Speaker 1: 0:00

So what this firm does a really good job of is giving us a system to manage tasks, and so what I try and do is think about each client as a project. Yeah Right, and if you are doing a project plan, like you think about an IT project plan, and you're only writing the next step in programming, you've lost sight of you know what's your deliverable, what are your objectives. And so I really try and take my experience, having worked on IT projects and having clear objectives, deliverables, a clear project plan, beginning to end.

Speaker 2: 0:44

Well, hello and welcome to the Jay Sterling Hughes Show, where we share how we have built our family law firm from zero to 25 plus attorneys and 15 million in revenue, all in the past 10 years, and my purpose here is to document what's working and what's not working, with hopes that you can take that and you can recontextualize it and shorten your success curve. I'm your host, jeff Hughes, and today's show I have a guest with me, tiffany Vogel, and Tiffany is annually our top performer here at Sterling Lawyers and we have an incredible conversation coming up. So Tiffany's one of our partners. Let me just like spin Tiffany's an extended intro here, because there is a wealth of nuggets and great information to share with our audience here that I want to tease out what you're going to be sharing here because it's really, really good. So Tiffany's one of our partners. In our Appleton office, which is a one of a small metro area here in Wisconsin, in the north central part of the state. She is going to talk about how she has collected now listen to this just shy of $1.3 million this year in 2024. So we're recording this on December 13th of 24. So the year's not quite over, but she's going to end up somewhere close or just shy of 1.3, which is incredible A for anyone to do that in a year in any metro, but to do it in a tiny metro of Appleton, wisconsin, is incredible. And so Tiffany is an amazing attorney who has learned how to create an efficient, team-centered practice. So what you're going to be hearing about is a couple things here.

Speaker 2: 2:15

One is that I remember interviewing Tiffany back in 2019. When she interviewed and after she came on board within about a year, the light bulb went on for me. Her hiring and her performance helped me understand the perfect bullseye target for our hiring processes for lawyers. She came in with some life experience, very hungry, chip on her shoulder, wanting to prove herself, and a combination of those things are what really we look for in a lot of our new hires, because that has been a formula for a lot of success for our firm. So she's going to talk about that. You're going to hear a lot about how she has built a very efficient practice. She has two full-time support staffs. One is here in Appleton, the other one is based out of the Philippines, and she leverages teammates. They have great communication based out of the Philippines and she leverages teammates. They have great communication and they have a philosophy that they follow together and they hold each other accountable around the idea of eat the frog first. So the frog is the most disgusting, gross thing and they want to eat it first. So you're going to hear about that.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Another thing that our firm is focused on in 2024 has been shifting all of our ideology and philosophy around client service. We want to be incredible, extraordinary at that. That requires changes throughout the whole firm and Tiffany has been in the vanguard of that and has really responded and has become an exceptional client server. And I asked her about that in our pre-call, our warmup here, and she didn't want to call it what I want to call it, which is kind of like a client satisfaction. She called it behavioral modification on her end. So she looked at it from a standpoint of what do I own and what can I change, and so she shares something in our podcast today about behavioral modification and she picked one specific thing on how she serves one population which is adult, middle-aged male guys like me, and how she had to shift her thinking to do that and it made a world of difference because it trickled out to every other aspect of her client service. So you don't want to miss that part of the podcast either, because that is terrific.

Speaker 2: 4:13

We spent a fair amount of time talking about how does she look at a client as a project and that kind of desensitized a little bit. She doesn't take the empathy and the human connection out of it. No, no, no. What she does is she looks at every case like a project and she schedules that out in the beginning, which enables her to create a very efficient, proactive-based practice which pushes cases along, which, by the way, the clients really want they want to be out of court system. She's identified that knows how to do that for them. So you're going to hear how she goes about doing that.

Speaker 2: 4:43

You're going to hear about her philosophy around delegation things that she won't and can't delegate, how she manages those and how she's constantly looking on a daily basis which is crazy to think about on a daily basis how can she improve that delegation interaction with her team? And then there's one really cool idea that she shares about she uses a link, gives all of her clients a link in the very beginning of her time with them where they can schedule 15 minutes with her, which, more than anything, gives peace of mind and comfort to clients and some other ideas and strategies she shares. So, tiffany, I have like gone way beyond my typical intro time and I've probably, you know, consumed a lot here, made you blush a little bit. But thank you for coming on the show today and sharing with us how you've had such an amazing success this year. And let's start off with the Tiffany story.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So I was actually born in a suburb of San Francisco, but over the course of my first couple of years my parents relocated back to Appleton, where they were originally from, and the reason they relocated here is because both my parents were from here. We have strong family roots, all our family is here, and my mom was pregnant with my youngest sister. So ever since then my parents have lived in the exact same house. I don't know that they'll ever sell it. They talk about retiring and moving, but we've been here ever since. So I started at UW Fox Valley, which is closing this year. Actually, I did my first year of college there with the intent that I was going to collect as many majors as possible Like a lifelong student sort of.

Speaker 2: 6:27

Thing.

Speaker 1: 6:28

What was that?

