Leveraging LinkedIn as a Lawyer, with Amy Grubb

Speaker 1 (00:03):

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.

Zack Glaser (00:35):

Hi, I’m Zack Glaser.

Jennifer Whigham (00:36):

And I’m Jennifer Whigham. And this is episode 426 of The Lawyer is podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today Stephanie is interviewing one of our newest lab coaches, Amy.

Zack Glaser (00:47):

Today’s podcast is brought to you by  Posh Virtual Receptionists, Clio, & Documate. We wouldn’t be able to do this show without their support, so stay tuned and we’ll tell you more about them later on.

Jennifer Whigham (00:57):

Zach, how cool is Amy, our newest Lab coach?

Zack Glaser (01:00):

I mean,

Jennifer Whigham (01:00):

What’s cooler than being cool?

Zack Glaser (01:02):

Ice cold? Yeah, she’s ice cold. No, she’s, she’s very, very cool. I think ice cold. She’s actually very warm. Yeah. Has a connotation of being, yeah. Yeah, she’s very warm, very nice, very friendly, but also extremely knowledgeable.

Jennifer Whigham (01:14):

Yeah, she’s a lawyer.

Zack Glaser (01:16):

Yeah, she’s a lawyer. She’s from Canada, so I guess that makes her a little bit cooler in many ways.

Jennifer Whigham (01:21):

Yeah, I mean in temperature wise likely as well. It does feel cooler to, we can now say we are an international team because we have Amy here and it’s been a little fun, I’m sure when we joke a little bit about us versus Canada. But it has been fun to have a Canadian, because occasionally things come up where she showed us that they have milk in bags, which was a new fact to us. Very old fact to any of our Canadian listeners, cuz obviously grew up with it. But on camera we made her go to her refrigerator and pull out her bag milk and she showed it to us just yeah,

Zack Glaser (01:56):

Casually. It’s funny you say that cuz that was the thing that was in my head too.

Jennifer Whigham (02:00):

Bag Milk. Yeah,

Zack Glaser (02:01):

It is amazing what kinda like impresses you when, or makes an impression on you when it’s something different from what you’re used to. Yeah. But it was so sleek. She had a jug specifically to put the bag into. And so if I went and visited Canada and was there at once, just say was there at Airbnb for a couple weeks and went and bought milk, I’d be like, yeah, stunned. It would just, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t be able to to have milk.

Jennifer Whigham (02:31):

Yeah, no, you would. It would throw it in the trash, I assume, right? Yes. Out of ignorance.

Zack Glaser (02:37):

That is pretty much my life right there. And I’d just be at Tim Horton’s the whole time having Bar Claw or something and some coffee.

Jennifer Whigham (02:45):

But back to Amy, she is more than just a bag of milk and a Canadian, like we said, she’s an attorney. She’s been coaching now in our Lawyer’s Lab coaching program for, it might have been over a month now, and people are loving her. She just has this really quietly capable, kind, practical coaching style that has really spoken to a lot of people in our program.

Zack Glaser (03:10):

Yes, I love when you work with somebody and you talk about how long they’ve been somewhere and you’re just like, well, she could have only been here a month.

Jennifer Whigham (03:19):

I know. Feels like she’s been here forever.

Zack Glaser (03:22):

Her capacity, her effect, all of that has been, it’s been wonderful for me. It’s been nice because she has a lot of experience in practice management software and practice in helping people with their practice management capabilities and everything. So very practical knowledge as if our coaches don’t have practical knowledge, but very, very practical knowledge that is something that I really am into as well.

Jennifer Whigham (03:49):

Yeah, she’s a Clio Wizard, Clio Witch, Clio Warlock, all of the above. She’s a Clio Master

Zack Glaser (03:55):

Maj, Maven.

Jennifer Whigham (03:57):

Clio Maj, Maven. We gotta stop. I could have just kept naming every class that you would find in an RPG at that point, but the point is Amy is one of her newest coaches and just to do a little plug, she still has spots available on her roster. So if you would like to join Lab and coach with Amy, our Canadian attorney who has a lot of practical tech knowledge as well, this is the time to do it before it fills up because she only has a limited amount of spots and I mean that not in a, I am selling something and there’s only a limited amount available. She actually only has a limited amount of spots. So I think you should think about joining Lab. We’ll have it in the show notes. We love Amy, we’re so glad she’s here. And now let’s hear Stephanie have her conversation with Amy.

