Strategic Planning and Leadership for Law Firm Success with Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright

Jeff: Looking back, those rocks were imperative to get done in year one in order for us to hit our growth targets that we have for year two, three, and four.

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Melissa: Welcome back to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. I am thrilled to have Ben Gideon and Jeffrey Wright. We actually call you Jeff.

Jeff: I was gonna say, Jeffrey?

Melissa: But your signature says Jeffrey. It's in my head.

Jeff: Yeah, Jeff is good.

Ben: He goes by many names. 

Jeff: Yeah. Some of them we can't say here. 

Melissa: Hey, thank you guys both for joining me today. We just finished day two of your two-day annual retreat, which was a great two days. Maybe before we dig in, I have some specific questions I'd love to get into conversations with you guys about. If you don't mind, maybe just share who you are, where you are, what you do.

Ben: So I'm Ben Gideon. I'm one of the founders and owners of Gideon Asen, which is a plaintiff's trial firm based out of the state of Maine. Uh, we do cases all over Northern New England, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts. We actually have a case out in California now. So we're doing cases in various places around the country. We do high value plaintiff's work, uh, predominantly medical malpractice, but also, uh, some personal injury, product liability, trucking cases, and things of that nature.

 Melissa: And when, when did you start the firm?

Ben: So we're about five years in. We started in the mid-COVID, uh, which is kind of a potentially inauspicious time to start a new business, but it actually worked quite well for us. And we've seen rapid growth over the past five years, which brought us to you, Melissa, and, um, I'm sure we'll talk about that today.

Melissa: Yeah. And yesterday, I interviewed your partner, founding partner, Taylor, and another partner at the firm, Meryl. That was a great conversation. So this is just a cherry on top that we get to have with the two of you.

Okay, and Jeff, you want to say a little bit about your role? Who you are?

Jeff: Yeah, so, uh, yesterday was my one-year anniversary with the firm. I'm the Chief Operating Officer, non-attorney, so the only non-attorney on your podcast between yesterday and today. And, uh, I was brought on to kind of assist in running the day-to-day of the firm and putting the strategic plan into action and holding the leadership team and the staff accountable for it.

Melissa: Yeah, what an addition. This came up in the conversation last night, but one-year anniversary, a year ago you guys were here, and you'd been here one week before you came to the annual retreat. So you were just jumping in with both feet.

Jeff: Yeah, it was a, it was a little intimidating because obviously I have zero background in the legal field. So I was coming to a new field with obviously surrounded by individuals that I had known for four days, and we flew to Denver to do an annual retreat to kind of set strategic planning for the firm for the next four years.

So I don't want to use the word intimidating, but you know, I was questioning myself on the, on the flight out, how useful am I going to be and how much am I going to be able to contribute out of the gate? And I was, I was pleasantly surprised with myself that, you know, I was able to interject in, in certain areas, and I think we left here last year with a very well-defined plan that we rolled out to the team and that we've executed on in the first year.

Melissa: Yeah. So that's one of the things I was most excited to talk to you guys about is what a year it's been. You have...

Ben: Can I just back to that? I mean, I remember having a conversation with you on the phone before we flew out for our retreat last year, where one of the topics was, does it make sense to bring our new COO to the retreat? Because you will have only been here for a few days. And there was a little bit of a, a debate about it, but ultimately you advised that it would make sense, and it was absolutely essential that you were here because it provided you a crash course on what our firm is all about and also got you in on the ground floor of discussing our new strategic plan. So you were read into all of the planning and, uh, process around that from day one.

And it was also just on a personal level, a great way to spend some time together outside of the office. Enjoyed a nice steak, which, uh, generated some discussion for the last year. And, um, other fun things. We went to a, uh, went to a Nuggets game where, uh, we saw a memorable three-quarter shot by Jokic, which is kind of an amazing thing to see. So it was actually a just a great experience overall and really defined our next phase of growth from that point forward.

Melissa: You know, the other thing that strikes me is you were talking when you came out, brand new to everything. Same for me. I hadn't spent a ton of time with you guys yet. And for me, what I got to experience and learn, which I imagine is the same for you, is your beliefs. Like you, watching you and Taylor talk about your future, about what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, you had some, you were really convicted about certain things. And you wouldn't have known that had you not seen it. I wouldn't have either. But it was really important that you got that. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that you get from fireside chats, you know?

Ben: Yeah. No, it would, looking back, I'm so happy I came out because I gained weeks of knowledge in a two-day period by being here. And then I think to Ben's point, you know, he was joking about, you know, the bison steaks and the game, but being able to talk to them and see them on a, you know, outside of a work environment and kind of establish a bond out of the gate, I think was important. And a year later, I mean, we still like each other, which is great. 

Melissa: You do. I would say you like each other even more.

Jeff: We do. That's crazy.

Ben: It's pretty cool. We have a good time. Yeah. We really... I've always believed that it's really important to have fun at your work. It's what you spend the majority of your waking hours doing. Um, you know, like it or not, this is the world we live in. And if you're not having fun doing what you're doing, you should go do something else. And we have a lot of fun. We joke around a lot. It's part of our culture. Sometimes it can it can get it can go over the edge, and Jeff is good at reigning us in a little bit. But no, we just really enjoy each other's company.

We, you know, it especially when you're in the kind of business we're in, representing people with catastrophic, life-changing injuries, where, I mean, nobody comes to us on their best day. They're always coming to us on their very worst day, and we're there to be counselors and represent them in something that is a very difficult part of their life. You need some outlets and relief from that. And so we do that usually through humor in the office and outside of the office.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. You guys do have a lot of fun, and you work really hard. You stay very focused, which is not a trait that everyone exercises, I guess is the right word. I will say yesterday, there was a moment. People were milling about for a minute, you know, taking a break or something, and you got this big grin on your face. I had no idea what's going to come out of your mouth. I figured it was going to be a joke. And you said, you know, this whole law firm thing is really fun. Like this whole whatever comment you made was just, you're having a good time, generally speaking, growing this firm.