Speaker 2: 6:29

Like a lifelong student sort of mentality.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Absolutely. That's been me since day one. I've always had a really strong interest in science, art or the arts I should say primarily music and always been a really strong writer and so just had way too many interests to be contained by any one major. So I went to UW-Fox my first year and then I transferred to UW-Stevens Point. I went there.

Speaker 1: 7:05

The only reason I finally decided it was time to leave college is because they only give you student aid or did at the time for so many years and I was no longer going to have student aid to. Had intended to study to be a band director, but I panicked because I did not feel it was appropriate to put an early 20-something-year-old in charge of other people's children, and I had a lot of anxiety around that. So at that time in my life my fear of failure was driving my decision making. It's something that's really really difficult to overcome, but I think it comes with experience and practice, deciding that what you want for your life is, you know, having that long-term vision and and knowing that the fear is momentary, it is a moment in time, right, it's not going to stay forever. So then I ended up working for an insurance, a travel insurance company at that time I think they're actually owned by AIG now and then worked there for a year, managed call center while I was there, moved back to Appleton after that year.

Speaker 2: 8:35

So Appleton is a city of what size is for our audience to get a view of?

Speaker 1: 8:39

Appleton, I think we're right around 80,000, but then we have a lot of surrounding communities.

Speaker 2: 8:48

The whole area. I mean it's not very big, a couple hundred thousand people total, right. Right, I would agree, yeah, so we're talking small, small towns, central Wisconsin, right, all to the earth people.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Yes, and Stevens Point is even smaller than that. When I attended Stevens Point, I think the permanent population was around 23,000. And then there were a combination of 5,000 to 8,000, if I remember, students and other more transient people in that town. So quite small.

Speaker 2: 9:24

Yeah, all right, so I interrupted you, so pick up where I interrupted you at.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Yeah, so I ended up back in Appleton. I worked for a mail machine company in a call center. One of the most fun things I did there was we worked in a pod of two people and I worked in the inbound call center. So we were taking calls on accounts and my pod teammate and I decided that our jobs were kind of boring and that we wanted to add a little friendly competition and so we started a weekly competition to see who could by luck of the draw, just random, whichever calls you get, but if there was a past due account, who could collect the most money on past due accounts. Okay, so I think this sets up the type of personality I have in that you know we're going to look for these, these characteristics and future lawyers that we hire.

Speaker 2: 10:31

By the way, right Proves our here.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Right. So he won once, I think, but generally I was the winner because I was really determined to collect on these accounts.

Speaker 2: 10:44

And about what year was this, Tiffany?

Speaker 1: 10:47

That would have been 2002-ish, Okay Long long before I went to law school.

Speaker 2: 11:00

So we're getting there, but after I left, that After the music and environmental ethics major.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my undergraduate degree was complete at that point. Actually, I'll go back for just a second to that. I had a double major music and environmental ethics. I was maybe a class or two shy of getting a biology, chemistry and French minor.

Speaker 2: 11:24

Oh my goodness. Okay, three minors plus two doubles. Yeah, a double Okay.

Speaker 1: 11:31

A double yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:32

Wow.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Okay, um, after I left Pitney Bowes I went which was the mail machine company I went to work for Thrivent, which is a fortune 500 company. They're unique in that they're a fraternal, so you have to have membership criteria and people who purchase insurance from them have to meet meet that membership criteria. Learned a ton at that job. So there I started in the call center again, worked my way into a back office position called a business process analyst, so someone who writes and evaluates procedures, works with the system team on developing systems, with the system team on developing systems, interfaces with the staff when they have questions or they need certain types of approvals, that sort of thing. So that job and actually I'll go back even further. So that job was very process driven.

Speaker 1: 12:35

I didn't mention that my mother owned a sewing business for a lot of years and so from the moment I could hold a pair of scissors and operate a sewing machine, I worked for her and that job was extremely process driven as well and we were paid on production. So all the way back to late middle school and high school, I was working for my mom doing tasks. I mean the task was based on my age and my ability, but always focused on how can I be as efficient with my time as possible and make as much money as possible, while still producing the quality of goods that were required for her to maintain accounts that she had with large companies yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2: 13:26

So we're foreshadowing some of this process driven mentality that you've brought into the practice yes, so you decide to go off to law school, and what year was that that you entered law school? So you decided to go off to law school, and what year was that that you entered law school?

Speaker 1: 13:38

2015.

Speaker 2: 13:40

And you were part time, if I recall right.

Speaker 1: 13:42

When you went Somewhere between full time and part time. So the program I was in was designed to be done in four years. I actually graduated in three years.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Okay, a normal load then, I guess.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Pretty close yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:56

You went through the summers too, as I recall. Right a normal load then, I guess Pretty close.

Speaker 1: 13:59

yeah, you went through the summers too, as I recall right? Yes, I worked full-time. The program I attended was the first with a provisional approval from the ADA, a hybrid program where it was part online and part in person.

Speaker 2: 14:14

Okay, you were at Thrivent and I think you were a paralegal. Am I pulling this out of the memory bank correctly?

Speaker 1: 14:20

You're correct. After I was a business process analyst, I became a paralegal and I had enough attorneys at Thrivent ask me why I hadn't gone to law school. And then this hybrid program was just getting off the ground and it allowed me to continue working and not have to relocate my family while I went to law school. So it was a perfect storm.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Wow, so you're hustling, working a full load, taking classes at a full load, a mom, a wife all is going on during these three years years, yes, and one of the semesters my daughter also had a medical crisis, and so I was managing that for a semester as well.