Amy Grubb (04:46):

My name is Amy Grubb and I am a business coach at Lawyerist. Prior to that I was a business lawyer in big law and I also owned my own solo law firm. I am on a mission to help lawyers build law firms that bring them joy.

Stephanie Everett (05:00):

Hi Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Amy Grubb (05:02):

Hi Stephanie. Thank you for having me.

Stephanie Everett (05:05):

I am obviously very excited to introduce you to the listening community since you’re our newest business coach and you and I really share a lot of similarities in our background.

Amy Grubb (05:16):

We do. We are both Lawyers, we both owned our own firms. We both worked in large law firms as well. And I think we both really love helping other lawyers and supporting lawyers and helping them to build healthy law firms that they can be really proud of.

Stephanie Everett (05:37):

And I’m sure you have gotten this sense a lot too. It’s like we’ve been in their shoes so we kind of get it. We understand and I always tell people, I’m not going to ask you to do something that I wouldn’t have done myself. And I’m sure do you take a similar approach when you’re working with people?

Amy Grubb (05:54):

I do for sure. I understand where they’ve been, been. I understand the days where you just wanna throw in the towel and say, I’m done with this. I wanna go work for Canada Post. I’m in Canada, I wanna go work for, I want to do something a little bit easier. But then I also love being with them on the days where things just click and they’re super excited and they’re hiring and they’re growing and they can’t believe that they own this business and that they’re doing it. So it’s such a great opportunity to be able to do this with Lawyerist.

Stephanie Everett (06:28):

And so what are some of your coaching wins when you think about the work you’ve done with Lawyerist, what are some of the things that kind of make you most proud?

Amy Grubb (06:37):

Well, I’ve worked with some lawyers who they’re not even sure if they want to be lawyers anymore and they’ve thought about going out on their own, but they weren’t sure about that. And we talked about it and we walked through it and they decided they want to launch these firms and they’ve done it. They’ve hired staff, they’re working with clients they love working with. And I don’t know if they necessarily would have done it before if we hadn’t had some conversations. I hadn’t referred them to some other people to chat with to give it a try and see what happened. So that to me is one of the biggest wins that I’ve had as a coach. And to be honest, just seeing lawyers who are trying to do all the things, they’re the bookkeeper, they’re the marketer, they’re the IT person, they’re the lawyer. And being able to work with them and say, it’s okay, you can hire someone. You do have the revenue to do this. It’s scary and it’s a risk, but let’s give it a try. And that’s what we’re always saying in lab is let’s experiment, let’s try it, let’s see what happens. And so being able to help Lawyerist just get out of the weeds and see the bigger picture and help them to actually make that happen is such a huge win.

Stephanie Everett (07:58):

Yeah, I think it’s helpful cuz I still think there are people out there that are unsure of what a business coach does. That’s kind of a funny term. What does that mean? What does it actually look and feel like? Sometimes I’ve had people get on calls with me and they’re like, I just don’t know what this is.

Amy Grubb (08:14):

And to me it’s about working with someone and helping them to figure out, okay, what are their goals for the next quarter, for the year, for the next three years, what’s your vision? What’s your plan for this firm? And then working with them to break down those goals into smaller pieces that they can work on each quarter or each month each week. And having them go away from each of my calls with action items of things that they can do, ways that they can move forward. We’re not talking about moving mountains week to week, we’re talking about small pieces that add up to a really big change over time, but it’s little things day by day, week by week. And so my job is to help them to keep that vision in mind, to help them stay the course and just to help them focus to get where they want to be.

Stephanie Everett (09:09):

Yeah, I think for lawyers and small firms too, they might be the only partner, our owner in the firm, our only kind of person on the leadership level. And sometimes it’s really hard because you just don’t have anyone to have conversations with. I always laugh that I process out loud. And so sometimes in our business coach role, we become that sounding board for them and we become that place where they can go to say, wait, am I crazy or am I thinking about this right? Is this a path I can take? And it sounds like that’s exactly what you love to do most with your clients.

Amy Grubb (09:44):

And I find as solos sometimes they feel like they’re all alone and they don’t know where they can go with questions. And so I was working with one of our labsters just today and she was saying, well, what are other people using? We were talking about financial metrics, what are other people using to measure their firm’s finances? And I was able to say, well, I’m working with all different types of lawyers, so this is what I often see. Some of my other clients do this and some measure this. And so it’s being able to provide that information. But the great thing about Lawyerist and Lab in particular is the whole community because you have access to some amazing coaches, but then you also have access to other attorneys who are in your practice area, different practice areas, different jurisdictions where you can ask all kinds of questions and just get feedback from Lawyerist in general. So you have that plus you have the advantage of working with a coach as well.

