Leverage Remote Work, Team Culture, and Mediation in Law Firms

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 51: Adding 13 Employees in the Pandemic with Elise Buie, Mentorship and More with Josh Bonnici

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody, welcome back. To The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host is always Yann Roos. And I'm here today with a fantastic guest in Elise Bowie. So Elise and I first met on a summit that Alison Williams is holding. I think it was March or April, but it's one of those situations where I've kept seeing her throughout the intervening months.

Jan Roos: And she always has some really interesting stuff to say. And I don't want to geek out too much cause we're going to talk about it, but really interesting background. It seems to have aged like wine with everything that's going on in the world with COVID. So thanks for coming on the show.

Elise Buie: Absolutely.

Elise Buie: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I look forward to talking to you.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Awesome. So one of the things that I had to stop [00:01:00] us in the pre call, cause it was really interesting, but you mentioned that you've hired 13 people since the pandemic started. Okay. To give a little background to you, you're running a fully remote firm as well, right?

Elise Buie: I am. We've always had a remote firm, though. We've been virtual since we started in February 2015. And the pandemic, from the virtual part, Was a non issue for us, we really didn't have to do a lot of pivoting I mean there's been changes in court rules that we've had to negotiate but our virtual nature is the same And at the beginning of the pandemic so right around the time you and I did that webinar with allison and neil I was having that typical freak out.

Elise Buie: I think that a lot of law firm owners were having. Oh my god What is going to happen? How am I going to feed all these people and how's this going to go down? And so I mean I had this very monumental week of whiteboarding, all the possibilities of what this was going to look like. I created these big [00:02:00] whiteboards and I would run, how much money was in the trust account, what I thought would come in and ran all these different scenarios, actually 43 of them.

Elise Buie: And so by the end of scenario 43, I had gotten myself completely my head around the idea that No business could come in, like, all the bad things were going to happen, but I was still going to be okay. I had sat down with my husband and figured out, how can we not have any income for six months? How can we pull our kid out of private school so I can keep my intake person?

Elise Buie: I had all the bases covered. We put our house on the market in Seattle. The whole bit. I was, like, preparing. For the worse, a good lawyer does. And then I had a revelation, like I finished my 43rd whiteboard, I took a picture, because I took a picture of all of them so I could compare them later, and I said to myself, I was like, am I allowed to curse on a podcast?

Elise Buie: I'll try not to. Yeah,

Jan Roos: go for it, it's fine. But I was just like,

Elise Buie: I was just like, fuck this [00:03:00] virus I got this. And so I decided at that moment, None of this bad stuff was going to happen. And so I wrote a letter to my team and explain what I'm doing. Cause they probably thought I was a little MIA.

Elise Buie: And I was like, I got you all we are going to be able to make it through this. And so I really committed to just, putting my nose down and working my tail off. And I started doing like all of our consults and everything. And I was really committed to this. And we have explosively.

Elise Buie: Explosively.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I was going to say, I actually didn't know how big the firm was before going into this. 13 employees represents what kind of a percentage increase and then versus when you guys rolled into March.

Elise Buie: I think we had four of us in March.

Jan Roos: Oh my God. So that's like a 300 percent growth.

Elise Buie: Yeah. Not

Jan Roos: bad. Not bad.

Elise Buie: That's pretty much what we've done. Yes. Yeah.

Jan Roos: And I also want to tease this out to people who may not have been paying attention to this. The fact that you, this is one of the things too, because like people who get into this whole automated practice thing [00:04:00] for, I don't want to say selfish for more lifestyle oriented reasons.

Jan Roos: And oh yeah, maybe I can go out to fly out to Guam and sit on Moses or something like that. But the fact that you have the bandwidth to focus on 43 separate contingency planning is not only evidence of having all these systems and personal personnel systems set up really well, but also what you should be doing with that time, right?

Jan Roos: Because he came up with a strategic plan that obviously seems to have played out in a decent fashion, right?

Elise Buie: Absolutely. Yeah. I think doing those scenarios for me, It was really helpful for me to be able to see what is the worst possible scenario. And then how could I tweak that worst possible scenario in such a way where it would be okay.

Elise Buie: And I'm one of these very touchy feely woo employers. Like I was really looking at everybody and I'm like, okay, who has kids, who is like broke and they need, their job the most. And I was really trying to figure out like, If I started having to get people [00:05:00] to do less hours, how would it be less disruptive to each person?