Speaker 1: 15:09

How to support her and her need to see specialists as well as working full time and essentially a full class load.

Speaker 2: 15:18

Wow, so you graduate from law school? Yes, and what happens next?

Speaker 1: 15:25

So unfortunately, unfortunately, right this is do you choose to put the silver lining on something or see it as a bad thing? There wasn't space for me at Thrivent. Bad thing there wasn't space for me at Thrivent, and so I ended up working for a business transactions law firm for a year out of college and I'm grateful for the experience in that it helped me define what I didn't want in my legal career, but it was not a good space for me. I realized pretty quickly that I have a much deeper need to connect with the people aspect of lawyering and not the transactional accounting aspect of lawyering.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Okay, and their loss became our gains. This is where the story gets fun.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Yes.

Speaker 2: 16:19

So I'll interject here. So we were looking to grow our Appleton office and we had an ad that you responded to. I think it was in wisconsinlawyercom, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Might've been yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Okay, because I think that's the only thing we were advertising in back there. I think it was pre the Indeed era, because I didn't believe in Indeed back then. I don't think so. What year was it or what month was it that you joined our team and then talk through all the nitty-gritty, dirty details of starting and learning family law for the first time, what that was all like so I'm actually going to go back to the year I graduated law school.

Speaker 1: 16:57

I actually had applied and I had followed up with you and you said so sorry, we're not hiring anymore.

Speaker 2: 17:03

Oh, I rejected you oh man.

Speaker 1: 17:07

And then the following year, when I was deciding to part ways with the business transactions firm, I pulled out my list of all the places I had applied. I just started reaching out to people. And I reached out to you and you said you're in luck, you know, let's have a phone call. So there then I. We talked on the phone and I, the more I researched the firm, I was really, really intrigued by the process components. I was hearing the investment in systems, the break the mold by doing fixed fee. It was all really intriguing. It scratched my brain just right as a process person, right as a process person. The downside, actually in the interview process, is when I was a paralegal I had said if I ever had to do family law I was going to quit the law. So I had to keep a really open mind about applying here and really think about not only what I wanted for a career, but I had to really think about myself and what I needed versus what I thought I wanted.

Speaker 2: 18:26

Oh, wow, okay, so you had an open mind because you originally closed off to this whole concept of serving people going through a really hard time in family law.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Exactly. I'm happy to report it was a really good decision. I remember within the first probably couple of weeks and I took a stab at a consult. I thought it was just the greatest thing.

Speaker 1: 18:53

You know the greatest thing to have someone in your office for the first time feeling like they can unload a burden and tears stream down their face. I never thought I would like that feeling of helping someone unburdened like that, and now, the more I do it, the more it just is the most rewarding thing for me. Yeah, I think consults are the most rewarding thing for me.

Speaker 2: 19:19

Yeah, I think consults are the best part of family law. Personally, I love the consult process.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Okay, what month was it that you joined our team?

Speaker 1: 19:28

September of 2019. Okay.

Speaker 2: 19:32

All right, so you started off no experience whatsoever in family law.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Can I just add to that I didn't even take family law as a class in law school.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Okay, so we're starting from square zero, like this is family court, and you're learning the very basics of like no fault divorce, to start there, right?

Speaker 1: 19:51

Right right.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Got it In that first year. To summarize, if you like how did you get trained? What was your first year like? How were your numbers, that sort of thing.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Yeah, the difficulty in Wisconsin is we know we have in probably most states right, there's a long runway to get cases onboarded and get them resolved. So my first year, first of all I really didn't know what I was doing but I was trying very hard to observe and ask questions. I'm very much an experiential learner. It's interesting that my career got on this track because I was afraid when I was about to graduate from college and didn't become a band director. Because now I'm kind of the opposite. I very much thrive in situations where I'm thrown to the wolves, so to speak, where I'm put in a situation where maybe no one has the answer right, maybe it's a new novel case concept or we're trying something in a project and no one's done it before. Like, I very much thrive in that space. I've been, through my experiences, able to develop a skill to acknowledge that fear but continue to work through it, and so I've really used a lot of that.

Speaker 1: 21:20

My first year, you know, going to hearings with other attorneys in our office and self-reflection was a huge thing, right? What didn't I like about business transactions? What do I like about family law? What do I like about family law? How is this fitting my personality and what drives me. I remember one of the very first hearings I did on my own. It was a father who hadn't seen his child in six weeks probably longer than it might've been six weeks by the time we initially did our consult, and even longer by the time the first hearing occurred, and it was around this time of the year. And I just remember getting him holiday placement and walking out of that courtroom. He didn't even realize what had happened and then, when I explained it to him, the look of relief on his face was it just was such an immense and overwhelming feeling to be able to give that gift to someone you know, that he gets to spend the holidays with his child after not seeing them for weeks or months.

Speaker 2: 22:35

Yeah, wow, and it gives me chills thinking about. Your first year was COVID year, so we're talking 2020. So that was an odd year all around, right, so yes.