Stephanie Everett (10:44):

And maybe that’s a good place for us to shift into our topic for the day, which is around LinkedIn marketing, but also I’ll just give a nod that you just fit wrapped up a study group that you did inside Lab helping lawyers create bios that don’t suck. That’s what we called it, which I love. And you guys did just that in the study group, people brought their drafts of their bios to the group and you would give feedback, but then they would also give feedback to each other. And I think that really helps because it gives them ideas and people are like, oh wait, yeah, mine’s on point. It’s great and you’re just trying to refine it and make it better. So I loved that. Did that.

Amy Grubb (11:20):

Yeah, it was so much fun to do. And one of the participants, he wasn’t so concerned about his website bio, he wanted help with the introduction. He does a lot of public speaking, he gets a lot of work through speaking. And so he wanted help with how should he be introduced to before he goes up on the stage. And so he read it out loud. We gave him feedback on that. And then the other people, we looked at their website bios and it was a really great session. I really enjoyed it and I think people got a lot out of it. And it was nice to see because our final step was, okay, now post it on your site. And so I went to some of their sites and they were posted there.

Stephanie Everett (11:59):

Nice. All right. So I think that is actually a good segue to our topic today, which is also around marketing and specifically LinkedIn marketing. So I guess just to get us started, is LinkedIn a place where a lot of lawyers find success in marketing?

Amy Grubb (12:16):

I think all lawyers should be on LinkedIn and there are a variety of reasons your clients may be on LinkedIn, but for sure the people you went to law school with are on LinkedIn. Other people in your community, other professionals are on LinkedIn. And not only that, but if you Google someone’s name, their LinkedIn profile is going to come up fairly high in the rankings if not the very first ranking they’re going to see. So if someone refers your name as a potential lawyer, the potential client will google your name, but they’ll also look on LinkedIn. And so if you are not there, you could be missing out on clients and referral sources just by not being on the platform. And it’s a free platform. So I highly recommend taking advantage of it. And I was looking at the statistics the other day, Stephanie, and the most recent one I could find was that there are 875,000 million members on LinkedIn.

(13:26):

But from my experience on LinkedIn, there’s such a small percentage of people who are actually posting on LinkedIn that it’s a really great way to stand out from other people in the field, from other lawyers, from professionals just by going on LinkedIn and posting regularly. And I’m not talking about some of the other social media platforms where you need to post daily or anything crazy like that. I recommend people post two times a week. So it’s not a huge commitment and it’s something that once you get used to it and are regularly doing it, you become more comfortable with it. And like all social media, it becomes easier. So it’s not a huge time commitment to start posting and getting active on LinkedIn.

Stephanie Everett (14:18):

Yeah. Well let’s take a quick break and hear from our sponsors when we come back. Let’s get into some of the nitty gritty on what we should be doing with our LinkedIn profile.

Zack Glaser (14:29):

The Lawyerist Podcast is brought to you by Posh Virtual Receptionists. As an attorney. Do you ever wish you could be in two places at once? You could take a call while you’re in court, capture a lead during a meeting or schedule an appointment with a client while you’re elbow deep in an important case. Well, that’s where Posh comes in. They’re a team of professional, US-Based, live virtual receptionists available 24/7/365. They answer and transfer your calls, so you never miss an opportunity and you can devote more time to building your law firm. And with the Posh app you’re in total control of when your receptionist steps in. You can save as much as 40% off your current service provider’s rates. Even better, Posh is extending a special offer to Lawyerist listeners, visit posh.com/lawyerist to learn more and start your free trial of Posh Live Virtual Receptionist services. 

And by Clio. What do solo and small firm lawyers with great client relationships all have in common? They use cloud-based legal practice management software to run their law firms. This is just one finding from Clio’s latest Legal Trends Report. There’s no getting around it… the fact is… when it comes to client expectations—standards are higher than ever for lawyers. Proof is in the numbers: 88% of lawyers using cloud-based software report good relationships with clients. For firms not in the cloud, barely half can say the same. That gap is significant.For more information on how cloud software creates better client relationships, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O dot com / trends.