Ben: Yeah, I mean, part of it was we were dealing with a crisis management situation, and what I realized is as unpleasant as it is to deal with issues and, you know, if you read business books, a big part of being successful in any business is the ability to confront and deal with issues. And I enjoy the exercise of doing that even when the issue is unpleasant because it's a mental challenge.

And, you know, one of the things I've enjoyed about running the business is the new challenge it's brought and learning how to do something different and executing on that and the satisfaction you get from doing that well.

Melissa: Mhm. Yeah.

Ben: And, so I was kind of being facetious because we were talking about a difficult issue that was unpleasant to deal with. But when you're doing it together with people you respect and trust, and you have a good process, and you get to good results, it's actually pleasurable even to deal with unpleasant issues.

Melissa: Yeah. I didn't know you were being facetious. I thought you were…

Ben: No, I was being serious that I do, I'm having a lot of fun. I mean, I spent 17 years at another firm where I primarily was doing the trial work and practicing law, and I'm good at that. It's what one, it's a skillset I learned and I do enjoy that, but this is a different skill altogether, building a business is different than practicing law. And after 17 years of doing one thing, I've enjoyed learning to do something different.

Melissa: So, going back to last year and the plans you guys made, I mean, you know, you made plans for the first quarter, really. We knew there were some things coming down the line, but you got really concrete about, which is what we do. 90 days, what needs to get done. And, you know, I don't remember actually what the specific rocks were for Q1 2025, but you completed all of those ahead of time, and then you set new rocks.

And I mean, you guys crushed every single quarter, the rocks that you set, the strategic priorities that you set. You knocked those out of the park and they were not small. They were, they were big, meaningful pieces to the puzzle. So I don't know if you want to what's top of mind for you when you think back to what you've accomplished this year, I think is kind of what this comes down to.

Jeff: I mean, I think looking back, a lot of those rocks were foundational rocks that were imperative to get done in year one in order for us to hit our growth targets that are aggressive growth targets that we have for year two, three, and four. And, you know, we needed to establish those. We needed to, I don't want to say get them out of the way, but we needed to work on those and get them up and running and get them flushed out before starting year two.

So every single one of them was important, and we just held firm on all of them. And we met weekly on them and we discussed them and we checked them off and we added new ones and we just adhere to the process and stuck with it, which I think is probably the hardest thing because, you know, work gets in the way, life gets in the way and you distractions get in the way, but we never allowed any of those things to derail us.

Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think that our success in Q1 of 2025 started in Q4 of 2024, where we decided that we needed to develop a vision for the next phase of growth of our firm. We spent a lot of time working on that and developed a very detailed vision plan that outlined at least on a broad level where we were trying to go. And it outlined a big, hairy, audacious goal of 10Xing our revenues over four years, and sort of backed into that, what do we need to do to accomplish that? And that set forth the milestones over those four years, including what happened, needed to happen right away. So we did that.

But the other thing we did, which was equally important, was we very deliberately set out to recruit a chief operating officer to help us implement that because there would have been no way to do that with our structure of lawyers and legal staff that A, had no business background or experience or management experience or B, time in order to carry out that plan because we're all busy practicing law and managing our case load.

And so we recognized that was a real need. And we hired a firm and had a very deliberate nationwide search for a COO who could come in and help us implement that. And that's what netted us Jeff. And that was a process that was a very detailed process where we decided what we were looking for. We filtered out a number of candidates. We took psychological tests, and you've already seen from the person Jeff is that once we had that in place, if we had a set of rocks, they were done before we even had the ink dried on the paper because that's who Jeff is. If it's there, it's going to get done, and it's going to get done ahead of schedule, right? So, like it, it does seem very impressive that we did that, but once you see who we have here, it's obvious that was going to happen, right? Yeah. So.. 

Jeff: I think that's a good place to end.

Ben: Well, like we're in the retreat now. I mean, my big fear coming out of this retreat is there wouldn't be enough for Jeff to do because, like, he gets six months' worth of rocks done in 30 days, and then he's like, what do I do next? I need something to do now. I'm like, uh... Yeah. I don't know.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah, you do. You push, you push, you drive things forward, which is the job, right?

Jeff: Which was my job. I mean, you know, and during the interview process, you know, meeting with Ben and Taylor, you know, they discussed, and they had used terms like, you know, most law firms don't run like businesses, and they're run by attorneys that don't have good business acumen, and we need to bring somebody in.

And, you know, my experience is, you know, I've been an operations person, I've been a manager for 20-plus years in a different industry. I've been a chief operating officer, I've been a project manager. You know, I've negotiated multi-million-dollar contracts and built out facilities and so the way I work is I have very clear defined, you know, ways to do things and to drive things forward and if the senior management team agrees on a task that's the best thing for the firm to move us forward, it's my job to ensure that happens and I take it seriously.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did say how much you guys have got done. I'm glad you backed it up because it was I think you had read Vivid Vision before I met you. Maybe there were other influences as well. And then I think in December, you sent the strategic what the vision document. Is that right? You finished it in December?

Ben: I think so.

Melissa: And we met in person in January. We've been doing work with you guys ahead of time, but January was going to be the two-day retreat. And when I got that, I was totally impressed. I mean, not many people take the time to do that in the detail that you did it.

