Episode Notes

Unlock a clearer view of your law firm’s financial health in the latest Lawyerist Podcast. Join host Stephanie Everett as she dives into the essential key performance indicators (KPIs) that can transform how you understand your practice, guided by the expert insights of Bernadette Harris, Lawyerist Lab’s finance coach. 

You’ll gain practical knowledge about five crucial areas that directly impact your firm’s success. Understand your net profit margin like never before – not just the surface numbers, but the true profitability that informs your strategic decisions. Explore utilization rate and discover how to optimize your team’s time for maximum productivity. Learn the critical importance of your realization rate and practical steps to ensure you’re capturing the revenue you’ve earned. See how mastering AR aging can directly impact your cash flow and create financial stability. Plus, uncover the strategic advantage of understanding your revenue by practice area, empowering you to make smarter choices about your firm’s financial future. 

For straightforward, actionable insights into these vital financial indicators – the kind that can immediately help you manage your law firm more effectively – tune in to hear Bernadette Harris share her expertise.

Listen to our other episode with Bernadette Harris:

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  • 04:36. Diving into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • 15:51. Maximizing Revenue Collection: Realization Rate
  • 28:32. Working with a Financial Coach and a Special Announcement

Transcript

Stephanie Everett: 

Hi, I’m Stephanie. 

Zack Glaser: 

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 5 57 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks with Bernadette Harris about KPIs in your law firm. 

Stephanie Everett: 

So Zack, it’s almost vacation season. I mean, I feel like I just got back from vacation. We did. We always do a spring break, which is fun. It’s good after the winter. It’s fun to go someplace warm. 

Zack Glaser: 

Where’d you go? 

Stephanie Everett: 

Oh, we just went down to Cancun from Atlanta. It sounds crazy, but from Atlanta, that’s an easy vacation, like two hour flight and then you’re there. And then we get good deals on these little all-inclusives, and it’s just like that’s our easy button. You can just go check out, do whatever you want 

Zack Glaser: 

Nice 

Stephanie Everett: 

Than a trip where you’re traveling. Last summer we went to Europe and we’re sightseeing and going from place to place. And to me those feel like one’s a trip and one’s a vacation and maybe that’s, it’s just different. 

Zack Glaser: 

No, I think that’s a really good differentiation there. Kira and I tend to do trips. We tend to go somewhere and I mean, we don’t have children. We’re relatively young and healthy, and so we’re able to do that. And so we go to even Chicago or even if we go to Hot Springs, Arkansas from here, we go and do things and are moving around from place to place. We don’t just go to the beach and sit and I just don’t have a thing. That is my relaxing go and sit thing. 

Stephanie Everett: 

You 

Zack Glaser: 

Need that? 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, we try to do both. Let’s do a trip and let’s do a vacation. You kind of need, 

Zack Glaser: 

Okay, yeah, 

Stephanie Everett: 

Well maybe you should find a place. I mean, even if you don’t go someplace, A lot of people on our team now are doing more staycations where they’re just relaxing at home. I mean, you have to fight the urge to just do a lot of things. I suppose 

Zack Glaser: 

Really though, I was about to say that you still have the stuff to clean up and the things in your, but if you’re doing a proper vacation or something where you do leave, you should probably, you want to come back to a clean house, so you should probably have the dishes cleaned and the bathrooms and the beds made and everything. So maybe do that and then don’t go anywhere. Yeah, I dunno. 

Stephanie Everett: 

But for sure this summer, I mean I guess the message here is be intentional and plan some time. In fact, if you do have kids, there’s an episode, I mean this is going way back to Sam Glover days, but he did an episode once with the authors of 18 summers and it was all about how as a parent you really only have 18 summers with your kid, but really you have less than, I mean now my kid’s going to be a counselor in training at summer camp this summer is very excited, but it’s going to be gone for four weeks. So we really only have about three or four weeks of the summer to hang out and to do something, to do a family vacation. So now when they hit those older, you really got to be intentional about spending time with each other. 

Zack Glaser: 

That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. So I’d like to know kind of in the comments section of here, what is it that people that listen to the show, what are our listeners do for that? How do they kind of take that family and whatever you call your family, take that family sort of vacation, something to relaxing together. There’s something to taking, I can relax, I can take a weekend or something like that, but there’s something to kind of doing that as a family, as a group 

Stephanie Everett: 

And the stories. That’s been my biggest takeaway from the last couple of times I’ve gone away with my family is just how much we laugh and we write down things to remember our stories by, we keep little note cards throughout the year and we read ’em on New Year’s Eve. 