And by Documate. 90% of legal services will be delivered online by lawyers in the next 10 years. Documate is a software platform for lawyers to build client-facing legal apps. With Documate, do client intake, feed that data into robust document automation flows, and collect payments. Companies like Landlord Legal, JusTech and Hello Divorce are built on Documate. Sign up for a free trial now at documate/lawyerist and get $100 off your subscription. You can also book a time at documate/lawyerist to get a free consultation on incorporating automation into your practice. 

Stephanie Everett (17:02):

Alright, I’m back with Amy. And we’re talking about LinkedIn. Everybody should have a LinkedIn profile. It seems like a no-brainer, but it also seems like a lot of people aren’t really making good use of their profile. So what are some mistakes that you see people making?

Amy Grubb (17:18):

There are a lot of different mistakes that I see people making. So first off is not posting. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s a huge amount of people who are on LinkedIn and they never post, so that’s one. But then the people who do post, they’re not really saying much. So they could be posting a link to an article their firm wrote or a blog or a news article they’re sharing. And so they’ll just put the link and they’ll post that. But you wanna go that step further and tell me what you think is interesting about that article. Why are you posting it? Put a quote there to provide some context and tell me your opinion. Don’t just pull a link and put it up there. Another mistake I see all the time is in the headline that is on your profile. Whenever you comment on someone’s post, whenever someone looks at your profile right away, the piece that comes up first, I see so many attorneys who have written in their headline attorney or family law attorney or something super generic and you wanna stand out and LinkedIn is giving you this free real estate to stand out from the other family law attorneys.

(18:41):

And the way to do that is to hone in on your niche and who you want to be doing work for. So let’s say you’re a family law attorney in Toronto and you, your ideal client are people with a net worth greater than 2 million. You can put that right in your headline and be really, really specific there. And so that way whenever you comment on a post, people will see your name and they’ll also see what type of law you do, what type of practice area you have. And it’s really going to help you to stand out and rather than just be an attorney, it just provides a little bit more context and hopefully people will remember you more that way.

Stephanie Everett (19:24):

Yeah, I love that advice because I use this example a lot cuz it’s an easy one. People who don’t know what we do, even lawyers. So I was once working with a lawyer, he was a healthcare regulatory lawyer and I was like, listen, I’m a lawyer, I don’t know what that means. And people don’t wanna sound dumb, so nobody wants to ask you what that actually means. It just sounds really complicated and something I would never, ever need or know anyone who would need. And it turns out as I got him to explain it to me, he helps doctors setting up new offices how to break through all the red tape and get their offices set up the right way so they can get paid and do all the things they need to do. And I was like, oh, actually I might be able to refer you business. I might know someone in that situation, but the more you say healthcare regulatory lawyer, the more I’m never going to ask you or send you any work. So don’t assume because you say, I mean even estate planning, all these words that we think have meaning, nobody knows what they mean.

Amy Grubb (20:27):

And I think that’s a really great point as well because the words that you’re using, if you can sort of dumb it down a little bit and then someone in your network will understand, oh, this is the attorney who helps all of the doctors. And so that’s how you become known within your network. And so anytime anything to do with a doctor comes up, people are going to think of you. And so I think a lot of times people will think, well my target market isn’t necessarily on LinkedIn, but that’s okay. People know doctors and so they’re not necessarily the people on LinkedIn going to be your clients, but they will know people who will be looking for attorneys like you.

Stephanie Everett (21:11):

So once we get our headline right and we actually describe who we help and how we help the next thing we should do?

Amy Grubb (21:19):

Well a couple of these things, Stephanie, I would challenge the people who are listening to do these right away. These are really quick things that you can do. So you’ve updated your headline. I would say take a look at your photograph. I highly encourage you to have a headshot where you’re looking directly at the camera that’s going to help build confidence and trust and the space for the photo. And LinkedIn is very small, so if you have a full body shot or it’s like you walking your dog on the beach, it’s going to get lost because it’s so small. So that’s why I think you should use that space just for a great photo of you, of just your head so they can see who you are. My next suggestion is start commenting on people’s posts. So I understand people are reluctant to post and reluctant to comment and they’re worried they’re going to say the wrong thing and things like that.