And here's the difference. A lot of people do it in detail, and they provide detail on the wrong things. They provide detail on things they can't know. It's like wishes, you know. You provide a detail on what this is going to look like and why. And the specifics you had in there made a lot of sense, which helps create buy-in and belief from those around you. It was well done. I don't know how many pages it was, but it was.

Jeff: And it made my job a lot easier. Because I mean, when we came here, I mean, I think I read your strategic vision probably three days before I came here. But I read it, and I'm like, this is fantastic. And then I got even more invigorated. I'm like, well, I can do this. I can be part of this. And it was so well thought out and, you know, in addition to Ben obviously being an owner and a partner and a litigator and everything, Ben is kind of the visionary of the firm and the way that plan was laid out in such a well-defined way.

I mean, we obviously made some tweaks to it, but um, I could look at it from a 30,000-foot standpoint and be like, oh, all this is achievable. There's no reason why we can't do this. You know, just knowing even as little as I did at that time. Yeah. And then the more I got to know the people that I'm surrounded by, you know, their type of character and their intelligence and everything. I'm like, yeah, we can do this. This is a, not a cakewalk, but this is all achievable.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious from you because there's people plenty of people know that they so if you read Vivid Vision, you know, that's like a three to five-page document, I think is what they recommend. Yours is more pages than that, and it was dense, but in really helpful, amazing, well-thought-out ways. I'm curious, how did you come to creating that? Because it's not what Vivid Vision “recommended “in their prescription, right? But you it did have an influence. So just if you want to share...

Ben: Yeah, I mean, I did read Vivid Vision at the request of one of our staff, who, it was interesting. We were at a quarterly planning meeting of just our internal leadership team at the time and our then chief operating officer, or we could call her the office manager person, we were a smaller business at that time, but she said, you know, rightly, you know, we had an original plan, mission statement when we started our firm and we had accomplished everything in our original mission. And she said, what's the next phase? Where are we going from here?

And she said, you know, I just read this book called Vivid Vision, and I'd recommend you read it. And all the members of the leadership team read it. But she had a very valid point, which is, what are we planning for? What are we doing? Like we've already accomplished our initial goals. We don't as a team, we don't know where we're going. So how are we going to get there if we don't know where there is?

So I took that to heart, and when I sat down to write the vision, the first stage of it was to do a recap on where we started and where we had been and where the strengths were of what we had built and where the things were that we still, you know, what we were missing.

And so I think that's important because recognizing what you've successfully navigated to get from point A to point B gives you the confidence in moving from point B to point C because you look and say, wow, we've done all these things really well. We can get to that next stage. So, and that's in the Vivid Vision, looking back and analyzing that.

Next phase was big hairy audacious goal. You have to have a mission that brings people together behind something that's inspiring and motivating to the team, otherwise it just seems small and tedious, and people aren't going to get excited about it. And so our goal at that time was to 10X our revenues.

Now, since then, I've had Cameron Herald on our podcast, who's a great guy, by the way, and very smart, and we were talking about vision, and it occurred to me that our vision was purely financially motivated, and he said, you know, vision needs to have a larger non-financial dimension. So we spent a good portion of the first day of this year's annual retreat with you mapping out our non-financial, larger, kind of world-changing mission that our firm has. So that's something I missed in the first iteration of the vision statement.

But we did have a very big audacious goal in terms of the revenue generation, and then we kind of backed into that by looking at what are the pieces we need to put in place to make that happen. And in our case, there were a number of critical metrics for that, that we were able to identify.

And one of the things that was helpful to me is that I've been doing this for a long time. I know this industry extremely well. I was part of managing another firm that was the largest and most successful firm until we came into being in our state, and it existed for 100 years.

So I know the business and I think it's, you know, somebody who's running a law firm who's just starting out, maybe hanging a shingle a couple of years out of law school, you need to find a mentor, you need to work with some kind of group, to learn from others because you're not going to have that industry-wide knowledge that I was lucky enough to have coming into this.

What happens is if you're in an industry doing something for a long time, you start to catalog things that, you know, if I could wave a magic wand and have ultimate power, I would do it this way instead, or I would do it this way instead on a different issue. And when you build your own practice, this is your opportunity kind of to have your own laboratory to experiment on all those things. And I had a lot of things built up in my mind that I wanted to work on. So that's kind of where it all came from.

Melissa: Yeah. It was really, it was very helpful for everybody on your team. It was helpful for me and, um, facilitating that day because I got some insight into the things you'd already thought through. So I knew there were things I didn't need to help with at all because you'd thought through those. And it really allowed us, I think, a year ago at that retreat, to have a more advanced conversation because you had done that work. And it allowed you to fly further, faster in your job.

So, yeah, I was focusing on what a year, 2025, but you're right, 2024, the four months leading up to that was a huge springboard for what 2025 became, came to be. 

Jeff: Yeah, without all that pre-work, I mean, when I started in January 2025, I would not have been able to hit the ground running. But really, I mean, we came to Denver, and then we got back to Main,e and we just started working on it. You know, there was no gap, there was no downtime. We just immediately started implementing things. 

Melissa: Just to give people some insight into the boxes you checked this year, um, and last year, we're now in 2026, so 2025. You, sort of an afterthought that we thought of today at lunch, but you put together the revised compensation plan that will kick off this year, correct?

Jeff: January 2026, yeah.

Melissa: Yeah, and so that was a big deal. That was early in 2025. We almost forgot about it. You hired a marketing director and have been, there's some big marketing initiatives that have been put into place as well as that director being into place. You were a big part of 2025. You hired, I you, you did have 12, and I think now you're at 18, you said.

Jeff: Yeah, so and we increased our FTEs, but yeah, by 50%. Yeah. And that included building out, you know, an entire new department of the firm.

