The 21-Week Attorney Consultation Training Behind $18MM Growth

Attorney consultation training fails when firms rush it. We built a 21-week system that actually works. 

Learn the 5-phase consultation process that fixed our close rate and scaled Sterling to $18MM.

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📄 CHAPTERS  

0:00 - Attorney Consultation Training That Fixed Our Close Rate

0:47 - Why Your Marketing Dies in the Consult Room

2:05 - The Low Close Rate Data That Started Consult College

2:44 - Why Attorney Training Takes 21 Weeks (Not 2)

4:12 - How to Get Attorneys Past the Sales Stigma

6:06 - Phase 1: Building Rapport and Setting the Roadmap

9:00 - Phase 2-3: Discovery and Vision (Finding Their Peace)

12:00 - Phase 4-5: Clarity and Closing With Confidence

15:34 - Key Lessons: Speed Kills, Watch the Game Tape

16:57 - The Human Element That Makes Consultation Training Work

Curious to discover your personalized roadmap to scaling a law firm, no matter where you are in the business? 

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Transcript

0:00

Do your attorneys just suck in the consult room? You get marketing going, you get leads going, and then you finally get to the consult and your attorney can't close. We developed our own consult college to help our attorneys improve their skills I hope you love it and get some value out of how we train our attorneys to dominate the consult room. Welcome back to the Sterling family Law Show. I'm your host, Tyler Dolph. Mary, thank you so much for coming back to the Sterling Family Lore Show big episode today. We're talking about coaching attorneys, and we've coined that into a program called consult College that we use at Sterling. This has to be pretty fun because you have to go to all of our attorneys and say, listen, forget all the things you've learned. Let me tell you how to deal with people, how to listen, give us an overview of how this came about. And then what's it like? Yeah. So this came about because we recognize that marketing can give us the leads. The intake team can generate those and opportunities. And then it stops. And we had a problem and we had to identify what the problem was. And once we identified that inside the council room, we were not being humans. We were not letting someone fully unburden. We could pinpoint now we need to improve that area. And that's where Council College was really born. It is now a 21 week program where new attorneys and new hires sit with me once a week, and we talk about the philosophy behind our council process, why it works, why it matters, how does it feel for the client? And if you're a three hour meeting that you're still in law school? Or you're a brand new attorney out of law school, you also have a half hour with me where we do mock consultations once a week during that 21 week process, as Love it. Last time with Mary. Never a bad thing. So how did you recognize that this was an issue? Right. What I'm trying to say is you got to have the data. You got to understand. Hey, my consulta close rate is dwindling. What are we going to do about it? That really was the data point is we recognized we had all of these opportunities in front of us, but we weren't closing them. We were losing the clients. And we really needed to understand why someone walked away. And when they did walk away, what was the value that we were presenting them, and how did we miss that value add to their life? And that's, that's really the identification is we had a really low close rate. We needed to solve that from a business perspective, because we knew we couldn't grow and we we couldn't be the best version of ourselves either. Helping families through one of the most difficult seasons of their life. So. Well said. Okay, 21 weeks seems like a really long time. Talk to us about why it needs to take that long. What? What are you doing in the details? What's week one look like versus week 21? Yeah. So we have a five step council process. The consultations are broken into five different phases. We call them in-house and in order to do the five phase as well, you need to see me do it. You need to tell me how to do it. And then you need to show me that you can do it. So that's a three week process per phase. And then we also want them to have enough time to pinpoint areas of improvement themselves and where something went wrong on their own time. But then also watch a colleague kind of hit it from a different angle. What are some different unique deployments that they use that you hadn't even considered yet, or where some areas that maybe your colleagues don't struggle, but you do struggle. And how can you utilize those individuals to better yourself as well? And so I didn't want to just do 15 weeks and break it up that way. I wanted to go really in-depth and pull in a lot of different sales strategies, a lot of different voices from the sales space and human connection, to to really get a well-rounded individual inside that council room. Yeah. Because I assume that attorneys don't even like the word sales. They don't want to be associated with it. They don't want to be salespeople. They became lawyers to be lawyers. So how do you get them over that hump? I mean, listen, you're either selling or you're being sold something. Grant Cardone said that and I think that's true in every different career path you have, whether you're in it or you're an attorney or you are a salesperson, there's just this connotation around that, that job description that makes it feel really smarmy or just like, icky. That's not true. I think the reality is, is when you are helping someone become the best version of themselves, and when you're helping clients really get to what gets them out of their pain, that goes away. And that's really a part of college too, is you're not selling just a service. You're selling something that matters to the individual. And I know personally, if a client leaves us, they're not going to be supported the way we can support them. They're not going to