104 - How to Effectively Partner with Others to Boost Efficiency, Profitability, Compliance and Client Satisfaction

Hosted on this episode is Grant Sanders, the head of Legal Operations at Stephen Rimmer Solicitors. He has a passion for turning law practice into a well-oiled machine – whilst meeting today’s demanding compliance regulations.

In this episode, Grant broke down how effective it is to partner with consultants and other small law firm service providers to boost efficiency and a way that increase profitability while also meeting compliance demands and long-term client satisfaction.

Useful links :

linkedin.com/in/granttythansanders

Proudly edited with finesse by Mike at Making Digital Real ✨

Transcript

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I am your host, Dan Warburton. If you are a law firm equity member, partner, CEO or MD who wants to increase your profit while reducing your workload, then you are in the right place.

It's the skills that I needed to become a leader. Yeah. I'm so happy that I've met you in my life.

You've spoken about the revenue increase. It went from like 70,000 to nearly half a million. What percentage increase is that? It's over 400% in that range.

Our monetary returns have been insane. And what we have made in extra profit as compared to what we spent on you is incomparable. You've just trebled the firm's profits in one year.

Yeah. Are you getting what I'm saying? After working with Dan for a few months, my income is up, my happiness is up. This has changed my whole life.

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I'm here with my guest today, Grant Sanders. He's the Head of Legal Operations at Stephen Rimmer Solicitors.

He has a passion for turning the practice of law into a well-oiled machine whilst meeting today's demanding compliance regulations. And today, what we're going to be talking about is how to effectively partner with others to boost efficiency, profitability, compliance and client satisfaction. Grant, it's so great to have you here.

Thanks, Dan. We've met a few times out networking at different events. I met you as Lexil.

And then more recently was the... Oh, you have to remind me now. Management Summit, wasn't it? The Legal Management Summit, yeah. Yeah.

And you've also kindly written a review for my book, Delegate Now to Supercharge Your Profits. Great book. Oh, yeah.

Thanks so much. And your review said to me how already highly experienced you are in everything that was covered in that book. So it was great to read it that you did actually still gain some useful insights from it.

I thought, I said this in the review, I thought that you managed to distill down some quite tough topics actually into some really digestible nuggets of good information. Yeah. Nice.

Nice. So tell us, how did you get to be the head of legal operations at Stephen Rimmers Listers? Oh, right. You want my life story, do you? Okay.

Yeah. I trained here. So I was Wilson's private client.

I did that for about 10 years in total. Then there was a national brand legal services provider over. And so I'm in the southeast, moved over to Bristol.

So again, Bristol for almost 10 years with those guys. That was really exciting. That was not a new organization as such, but they're having a new arm to their legal services in Wilson probate.

So got involved in that. That taught me so much about compliance and people management. And the training there was fantastic.

So I got to learn about how to really differentiate your brand. I learned about how to get the most out of people. Also, you've probably seen this stint where you have sort of red, yellow, green, and you put people in, and it's different ways you talk to them, different ways that you can get the most out of them through communication and sort of the way people digest information.

So it's about talking the right way to the person that you're talking to. And that can come from their life experience, their training, because what you find in traditional law firm practices is people went to the same sort of school. They learned the same way.

They went to university. They got taught the same stuff. They're all coming from the same sort of mindset.

But with this organization, it was much more the mix. So they brought people in without law degrees. They brought people in doing SILEX.

It was a really good time. Yeah, really good time. And then, because I live here and my wife lives in the southeast, got the opportunity to come back to the firm.

And from there, really sort of from a practice manager sort of role, which is many, many different hats to now we've grown to a bigger size. It's more of a legal operations kind of role. So that involves compliance because I'm a compliance officer for legal practice.

It's also got HR, marketing, BD, IT. What else has it got? So they oversee the finance side of things, stuff that you can take away from the fee earners. So they are just concentrating on what they've been trained and are good at, which is solving people's problems, really.

Or you can take away from them to allow them to do as much as they can at the legal work, the better it is for the firm, really. Yeah, it makes complete sense. And the reason why I say, wow, is because from my experience, a lot of this is handled by not secretaries as such, but in other firms, most fee earners have a secretary or another team member that handles a lot of this for them.

But yet you seem to be carrying a lot of this work. Yeah, and often you'll find in different practices as well, you will have the partners in charge of the department might be a fee earner, probably one of their best fee earners, and that's why they're there. They've also got a management responsibility and they're a partner in a law firm with all those pressures as well.

