Episode Notes

The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited doubled down on our Healthy Firm model. But what, exactly, is it? Join us for a podcast book tour, where we dive into each of the six areas of business integral to building a client-centered, efficient, and profitable small law firm. 

Lawyerist Lab member, Brandon Harter, noticed that traditional methods of practicing law were not effective, so he decided to start from scratch. Learn how he developed a Healthy Strategy, adopting a flat fee and subscription model that eliminates tension with clients.  

If today's podcast resonates with you and you haven't read The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited yet, get the first chapter right now for free! Looking for help beyond the book? Check out our coaching community to see if it's right for you.

  • 5:50. Contested litigation for a flat fee.
  • 11:47. Setting up a subscription model.
  • 20:06. Advice on how to make the change.

Transcript

Announcer: 

 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:35): 

Hi, I’m Jennifer Whigham.  

  

Stephanie Everett (00:36): 

And I’m Stephanie Everett. And this is episode 439 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today I’m interviewing one of our Labsters Brandon, Harter about how he redesigned his firm’s business strategy.  

  

Jennifer Whigham (00:50): 

Today’s podcast is brought to you by ?Posh Virtual Receptionists, Clio, & LawPay. We wouldn’t be able to do this show with author support, so stay tuned, we’ll tell you a little bit more about them later on  

  

Stephanie Everett (01:02): 

Today, Jennifer, we are going to kick off what we’re going to call our virtual book tour. I hope everyone knows by now that we just released our new book, the Small Firm Roadmap Revisited, and in it we outline our healthy firm model and that starts with healthy strategy. So we wanted to interview Brandon because we think he’s doing really cool things with his business model, and we want to use it as an example of someone who’s taking the things we talk about in the book and actually living it and putting it into action in his firm.  

  

Jennifer Whigham (01:34): 

And Brandon is a lobster, and he was in a very different place, I think when he first started in lab.  

  

Stephanie Everett (01:40): 

Yeah, I asked him about that and it was kind of funny. We realized when we recorded this that it’s just been a year that all of this change has happened, and so we’re going to walk through how that came about and what kind of changes he had to make that vision a reality. Yeah, I think this will be a great conversation. And why don’t we just jump right into it. Here’s conversation with Brandon.  

  

Brandon Harter (02:06): 

Hi, I’m Brandon Harter. I’m a co-founder of Lancaster Tech Law. We are a small firm providing businesses with guidance and using technology to improve and eliminate traditional barriers to client and attorney communication.  

  

Stephanie Everett (02:19): 

Hey Brandon, welcome to the show.  

  

Brandon Harter (02:21): 

Hi, Stephanie.  

  

Stephanie Everett (02:21): 

I am excited for everyone to hear your story. And maybe just to set it up, I’m going to give people my version, which is that probably, I mean, we could just go back a little bit in time, but we’ll just say a few years ago, your practice probably looked like most people, right? You do business litigation, you were at a small firm, you had some partners, you had some people working for you, and you build and did things probably the way most Lawyerist seem to do things. Fair.  

  

Brandon Harter (02:50): 

Yep, absolutely.  

  

Stephanie Everett (02:51): 

And then something changed and you got an idea, and I want to pick up there and hear what changed for you and what did you decide do about it?  

  

Brandon Harter (03:00): 

Yeah, there were a number of things sort of fundamentally, and everybody’s had those moments of, oh, I don’t like the billable hour model and I want to do something else. But I realized what it was doing and just the way that we practiced was really impairing the ability to communicate with clients. They don’t want to pick up the phone and talk to you because they’re afraid of the bill. They make a decision in litigation and then later on say, I don’t want to do this anymore, but we’ve already done a month and a half of work, so you’re going to get another couple of thousand dollars of a bill in the mail. And especially during the pandemic, I was sort of looking around at the way other industries changed and other things adapted, and then the law came back out and we were sort of back in our ivory tower again and saying, okay, great. Now that things are opened, clients please come back and do exactly what we had you do it before because it was good for us. And I sort of said, well, time out. I don’t know about that.  

  

Stephanie Everett (03:53): 

And I love that these thoughts really started with your clients. You were thinking about your clients and thinking about their perception and what it was like to work with you.  

  

Brandon Harter (04:03): 

Sure. And it was an experience where if you were using telemedicine during the pandemic, you’re thinking, well, why can’t I do that with my lawyer? Why can’t I talk to you the same way? Or using other sorts of technologies that are available? And I think too often, no matter whether you called yourself client-centered or not, it was really client-centered to the extent it’s convenient for me, the lawyer, not client-centered as in, okay, put myself in your shoes. What do you actually want to have this experience look like?  