Speaker 2: 22:44

If you reflect on that year, do you recall I'm trying to give the audience some context of how you've made the jumps over the years. Yeah, and by the way, just for everyone's knowledge, we really track three different metrics here. We track our lawyers, we track our collections, which is an indicator of efficiency and so forth, and we track our performance in the consult room and we track our client satisfaction scores. So as you look back, I know it's four years, we're 24 right now, but as you look back in 20, do you recall kind of how that first year shook out?

Speaker 1: 23:16

As you look back, in 20, do you recall kind of how that first year shook out. I was really happy with my collections, numbers, nps. I at the time I'm going to be honest I ignored. I didn't think it was something I could actually influence. What was the what's?

Speaker 2: 23:35

Our consult rate.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Oh, consult rate. That was hard during COVID because we had so many people contact us for consults that were in really bad living situations. But because of COVID, because of the financial effects, I felt pretty powerless to help them and I think I don't remember what the numbers were, but I seem to recall that there was. I mean, it just had an effect on every business, I think including ours. People were hesitant to pull the trigger on filing for divorce during COVID.

Speaker 2: 24:13

Yeah, it was especially during those months of April, May and June, Right Into the year. It kind of swung back a little bit, as I recall. So that was your first full year learning family law. We get into 21. And do you recall how things went for you that year?

Speaker 1: 24:29

21,. I did extremely well, if I recall correctly. Well, if I recall correctly, by 2021, I think that was the first year I had the highest collections in the firm. It was either 21 or 22. As you and I know, the other attorney in our office, who is extremely competitive, had been running numbers all year and here's me just trying to keep getting through the day because I'm still learning my job and he was, I think, quite shocked when he ran the year-end numbers because no one had projected it and I wasn't paying attention.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Hello, jeff, here, my team and I have built a family law practice resource website at jsterlinghughescom. That's jsterlinghughescom, and it is loaded with all kinds of information and downloads and educational content to help you build the family law practice of your dreams. So, if you haven't, please go to my website, subscribe to the newsletter and I promise each week I'll send you valuable content that will help you build a beautiful law firm, as well as share with you news and developments happening around the United States that impact the practice of family law. Okay, so that was Jeff Murrell.

Speaker 2: 25:52

Now, I had him on as a guest a couple months ago I don't know, seven or eight months ago where he crossed the million dollar threshold. You now have crossed, or bumping right into the 1.3. So you've blown his numbers out of the water, and so let's just kind of cut right to the chase. And how in the world do you do that? Talk about your processes, your staffing. How big is your staffing that supports you? How do you handle consults and all that? Because you're doing this you're not as a part of a lawyer team. You're doing this on your own as a lawyer, with support teammates. So how do you do it?

Speaker 1: 26:27

Right right Right now. Our model is that we have people to manage people not on my team. So I want to be upfront about that. I do spend time managing the team, but I'm not responsible for, or directly responsible for, hiring, firing and performance plans, that sort of thing. On my team I have one full-time paralegal, a bit unique in the firm in that she is assigned to me full-time. She does not support any other attorneys in our firm.

Speaker 2: 27:01

What's her name?

Speaker 1: 27:02

Olivia.

Speaker 2: 27:02

Olivia okay.

Speaker 1: 27:04

And then we just started piloting about. Within the last six months, we've been developing and piloting a virtual legal assistant role, who is Bing, so these two people support me full time.

Speaker 2: 27:23

So Bing is in the Philippines and Olivia is there with you locally in Appleton.

Speaker 1: 27:29

Yes.

Speaker 2: 27:30

Okay, and have these two ladies been with you all year? I know Bing just recently, as in a few months ago joined your team, but Olivia has been with you all year.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Yes, she started on my team. I think we just had our two year anniversary or it's this month, sometime working together.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Yeah, got it. Okay. And outside of that direct like serving, helping you on your team is just those two ladies.

Speaker 1: 27:56

Obviously, we have a marketing team and we have an intake team and all that, but Right and I I occasionally get help or leverage help from two associates on our team If there's a good learning opportunity, or it's pretty rare that they would cover any hearings for me or, you know, start to finish, handle any task for me.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Okay, so what is a day in the life or a week in the life of Tiffany? Look like.

Speaker 1: 28:25

I think the biggest thing is figure out when you are going to have desk time to prepare where you're not being interrupted. Desk time to prepare where you're not being interrupted. People on our team like to point out that they think I keep crazy hours. My desk time largely, is before the workday begins, because I want to be able to start with the task that is the most difficult really needs to be completed Anything that is urgent carryover from the day before. One thing I've implemented with my team in fact, we got out of the habit of it. We're getting back in the habit of it. I just sent a message to them today Think about your frogs. So I know there are lots of, lots of podcasts and good materials about eating your frog one bite at a time. So always creating awareness within your team. Every person should have a frog. What's the thing you're procrastinating? What's the thing that, if done, would lift the brain weight?

Speaker 2: 29:32

So in free up space so that we can do other things plus keep clients happy yeah, you're referring to the, the metaphor of eat the frog first, because it's the worst, grossest thing you'll do of the day yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:47

I think I said one bite at a time I I'm notorious for getting one bite at a time, as long as you eat it first. Right, you got to eat it first one bite at a time.