So they're trying to remove as much as you can so they can actually concentrate on leading their team and doing the work that they're very good at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great reminder, you know, because for every 15 minutes or an hour that a fee earner is doing some other task that isn't bringing in money into the firm, that they're less effective in their ability to contribute towards the profitability of the firm as a whole.

So coming back to it, how to effectively partner with others to boost efficiency, profitability, compliance and client satisfaction. What do you mean by that? I like to partner with people. So I am not, I know enough that in a conversation like this, I can sound like I know quite a bit.

But actually, Dan, if you started actually digging into the detail, you'll find I don't know very much at all. But I find people that know much more than me about a certain subject and then they help us. So that'd be in our compliance.

We undertook a Regulation 21 audit before we had our SRA thematic review. And that was an absolute godsend to have that marker that when the SRA did come and visit us, we could provide that. We could say, look, this is what was found.

This is how we implemented the changes. And we got clean bill of health. And there's been a lot of press recently about firms not being as lucky as that.

So it's finding good partners to work with. Again, for marketing, I like networking and I like talking to people. But actually, you know, the SEO, the email campaigns, the social media stuff, that I give to someone else.

Rather than have me do it or try and get fee earners to do it, which as you pointed out, we're taking away from them actually doing the job. You can get someone for a lot cheaper than it would be to employ a marketing executive and pay their salary and their pension. You know, they have holiday.

Whereas if you partner with someone, then you've got them there on a retainer. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. And how effective have you found outsourcing marketing? Yeah, very effective.

We've grown. We've probably doubled in our turnover in the last, so I came back about 2018, so in the last six years. Double turnover.

Nice. Headcount's gone up probably 30%, something like that. But again, on the recruitment side of things, I like to be quite visible on LinkedIn and make those initial connections with people that we want to recruit, so they get an idea of what the firm's like and what we're about.

But actually going, you know, it's a long tail thing, recruitment in law. You get them at the right time, and I haven't got the time to keep constantly following up, so using a good recruitment consultant is important to know the business and they get to know what we're about. And they can keep just in check with that person.

How else do we use it for? I mean, just stuff. We've got a great guy that does. So we have lots of disparate, so someone would do our shredding, someone would do our stationary, someone would do our bin collection, stuff like that, but to bring it all under one roof.

Something goes wrong now, I just pick up the phone, talk to one person, and they go and sort it out. We've done similar with our telephones and our IT. One was always saying, oh, it's the other one's fault, but bring it all under one house, build up a good relationship with that person, and then you can cut your time down.

So you mean as in go and employ somebody to handle? Well, I mean, we've got a couple of IT floor walkers who do all the day-to-day stuff, but high-level cybersecurity, IT management, all that kind of stuff. Again, having one strategic alliance with someone, you can just call them and deal with that, and it doesn't have to be too expensive either. I went out and spoke to two or three different companies.

Again, most things are on a relationship level, aren't they? Yeah. Everyone's got a similar product. It's who you connect with and who you feel comfortable giving that work to.

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. What I'm taking from this is the sheer value of building those relationships with suppliers, finding the right ones, and don't hold back from delegating it away, and at least initially just having those conversations and seeing how cost-effective they can solve that problem or take that workload off your team's plate. Really great, yeah.

And I think that works with... So we run a bit more of a traditional model where you've got a Fianna, and they've got a secretary as well, so one-to-one support. Again, we want the solicitor or the lawyer concentrating on the legal work. They shouldn't be having to raise invoices, open and close files, chase some outstanding documents, things like that.

It's about delegation, which you talk about quite a lot in the book. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I'm sure the listener is keen to know who are these partners that you team up with, and do you think you're able to disclose who it is that you rate highly to offer these services? Yeah, is that okay? Yeah, of course it is.

Well, I mean, we're only promoting their business, aren't we? So, well, going down the list, for marketing, we use Lara at Consortium, all the marketing. Ah, Lara, yeah, fantastic personality. Everybody knows Lara, great.

She was really fantastic, actually, getting me to expand my network and getting me out and doing stuff like this. Great. Conscious Solutions, we use for our website.

Oh, yes, they're actually sponsoring the book launch event. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. Yeah, we've been working with those for a number of years now.

They're great guys. Hive Risk. Hive Risk, Kate Burt, one of my other clients.

Yeah. They're coming in in February. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant.

I mean, our second regulation 21, because we're going to do it on a sort of every couple of years just to keep everybody on their toes. Yeah. Cyber Security.

Cyber, well, we use a local company called Computer Consultant Nextworks. Have they? All of our IT. We've known, again, they've been in place longer than I've been here, so we've been with them about 25 years.