Elise Buie: It was pretty complex, of what I was going to do. And in my team stepped up in an amazing way. Initially, Because, we have this wellness initiative where I pay them every month to do some activity that they enjoy, whether it's like improv classes or water yoga or whatever.

Elise Buie: And so I was like, there's certain things we're going to cut out during this pandemic, because at the time I thought, It was going to be bad. And so I told them all we were going to cut that out. And I was trying to save money everywhere I could and cut down expenses. And then obviously once I saw that we were doing fine, I gave them all that money back, just paid it in a lump sum over several months of I'm like, here's all your wellness money that you didn't get.

Elise Buie: They stepped up too because they were willing to just be okay with that and they knew we were all just working and we didn't know how it was going to play out. And my team is amazing, and now it's even more amazing. We've gotten some of the most amazing [00:06:00] paralegals and attorneys and we, it's been, I mean it's been really just so rewarding to watch my team grow during this time and to see them helping each other.

Elise Buie: and supporting each other through this. We have an attorney who got injured recently, and that was a big shock. And she's been out now for six weeks and is gonna be out for a few more. Within an hour of me announcing that she got injured, people on my team were slacking me privately, just saying, Whatever you need me to do, I will do.

Elise Buie: They're like, if you need me to move roles, if you need me to take on more cases, people were just like, what can I do to make this work? And I got you. And I was just like, wow, that's amazing.

Jan Roos: And it seems like, the culture has been working super well. And also the fact that you're 13 in a row with, Presumably good hires in the recent time, obviously it shows that you guys have a thesis for the hiring these folks that's been working.

Jan Roos: Can you tell us a little bit more about how you're finding such good people with such consistency?

Elise Buie: [00:07:00] One thing obviously is the pandemic. And so some people have lost their jobs, some firms have not. And I tend to be that person that is going to look to my network for hires. So every hire I've gotten, I have gone to people I know, usually the same 30 or 40 people professionally that I know, and I'll say, okay, I need to hire an attorney.

Elise Buie: Who do you have? What do you think? Who might be out there? And I just get leads from people about this person or this paralegal used to be here. And I know this attorney had been looking a few months ago and I have been able to get people that way. I did have one employment company keeps reaching out to me.

Elise Buie: And so I did interview one person. They sent me and I was like, no way. And I thought, I was like, I got this. I don't know about y'all, but I'm like, I'll just stay with my little folksy using my network plan.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's awesome. And it's interesting. It's like a lot of [00:08:00] people are looking at the downsides of the pandemic, but obviously after this exercise that you've been through, you've been able to see some of the opportunities and I'll actually draw a personal story here.

Jan Roos: So I'm actually really excited because we moved into a place. Those are just two things. Basically we ended up getting, I ended up picking up a grill. I've had a backyard for the first time I've ever lived in New York for the last five years, but I got this fantastic three stage grill. It's got a gas, it's got the coal, it's got the smoker, and I got this thing for 150 bucks.

Jan Roos: But again, I'm not just talking about my grill here, but it's like kinda like the pandemic has had a lot of opportunities because you think about every single time you see an unemployment headline, every single time you see a big thing shut down. There's real people attached to that. And even seems like it's a big opportunity for people that have been able to capitalize on it, to be able to take advantage of that and really get some good people.

Jan Roos: Not to say like at a discount, that's probably not a good part of that analogy, but just there's such an abundance of people that are out there. So also I wanted to talk about some of the other things that made that possible. So one of the things, and this seems like for the most part, when I'm talking to attorneys, it's either chicken little, or, Oh my God, I've been [00:09:00] so busy.

Jan Roos: So in the frame of family law, obviously a very. court centric practice area. How has the pandemic kind of shaped out in terms of, the demand for this, the family law services in general for the firm and any kind of changes that have happened to that since you got started?

Elise Buie: I think we've noticed, there's a lot of demand for family law.

Elise Buie: Initially when the pandemic started, it was, parenting plan disputes. Do I send my kid over to my ex who's an emergency room doctor? No, I don't want to do that. And I'm like you got to do that. And so there was a lot of those types of disputes for us. The thing I think we have noticed the most and have really been able to capitalize on is the fact that courts are While they're available, it's very different in their backlog, and it's a mess.