  

Stephanie Everett (04:32): 

Yeah. And so then tell us what you did when you realized you wanted to go down this different path and what did you build?  

  

Brandon Harter (04:40): 

Yeah, so we sort of built a firm from the ground up trying to create a series of choices or a series of options for our clients. So certainly you could force everybody down one path and say, we’re only doing video conferences, we’re not doing anything else. You can’t do X, Y, or Z that didn’t really feel customer friendly nor did just adopting the traditional model. So what we did is we sort of built from the ground up and said, okay, let’s give choice to clients because it’s not one size fit all. And so we do that with communication preferences, people who come in, people who come in, okay, electronically, people are on the phone. And we do that with our billing as well. So we offer hourly billing to our clients, but we also have a lot of our clients on a subscription model so that they’re not afraid of what the bill’s going to look like at the end of the month. And we handle more than half of our commercial litigation on a flat fee model, sort of a carte menu of services and just basically say, look, if you’re used to the hourly model and you want to continue doing that, knock yourself out. But we’re really designed to do it in any of these ways and price it effectively and use tech on our end effectively so that you pick what’s good for you, we’ll make it work on our end rather than the other way around.  

  

Stephanie Everett (05:50): 

So there’s probably some people who’ve dig into a couple of the things that you just said. One is that are doing contested litigation, business litigation for a flat fee in some instances,  

  

Brandon Harter (06:04): 

Correct. Yes 

  

Stephanie Everett (06:05): 

So people are probably sitting here going, okay, I hear you, but how does that work? Or they’ve already said in their head that would never work because you and I both know that’s what people like to say when they hear this.  

  

Brandon Harter (06:17): 

That’s probably what I was saying five years ago, if you truth be told as far as whether that would work. So the scariest part about it with anything is how do I price it? How do I decide what’s right and what’s wrong? And for a little while we were sort of paralyzed with the idea of, oh, we really have to make sure this is correct because if it’s wrong, it’s really going to screw a bunch of different things up. And then at some point we sort of said, time out perfect is the enemy of good. At some point let’s get close and evaluate it. So we picked based on I have a decade of litigation experience, I can estimate what a lot of things are going to be, and then we’ll adjust and we use metrics to track it. And every month or so we look back and say, okay, do the complaints cost us more than this?  

  

(06:59) 

Do the demand letters cost us more than this? And then we talk about, okay, let’s see if that trend continues and then we’ll make adjustments to the pricing over time. But really just getting out there and doing it is effective. And I will also say we very quickly figured out you have to set aside the hourly concept. It’ll take me four hours to do this. And so that’s what this is worth what it’s worth. The client has nothing to do with how long it takes me to produce it. And if what it’s worth to the client is higher than what it takes me to produce it, fine, I’ll charge for that and we can collect profit. And if it’s not worth what it takes us to do it, well then we need to find a better way to do it because we’re not providing a service to somebody if they don’t see the value in it.  

  

Stephanie Everett (07:39): 

Yeah. I just read recently and someone asked, are you selling the hole, the drill or the time it takes to drill the hole? And I think that’s kind of what you’re saying too. We get so stuck as Lawyerist and thinking we’re selling our time or we’re selling tasks when really we’re selling solutions. And so it really, we have to start shifting our framework and our mindset around what is it we’re selling and how do we add value and then how do we price it?  

  

Brandon Harter (08:07): 

Yeah. The other thing that comes up in the course of civil litigation is it’s never one size fits all, right? Some cases are going to have more witnesses than others, some are going to have some unusual turn in the middle. And how do you manage that? Well, people have been managing risk and that sort of thing in other industries forever. The idea that you can’t price around risk. So that one time in 10, it’s okay that we go over because we do find the rest of the time is certainly true. And the other way that we’ve gotten around it is by breaking cases down sort of into easier to understand pieces. So we refer to litigation occurring in three phases, sort of a pleadings, get the claims out there, discovery, let’s exchange information trial or arbitration or whatever it is in the last phase. And so we sort of stop at the start of each phase and tell the client, here’s the things that I think are coming and the prices for those things.  