But again, great relationship with them, the MDN, so their new telephones as well. Yeah, brilliant. I'm just wondering, coming back, you were saying how it's really paid off investing in marketing, and obviously Lara and the team have been great there.

What percentage of your work, if you know or can tell or just have an idea of, comes from past clients and you reaching out to past clients versus creating new clients? I do know that. So I'm a bit data-driven. So nice.

That's another one, actually, Capture. We use that for all of our MR. Oh, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, yeah.

They're great. And our case management system, I'm trying to remember them all now, is Advanced ALB. Again, that's the partners of ours.

We've worked with them a lot for developing the case management system to make it our own through workflows. But that then allows us to sort of answer questions that you've just asked. We're about 80% is recommended by our existing clients.

Okay. So we actually do, it takes a lot to bring new clients in, so we do our old clients. So we've got quarterly newsletters that go out.

We run competitions and things for our current clients. We've just won tickets for Brighton & Hove against Brentford. That's one of our existing clients has won that, which is just a way to say thank you, really.

So yeah, 80%. So we watch that by matter ones. So if you've got a matter one, you know they're a new client.

And if they're a matter two, three, four, you know that they're returning to you. Quite a period, because you don't need legal services every year. We're not lucky like accountants where you've got this reoccurring annual revenue.

So it's just about trying to remain at the front of the client's mind. So when they do need you, they're not going into Google and putting solicitors near me. They're getting a regular update from us.

We're letting them know about the stuff we're doing in the community. And then hopefully we're there and they can think, oh, I'll go and see Stephen Rimmers. That's a great reminder to all of us that are growing a business.

You know, perhaps we feel like all our outreach efforts aren't paying off. You've got to stay in the game to win it. It's not just be in it to win it.

You need to be in it and stay in it to win it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we do.

We do focus on existing clients quite a bit. Yeah, because that's where, you know, we've already made, they've already come to us. We're lucky for them to choose us.

We've given a great service and we put a lot on client satisfaction. Again, Review Solicitors is another one that we partnered with. Oh, yes. 

Nice. They've been really good. We've managed to automate a lot of that collection with them.

Hopefully, you know, clients will stay with us. We want to be that family sister. We're not trying to be a top 100 firm.

We are a high street firm. We serve the local community. So we do a lot with local schools.

I was out doing some interviews, some mock interviews with some year 11s the other day. We do a lot with local rotary, chamber, all that kind of stuff. Really try and be in the community.

Oh, nice. That's what we want. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Because then when you're providing these mock interviews, the child then says, Oh, I had this guy from Stephen Rimmer come over. And again, then you're in the family household discussion. Well, we did, we did a coloring competition.

So we went to the reception classes of all the local schools and said, you color this, get one of your, all your children to color this in. We'll give you a Christmas tree for doing that as a thank you. And then we're going to pick a winner later this week and then the family get a hamper.

But, you know, they've all gone home and they've got our logo on the top. And just a very clever guys. If you're if you're tuned in and listening to this, you're now being given some real insider secrets here about some very, very clever marketing here.

Really nice. Really nice. And of course, it's all very much community building at the same time, isn't it? It is as much as giving back to the local communities.

It is. And it's not a hard sell either. Like you say, we're just trying to be present, front of mind with people when they're thinking about, oh, I want to move house or I want to make a will or, you know, unfortunately I'm going through a divorce or something like that or someone's passed away.

It's just we want to be really approachable. It's quite, quite a difficult thing, I think, for someone to come in and talk to a solicitor. This still seems, you know, quite a scary thing to do.

If you've got parents at the school gate and we try to recruit within sort of an hour as well of the office, is that we say, you know, oh, I know so and so, they've got a kid at my school. Just try and make it really, really approachable and friendly. Wow.

Really good. What advice would you give a law firm owner or partner who just feels weighed down from it all? They feel like they've got too much to do. Their clients keep calling them to do their work that they've always done, you know, which they've always done for years and they can't see a way out of it.

What advice would you give to them? Make those internal and external strategic partnerships. Yeah. What's the difference between those two then? So external, you're bringing in someone who knows more than you about a specific subject, so marketing or SEO or computers or something like that.

So then you've really got to lean on them for their advice and that's quite honestly, it's probably a bit cheaper than employing someone to do it. Internally, you need to bring up the new people. So we've got, we've been going through quite a big training program, so we've always got three or four trainee solicitors coming through.