be taken care of the way we can take care of them. And I know that because I've worked here so long and I know what these attorneys can do, and I know the heart that they all have. And the new attorneys need to know that to a new hire is just really need to know that, too. Because if you believe in what you're selling, it doesn't feel disingenuous. It feels really good to make sure that everyone that's in front of you is getting the help that they and their family require and need. 100%. I mean, I said that all the time, like, you're selling your kids going to school, right? You know that they need to go to school so they can learn that's a sale. They're going to eat healthy. You want them to eat healthy, that's a sale. So, it doesn't always have to be slimy, which is great to hear. not at all. I use it and I talk about this all the time. I use sales in foster care. I'm a foster mom. And have you ever tried to parent a foster teen that has baggage and baggage of trauma. You're selling them all day long. It's just a different way to think about it. 100%. All right. You mentioned five phases. Let's go through the phases. so phase one is the roadmap. You set the frame for what we're about to talk about what we're doing here today. And you want to do that with certainty. And a calm nature so that the client understands. Hey, I know you're going through a really painful season. I did my due diligence by listening in to the intake call, reviewing those notes, looking actually cap records really just quickly, quickly establishing that rapport with the individuals that they know what they're about to embark upon with you and that you're a trusted voice in that room. So phase one is just simply building a relationship, inviting them to to trust you and to know that, you have context on their situation. After phase one, do you want the client to, to really unload, like, is that the what's the goal of phase one? Yeah. The goal is to create clarity, authority and immediate trust so that in phase two they can fully unburden. It's really setting the stage, setting the roadmap that allows them certainty and calm. All right. Let's jump into phase two. Phase two is listening and unburdening. This is my favorite portion of the the script or the roadmap that we're about to do. It pulls the pain forward. The goal here is to let the client release what's heavy, what's been weighing you down, what is the pain that you're currently in? And you do that by listening, listening, validating and just digging deeper into them. It is a lot of tell me more about that. How is that impacting your future? What would that do if you stayed in this season of pain for the next six months? It's listening. It's unburdening. Is it, as part of the coaching process, helping the attorneys, not trying to solve anything during phase two? Don't answer any questions. Don't say, oh, I can help with that. Oh yeah. It's the biggest roadblock or hurdle that a new attorney has to jump over because they have all the answers, or they think they have all the answers. I think is a better way to say that because they're they're presenting problems and an attorney's job is to solve problems. But in reality, you have to go beyond the surface. You have to dig out the root. Because when someone says to you, well, I just want to get through this quickly. Okay. Tell me more about that. What pain are you in that makes you want to get out of this quicker? Well, it's just causing me a lot of financial stress. Okay, tell me more about that. What's been impacted the most by the financial stress you're currently facing? Well, I can't pay my mortgage and an attorney. Okay? You have to keep digging in order to find out where they currently are, where they want to go, and then what's stopping them from putting that next foot forward. And you got to do that by listening. Hey, family law firm leaders. My partner, Tony Karl's just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from 0 to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work. But if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family, law firm will succeed. how do you know that you're done with phase two. There is an immense sense of relief from the individual. It's why we like to do consultations in person or by video. You can see when someone has unburdened, their body posture is calmer, they're more relaxed, they don't feel like they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, because a lot of these individuals that are consulting with us have not even spoken to their friends or family about the pain that they're in. It's all bottled up inside. And if you do a really good job here in listening and unburdening, you can see it on the screen, you can feel them release that tension and then, you know, you've done a really good job and you can move into phase three. Then and only then can you move into phase three. And and for our listeners, this could be 30 minutes, 20 minute. Yeah. Oh yeah. Listening and unburdening could take 20 to 35 minutes getting the full picture out. Because think about you and you're married right now. You've got finances, you've got kids, you've got taxes, you have a business. There's just a lot going on in an individual's life. And there could be different pain points and all four of those areas. And it's your job to ensure you've uncovered all of the different pain points that this individual is in. So good okay. So we we've established trust and authority. We've allowed them to unburden. Now once phase three. Answering the big question. This is where I need the attorney to paint a vision for the future. The goal here is to shift from emotional into directional. Show them that there is a finish line. And when we say ask the big question, our big question is let's fast forward six months. Imagine that Sterling has put this behind you. What does your life look like? Whatever that client says to you, that is the goal that you anchor the rest of your counsel to, because that goal is what makes that person feel at peace. And