  

(08:58) 

We’ll talk again when we get to the next phase. Because when you get through the first phase and you go, okay, this ended up being kind of a circus, there’s a lot of things going on, I didn’t expect all that stuff to happen. You can make adjustments if you need to going into that second phase. And it gives you a chance also to say, okay, I told you before it was going to be X number of dollars for a deposition. Turns out we have to take three, not one, but you knew what we were going to call charge for a deposition. And so we understand what that adjustment is even in the middle of a phase. So by allowing modifiers not based on I think this is difficult or I think this isn’t difficult, which is hard for the outside world to see, break it into things that they can see more tangibly. I went to a conference, I took a deposition for you, we answered this discovery, and by breaking into tasks, they can see you get a lot less questions about what the heck did you do for me this cycle and why does it cost that much?  

  

Stephanie Everett (09:50): 

Yeah. And so it sounds like you’re not saying at the beginning of the case, I’m going to flat fee this litigation for $30,000 you’re saying, or you tell us, but you’re breaking it into discreet task and then reevaluating that within those phases.  

  

Brandon Harter (10:06): 

So it depends on the kind of case. There is some litigation that we do one number all in from the front because we know it’s going to take a certain level, certain kinds of collections work or landlord tenant work or some things that you can predict. This is basically what the scope of it’s going to be. But if you’ve got a flat fee case now where you’ve got a pair of clients fighting over a million and a half dollars, it’s kind of hard to predict where all of those lefts and rights are going to go, but the clients still likes the ability to have some control over what the steps in the process are. And so for those cases, we break it up into sort of bite-size chunks that they can see either in terms of tasks or sometimes it’s just in terms of time.  

  

(10:46) 

So we are defending a case where it sort of ebbs and flows and sometimes there’s activity and sometimes they’re not, and we just agreed to a flat fee month over month, it’ll be X dollars a month, the sort of manage this until it gets hot again. So it’s just going to be 200 bucks a month to keep an eye on this until it starts doing something again. The trick is that we don’t come into these things saying, this is how the billing works, take it or leave it. We give clients options and it’s right on the engagement letter. We tell them, here’s what it would look like hourly. Here’s what it would look like as a flat fee. Here’s what it would look like as a subscription. Pick poison. Pick what you want to do and talk to us if you’re not sure. And so far we’ve gotten a pretty good response to that.  

  

Stephanie Everett (11:26): 

Yeah, I want to dig into that real quickly though. Let’s define one more thing, which is your subscription pricing. So tell us how that works because I know a l, I talked to a lot of Lawyerist and they do want to go this way, they’re just not sure how to set it up and how to even get started. So maybe let’s first describe what you’re doing and then we can talk about how you got started doing it.  

  

Brandon Harter (11:47): 

Sure. Our bread and butter subscription is what we do for our day in day out business clients. We charge one flat fee a month and in exchange for that flat fee, they can call or email or ask us to look over a contract quick with them, hop on a video conference and look at it together, do that sort of thing. And it’s priced to be sort of like having Amazon Prime. You basically get this because you get enough benefits out of it, and we understand that you’re probably going to buy other stuff than just the Amazon Prime subscription as you go over time. And so that’s basically what we do. This is how we can provide your day in day out answers. If you’ve got a bigger project, you get sued for something like that, that’s beyond the course of the subscription. But what it does is it eliminates the friction on each phone call.  

  

(12:30) 

They’re not afraid to pick up the phone and talk to you because they feel like, oh, I’ve already signed up for this service. This is available just like I bought Microsoft 365 this month and I have already paid for it, so I might as well use it. It’s a similar sort of model for our business clients and in the litigation world, we use it as I mentioned, sort of when cases either slow down or they’re being predictable and you’re waiting for something. It can be a good way to say it’s not. It’s okay to come and ask me what’s going on with your case. You’re not going to get billed 0.2 every time you call me for me to say, oh, the judge didn’t do anything. We can continue to talk. We continue to manage things sort of at a lower price point over time, so you’re not afraid of picking up a phone.  

  

Stephanie Everett (13:09): 

And when you got started on that, did you just pick a number?  

  

Brandon Harter (13:13): 

It was actually a little bit of trial and error. We had actually started with a handful of preexisting clients I had who I basically told them, Hey guys, this is a beta test. This may or may not go well. If you give me feedback, I’ll give you a couple percentage off your regular invoices from me and we’ll make this a two-way street that works. And what we had done at first was we tried to set an all-in price for a given business. So if you make so much in revenue a year, your all-in is going to be 1500 bucks a month, and then that’ll count you for the whole year and you know what your budget is. And between trying to get the information you needed from a client to price that before you ever started doing work, and frankly, the fact that it fluctuated so much over time, it just didn’t make a lot of sense.  