Melissa: Okay, that's another box to check off, which was building what you guys call the IECU, intake department. 

Jeff: Intake evaluation, yep. 

Melissa: Yeah. So I just, I... 

Ben: We doubled our fee revenue from about $5 to $10.5 million and projected to double again next year. We got the largest injury verdict in the state in the history of the state of Maine.

Jeff: We hired so many people that we had to establish a new location in the same building. So we now really have two fully built-out offices.

Melissa: You also, I don't know the new attorney that just started, is she counted in your 18? Because she started in January.

Jeff: She is counted in the 18. Yeah.

Melissa: Okay, so you hired her in 2025. I mean, that's a big deal. She's likely a very strong add to what you, I mean, that's that's the idea, right? So I just, I mean, all of those things, there's many people that are listening to this that they like to get one or two of those things done in a year. You've already said one of the things. I'm just curious from your perspective, you guys do what you do, and you operate how you operate. What do you attribute the focus and success of getting all of that accomplished to?

Ben: I think we're very...

Melissa: Besides Jeff. Because Jeff is a big part.

Jeff: We’re driven.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, but it's not the issue isn't an individual personality because Jeff is a product of a very intentional set of decisions to hire Jeff. And that's how we approach everything. I think when it comes to running businesses that what I've learned from it is there aren't any shortcuts. You have to go step by step, and if you miss a step, maybe that can set you back.

Even if you look at what we did at the end of 2024 that set us up for 2025, you could only understand that in the context of what we did from 2020 to 2024 to grow our firm from $1 million to $5 million a year over a four-year period to put all of this other infrastructure in place and to have the revenue to do things such as hire a full-time COO and start marketing direct to consumer through television advertising and pay-per-click, coming out to Colorado to do leadership retreats, putting a leadership team together for that matter. You know, building out our facilities.

So it's a, what we do is we try to do things with deliberate thought and planning, assessing, having good decision-making process to get to the best decision. And then each step leverages us to be able to make that next step in a thoughtful way.

One of the issues we were facing before Jeff, which was bogging us down, was the inability to manage, train, and manage staff because we were not very good at that. And we would have personnel problems that every lawyer knows this who's running a firm, you have all these plans and intentions, and then you have somebody who's not working out or is creating a toxic internal environment in your office. That starts to sap your energy. It starts to drain other employees. Now you have internal problems. And you can't do anything else when you're fighting fires.

So just getting to the point where we didn't have to fight fires anymore, or where we had somebody who could fight them for us if they arose, it was an enormous, uh, step forward for us because you're always doing that one step forward, kind of two steps back if you're always putting out fires and dealing with problems.

So, you know, it's just a whole set of, like, steps, but the term from that book, traction, which is such a great term, is that as you have wins and you develop capital from your successes, and I do mean literally capital in terms of money, because you need resources to carry out these plans, but also capital in terms of building your culture, having enough loyal, committed employees that even if you had one bad apple, they're overwhelmed by the critical mass of goodness and so forth. As that traction builds, each phase becomes easier to implement because you've got resources to implement it.

On the other hand, it also comes with enormous new challenges because the additional resources it takes to run the operation are become much more demanding and you can't do it the way you used to do it when, you know, when you got a $10 million or $20 million budget, you have to have systems and personnel that are different from when it's just you and your founder and a couple, you know, paralegals. It's just different.

And that's why it's been so great working with you, Melissa, because we have now a very structured way to take ourselves out of the day-to-day demands of our work and to spend time thoughtfully thinking through these issues, developing plans that we can then execute.

Melissa: Yeah. I love the work that I have the privilege to do with you guys. And I will say, though, I love everything you just said. So I'm curious what you have to say is the answer to the question if you remember the question. 

Jeff: Yeah, and I mean, I would echo a lot of what Ben says, but I think the, and he mentioned it, but we made a conscious decision of what type of culture we wanted, and we've kept that top of mind on every hiring decision. So I think culture, and then Ben used the term, being very deliberate.

I think every decision that we made and every step forward and everything was very well thought out, very deliberate. And then we executed on it. I'm not saying we went an entire year without making mistakes or making some bad decisions. Of course you do. But we mitigated those by working in a team environment, working together, having an open, honest dialogue, which is the type of culture we have. We work through and overcame any of those issues or mistakes that we made and just move forward. So.

Melissa: Okay, so I agree with everything you guys are saying. What I know, I'm just, I'm thinking about the listeners. I planning and execution. But if people do a good enough job planning, then they don't always execute the way you guys execute. That is difficult. And some of it is the way you're wired. I mean, I remember you saying the first time I met you, before you left, you're like, I don't need any calls. You tell me to do something, it's going to get done. No one says that to me. That's a very unique thing to say to me that I that I hear.

So, maybe you have no idea, and you're like, it's just who I am. But the fact that you do meet weekly for rocks, and there's not a world in which, I've never been in part of one of those meetings, but there's not a world in which you guys can just come and have some excuses for progress or lack of progress on rocks. Like, you guys really show up, you really do report in. There's accountability for accomplishing progress on these things. And it is a cultural thing, but I just wonder if you have anything at all to offer for why you're so disciplined.

Ben: It's funny you say that because I don't necessarily think of myself as a particularly disciplined person overall. I'm very goal-oriented, and I'm very competitive. And so when I have a goal that I want to succeed at, I do what it takes to get there because I want the trophy of the success.

I mean, my wife would laugh because my to-do list at home of items that are undone, including I can think of, well, there's a broken toilet seat, and I, she brought the new one with the screws, and it's sitting right next to it, and it's been sitting there for weeks. You know, she would laugh that I'm sort of somebody who executes and gets things done, but when I, when there's something I want, I do it. And it's, I view this as, you know, it's somewhat of a competition, and I see a goal, and I just, I'm very goal-oriented like that.