We support people with funding for their SILEX or their licensed conveyance of courses. So it's about bringing those people through and then delegating some work until you build confidence in them and allow them to grow as well so they enjoy it because people want to be stretched and as I say, we've got a good Ministry of Support function as well. So clients feel happier.

They're talking to someone that they've talked to before. If you're not available, they get to talk to the same assistant each time who knows about the file and they can feel confident in their messages and things that get passed on. I think some, again it's quite a traditional approach and some law firms I've seen have gone into a pooled admin resource but then I don't think that's a great client journey really.

You don't know who's got the task. You could fall between two people and never get to speak to the same person twice. So it's about that client journey and that's I think where we get our good reviews is that the client can pick up the phone any time they like and if the lawyer isn't available then they know that they can speak to an assistant.

Okay, okay. Who is likely the assistant of that lawyer that they know well? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, always.

Okay. And then you can even delegate tasks. Again, you've got secretaries who might want to be paralegals and then they would like a training contract.

So again, you can delegate more work to them. It's not about delegating them things that they can't cope with. And you do have to spend that time in training but it's that old adage, isn't it? You know, teach a man to fish kind of thing.

You know, at the front end it will take a bit more time but hopefully that will free up more of your time to concentrate again on the harder legal stuff. Commercial business pays more. Yeah, it's a great reminder you know, how slow and painful it can feel to be sitting in those one-on-one with somebody as you train them up and get them up to speed with something.

But actually when you stand back within four to six weeks you already notice a great improvement in that employee and they're applying themselves and their value to the firm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So what would you say are the key ways of delegating? So what I picked up from your book was the feedback. I think that's great. I think perhaps lawyers could be pretty bad at giving feedback because they'll always think that they're criticizing but actually people want to hear that feedback.

They want to engage. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

From what you were saying and what came to my mind when you said how do you delegate? The first one is give people the opportunity to be trusted. Yeah. That's the very first stage.

If you don't give your people ever even the opportunity to just earn your trust and be trusted by you then you will never have this experience or perception of them as being helpful towards you and the firm or certainly nowhere near as much as they could be. By the time you build confidence. Isn't that it? Yeah, that's it.

So it's about delegating but delegating the right things and in the right order. So in other words what I call delegating responsibly and then have them earn your trust by doing the first tasks on time and doing them well. And then the other thing is delegating isn't something it's just something you ask somebody to do and you walk away.

It's something that you schedule a time to have a conversation about what you want them to do and then you make clear requests with agreed deadlines but then make it a routine where week by week you have a one-on-one call with them to ask them how did it go? What did you learn from doing that? What is it that you feel that you could do better next time? And then that's moving from not advising but leading. Don't give them the answers. Ask them questions that have them question themselves and question what they're doing.

Then that's how they grow and they build their ability to take more responsibility and the more responsible they become the less weight as the firm owners we have on our shoulders. Yeah, so we do monthly one-to-ones and initially when you set those up it might be quite a long conversation. Yeah.

Move through the months. You know the files that are tricky and you know the files that are going fine and actually that talk turns into a bit of a shorter conversation I think as the months go on. Yeah.