  

(14:02) 

And so we sort of adapted to a different pricing model where it was enough that they were getting value but not so high that it felt like an impediment to signing up and doing it. And one of our favorite or one of the client segments who really, really likes it are actually startups because they have so many little questions that they just don’t, is this even a legal question? Is this an accounting question? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this, but they’re terrified of getting that $15,000 lawyer bill in the mail six weeks after they asked a question. So they know that this is the dollar amount coming into it, and it really makes for better client relationships over the long term because then when it turns into something or it turns into litigation, I sort of already know what’s going on because we’ve been kept apprised of the situation as we went along. So it loops back to that eliminating a barrier to entry kind of concept. The bill shouldn’t be a point of friction between the client and the attorney. It should be just something that happens sort of organically while you’re having that good dialogue back.  

  

Stephanie Everett (15:06): 

Yeah, I love that it is worth repeating and for everyone to listen in on that point because yeah, you’re right. Our bills shouldn’t create friction between us and our clients. So important. All right, let’s take a quick break. We’ll hear from our sponsors when we come back. I want to dig in some more to what the clients are experiencing.  

  

Zack Glaser (15:27): 

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Stephanie Everett (18:21): 

All right, I’m back with Brandon. And you recently completely changed your business model and adopted flat fee and subscription pricing for your business litigation practice in addition to some hourly billing and you’re giving clients the choice. I’m curious to hear what the response has been from the clients because I think we all assume, well, clients are just used to the hourly billing and that’s what they’re going to pick.  

  

Brandon Harter (18:48): 

Sure. And by way of little background, this time last year, I was still in my traditional small firm billing entirely by the hour, and so I ended up having the unique experience of what happens when you take a chunk of clients who are being billed by the hour and then throw this choice in front of them and see what happens as you might expect it. First there was some confusion in terms of what do you mean this is an option? I don’t even understand what you’re offering me. And so we tried to take some efforts to have extra letters or onboarding communications that helped explain what’s going on. And sometimes you just have to hop on the phone or hop in a conference room and explain it to people. But after a month or two, we really started to get people saying, wow, I can’t believe we didn’t do this before.  

  

(19:33) 

We’d get people saying, this is so much nicer, it’s so much more predictable. I know what this is going to look like. I had one client who tell me, I’m no longer afraid to open envelopes from your office because they were just terrified of what the bill was going to look like coming out. And so now it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like that bad surprise you get in the mail. And so they’ve really started to warm up to the idea, and I mentioned we give clients the choice. 70% of our clients are on an alternative fee model despite the fact that they were hourly with me before.  

  

Stephanie Everett (20:03): 

Yeah, I mean that’s amazing because I think, and it does take some education, they’re not going to necessarily just jump on board, but once they see it and understand it, it sounds like they’re really picking up on it and they’re probably out now in the community singing your praises. And I happen to know you have a lot of work coming in, so it seems to be working  

  

Brandon Harter (20:22): 

So far, so good.  

  

Stephanie Everett (20:23): 

Yeah, I think that’s a good point that you just made is just even a year ago you were still in what we would think of as a more traditional model, and you had this idea you ended up having to leave your existing firm and start your own firm in order to really embrace it and make it happen. But what tips or advice would you give for people who might be thinking about this, thinking about this transition and what they might learn from how you did it?  

  

Brandon Harter (20:50): 

So the first thing I would say is something I mentioned earlier about perfect being the enemy of good. You’re never going to figure every ounce of this out before you go. That’s not saying don’t plan at all and just see what happens, that there certainly is a lot of thinking that goes into it. But that’s one thing I would say get close and understand that you’re going to have to continue to evolve this over time, even if you picked the perfect price points and models and timing from ground one. The second thing I would say is don’t be afraid to ask for feedback, particularly from clients that you’ve worked with before or somebody that you’ve got a good relationship with and say, Hey, this is what I’m trying, I’m trying to make this better for you guys. Tell me what you think about this. Some of the best information I got early on about how to make some of this pricing work and how to do some of the subscription was I had a longtime client in the IT sector who does managed IT services where they provide a certain amount of service hours per month, and we sort of sat down and had lunch and talked over this is how legal is different than tech and vice versa.  