And it's I mean, for lawyers, I mean, every lawyer has this in a mini way in all of their representations, whatever kind of work they do, but if you're an immigration lawyer, your goal is to get your client, you know, the visa or the asylum if you're the trial lawyer like we are, the goal is to get a verdict in front of a jury or to negotiate the deal if you're a, you know, a commercial lawyer or whatever. In your individual cases, you're you have a goal, and you have a plan. Here's what you're going to do to execute on that and to make that happen for your client.

Well, that's what I've been doing for 20 years. So now I'm just doing the same thing with the business. We have a goal, we have a plan, we execute on it. And it's we I do it because I want to get the result, not because I'm inherently organized or disciplined. That's the reality of it.

Melissa: That's, that makes a lot of sense. What do you think?

Jeff: And the thing we found out, and I don't think this was by fate or anything, but, you know, the firm that Ben and the team hired in order to find me had certain testing that they did and Ben had... 

Melissa: Should we give a plug? Because they did such a great job.

Ben: Yeah, they're called Vision Spark, and yeah, highly recommend if you're looking for a chief operating officer, that's their niche. They're fantastic. They're great. They're, uh, yeah, leave it at that.

Jeff: Yeah. I don't know if I can give plugs or not. So that's...

Melissa: Oh. Oh, I don't know. Oh, I don't know either. I didn't think... whatever.

Jeff: But yeah, so where was I going? Oh, so Ben and the rest of the senior team took the same testing, and we all scored extremely similar in the key areas. And you know, the entire team is driven, the entire team is goal-oriented, the entire team is focused.

Melissa: Ambition, I remember, was a word that you all share.

Jeff: Ambition. Yeah, and it's just competitive. Yeah. And I think, you know, to be surrounded by people like that, you don't have a choice but to, you know, push forward and succeed. I mean, losing or not completing a goal, or the goal being delayed and pushing it out another quarter because you didn't get to it. Yeah, that's not acceptable. It's not acceptable to ourselves and it's not acceptable from your teammates. You know, we hold ourselves accountable, and we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Melissa: Right. Well, what a year it's been. You guys are in a very different place than you were a year ago, and you got another year ahead of you. You've just you're making, you've made some plans for, and in many ways, it's less nuts and boltsy, you know, like marketing department, IECU.

Jeff: Yeah. The foundational stuff is behind us.

Melissa: But you made the point, I think this year's gonna be harder than last year. Even I, there's a couple of really big things that need to happen over the course of the year. I don't know if you want to speak to that, but...

Ben: Yeah, I mean, so first of all, we just came out of our two-day retreat. I'm fairly exhausted from it. We did a lot of great work.

Melissa: You guys are good sports.

Ben: We did a lot of great work. I mean, we came out with a lot of deliverables. I'm excited to go back and work on implementing. It's funny, it's uh, there's kind of a pendulum in this business building thing. As you develop more outreach and success, there's more demand, and then you need more capacity, right?

So if you're building widgets and they're very popular, you need to build, you know, potentially build more factories to make more widgets because more people want to buy them. If you're a law firm and you're in high demand, which we are, we've been very successful at getting enormous number of very high-value cases to work on. So our business model requires us litigating those at the highest levels to great results for our clients. Now you need capacity to do that.

So now we're back into the building more capacity part of that plan, which we always knew we would have to do. But that's hard because finding the right lawyers, training them to perform at the level and to meet the standards you need, that's very different than hiring hourly-rate staff to do more administrative functions. There's a lot more variability in that. There's a lot more risk in it. You're paying people more, and you know, to deliver the quality services we want to deliver to our clients, you can't just tolerate anybody doing anything in that role, even if they're well managed.

You have to have the right people, and they have to have the skill sets, and for what we do, it takes a special kind of person in a special team to deliver the kind of results we wanted to deliver. So... You know, that's just hard.

It's also part of being a founder-owner, and my partner, founder, we also have to have the ability to take ourselves out of being the bottleneck or the go-to rainmaker day-to-day in every case, because that's even though we've been very successful in scaling, we still are predominantly those rainmakers. And if the firm depends on only us doing that, there's a very, you know, there's a real ceiling to how much we can grow and succeed.

So we've recognized that, and we have really great other lawyers in our firm. So what we need to do now is empower them, find ways that we can inject ourselves at the right points in the process to leverage ourselves across more lawyers, and then build out systems of teams that can meet that capacity, even if maybe we don't have any individual lawyer that can do every part of the job perfectly. But as a team, we can put together the skills needed.

So that's the part we're embarking on now. We're partway there, but it is a real challenge. I think it's going to be a harder year than last year, despite the number of things we had to do to accomplish last year.

Jeff: Mhm. Yeah, and you know, the attorney we just brought on that started January 5th, and we're looking to hire one more litigation attorney. It's really rock number one. I think these two hires, if they're the right hires, are going to be the tide turners for, you know, our success in year two. Because to Ben's point, you know, we have a pipeline of cases and we just need additional people to work on them. But it has to be the right people.

Melissa: Right. And you guys have done a pretty good job of you do a great job of mentoring who is the attorneys in the firm. But you guys...

Ben: I wouldn't say that. I think we do an okay job.

Melissa: Well, like Meryl, I mean, you're...

Ben: So Meryl's a good example. So she came in, she was our first non-founder lawyer, and we made her a partner, you know, last month, and it's phenomenal. Meryl's a terrific asset and a great and an amazing lawyer and a great person. But Meryl was really thrown in.