Speaker 2: 29:57

I guess if you've got a big enough goal you know goal, like me, but okay, so I interrupt you. You're talking about the principle of the grossest thing you have to do, the thing you were putting off and you procrastinate the most on. You do that first, you and your team. Yes, Trying to just instill that as like the ethos of how your team operates.

Speaker 1: 30:14

Yes, and in fact sometimes when I can tell there's procrastination occurring, either myself or someone on my team I don't even have to say anything. I just go grab a picture of a frog off the Internet and send that to someone.

Speaker 1: 30:29

That's either me committing that I'm not leaving work until I've eaten my frog and if I procrastinated all day, well I guess that means I'm eating dinner late that night or my team knows when they get that, like that's my check in to see where they are on the task that they've committed to completing that day.

Speaker 2: 30:50

Do you have a sense, Tiffany, of how many files you've closed in 2024?

Speaker 1: 30:55

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 30:59

Probably around the 200 mark. Would that be about, right, you think?

Speaker 1: 31:02

Probably.

Speaker 2: 31:04

Okay From a standpoint of consults, because when people see your performance, the immediate reaction is, oh, she must work 95 hours a week. Immediate reaction is, oh, she must work 95 hours a week and every client's pissed off at her because she has no time to spend with any of them, which is absolutely not true on both counts. So I don't want to drill into those and be real about them. Of course I don't want to like candy coat anything here. So, standpoint of how you manage that many files with your team I mean fixed fee is a big part of it. Right, because you're not required to grind hours. You're trying, you're required to grind out results and if that happens on a time or a long amount of time. So, starting with the consults, how many consults are you taking? Are you going through the consult for all of those individuals, those clients, or how does that work?

Speaker 1: 31:52

I think that's another great call out of someone who's not directly on my team but I directly benefit from. So I do a combination of my own consults and then also receive handoffs, primarily from our consult team and I know, going into next year. I've looked at, you know, the cost to me of doing my own consults versus that team and the benefit of having that team continue to do the consults for me outweighs the time I would invest. Now I'm still working with my current team. So, being in Olivia to maximize my calendar time so that I can do both. Right, I want my pipeline as open as possible by doing as many of my own consults while still serving my current clients, plus getting those handoffs from our consult team.

Speaker 2: 32:50

Okay, you're referring to our consult legal assistants who and it's blended it's about a 50-50 ratio right now of the total consults our firm does. Half of them is done by non-lawyers on our CLA team and half of them are done by our lawyers. Roughly it flows and goes 60-40 some weeks, but in that range.

Speaker 1: 33:09

Right.

Speaker 2: 33:10

And some of them are doing the consult, passing the client over to you once the client funds Right and meeting them. Okay, got it. And so in a given week, how many consults are you doing personally?

Speaker 1: 33:22

Well, my plan going into the busy season you know it's December, it's not a great indicator because our consults tend to be lighter this time of year. To be lighter this time of year, but going into our busy season.

Speaker 2: 33:35

so February, march, april, I would shoot for eight to 10 consults a week, if I can swing it with my caseload and court appearances, okay, and each consult requires about how much time to prep. Do the consult? Post-consult notes what does that look like?

Speaker 1: 33:55

Always looking for efficiency. On that, I know. When I talked with Jeff Morrell he seems to think close to three hours. I think that's really long. I think probably an hour and a half prep time time in the consult follow-ups, afterwards follow-ups with our consult legal assistants.

Speaker 2: 34:17

Okay, so you invest about an hour and a half time total ish, right, I know it varies between clients with your initial consult. So if you're doing eight to 10, so that's going to require about 15 hours a week, right, okay, in a given week and I'm all time now, all the all the time you spent consults, doing legal work, doing stuff we ask you to do, that doesn't show up, right? How much time of that are you working in a given week?

Speaker 1: 34:41

I would say, if I looked at that across the entire year, I actually don't work as many hours as what it might seem. I'm probably in the 50 to 60 hour range. Of course, you know January. I know I have a ton of trials scheduled. I'm going to be working more. I'm already planning ahead for that. But then in the summer you'll have legs where you know maybe I'm working 40 hours and I'm leaving early on a Friday because I can. I think this is really important. I take vacation. I've been bad about it the last year and a half, but it is something that I'm really committed to doing taking vacation and not being available. My staff knows how to get a hold of me if there's truly something urgent, and I always tell them the same thing when I leave the office. If you can get a hold of me, then I'll answer the phone. But I'm very intentional about taking trips where frequently there isn't access. There isn't phone access or internet access.

Speaker 2: 35:45

for that reason, so this year how much vacation time did you take?

Speaker 1: 35:48

This year was a bit of an odd year because of personal stuff going on, but I did, throughout the summer, block my calendar on Fridays almost through the entire summer, and so I would work maybe for a few hours in the morning and then take the rest of the day and go hiking or leave early for a weekend, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 36:12

Okay. So in fairness, you have a pretty heavy load. You don't take a ton of time, working about 50 to 60 hours a week. So that's just you're. You're grinding, no question.