  

(21:52) 

This is how you would use ours, this is how I would use ours. And we sort of just got a napkin out or drawn stuff and sketching stuff back and forth. So feedback from the people who are actually on the other side of it is absolutely invaluable. The last thing I would say is make sure that the people around you are on board with what you were trying to do and why you were trying to do it. If you don’t have buy-in from the people around you, it gets really difficult to do this effectively. I tried for a period of time to basically do this just myself and one staff member and sort of turn out lights on what was happening in the rest of the firm. And it made everything extra painful in terms of systems, in terms of communication, in terms of confusing the heck out of clients about why I got two bills from the same firm in the same month, and they look wildly different.  

  

(22:42) 

So make sure that there are people around you who are comfortable with what it is that you’re trying to do. And that’s not to say that you can’t have different practice areas who are handled things differently or different Lawyerist who can do it, but there’s a certain amount of commitment that’s needed, a certain leap of faith to say, okay, what I’m worth isn’t my number in my head per hour. It’s based on what something else or someone else is getting out of it. And that takes commitment, not just at the attorney level. It takes commitment with our staff, it takes it with our billing folks. They all have to sort of understand what we’re trying to do. And when you have a whole team around you who’s doing it, it doesn’t seem quite so scary.  

  

Stephanie Everett (23:22): 

Yeah, that makes sense. I thought your first piece of advice was going to be to join lab and work with us to make it happen.  

  

Brandon Harter (23:28): 

Well, I’m already assuming that everyone in the country is a member of Lab, and if you’re not at this point, then shame on you for listening to this podcast and not doing it. But Lab was also a very critical component of my decision and my launch. So  

  

Stephanie Everett (23:41): 

No, I do appreciate that. And I’m laughing because I work with Brandon. I was with you when you were at the previous firm and you had this idea and you were trying to make it work, and I kind of could see where you were headed, and it was actually my honor and privilege to be able to work with you during that transition because we were able to have really good discussions and help you kind of think through how this needs to work. And you’re right, because the other piece we haven’t really talked about is not only did you have to change your pricing and how you thought about cases, but there were backend changes you were making at the same time for how you were running cases, how you were setting up your software, how you’re using technology, because that’s the other part of this is we got to compliment it and now we can do work faster, and yet we’re getting the benefit of that work as part of the business model. All these things sort of have to work together. So what were some of the big changes you had to make on the backend that feel different than what you had at your old firm?  

  

Brandon Harter (24:40): 

I think the biggest change on the backend was a willingness to add something because it works better for some component of the firm, even if it’s not for everybody. There were some tools where it really helped us speed up the drafting of some discovery stuff, but it was something that the paralegals really needed to use, not so much the Lawyerist. And if you’re just driving all of the decisions from, well, I’m the lawyer and I know what software I need in my firm, I never would’ve even known about it. This was something that somebody came across and then brought to us to try to use the most recent example of this. We’ve been experimenting with some of the AI generated content, so do a first draft with the computer, whether it’s chat, G P T or one of the other platforms out there that are growing. It’s that sort of stuff, looking for things that help other parts of the firm than just the lawyer who’s signing off at the end of the day. That was probably the biggest thing that was changing.  

  

Stephanie Everett (25:33): 

Yeah. All right. So one thing I do like to ask everyone, we’ll kind of shift gears for a second, is as always growing as people is one of our values here at Lawyerist. So I like to ask people, what are you currently learning? It can be personal or professional, but what are you doing new in your world? And maybe you even just hinted at it.  

  

Brandon Harter (25:53): 

Yeah, so I would say two things. One is that exactly what I just mentioned. It’s the learning to listen to the voices that are around you. And that’s particularly important for me. Now, my wife for the first time is working with me in the law firm, and so if I wasn’t listening to the other staff around me, I would get it both here and at home. And so you got to be careful with that, but I am privileged to be able to have her here with me on staff, and then she makes a lot of the things go. The other thing would be I am starting to learn that maybe I’m not quite as crazy as I thought I was when we got started, because when I first started explaining this at bar functions or doing that sort of thing, you would get one or two looks.  

  

(26:32) 

You would either get deer in the headlights where I might as well have been talking about metadata and people had no idea what I was talking about, brain and the tech Lawyerist doing his crazy thing. Again, just smile and nod and then keep going. Or you would get the people who would shake their head and give you the, oh, Brandon, you don’t know what you’re doing, mistakes of youth, you’re going to learn and then you’ll be back and you’ll do whatever else. But the fun thing was over time, particularly not in the big mixed group settings, you’d start to have attorneys come to you and sort of quietly whisper, Hey, does that really work? Is this really a thing that I can do because it sounds cool and I want to try it, but I don’t quite know how to do it. I don’t quite know how to bring it up to the other Lawyerist in my firm.  