I mean, Meryl was successful because she was capable of coming into a world where she was thrown into the deep end of the pool and learned to swim, and she would ask for help when needed. And we would mentor her as we could with the limited resources and time we had, but you know, she's the people who have succeeded in our firm to date have had to be fairly self-sufficient and independent because we do not have a lot of extra capacity to do outside mentoring. The mentoring in our firm really comes in the hands-on part of the practice.

So it's something, I mean, one thing we did really for the first time in this retreat was to map out all of the skills and the capacities we need to build in each lawyer and to try to be much more deliberate about that. Up until now, we really haven't been very deliberate about it. We've just been fortunate to hire people who didn't need that level of hand-holding.

Melissa: But I mean, that's what I was going to say, you've done a good job mentoring, and you know that the way that you've done it isn't going to cut it for your future. You need so you basically built out a skeleton of something that you can continue to fill in after today, which will help a lot with the person who just started on January, the attorney who started on January 5th.

But also, you have someone that's been with you for a year and a half or so that you see areas or you know, you have in your brain areas that there's still development to be made, but there's no organized or systematic way for them to do that. And so you guys are trying to put that into place so that as you grow, you can you can keep up with the capacity needs, which is that is that is challenging. Work worth doing. But I could see why you made the comment, “I think this year is going to be harder than last.”

Jeff: Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah, and I mean every lawyer who's listening to your podcast knows there's really only two solutions to the lawyer problem. One is you have to you hire a seAsened superstar lawyer who can hit the ground running on day one and do all the work that you need done by that lawyer who has the right temperament, who has the right judgment, who has the right experience, you know, can talk confidently to their clients because they know what they're talking about, they know the law, etc, etc.

Finding that person is extremely difficult because those people are all very successful lawyers already. They may own their own firms, they may be partners in other firms. There's not a lot of rationale for them to move and come to a different firm.

Now we think we have a lot to offer even someone like that, but finding that person is very difficult. And in addition to that, they may have an ego or a personality that doesn't have a good fit for your culture. So you may have a superstar, but they're, you know, a real asshole and nobody else likes them, and they don't treat the staff well, they don't, you know, they're not respectful to your clients. We don't want somebody like that, even if they were a stellar lawyer.

So then you get to what's the other solution? And our model, the solution is to build out a team where even if every lawyer on the team doesn't have all of the skills themselves, and many of them do actually, the collective team has all of the capacity needed to be better than any one lawyer can be. And as long as that team is well managed and supervised and well-directed, they can fulfill that need and meet the capacity.

And that's what we're trying to build. But you know, every lawyer out there would probably sympathize with that. They need to build capacity. Are they going to run out and try to find, you know, the partner at their competitor firm down the road where they're going to want to come in and have an equity stake in the business, they're going to have a lot of demands, they may be difficult to deal with, they may do things in a way you don't like because they've learned habits that you don't agree with, or you're going to build it yourself. But if you're going to build it yourself, you have to have systems and an ability to build. That's very hard for lawyers because we're all very busy. And trying to build new lawyers when you're already at capacity practicing law is just it's just really challenging. I think very few law firms do that well.

Melissa: Mhm. Yeah. You made the comment yesterday when some of this was getting first built out, you said, I'm a little uncomfortable here because I can't see how I can, how I can be helpful here. And it was such a signal that this isn't fleshed out enough yet. You there, if it's not good enough for you to see a way in to be to for accountability purposes, then your antsy, and that's a really good signal for the leadership team.

Jeff: Yeah. And I mean, I, you know, to give them a little more color to what I was alluding to is, you know, I'm not an attorney, which we've established. And a lot of this year is going to be the development of our younger attorneys to take on more things, so they're not just on Ben and Taylor's plate. It's hiring and training and mentoring, you know, another litigation attorney. It's executing to a point where we're moving our cases forward in a very efficient manner that's in the client's best interest and the interest of the firm.

And when I, you know, take a step back and I'm like, well, how do I help with these? You know, I can, I can help with the day-to-day, I can help with the operational stuff, I can help to keep, you know, Ben and Taylor's plates clean and just focused on the litigation team. But how much can I do from a litigation standpoint with the attorneys?

You know, and we, we did, you know, flesh out a few things, and as we were talking about, you know, the training plan and the competencies and everything, you know, how can I help with that and interject myself into it? And I think that's going to be good for me and good for the attorneys and the accountability.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben: That's one reason it seems harder to me because most of the tasks last year, Jeff could do. And this is a harder one to have him as involved, but I do think that by virtue of the fact that he takes a lot of the burdens off of our shoulders in all of the administrative and personnel side of it, it frees us up to have more capacity to do the mentoring and training and building the teams.

But in addition, we're we've just know, we decided over this retreat that we're going to put some structure in place where Jeff is going to at least have some like transparency into that and an opportunity where our lawyers can have a direct channel to Jeff to say, hey, I don't think I'm really getting the skills I need or because it's harder for them to go to the direct lawyer who's maybe supervising or the senior person.

But in that way, Jeff can do periodic check-ins to make sure they're progressing the way we hope they will. And kind of have some outside accountability on this process. So it's not just the lawyer saying, oh, yeah, well, we're doing it all. Jeff's going to actually look into it and make sure that's happening. So.

Melissa: Yeah, you keep joking. Every joke that Jeff needs things to do. You have plenty to do, but I mean, I think you had a fear that we're not going to end up with enough rocks. But you guys ended up with six. 