Elise Buie: So we can encourage our clients to actually use alternative dispute resolution to get to resolution. So we've been using mediation more like in temporary orders or any type of [00:10:00] dispute we're having. It's like our first bet now is let's get in front of a mediator and let's see if we can resolve this.

Elise Buie: And to me, that's a huge win for families, that they're now not in court getting these arbitrary rulings. They're actually being able to sit down and talk about what's necessary, what might be in their children's best interest. And the other thing for us that I took on as my own little pet project.

Elise Buie: Like I said at the beginning, I started doing all the consults with our firm. And so one of the things that I figured I could do just as an attorney and somebody in the community where people are suffering, was I could just provide as many resources to people as possible. So when I'm doing consults, I have been providing people with names of professionals, names of Doctors, psychologists, pediatricians, just really sharing my network in a way with the people that I'm talking to.

Elise Buie: Books, classes, just all kinds [00:11:00] of things. I was telling somebody on my team this morning I'll do a consult and I'll, Get off the call and I'll realize, Oh, I should have told that person about this resource. And then I'm like in my practice management software, looking up their emails so I can send them a note.

Elise Buie: And I, I tell them, Oh, I forgot to tell you about this. I think it'd be super helpful. And I have gotten so much positive feedback from people, even people who haven't hired us, maybe they don't have money to hire. So they're not ready to take a step at that moment, but really acknowledging how much they appreciate all the resources they've been gotten and how it's been really helpful to them.

Elise Buie: And so that's something that's been really important to me is being able to help people because I think you nailed it when you talk about when people are losing jobs or we're seeing these unemployment, we see it a lot in our day to day practice. We get a lot of Boeing people. And Boeing is conceivably losing this one huge airplane project out here in the Seattle area.

Elise Buie: And it's, we've [00:12:00] had many clients. Who have been laid off from Boeing. And so it's a big deal and everything is gonna look different. If you're a mid six figure earner and then all of a sudden you have no job, all kinds of things are gonna change. And so the resources that we can give them and everything we can do to try to help them be able to tackle the problems that they're facing is really, it's been an important part of what we can do during this pandemic to try to give back in a small way, but a practical way.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And I definitely want to get into sort of the knowledge management system stuff and a little bit. But the first question I had was as far as the mediation and the alternatives to traditional family law, was this a big part of your practice leading into the pandemic? And it was a shine, the world shine a light on it, or did you guys end up developing this core competency in response to what was going on?

Elise Buie: I would say that it was definitely a part of our practice. We definitely as a firm. have a mindset and just a vision around [00:13:00] let's do as much as we can outside of court. We love doing collaborative law cases. I have seen a decline though in collaborative law. I think part of that is the cost of collaborative law, whereas mediation tends to be, I think, a little more direct, and people can get resolution quicker.

Elise Buie: And so in that regard, I would say we've been doing more and more. I don't think we've changed our competency level in that, but the one thing that has changed is there are more mediators in the area where we live who are willing to work with pro se parties, whereas historically a lot of mediators only want to work with people who are represented.

Elise Buie: And so a lot of times people are then having to hire us. to go to mediation. Whereas now, I can talk to people on the phone and if I get a good feel that mediation is a good fit for them, I can refer them to a mediator that will work with them directly without me being involved. So being my bad capitalist that I am, I'm losing business in that regard.

Elise Buie: But I'm helping families be able to [00:14:00] get to resolution more effectively and with less cost and quicker. And to me, that's a win. When, because my goal is for children to not suffer through divorce. And I definitely have a very large bent on the best interest of the child and trying to educate parents around how can you divorce in a way where you can also honor the best interest of your children.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I can say, it's the kind of thing that definitely comes across. And I would say, with you specifically, but in general, it's just like when people really care about getting people to a solution It makes when you recommend actually working with you come a lot stronger if you're able to know with conviction that's something you'd recommend the right person not to do.

Jan Roos: But also it's like even if you're being like a completely cynical networker, you're generating all kinds of relationships in the community. And if this is something with the, especially with the referrals and the outreach stuff and then passing people along, this could be paying dividends for years to come.