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, I mean I. Again. I want to say that this isn't a normal year for me. I don't anticipate that I will take no vacation this year. It was truly because of some personal things going on that I wasn't able to take as much vacation. I wasn't able to invest the hours during my working weeks that I normally would have to balance out the vacation that I would have preferred to take.

Speaker 1: 36:47

But I did in August take. You know I took a week vacation and went to California to visit some friends, so I do take truly time away.

Speaker 2: 36:58

Okay. So I want to switch over and talk about the systems that you've built for yourself that you can kind of maybe help our audience understand. In some ways they can inject that into their practice. You talk about this idea of eating the frog first and doing the worst task of the day in the beginning, because it lifts the mental weight that you're carrying, dreading having to do it. So you put it off, put it off, put it off and you spend half your day thinking about not doing it right. What else do you do?

Speaker 1: 37:26

The other thing I do and we tested something over the summer that was different than this and I didn't like it. It and we're going back to the original process. The moment that we are retained on a case, I am tasking certain things that are that meet the 80-20 rule. What I mean by that is, if you're doing a divorce, you have to file the divorce. You have to do a financial disclosure statement. You're going to have either mediation or a GAL appointed. Do you need an appraisal Right? These are all things.

Speaker 1: 38:02

I know from the consult what the trajectory of a case is. We have to do a marital settlement agreement and a property division worksheet, child support calculations and final documents division worksheet, child support calculations and final documents. I task that at the beginning of a case. We move deadlines, we assign the tasks between teammates, but I want to get those all out there, because then when we're talking about a case, we're not thinking about just the thing we're working on right now. We're thinking about final docs. When do I need that? How do we get there? So there's always this big picture for the cases when are we? How do we get to the end? And it's great because we don't have oversight. We're not forgetting to do final docs and showing up for a court hearing without them.

Speaker 1: 38:59

We're not, you know, having a case sit for weeks or months because the client's not barking at me and I don't have a task for a marital settlement agreement.

Speaker 2: 39:10

So putting that all in there, You're tasking marital settlement agreement right at the beginning.

Speaker 1: 39:15

I task it right at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Okay, wow Okay.

Speaker 1: 39:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:19

So, like here in Wisconsin, we have a four month waiting period, so that's very rare to start on that document day one or day week one.

Speaker 1: 39:27

I'm not starting it. I'm creating the task, but I typically put it out about 90 days.

Speaker 2: 39:34

Okay.

Speaker 1: 39:38

Yeah, and again, if we're not at a point of drafting that 90 days, then I'm having a conversation with my team. What do we need to do to get to the point where we're drafting that? So what this firm does a really good job of is giving us a system to manage tasks, and so what I try and do is think about each client as a project.

Speaker 2: 39:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Right, and if you are doing a project plan like you think about an IT project plan, and you're only writing the next step in programming, you've lost sight of you know what's your deliverable, what are your objectives. And so I really try and take my experience, having worked on IT projects and having clear objectives, deliverables, a clear project plan beginning to end, and bring that to this space. How do I, for you, know?

Speaker 2: 40:38

space. How do I, for you, know client John Doe, what is his project plan? Yeah, so when you say task, that's another way of just saying scheduling out these jobs to happen at a certain time, so it all syncs up and comes together when you need it to.

Speaker 1: 40:47

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Yeah, and one of the things I want to point out here that you're exceptionally good at is this concept of practicing with a proactive mindset. So you take the initiative in every one of these cases. You're the one that drives the agenda, pushes them along In some cases, I'm sure, even more than the courts do. You're pushing toward a resolution from the very minute you get a hold of that case.

Speaker 1: 41:11

Exactly. Yeah, I'm not waiting for the court.

Speaker 2: 41:14

So in fixed fee, that's a key factor, isn't it To be proactive? Because you're not paid for the time in the case, you're paid for the result you deliver to the clients. That's your deliverable, exactly Out of the court system. That's what they want.

Speaker 1: 41:27

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 41:28

So all of your systems that you've built in your practice they start with this concept of you're treating every case like a project. You've done these same projects over and over again, so you've really boiled it down to the essence and you'll schedule out that whole project the day you get the case.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Okay.

Speaker 1: 41:45

There are exceptions, right, but I'm not building a process for 100% of the variable, the variability. I'm building it for 80%. So we have cases where I'm getting retained late in a case and I need access to the case file before I can come up with the project plan. But, generally speaking, this is how I approach every case. Even when I'm retained late, I want to get to that point where I can tell the client I've thought about where we are now, where you want to be, and how we get there. What are those steps?

Speaker 2: 42:21

So let's talk about delegation, because you couldn't do what you do without a really strong team and Olivia is a stud, I mean. So let's just acknowledge that right up front. What is your philosophy and approach toward delegation? How much of it do you do? How much are you holding on to tiffany? Because I know a lot of lawyers have a really difficult time letting go of some of the languaging, for the msa, for example, and I know some won't let even their assistant do the financials, which is right, silly, but they. That happens quite a bit. So what's your philosophy?

Speaker 1: 42:52

well my background is is actually another piece here where I feel very fortunate to have had background as a paralegal in a very large company for 10 years. I worked very autonomously but under the supervision of an attorney, and there was always a lot of research done in that corporate setting about exactly what paralegals could and couldn't do. What does it mean to be supervised? And I brought that with me to our practice here. So I am one of these attorneys who is always challenging the paralegals to expand their definition of what it means to practice law, because I think that there's still more opportunity to be had in this space.