Jeff: I do. I always have a fear and it's just I want to interject myself into every facet of the business and ensure it's working the way that, you know, the vision has it laid out. You know, without overstepping my bounds. I mean, I, you know, I'm not going to put together a case review. I'm not going to, you know, go to court. I'm not going to argue a case. I understand all of that. But I just want to try and interject myself everywhere where I can be of a benefit. Mhm. And, um, you know, it's just my nature.

Melissa: You guys certainly... That's just... Yeah. You guys are such a remarkable team. I mean, the two of you, the way you're focused on the things you're focused on inside of the firm. And then the leadership team as a whole. I mean, I think the two of you as founders are really strong and that's a, that's intentional. You guys work on that relationship as founders. I just, there's a lot of intentionality in your firm, and it shows, and you know, maybe it is because you're competitive and you have something you want and so that's what you're you're going for. Maybe that's just what we chalk this up to, but it's pretty magical to watch the progress that you guys make and the intentionality.

I mean, even, we don't need to go into all this. I'm mindful of time, but you know, you, the two of you, I don't know if it really was together or not. I don't know who wrote most of it, but the two of you put together a memo prior to this retreat. That's intentionality, you know? And you didn't come saying these are our rocks. You came saying this is the landscape as we see it now, and these are the things that we should not focus on. And these are the things that we should focus on. And I mean, that just sets up the days with a tone that is invaluable. It's invaluable.

Jeff: And the majority of that memo was Ben's memo. I mean, he kind of sent me a draft and I, you know, we had discussed kind of some different what we thought were priorities, you know, a few weeks ago. You know, and Ben, after giving it some more thought, kind of pivoted due to some, you know, recent circumstances and stuff, and Ben pivoted and sent it to me, and you know, I added a few small things, but you know, for the most part, Ben's tone was correct. Ben's observation was correct, and you know, I agreed with it. Meryl, Taylor, and you know, it was a good thing for you to work from and it helped make this an extremely productive two days, was Ben taking the time to do that memo, which I think he did on an airplane coming back from Austria.

Ben: Yeah, I mean, the truth is, I was worried because there'd been a lot of recent distractions in our firm, and I thought there was potentially going to be a tendency for us to get distracted, to having kind of immediate crisis management discussions or just moving down rabbit holes. And...

Melissa: Is that the reason you wrote that memo?

Ben: Yes.

Jeff: A big reason.

But yeah, but also I just had this, I mean, anyone, so I'm 54 years old and there's probably folks listening that are, you know, in the same boat as I am, but you start looking at kind of your, I mean, I'm still very active and I expect to be trying cases for another decade and being an integral part of the work. I love the work, and I'll continue doing it, but I don't want to do it in the same way that I've done it for 20-plus years. I want to do it differently going forward.

And what I've realized is my meal ticket towards allowing that to happen depends on building certain capacities that our firm doesn't have. And when I was reflecting back on all the great things we've done, it still occurred to me that without me and Taylor, 95% of our revenue would be would decimate. You know, we just we are still integral in almost all of the significant cases. Not that we don't have phenomenal lawyers that are working with us on all those cases, they're we have that, but being able to transition out of doing some of the things requires us building that capacity.

And also, we just don't have the capacity to implement our vision without doing that. So that was kind of part of the insight. And then, as we started to think about various individuals and crisis management and recent events, those started to clarify in my mind also why this is such a critical issue. You know, so that all came to light on my flight home from a ski trip to Austria.

Jeff: But also going back to, you know, us being very deliberate. We knew we were flying out here on a Tuesday morning. We came in early Monday morning and talked about the distractions and said, let's get this out of the way because when we get to Denver, we're going to focus on the strategic plan and not get distracted.

So we deliberately made a choice to come in. I mean, we have an all-employee meeting at 9:00 a.m. We all came in and literally almost for a solid hour just hashed out the scenarios of what was happening recently, how we were going to respond, what we were going to do. And we all agreed, we came to conclusions, we came to answers, and then I don't want to say we forgot about it, but that way it would not be a focus. So I think that's where the that's that was done deliberately. And if we didn't do that, if Ben didn't write that memo and if we didn't have that meeting Monday morning to flush everything out, we would have wasted a lot of time here, unfortunately, on that.

Melissa: No, I could I 100% agree that probably would have happened. So, yeah, you guys are, it's fun to work with people who are intentional. So, yeah.

Jeff: I think one of the hardest things in what we do, and you know, it sounds like common sense, is we try and keep everything top of mind. No matter what else is going on, no matter whether, you know, the attorneys are prepping for trial or they're doing, taking key depositions or there's some other, you know, something big happening in the firm, you know, at the end of the day, we're still circling back to our plan. We're still meeting weekly that we haven't made an excuse to not keep it top of mind.

Melissa: That is, you'll hear people say, like, it just slipped my mind, or it fell out of my mind. That didn’t happen to you. I mean you can, that is not an excuse.

Jeff: We don't allow it. We don't allow it to. 

Melissa: Yeah, exactly. Like you keep it top of mind. Of course, it's going to fall out of your brain when you have, you're juggling 100 things. So you do have to do that on purpose.

Jeff: We do.

Melissa: Yeah, you do. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, is there anything, is there like something in particular you're really looking forward to seeing come to life this year? I mean, we've talked about the training with the attorneys, but is there anything that comes to mind? You have a full year ahead of you, but... 

Ben: There's so many things. I mean, we have some really deserving and incredible cases that we're hoping to get scheduled for trial this year. I'm very excited to try that case, especially off the last trial that we had that was very energizing and successful. And I think we keep learning and getting better at the craft of trying cases. 

I just want to say, in terms of our work with you, Melissa, it's just, you've been really great for us. I think one of the reasons we work so well together is that a lot of consultants bring kind of a cookie-cutter approach that you're going to go through this system, you're going to go through this check, you know, set of checklists or boxes.