But we also try and have an open door policy so you know someone can ask a question at any time there's no wrong questions really because if you have that kind of transparent cooperation you're not going to have files that are just sat on a desk you know keep going to the bottom of the pile that turn into problems. Yeah, yeah and it's interesting that you say you know you have these sessions or one-on-one you know one-on-one meetings once a month because I often find that a lot of people by the fourth week they've slowly drifted off back into bad habits and old ways of doing things and that it's much more effective to have a weekly one-on-one call and to structure it across the firm so that everybody has a weekly one-on-one with somebody that's holding them to account on their targets and what they're supposed to achieve but what you're saying is once a month seems to be working so yeah it's interesting Yeah, yeah monthly is fine I mean like I say we've got an open door policy so most people talk to each other probably daily to be honest Yeah they do have issues that come up quite quickly on the feedback front it's a bit more structured I think with the feedback and then we have an annual appraisal as well Nice Well I've learnt so much from this conversation already I'm just wondering you know you've clearly got a lot of experience in managing people managing teams but also outsourcing and creating these great partnerships with other exterior companies and individuals At what stage do you think it's better to have somebody in-house handling things like compliance and some of the heavier stuff I think as we grow so we're about 110 people now I still know everybody's name I still meet everybody on their first day I still try to learn one thing about them remember that it is starting to get a little bit more difficult now so we're probably at a point I mean I thought it was maybe 150 people that might might turn into maybe 125 something like that that's the kind of numbers I've got in mind at the moment with HR like I say it's getting getting more tricky compliance because we've got a great management system because we do regular file audits we've got we've just brought in some new software called Reg1 which is helping with all of our compliance and oversight so our file reviews used to be two file reviews per fee and a per month because we're Lexel accredited where we're hoping that this will sort of flick it on its head really and be an exception report so we can actually go in and tackle where we know there are issues rather than just happening to come across them in a file review so it's it's trying to leverage tech a bit as well to make those roles a bit easier but yeah it's probably a compliance person a HR person marketing seems to be going okay like I say we're pretty light touch on marketing we've got a great website and we do a lot around existing clients and the reviews as well is really driven I think a lot you know a lot of people will go online now do a bit of research before choosing a firm that really works so in-house marketing perhaps not but yeah probably HR compliance will be the ones where we bring bring people in to help as we grow as you grow yeah so you'd probably go from a bi-monthly to maybe monthly maybe weekly and in the end end up having somebody yeah but but even so they still wouldn't be employed as such they'd still be subcontracted you feel maybe not the HR and the compliance we won't bring someone in in-house to do that because as we grow as we get more people as we get more files I think it's good to have that hands-on person I mean basically it will be because I'm I'm kind of doing all that at the moment it'll be when it becomes too much for me that's when I'll know yeah got it so we've got a chair who's doing he's just done his HR CPD 1 got a lady that helps me with more administrative tasks so scheduling meetings and she does holiday and sickness and stuff like that so we've got people coming through so developing people internally for that yeah nice nice yeah really good I can see how you know you balance outsourcing as such versus as you said external relations versus internal and how you balance the two to be able to achieve a consistent growth and how you you're monitoring how busy and how overwhelmed you get as to when is the point to bring in somebody new and rather than you trying to stretch yourself and spread yourself thinly the way forward is building relationships and getting that support internal and external yeah brilliant I've gained some great insights from you today I'm sure the listeners here have also gained some great insights from you and in the show notes we'll put a link to what are we going to put is it a link to your LinkedIn I like to meet people so honestly if anyone just come over say hello I do my meeting people and expanding my network because you can find you can take something from everybody yeah absolutely and what I'm hearing from that is don't be so protective over your connections and your relationships because actually when you go out there and you and you be compassionate and you be giving of your connections you just make the world a better place and you end up creating a good karma and opportunity comes back your way right absolutely yes I mean yeah I truly believe yeah I think law firms 10-15 years ago were very close-minded and you shouldn't collaborate with people no one can know what's going on in your firm and actually I think it's much better and we're part of the LawNet group so you know they're they're fantastic network of lawyers I met some great great people through that as well yeah great is it is it Peter Riddleston is there group training Evan Date yeah that's him yes I've got a call with him scheduled about possibly speaking and leading sessions for them oh nice there you go so yeah yeah yeah it's once you get out there and you start getting known you create these relationships it's amazing how many opportunities and the doors start to open I think this is why we keep meeting when we're out and about because we both share the same intent you know I have absolutely brought work into the firm because of the networking that I've done so that is actual you know actual paying work yeah because you can't always do everything you have conflicts or you might not specialise in that particular area so networking with other law firms finding out if they've made mistakes or if they've got a great thing that they're using you know benefit your own firm yeah nice have you have you heard of Myerson Connections no or I'll make an introduction there to Chris Myerson Connections a great referral network it's got about 180 law firms in it and if there's yeah any work that you have conflict of interest or is too specialised or something they've got a whole team there and they've got a brilliant no poaching policy as well and most of my clients are now working with them and enjoy it excellent yeah brilliant really good Grant as always I love catching up with you I always learn more from you in conversation and are you Dan honestly thank you thank you well you're coming to one of the book launches aren't you I'm going to try so it's either going to be London or Bristol I'm going to try okay okay I'd love for you to make it and I'll personally give you a signed copy of the book that'd be brilliant okay brilliant alright well actually saying that just before you click you sent me I don't know if I should have done this but you sent me obviously the draft printed that off and at a partners meeting I gave it out to everybody so they could go and read it okay just tell them not to share it anywhere else that's stupid there was some really good stuff in there so I wanted them to see it as well oh wow thanks so much for that feedback that's really made my day thank you alright well go forth and conquer and I'm sure we'll speak again soon brilliant thanks a lot for inviting me cheers bye thank you for listening to the Law Firm Owners Podcast with me your host Dan Warburton if you found this useful then join my Law Firm Owners Club which already has over 850 members it's free to join and as a member you'll get my very best episodes exclusive content free training tickets to events I'm 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