Speaker 2: 43:42

Wow Okay.

Speaker 1: 43:43

I am not someone who wants to own things. I just was talking with a friend of mine this week and they said I come across as so detail-oriented. I said, actually the details cause a friend of mine this week and they said I come across as so detail oriented. I said, actually the details cause a lot of anxiety for me because I am a big picture thinker. I'm this, you know, big picture, strategic thinker, and so when I think about tasks that I can delegate to my paralegal we've had conversations I'm the strategic thinker. I need you to be detail oriented.

Speaker 1: 44:16

If I draft something, assume it has typos in it. It was one of the reasons going back to why am I not in business transactions, because that requires a level of detail orientation that's difficult for me, and so having those open dialogues with your team about what each person's strengths and weaknesses are is really important. And I think the other thing too that I have always been very clear with my team my job is not to make your job harder, my job is to make your job easier and serve the clients better, and so I have tried very hard to develop a team where they are very willing to bring me feedback, where I encourage feedback, where, when we have team meetings, I'm bringing a list of where, when we have team meetings, I'm bringing a list of hey, can we try this process improvement? And they're bringing a list with additional process improvements and we're creating this constant dialogue about what moves the needle.

Speaker 2: 45:28

That's so hard to get my head around, because if you're constantly improving your processes, you can do less work for more result over and over again, but it takes a special thinker and a discipline to stay with that. So do you have any tricks or methodologies that you follow to do that?

Speaker 1: 45:42

I think the biggest thing is, well, two things. So I am not someone who likes to try. Technology is my first go-to. That is one area where Jeff Morell and I we are complimentary He'll try technology right away. And I'm more about efficiencies and other ways people management, client management, those sorts of things. So for me it's more about finding the problem. I'll give an example Yesterday we had a team meeting and I said hey, we're struggling.

Speaker 1: 46:25

When we're supposed to be finalizing a financial disclosure statement ahead of a temporary order hearing, Clients aren't responding to our emails, I'm not getting the document soon enough to be able to prepare for my prep hearing call with the client, which means I'm creating a bottleneck and getting their financial approved and submitted to the court. And I brought some ideas to that meeting and we talked about it and we came up with a potential solution. I think the biggest thing is is you have to take time to reflect on your day. What went well, what didn't go well? Where do you think there's room for improvement? Right, Right, you have to make time for it and for me it's natural to do that. That is something I think about on the drive home from work. What went well, what didn't go well. Where is there room for improvement? If it's not natural to you, you have to schedule time for that.

Speaker 2: 47:28

Yeah, I agree with you. You have to be totally intentional, because I don't naturally do that. I'm go go go and it doesn't take a ton of time just to reflect back and say, okay, I need to adjust here. If you do one adjustment a day, that gets you 1% better man, that's incredible results over time.

Speaker 1: 47:44

Right.

Speaker 2: 47:45

Tiffany, on the delegation side, what things do you not delegate? So let's kind of start with that list. Now, we know, obviously, you're going to court, so we're not sending paralegals to court. All right, you're giving the advice to the client, but there's a whole lot more in family law other than that, those two things. Is there anything else that you just simply will not delegate?

Speaker 1: 48:05

I don't like the words will not. Can you tell? I think the things that would be very difficult to delegate, but I would never say never if there's, because I'm always thinking about how do we leverage staff more, right, yeah, I think the thing that is difficult to delegate is any task that the client needs the interface with the attorney for their confidence in the firm and in the job that we're doing. So what I mean by that is if the client has a urgent safety concern, our paralegals are great. Our paralegals will talk to them, but they want to talk with an attorney. I could give a script to a paralegal, but it's not going to be received and have the same calming effect for the client as if I deliver it myself Of course.

Speaker 2: 49:07

Yeah, Just there, though, I can tell you're delegating part of that responsibility. You're like I set the table for you. You're able to deliver that confidence and affirm them and encourage them and support them and love on them and all that. But it's the whole setup and all that that you're doing parts of that.

Speaker 1: 49:24

Right, right, and that's a good point too, too. So one thing I do when I'm first, so I was talking about what's my I have this project plan right. The first thing the client receives from me via email is an email that says here's who I am, here's who my team is, here's how you get a hold of us. And in that email I include a link that the clients are encouraged to use anytime. They don't need permission from me. They can click on it and schedule 15 minutes with me. So that's helpful upfront, that I'm giving them my entire team's contact information.

Speaker 2: 50:03

You move past that pretty quick. That's a key thing you're mentioning there. You give your clients a link, but anytime they want to talk to Tiffany, they can go on that link and they can schedule 15 minutes on your calendar and it pops up. You give it rules, right, of course, but what's the utilization for that for clients? How many are doing this?