The problem is we're at a different place. Every law firm is probably a unique and different place. We wouldn't do well in an environment where we had to go through things that were too, you know, rudimentary because we've already accomplished a lot of that. And you meet us where we are and you bring out the ability for us to, you know, you give us the space to work through issues. You inject yourself when you need to steer the conversation or where you can see it coming off the rails, or kind of sometimes tactfully or more directly direct us, you know, redirect us. But you really let us work through, set the tone in the agenda for what we need. And that's really allowed us to, I mean, these, uh, retreats have been extremely productive.

And I just, we've talked to a lot of different consultants over the years, and I think that's very much the exception. I think the norm is to have some kind of standard format that everyone has to go through, whether they need that or not. And that can be just extremely frustrating if you're like doing things you don't really need to do, or the person is giving you guidance and advice that you know isn't right for you, because we're not idiots. Like, we bring a lot to the table. You bring the best out of us and allow us to have that process, which is, it's the process that's been important to us and the space, you know. So I just, it's really worked well for us.

Melissa: That means a lot to me. I think I work hard, and I'm not perfect at it, but I can always get better. I work hard to listen. I need to listen to people. I do not know what's best for people, even if I think I do, I'm wrong. I'm probably wrong. Like, everybody does have their own path. There's not one set way that's the right way to do things to be successful. And it's important to really meet people where they are and listen to them.

I mean, the clients that I get to work with are smart and they haveideas and there's things that they are focused on that maybe there needs to be some tailoring to the focus, but as long as it's lining up with where they say they want to go, I should not step in and say, well, have you guys done X? X will take you over here. We're trying to go here. It's so I think that it is an art, not a science, to facilitate well, and it's fun to try to get better and better at it over the years. So I appreciate you saying everything you're saying.

Ben: And Jeff will tell you, I don't, I'm pretty candid about my thoughts. So if I didn't believe that, I would say it. But yeah, no, it's been really, it's worked really well for us.

Melissa: It's great. Well, you guys, cheers. You didn't say if there's anything for you. You excited about anything this year? Jeff is steady Eddie.

Jeff: I’m steady Eddie Jeff. No, I just, I mean, to piggyback off of Ben, I think you are an extraordinarily gifted facilitator. And, you know, you give us the space, but you also give us the structure and, you know, we leave here with very clear direction, whether it's our quarterly meetings or obviously the longer on-site annuals. And, you know, it gives us a path to success, and you're a part of that. And thank you.

Melissa: Thank you. That's a huge compliment coming from the two of you. So thank you.

Jeff: Yeah, we appreciate it. I mean, this year... I know we talked a lot about, you know, training and attorney growth. I mean, I'm I'm I'm looking forward to filling out our litigation team and finding the right attorney, and you know, get those teams built out and at a capacity where, you know, they can handle our influx of cases in obviously a very efficient manner.

And the new unit, the intake evaluation unit, you know, has been in existence for what, six and a half months roughly. This is the year for that unit to start, you know, monetizing things and, you know, everything's been flushed out in terms of structure and procedures and what we're doing and we have a pretty good plan, but I'm excited to see the growth of that unit and, you know, how it's going to add to the firm.

Ben: Yeah. Send your resumes to jwright@gideonasenlaw.com.

Melissa: Yes. Yes. Yeah. You guys.

Jeff: I will field them. 

Melissa: Well, thank you. Thank you for a great two days. Thank you...

Ben: Thank you. Thanks for dinner last night.

Melissa: Absolutely. Thank you for…

Ben: We're heading to the Rodeo tonight.

Melissa: Yes, you are.

Ben: We didn't know… no Nuggets game.

Melissa: Western Stock Show, though, that which is a big deal around here.

Ben: Apparently.

Melissa: Yeah. You know, people don't take their Christmas lights down until after the Western Stock Show is over. Isn't that funny?

Ben: Jeff's afraid of clowns, so I don't know what's going to happen. It could get ugly.

Jeff: Yeah, there's, if there's rodeo clowns, there might be a problem for me, but...

Melissa: But you do have rodeo clothes you brought for the rodeo.

Jeff: Well, I mean, we're from Maine, so I mean, everyone's got flannels up in Maine, and I got a pair of Wranglers and some boots. I'm going to fit right in.

Melissa: Yeah, you are.

Ben: Go and jump on a bull.

Jeff: I'll jump right on. I don't care.

Ben: Go and gore one of those clowns.

Jeff: Yeah, no, it'll be fun. I mean, last year when we were out here, you know, our last night we were lucky enough the Nuggets were in town and had a blast there, and tonight the Rodeo or whatever we're calling it.

Ben: If we came a week later or a few days later, we could see the…

Jeff: Oh, the Broncos game.

Ben: Broncos game. I know. Broncos...

Melissa: Yeah, that's true. And I didn't say this, but thank you for being the first in our new space. This was awesome.

Ben: Oh, yeah. Great space. Yeah.

Jeff: Fantastic space.

Melissa: We found a few things we need to tweak, but...

Jeff: Yeah, we don't have to revisit, you know, the shades and the light and, you know, a few things, but...

Melissa: We'll get it taken care of.

Jeff: I'll send you an email reminder.

Ben: Your snacks are excellent. I highly recommend…

Melissa: The what is?

Ben: The snacks

Melissa: The snacks.

Jeff: Yeah, solid snacks.

Melissa: That's great. Thank you, guys, so much for taking the time to do this.

Ben: Thank you.

Jeff: You're awesome. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Hey, want to watch the video of this episode? Head over to Velocity Work’s YouTube channel. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

You may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map Friday Wrap. If you go to velocitywork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to velocitywork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.