Zack Glaser: 

Oh wow. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah. So we we’re always like, is that card worthy? And probably, or if you say something ridiculous, you’re like, oh, I’m putting that on a card tonight. 

Zack Glaser: 

Oh man, that’s fun. That’s fun. Awesome. Well, before everybody goes out, buys a bunch of index cards and starts doing that, maybe they can stop by Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever they’re listening to this and leave us a review. And then now here’s our conversation between Stephanie and Bernadette. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Hey guys, it is me again, Bernadette l Harris. I’m the finance coach here at lawyers and thrilled as always to be back on the podcast. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yes, we always have such fun conversations about numbers. Everybody. Everybody. Favorite topic. I think it’s fair to say after listening to you, they realize that they actually do love their numbers. So 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah, that’s my goal. It’s always to help people kind of demystify it and just realize that it’s not as bad as you think and when you get into the habit of actually looking at your numbers, it could be fun. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, I think so. So today we thought, we talk about KPIs a lot. We talk about different parts of finances, some of Bernadette’s past episodes. If you haven’t listened to ’em, we’ll make sure to list them in the show notes, but she’s talked us through how to read your income statement and your balance sheet, some of the basic financial reports that you get and those are super helpful. We’ve talked about tax planning before, so today we thought we’d tackle some maybe lesser known KPIs. There’s always maybe, I don’t know, there’s the normal ones that probably people think about, but maybe we thought a different spin on that or some different KPIs you should be paying attention to. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Hopefully these are something new. Everyone will leave here with a new KPI to start tracking. 

Stephanie Everett: 

So if you’re not KPI, key performance indicator. So I always say it’s just numbers, it’s data. How are we assessing if we’re moving closer to our goals or further from our goals and what numbers can we look at to see if that’s the case? Is that how you would define it? 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah, I think that’s a good, I like to think of KPIs as when you think about your KPIs, think about when you go to the doctor and you get a physical and they give you your blood work and it tells you that your iron is this number and then they give you a range to let you know what’s good or bad. So KPIs is kind of like that, those numbers that just let you know how your business is doing. 

Stephanie Everett: 

So the first one we’re going to tackle is net profit margin and people probably are familiar with the concept of profit, but maybe let’s just break it down so there’s no questions asked. When we talk about a net profit margin, what does that number represent? 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah, so the net profit margin, it tells you how much revenue you’re actually keeping in the firm after you paid your expenses. So you get fees, you pay your people, you pay your expenses, what’s left is your profit, and the net profit margin is that percentage that lets you know how much of your income you’re actually keeping in the business. And so we figure it out, it’s pretty basic. We basically just take your profit and divide it by your total revenue and then multiply by a hundred to get the percentage. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Perfect. So, so I think everyone knows this, but sometimes with accounting stuff, people get all nervous profit is we’re looking at money in income, the 

Zack Glaser: 

Bottom line. 

Stephanie Everett: 

So how much money’s coming in, how much money’s going out for expenses, what’s left over, that’s your profit. And then you’re saying we look at that as a percentage of our revenue. So simply take that number, divide it by the total revenue amount, you have to multiply it by a hundred to make it a percentage. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

So 

Stephanie Everett: 

When we do that exercise and we get that percentage, are there some benchmarks? I know what we talk about here at lawyers, but what benchmarks are you looking at for that percentage to see that it’s healthy? 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

So I think anywhere between 20 and 30% is healthy. I mean, of course if you have a higher profit margin, that’s sweet, but if your profit margin is 10% or less, then you want to look at your expenses because maybe your expenses are too high or your prices are too low. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Now I think it’s probably fair to bring in a little bit of a nuanced piece here because I know that a lot of attorneys, a lot of law firm owners will not pay themselves any kind of, let’s just call it salary or wages. I don’t care if we’re, I’m not tell people, I’m not trying to give W2 tax advice, but if there’s nothing in the expense bucket for you paying yourself. So a lot of law firms, especially the big firms, they love doing this game. They may have hundreds of partners on their team and they account for zero in the expense bucket for the wages of those partners. And so then they report, we have profit margins of 45, 50 5% and I’m always well slow down because that’s not really an accurate picture of your profit margin because your most expensive, your most valuable people are showing up as big fat zeros. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah, I agree. And so in that expense bucket, if you haven’t taken into consideration your compensation, then your numbers are skewed. They don’t really tell us the picture that they should tell us. And so if you’re looking at 20, 30% profit margins and you are not paying yourself you have a problem, 