Speaker 1: 50:22

I would say probably half or more. It depends how tech savvy they are. My older clients want to reach out to the paralegal and schedule through the paralegal, which they can also do. My more tech savvy clients, you know they might schedule a 15 minute meeting with me every couple of weeks just to do a check in, especially if we're waiting on things like waiting on a valuation or appraisal, or you know, they're waiting on their mediation date and that sort of thing. The clients who use it really like it. It's a little frustrating for them, I think sometimes if I don't have availability like if I have a trial coming up my calendar tends to be full and it's hard for them to find a time. But that's not the only way that they can reach out to me and I also let them know. So it's set up for 15 minutes. They need more time than 15 minutes. They can ask for that. They just can't schedule that themselves.

Speaker 2: 51:22

Wow, that's a good parameter there. Ok, wow, that's a good parameter there. Okay, you earlier this year our firm and really kind of coming out of last year put a lot of emphasis around shifting our focus from being a marketing and Holly and all of the senior partners really kind of stepped into some of these roles and you've responded incredibly well here. You've done some incredible things with your client satisfaction and so forth and I asked you before our call here like, how have you done that to such a high level? And you really you use the words behavior modification when it comes to client service. I'd love for you to unpack that for our audience. One and two practical steps. I know this calendar linking is one of them, which is a brilliant idea, because I know that probably gives clients a whole lot of just satisfaction and comfort. Hey, I want to talk to Tiffany. I can always get on a calendar. So what have you done?

Speaker 1: 52:24

behaviorally modification it's not like you're a dog or something like that, and I like how you put that, but what have you done? One of the things I did is number one. You really have to take the time to reflect on yourself. We talk as family law attorneys. How many times a day am I asking a client if they're seeing a therapist, if they would like a referral to a therapist, suggesting that their kids get in therapy? And I wasn't taking the time to actually do that myself. And this is a really stressful job.

Speaker 1: 52:59

And the reason I bring this up is because I was able to a combination of working with my manager and saying, okay, the segment of the population that I don't want. Another one of these clients was middle-aged men. I had a really hard time. I had a hard time relating to them. I had biases against them and the things that they were telling me. I didn't feel like I had anything I could relate to or in common with them. I really struggled in meeting their needs. They were frequently the ones that were very dissatisfied with the service that I was providing. So I unpacked that in therapy, quite frankly, and realized that there were things in my past that I needed to deal with where this particular population was a trigger for me.

Speaker 1: 53:58

In addition to that, I worked with my manager to say OK, this is the population I have the hardest time addressing. Let's come up with a game plan on how I'm going to better serve these people.

Speaker 2: 54:12

Wow, do you remember what that plan was?

Speaker 1: 54:21

Yeah. So, number one, I had a very short temper with these people, quite frankly, and so one of the things I do now is just acknowledge it in a phone call, right. So one of the things I do now is just acknowledge it in a phone call, right. When my client, and especially this population, is getting escalated in how they're communicating with me, I just call it out and I'm really calm about it. I wait for a pause in the conversation and I'll just say you know, I hear the stress in your voice. I know you're frustrated. I just want to let you know that you know I'm feeling stress and anxiety for you. I just want to bring the temperature down a little bit Because if we continue to escalate and I'm matching your energy we're not going to be able to accomplish what we need, and I'm here to support you.

Speaker 1: 55:08

So it was finding a different way to communicate with this group of people that I felt like I could not relate to, figuring out how to communicate with them differently, how to deescalate in the moment, and how important a pause in the conversation can be. That is, it's super powerful, and maybe you know, maybe it's a male attorney working with middle-aged female mothers and having a hard time relating. I don't know what it's going to be for each attorney listening to this podcast. But figure out who the population is that you have the most difficult time serving and really keep asking yourself the question why, why am I struggling to serve that population? And then I think once you figure out the why, the steps to resolve that then become clearer and then it's just a matter of practice. So part of why I identified this population as well, um, is because I figured if I could move the needle for them, then I would be able to move the needle for every client okay, so it's like another big version of eat the frog figure, that population, yeah, wow.

Speaker 2: 56:26

So I'm a middle-aged guy, definitely, so I'm going to be listening. I'm going to be listening for these uh soothing strategies you have whenever you and I talk going forward. You know, you just divulge your secrets to me right, I know so from a behavior modification that seemed like you're the biggest lever that you pulled to have these big, vast improvements over the course of a while and maybe therapy isn't the thing for everyone.

Speaker 1: 56:52

Um, it was for me, I. I needed that because I needed someone else to reflect back to me what I wasn't, what I didn't have the self-awareness to identify in myself. If you're someone who's can do that work on your own, I mean, certainly you could avoid the need for therapy. But it was really critical for me.

Speaker 2: 57:11

Yeah, I'm a big believer in therapy. I've done my share of time on the couch.

Speaker 1: 57:16

Right.

Speaker 2: 57:18

All right. So for the sake of time, I've asked you a whole lot of questions about how you did it last year. Is there anything I'm not asking you that you feel like would just be that gold nugget you would pass on to help other attorneys have some of the efficiency successes that you've had?

Speaker 1: 57:32

I really just would reiterate self-awareness, asking questions, be curious, be a constant learner. Those are skills that are so hard to teach, but I do believe they are teachable and I believe that those set the foundation for having a really successful practice and being a really successful attorney.

Speaker 2: 58:01

Wow, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. I appreciate your time today.

Speaker 1: 58:05

Yeah.