(22:14):

But once you start doing it and get more comfortable, I promise you it gets easier. So I challenge our listeners as well when you’re commenting on someone’s post to put more than a couple of words in your comments. If you are posting that you have a new position, instead of saying in my comment, congrats Stephanie, put a little bit more in there. Say, congratulations Stephanie, you’re going to be great in this new role or something like that just to build that relationship with the other person who’s posted. And there is no better way to support another person’s business then to just do something really simple on LinkedIn, like commenting on their post and liking their posts and things like that. Another thing you can do on LinkedIn is there’s a feature and it has a little bell on someone’s profile. And I think you may only be able to access this through the app, but I’m not sure off the top of my head, but if there’s a potential client I am interested in or if someone has really thought-provoking posts and I want to follow what they’re saying, you can click on the bell on their profile and then that way anytime they post it will come up in your feed and you will see their activity.

(23:26):

This is a great way to start engaging with people that you want to get to know better and you want to learn more about. And so they will be top of mind for you when you look at your notifications.

Stephanie Everett (23:40):

Yeah, that’s a great tip, I didn’t know that. And that makes a lot of sense, especially if you have targets or people you’re trying to further your relationship with. Because honestly, I pay attention when people comment on my post because if you don’t know the algorithms like that, the more comments you get, the more LinkedIn’s going to show that post to more people. So if you go in and comment on my posts, I would notice you and I would be grateful for that and I’d be more likely to post or comment. I’d be more likely to comment on your post. So I think that’s a really smart and easy way to just start building relationships with people on LinkedIn.

Amy Grubb (24:17):

And the other one too, Stephanie, is if you send a request to connect with someone, you have the opportunity to send a note. So I imagine you get a lot of requests on LinkedIn like I do to connect with someone, but if I don’t have the context of who you are or why you’re connecting, it’s more work for me to then go to that person’s profile and read through it and figure out who are they? Do I know this person? So when you send a connection request to someone, let them know, Hey, I heard you on this podcast episode. Would love to connect. Just give them a little bit of background, say, Hey, I read your recent post about dressing in the workforce and would just love to connect with you here on LinkedIn. So this is another tip for any of your listeners. I would love to connect with our listeners. And so if any of you want to connect with me or with Stephanie as well, send us a connection request and put in the request that you heard this episode.

Stephanie Everett (25:15):

Yes, I love this advice, especially now that there are so many people trying to use LinkedIn for sales. I’m getting so many random people who are making connection requests and it’s clear that they just wanna pitch me on something. Usually if it’s a lawyer, I’ll usually think, well, this probably, maybe this is just someone who does wanna connect with me. So I would love to connect with more people. And I love that advice like go connect with me and Amy as soon as you have or in a safe place to do so if you’re listening in your car. But let us know that the, just send it in the note, listen to the podcast because that would really help. And then you’re right, I don’t think that you’re trying to sell me on something.

Amy Grubb (25:57):

Yeah, exactly. The next step of course is writing a post. So I’m sure there’s lots of people who are listening who regularly write posts, but I also know there are a lot of people who don’t write posts or they’re not sure what to write. And so if you’re unsure about what to write in a post, think about some of the frequently asked questions you get from clients you can post about those things that come up. I think another great one is just a post about what’s going on in your office, what does it look like? Take a picture of your desk or if you’re going out for lunch with your staff, post that as well because down the road when you’re hiring, potential candidates are going to be looking to your LinkedIn profile. And if they see pictures of you out for lunch and different things going on behind the scenes, it’ll help to paint the picture of what your work environment looks like and whether or not they want to apply to your firm or not.

Stephanie Everett (26:51):

Yes, these are all such good advice and easy to do. And so I love that you started off telling us all that in your coaching sessions you give easy small bite size pieces for the clients to go do. And guess what, everybody, she’s just done the same in this podcast episode. So you now have your homework. You can update your headline, make sure your photo’s good, connect with people, start posting and commenting. Did I get ’em all? That’s our five.

Amy Grubb (27:18):

Yep. I think you got them all. Good job, Stephanie.

Stephanie Everett (27:21):

Awesome. Well Amy, this will not be the last time anybody hears from you because we’re so excited to have you on the team to be able to share all your expertise and knowledge with our community in our Lab program and on the show. And I’m just so glad to have you here cuz it took us a while to make this happen, but we finally got it. We finally got it to work out and for you to be on the team.

Amy Grubb (27:46):

I’m so grateful to be here. I have been following Lawyerist for so long as you know. So it really is like a dream fulfilled to be part of the team. So I’m thrilled to be here.

Speaker 1 (28:00):

The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss 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.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, are right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab 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.