Stephanie Everett: 

Or if your spouse is doing maybe doing some work on the side, maybe doing some of your marketing or your office, we see 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

This or billing or something 

Stephanie Everett: 

And you’re not paying that person, that also is going to skew that percentage an expense your business would otherwise incur that you’re getting basically for free, by the way, pay your spouses, they earned it, just pay your spouses 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Or your children if they’re working in your business. Yes, pay people. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Exactly. But I say that because I think when we talk about a benchmark of 20%, 15, I always say 15 to 20% is a sign of a healthy firm. But if you haven’t done that math and put something in the expense column for you, then you may be thinking you’re doing great and you actually aren’t. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Absolutely. Great point. 

Stephanie Everett: 

All right, so then if we move on from there, I guess the second number we’re going to tackle is utilization rate. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

So the utilization rate, this is the number that tells you how much your team’s available time is spent on billable work. And this is really for firms that are tracking billable hours. And even if you don’t bill hourly, if you track time, which I think is a good idea, especially when you have a team so that you know what your utilization rate is, you can see how much of the time that your team is working. If your team is working 60 hours a week, I hope they’re not. But if they’re working 60 hours a week, how much of that time is spent doing billable work? So to get this number, you will take the billable hours and divide it by the number of hours total. So let’s say they work a 40 hour week, which is reasonable, if they’re working a 40 hour week and they’re billing 20 hours a week, then their utilization rate is only 50%, 

Stephanie Everett: 

Which I’m assuming is probably lower than we want it to be. What would be a target for your team? What’s a good target utilization 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Rate? Usually with attorneys, I would say somewhere between 70 and 80% is a good utilization rate. Anything below 60% is you have unused capacity, you’re paying people to not do anything essentially because if they are working, they’re only billing 40% of their time. What are they doing with the other 60 

Stephanie Everett: 

Right now? I’m curious, you and I haven’t talked about this yet, so I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I know here it comes sometimes with my law firm owners, I’ll often give them this example where I say, sometimes we think not billable means not valuable. And I’ll give them this example. If I told you you could spend 10 or 20 hours building a new product that you were then going to maybe sell for a flat fee and it was going to be scalable and you build it once and then you sell it over and over and over again, would you be willing to make that investment? And they usually are like, well, yeah, that makes sense. So I’m just kind of curious because I think when we put our owner’s hat on, our roles shift and our responsibilities shift. And so then it might be, I suspect this is where I said I don’t know what you’re going to say to this, that the utilization rate of depending on the role may look different than what you just said at that 60 to 70%. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah, and it does depend. So my question is if your utilization rate is, if they’re only billing 40% of their time, then the question is what are they doing with the other 60? And to your point, if they’re using half of that time to do something to document SOPs or if they’re training someone else to be able to take on some, there may be a reason for the utilization rate to be there. But we’re talking in optimal situations. You have an employee that is working for you and this person is you’re trying to determine whether they’re high performing or not. Sometimes that utilization rate is a good indicator that things are well, but I know that every single rule has an exception. And so I think yeah, 

Stephanie Everett: 

It’s good because good to sometimes remember. And then I guess too to think about it also probably helps you determine capacity. Sometimes people are wondering, when should I hire, when should I add to the team? And looking at a number like utilization rate might give you an indication, do they really have full plates? Do they have for more work because maybe you can redistribute work before you need to hire somebody else. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Exactly, exactly. That’s a great point. So utilization rate tells us a lot of things, and then you can use this, and this is only the 70% is for attorneys. So you may have a paralegal or you may have an assistant who they’re not doing billable work, but to your point earlier, they’re doing important work, they’re doing things that are essential. And so if you have someone that’s answering the phones and keeping your calendar and keeping the office moving organized and all of those things, those are things that you can’t build a client for. But there are definitely things that add to the overall efficiency of your firm. And so I don’t want you to take this utilization rate conversation too literally and not actually look at it, but I would challenge you to look at what everybody is doing to make sure that everybody’s working to their full capacity. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Perfect. Makes sense. Alright, the third number we’re going to talk about today is realization rate. I can’t talk today, it’s a mouthful. All right, so 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Let’s define out one. So realization rate. This rate tells you how much of your billable work you actually get paid on because it’s great to track billing and to send invoices, but if you’re not getting paid on those invoices, you need to understand what your realization rate is. So this looks at how much money you’ve collected versus or divided by the amount that you’ve actually billed. So you send out invoices for $10,000 and you collect nine, then now you have a 90% utilization rate. And so 90 of course, 92 a hundred is ideal. Anything below 85 is saying that you’re writing off a lot of stuff. And so you might want to look at your processes, look at your procedures, or does your engagement letter speak to what do you do in the instance of uncollected funds and are you enforcing it? Because many of us, you are lawyers, so you may have the really tight engagement letter that says if you don’t pay by 30 days, this happens. And if you don’t pay by 60 days, this happens. But do you do it? 