here's the thing that is really hard for new attorneys to understand. Their version of peace could be totally different than your version of peace. Your version of peace is the attorney could be very factual to the point by the book, by the law right there. Peace is very emotional. All right I've got a house and my kids are happy and yeah. And that's the goal. That's what you anchor to. Because I can tell you 100%, they're not buying that. You are an attorney. They're buying what you can make them feel like in the next six months. And if you can anchor all of the legal solutions to that feeling game, set, match, they're not going anywhere else. That's such an important point that, it doesn't matter what your version of success is, they need to feel that their version of success is, most attainable with you. And so how do we move them into that next phase, then? Phase four is clarity and next steps. So this is where the attorney establishes authority, starts answering those legal questions but also bridges that goal into hope okay. The goal here is connect their vision. What they just told you with our process okay. Clarity kills fear every single time. So the attorney's job here is to clear that up. A lot of this is going to be anchored in the Sterling's three unique. So we're exclusively fixed fee. We only do family law. We have proven success. I think we're up to 15,000 past client reviews at this point. But it's to bridge all of those three uniques into the pain and the goal that they have for their future and how to sterling get them, get them there. And that's really where that authority comes in. That's great. And so that's more tactical, like at based on everything you said. And the vision for success that you have here is what next steps look like. Yep. And the attorneys could do this all day every day because it's very much answering those legal questions, guiding them through. You have a fear of the court okay. Here's how I would approach that. Right. Like this is finally the part where the attorney can come back and give their $0.02 on. This is what I'm going to be able to legally do for you. And here's how I'm going to do it. And then I'm assuming phase five is the big close. Yeah. Show the value and close with confidence. So the goal here is present. The options tie the value to their outcome and close decisively. Allow them to see that no matter what their pain is and what their goal is for the future, they achieve it at Sterling. And you're going to do that in a number of different ways. You're going to obviously link their feature advantage benefit statement to the recommended product offering that we have off of our one pager. And that's the other really cool thing that we do at Sterling is it's not a one size fits all firm. We know that there is value to full representation, but we also know that there's value to mediation. We know that there's value to document drafting or for the pro se litigant that wants to do this on their own. If you want someone to review it before it gets submitted to a judge, we have that option too. So in the big close, not only are you confidently presenting why Sterling is a solution, you're confidently picking the right service path for the individual. And I'll tell you, that's about five weeks of work with the attorneys because they in in law school present very easily full representation. But there's all these different options that are really available. So how do you confidently describe document drafting and court prep? How do you confidently describe a limited scope agreement? And we do that together in the classroom as well. based on what I've heard, your best path forward is ABC. Yes. And let me tell you why. Love it. So, if, law firm owner is listening to this and they're like, man, we got to, you know, our our concept clause rights, things, we got to implement something like this. What are some, like, key lessons you learned building this and where you scraped your knee and had to pivot? What what advice could you offer a law firm owner in trying to implement something like this? I think speed is something that is a real detriment to law firms. They want to identify the problem and solve the problem within a week, within two weeks, within one month. That's just not possible. If you're doing it right, you need to slow down, break apart what you're actually doing, what you want to be doing, and what you want that client to feel when you maximize your time in the counsel room and really understand how this impacts the person, you can better yourself. And then you can of course, better your business because of it. The other thing is, this is really hard to hear to. I think everyone should listen to themselves back. I think you should download every single consultation you do and listen to yourself. Listen to yourself just on audio and then watch yourself. You learn the most by looking at what you're currently doing and hearing how you sound. Okay, I watch the game tape. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like that. If you're an athlete, you watch yourself perform for a reason. It's the same thing in the consult room. You're going to pick up on little minute details you didn't know you were doing, and then you're going to learn from those. That's great. That's great advice. Anything else you could offer our audience as it relates to helping attorneys be better in the consult room? I think remembering to be human, remembering that yes, this is a business. Yes. You want to grow your business, but these are individuals lives that have a very personal impact on every area of their life, whether it's family, children, work, all of the above. You have to remember that this person is in pain, and to treat them with anything less than white glove service for the pain that they're experiencing. It's not the way to do it. a lot merrier. The best. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. Really appreciate you being on the podcast and we will see you again very soon. Thanks, Tyler.