  

(27:12) 

And so you find out that there is actually this community even in the legal world who says, I sense that something isn’t quite as good as it could be. And I think when we start to pull it into, there are segments of the legal industry who have been better at using these tools, some of the pro bono services, some of the immigration or domestic world services where there really isn’t the money unless you find another way to make this work. The commercial world, the business world where I tend to have my clients has traditionally been okay getting paid, and so there was no need to innovate. I was worried that I was a little too far ahead of the curve about whether or not that was coming, but when I hear those whispers from other people, I think, okay, maybe I’m only a little bit crazy. I’m not quite as crazy as I was afraid  

  

Stephanie Everett (27:56): 

Of. You’re not crazy at all. But I mean, let’s answer the question though. Is it working? When you look at your firm now, you’ve built this new, what I would call healthy business strategy. Is it successful or what are you seeing on the back end and how are you seeing if it’s working and measuring that success?  

  

Brandon Harter (28:15): 

Sure, it is working. I’ll answer that first and foremost, like any startup, you’ve got your own things to think through and challenges and extra things to get set up, but it is working and it’s working in two ways. It’s working in that we’re getting the work done for clients. The same work that I was getting done before, they’re still getting taken care of. So that number one tells me it’s working. And the other thing is we’re making money and we’re keeping the lights on doing it. So if at the end of the day the measure of a successful firm is, can you accomplish the work and do you have the money to keep the door open for the next day? Yeah, we’re there. We’re doing that. So  

  

Stephanie Everett (28:49): 

Yeah. I’m curious too, like you talked about from the client’s perspective, how you think they are reacting to this. What’s different from your perspective now that you’re not necessarily keeping track of 0.2 s every second of the day?  

  

Brandon Harter (29:03): 

It encourages you to look for those little efficiencies in the day. It’s not, oh, if I make this more efficient, there goes some billable hours and I got to fill it with something else. So that’s part of it. I think it’s also really eliminated a lot of the sort of stiff arm between me and the clients, that sort of separation. I had some really good clients before who notwithstanding the billable hour we’re perfectly fine hanging out with you or doing whatever or talking or doing that sort of thing. But those were sort of the exception. Those weren’t the norm because a lot of people are afraid of the bill or the cost or the appearance or that sort of thing. Getting to know more of my clients having more effective across the board has been a really sort of nice treat for me and has really been something that’s something that I would encourage anybody who’s thinking about this, don’t just think about it in terms of will it work or what’s the dollar amount? Think about how satisfying the work is and being able to connect with people on a more human level without that barrier between you and them. It’s sort of one of the unforeseen but favorite perks that I had.  

  

Stephanie Everett (30:05): 

I love that. What a great place to wrap up. It was so great to have you on. I’m so excited to see what you’ve built, how much success you’ve had already in just a short time, and I know you’re going to have a lot more.  

  

Brandon Harter (30:17): 

Thank you, Stephanie. It was a pleasure getting to talk with you today, and I look forward to hearing about many more folks having success like I am in the future.  

  

Announcer (30:26): 

The Lawyerist podcast is edited by Brittany Felix, are you ready to implement the ideas we discussed here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First, if you haven’t read the Small Firm roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist dot com slash book, looking for help beyond the book. Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities are right for you. Head to Lawyerist dot com slash community slash to schedule a 10 minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

 

 

 

Your Hosts

Stephanie Everett

Stephanie Everett is the President of Lawyerist, where she leads the Lawyerist Lab program. She is the co-author of the bestselling book The Small Firm Roadmap and is a regular guest and co-host of the weekly Lawyerist Podcast.

Featured Guests

Brandon Harter Headshot

Brandon Harter

Brandon Harter is a litigator and eDiscovery specialist who launched an alternative fee-based firm, Lancaster Tech Law, in 2022. His passion is finding efficient, tech-savvy legal solutions to problems at the intersection of law and technology. He encourages clients to transition to flat-fee and subscription services and to use paperless, cloud-based communication like self-scheduling and client portals. He strives to reduce friction points that make the law more expensive or burdensome by encouraging the thoughtful use of technology, automation, and artificial intelligence tools. 

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Last updated April 6th, 2023