Stephanie Everett: 

And I know we’re going to talk about that more in a minute, but I think also there’s kind of two utilization rates if you think about it, because the way you defined it was after you invoice. So how much do you invoice, how much do you collect? But for a lot of attorneys, a sneaky one they’re not paying attention to is that pre-bill process. So as attorneys, we like to run our pre-bills and we look at what the bill’s going to look like and then we look at it and say, this client, they’re not going to like that charge. I think this person spent too much time on that. I couldn’t possibly charge them this amount for that work. So what do we do? We write down the bill before it even goes out the door, and you need to pay attention to that because that also is an indicator of why are we writing stuff down? 

We used to have a rule in my firm, if a partner wanted to write off more than I think it was like 10% in a pre-bill process, it had to go to another partner for review because sometimes it’s just like you said, it’s our not, maybe not, but we feel bad. We’re like, lawyers do this. Oh, I shouldn’t charge this person that much. And so we had somebody else look at it to see were we really justified in the write down or were we being too sympathetic to the client and not standing by our bills? And we really found that really cleaned up that part of the process where we were writing down more than we should have been. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

So it sounds like you were taking the emotion out of it because the lawyer that’s actually working on the case, they know the client, maybe they talked about their kids and they’re feeling like, oh, she’s really nice. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. So now the attorney, the partner who has no idea who this client is, is looking at it more objectively and being able to make, and I think also in that pre-built conversation or in that process, it’s also an opportunity again to look at efficiencies in the firm because if you feel like this took too long, then the question is why did it take so long? And is there software that can help us to improve this process? Was I just off my game that day and it took me a little bit longer. My kid was acting crazy before we left home and I was distracted. You want to actually look at the why of why is this happening and are there opportunities to improve? 

Stephanie Everett: 

Absolutely. Another reason alternative billing makes a lot of sense because as you know, we get away from that and we can say upfront, this is what this task is we’re going to charge for. It just incentivizes differently. And a lot of times lawyers like to say, oh, if I was charging you by the billable hour, they say I would have made X on this project. And I’m like, but would you have, because you got to think about that pre-bill write off then like you said, how much are you writing off after you send the invoice? How much are you actually collecting? Lawyers kind of forget those numbers in the equation, but if we agree upfront the client’s going to pay me X for Y work, it’s very, very rare that I hear about flat fees getting written down or not 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Collected. Yeah, because you’ve already had the conversation and as a non-attorney and being on the other side of receiving that invoice, it’s frightening to receive an invoice. And you don’t know if you say you’re going to work on this matter for me and I have no idea how long it’s going to take you to do that matter. And then I find out when I get the invoice. Yeah, I’ve been on the other side of that and it’s not a great feeling. So I’m very much a proponent of the flat fee model because it helps both ends. It helps the attorney understand exactly what they’re going to get for providing this service. It helps your client understand exactly what they’re going to pay for receiving that service. So 

Stephanie Everett: 

Absolutely. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

I know this session is not about flat fees, but I know 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, everything is about flat fees with me. The audience already knows that if I can work it in, it’s coming, which directly impacts our fourth KPI that we’re going to talk about today, which is AR aging because like you said, we’re less likely to have those aging invoices if the client’s prepared and knows what they’re going to pay. But for all our listeners, let’s define ar, accounts receivable and aging. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

So this tells you how long it takes your clients to pay you. And this is one of the things that helps us to determine if you even have cashflow problems. So when your clients are not paying their bills when they’re supposed to pay their bills, or it could be you that you’re not invoicing when you’re supposed to be invoicing. These are all things that cause us cashflow problems. So an AR aging is something that you can actually get from either your accounting software or your practice management software wherever you’re sending your invoices, and it’ll let you know which clients are current, which clients are 30 days behind, 60 days, God forbid, 90. And this helps you. And I like to encourage business owners, a law firm owners to really pay attention to this and enforce your policies, whatever your policies are. If your engagement letter says that you are going to apply a late fee after 30 days, apply it because people will, they’ll pay attention. I believe that they pay the bills late that they know they can get away with paying late. 

So this is a personal story. A long time ago when I first started my firm, I learned this lesson very early. I’m an accountant, so I was doing some work for this company and it was an after the fact type thing, which where I would go do the work and then send them the invoice later. And my contract said that after 30 days, I don’t even think I gave 30 days, I don’t have 30 day terms. Those are ridiculous. Like 15 days. It was a late fee was going to be applied, whatever my contract said, I applied the late fee and sent the invoice again with the late fee. And the client was like, oh my gosh, we got a late fee. So I remember the next time, and I was doing some onsite work with this client, so the next time that I went to this client’s office, the owner said, make sure you pay Bernadette’s invoice on time because we don’t want to pay any more late fees. But it just speaks to if they know they can get away with paying you late, they will pay you late. And so yeah, do the nudges, send the reminders, add the late fee, do the things that your contracts say that you’re going to do. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, I always remind people you did the work, that’s money that should be in your bank account, not theirs. And so I know nobody likes collections. There’s companies out there that can help you with that. There’s tools out there, there’s reminders. I mean, I even tell people, I’ve had lawyers get their mom to make the calls for them because again, back to the emotion, it’s like, well, I don’t want to call my client and have to ask for money. I’m their zealous advocate. I’m like, set up an email. Every law firm should have an email of something like accounting at the name of your, you can set up an alias so you can make it look like the email’s coming 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

From. It’s not you. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, it’s coming from the accounting department. And then you don’t have to feel as bad. And then you can also hire a friend to make those calls for you that somebody who doesn’t have any emotion to it, I know our 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Friend or have your assistant do it or something. Yeah. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Or our friends over. I’ll give a shout out to our friend Matt at Callbox because that’s their whole business. They have US based team. They’ll make the calls on your behalf, which is awesome. I know nobody wants to do it, so if you do call them, tell ’em Stephanie at Lawyer has sent you, I think they have a discount. So that’s my unintentional plug for the day. Awesome. And then the last one we’re going to cover is revenue by practice area. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

And I like this one because this KPI actually lets you know which services are the most profitable and it helps you to figure out which work to focus on. Sometimes we think that sometimes the practice area that we enjoy the most may not be the most profitable, and you have to have those hard conversations with yourself and it’s like, Hey, you really like doing uncontested divorces, but they’re only bringing in 10% of the revenue, whereas custody cases are bringing in 60%. And it’s just being able to look at data and make decisions based on data and not emotions, not your feelings, but what does the data say? 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah. And I know so many times I get on with a firm when we’re looking at their budget and their working on a forecasting model, and I’ll say, okay, well how much revenue did you generate from this case type last year or how many cases? We’re trying to back into some numbers. And a lot of people have their accounting system set up where it’s just one big bucket that’s 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Income and everything just goes into 

Stephanie Everett: 

Services. And I know you’re relying on your bookkeepers to help you set these things up, but this is where you as the owner really need to think strategically about what information do you want to have about your business. And then it’s simple, easy, the technical word is chart of accounts. You tell your bookkeeper, Hey, I want to set up these in my chart of accounts so I can start tracking this kind of income versus this kind of income, this kind of case. And you got to think about just, I always say, what kind of buckets do you want to track? That helps us when it comes to marketing, if you know want, it helps us, like you said, in so many ways, there’s going to be so much information about our business, but if we don’t have the data set up on the backend, it’s really hard to 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Look at that number. It makes it really, really hard and also helps you when you’re thinking about it’s so many ways, like you said, marketing, hiring, all of these things. When you’re looking at the way that you want to structure your firm, if you know that this practice area brings in 60% of the revenue of your firm, then you got to really take care of that 60%. And so it just helps in so many ways. And whether it’s in your accounting system or your practice management software, you got to be tracking how much money you’re making. And like you said, when you’re looking at forecasting, you’re not able to really give good forecast when you don’t know how much money you’re generating per case type, per practice area, all of those kinds of things. And so knowing this data is more than just staying on top of your goals, but it’s also helping you to run your firm more efficiently. 

Stephanie Everett: 

And this is where I think you and I love to work with firms. We love to dig in. When you’re in our lab program, we are like, open up the book, share your screen. Let’s go to your bookkeeping, whatever. I know we’re always scared, feel scary, but then we start walking through it and every time we do it, I mean people are just like, oh, this was so great. This is so helpful. I just learned so much and I know it’s so helpful, and we both just really love to do it. And you can see we’re not scary people. We’re not at all. Not at all. No, we’re fun. We’re not going to yell at you or do anything or shame you. I always tell people, no judgment when I ask questions, I’m no judgment. We’re just trying to see where we are so we can get you where you need to be. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Exactly. And I love it when, and I know you’ve probably experienced this, but you may be on a zoom call with someone and the shoulders are here, and then at some point you see them go down and it’s like, yes. Okay, so the shoulders are down, and now you’re not as tense about having this conversation because it’s an important one. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Absolutely. And we have some good news. So hopefully if you’ve been listening for a while, you probably know that Bernadette is our financial coach, and so she’s available to our lobsters to talk specifically about finances, but as you can tell, she knows a lot about business. So she’s also just an amazing business coach. She can help you. She’s done it. She’s been a business owner. She’s been in your shoes, and so she knows what it’s like to have to do the marketing and do the hiring and do all the things that we talk about with our lawyers in our lab program. And the good news is she has some openings right now. So if you’re listening to this or you’ve listened to Bernadette before and you’re like, I wish I could work with Bernadette, she sounds pretty cool. She is. I can vouch for her. 

Thank you. Yes, yes. I want to fill up your schedule because you’re doing some more with us and we want to get your roster filled up. So if you are at all interested in working with Bernadette, here is your chance, because I know she’s going to be in high demand, so her schedule’s going to fill fast. So this is kind of your sneak peek chance to get on that schedule now, if you know what I mean. So make sure you reach out to us. You can always just email us if you’re interested in talking about what we do in lab and working with Bernadette. We’ll put all the information in the show notes, but you can always send me an email, stephanie@lawyerist.com and I’ll get you connected to the right people because I cannot sing Bernadette’s praises enough. She is amazing, and she’s also super fun, and I don’t know so many good things. Right. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And I do. I look forward to it. I can’t believe that I’ve been in business for 23 years, only 25. But yeah, just being in business for 23 years, I’ve seen and done it all. Absolutely. I love being able to help business owners see the blind spots, see the blind spots, and just show you where to go. So it’s more than just finances. And honestly, even when I do a lot of the financial coaching calls, Stephanie, most of the time it’s not finances. The problem is it’s operations or it’s marketing or it is hiring or firing or something like that, and they all kind of bleed into the finances, but the real issue isn’t finance. And so we get a chance to, even in our finance calls, have some conversations about some of that other stuff. Yeah, 

Stephanie Everett: 

Absolutely. I mean, that’s why the healthy firm model is a circle, right? It’s all connected and 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

It’s all connected. 

Stephanie Everett: 

We start peeling away at one area and then it impacts another, and another, and another. But when you start chipping away at those problems and making them opportunities and fixing them, that’s where you also really start to see those. And everything starts clicking and growing. And that’s when the fun and the magic happens. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Yeah. And the shoulders go down. I love that. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Love it. Alright, we may call that. Yeah, shoulders down. Alright, well thank you Bernadette for being with me again. Another great conversation and we will talk to you soon. 

Bernadette L. Harris : 

Thank you.

Your Hosts

Stephanie Everett

Stephanie Everett is the Chief Growth Officer and Lead Business Coach of Lawyerist. She is the co-author of the bestselling book The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited and co-host of the weekly Lawyerist Podcast.

Featured Guests

Bernadette Harris Headshot

Bernadette Harris

Bernadette Harris started her first business in 1998 and never looked back. With a background in accounting, business strategy, speaking and fraud forensics, Bernadette has helped countless businesses grow and become even more successful. Her ultimate goal is to see fewer businesses fail. She has written three bestselling books where she focuses on business strategy, preventing fraud, employees/vendors, and more. Her specialties include tax and forensic accounting, entrepreneurship, speaking, and fraud prevention.

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Last updated May 1st, 2025