Jan Roos: And it seems like it's already working out really well. But. This is part of the practice before, I can only imagine this would continue to snowball. [00:15:00] So switching gears a little bit into kind of the process stuff. So you mentioned that this has been your pet project. And I think in the way that you've talked about a lot of stuff, I can tell that you have some really good systems for this stuff.

Jan Roos: So how do you go about taking all this work that you're doing in the planning and the codification, getting it across the organization? I know a big question about that. Okay.

Elise Buie: We use practice management software. We use Clio and we've been using Clio forever. And so we're like diehard Clio users, but we had a situation in October of 2018 when we were much smaller.

Elise Buie: I think we had, there was four attorneys and we had an attorney go out on an emergency medical leave. And literally I was given like 15 minutes to get the lowdown from our, on all our cases. And then she was out. It was literally like, my doctor is telling me this. And so I was actually in a mediation when she contacted me, I stepped out and tried to literally take furious notes about what was going [00:16:00] on.

Elise Buie: And in the next two weeks, of course, as life would have it, I also then, I think exactly two days later, I was hospitalized on an emergency basis and told I needed an emergency gallbladder removal. And I was like no, I'm in the middle of a work. And the doctor was like, Elise, you don't understand. This could be life threatening.

Elise Buie: I was like, that's a little melodramatic. We're talking about a gallbladder. Seriously. I'm like, it's a tiny little organ. We're good. It'll be fine. So I left against medical advice. My husband was not happy at me, but I was literally in this work crisis where we did not utilize Clio properly. So at that moment I hired Melanie Leonard of Streamline Legal, who I had come to just.

Elise Buie: Love and appreciate so much. And I just said to her, I was like, I need help. This can never happen again. I was like, this this is it. This girl's gonna make this mistake one time, and one time only. We then started [00:17:00] building out our CLIO pretty extensively, and I created these draconian rules that I started monitoring every Saturday where every case had to have a forward focus task and every case had to have a note within the last two weeks.

Elise Buie: So it, it ensured me that every case was viewed with every two weeks and that if anything ever happened to a team member, you could go in and do that next forward focus task, whatever it is. And at least you bought yourself two weeks of time to figure out what's going on if you, there's more figuring you need.

Elise Buie: And since that time, we've built it out even further. So just this July, I got a text from one of my attorneys, like at nighttime saying, I just fell off a horse. I'm headed to the hospital. But she was like, Oh, I'm sure I'll be fine. It's just a bruise. I'll be back tomorrow. And I was like I didn't know, but then the next thing I learned, she's shattered her hip socket.

Elise Buie: She's going to be in surgery all day. She's going to be out for months. It was a big [00:18:00] injury. And so literally I was able to, at that moment, go into my practice management. I took every task that was assigned to her and I assigned it to somebody else. It was maybe a 40 minute process, and that was the extent of the drama regarding her injury.

Elise Buie: And we have just gone from there, and there has been no bumps along the way. And I thought, wow, two years has made a huge difference in this. And that's been really helpful. It's made all the difference in the world to be able to handle that kind of trauma. Emergency.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And talk about it before and after you can't get a better situation than that.

Jan Roos: But it's, sometimes honestly it's, if people, I feel like it's in a similar situation with the pandemic as a whole, like people have been like, Oh yeah, it'd be really nice to get my practice totally systemized. Oh, it'd be really nice to get virtual. But sometimes you can't really know not to touch the stove until you put your hand on a hot pan.[00:19:00]

Jan Roos: But the second time that problem came around, you were totally all set. And aside from being ready for these emergencies, which obviously I think more people should think about, but it's probably a little bit harder to, there's obviously some systematized as it is. I think this is something that I know from having listened to some other podcasts you've done, but you have a completely remote workforce and completely, right?

Elise Buie: Oh, completely. We do have an office in downtown Seattle, but we never go to it. Nobody has stepped foot into it since February. So we just, yeah, we're completely remote and we have been for years. It's a pretty, I thought it was a normal system until the pandemic occurred. And then I realized at that point, we have a unicorn office.

Elise Buie: I have an it person. Who sets up everything. We have this whole system of I hire somebody, I send out this pretty elaborate onboarding email that ties in all my team members, the admin person, the accountant, the COO, the IT person, the office manager. So [00:20:00] everyone knows at the same time, this person's been hired.

Elise Buie: So then they all take their checklist and they go with it. And I, Literally come off of it. So I don't have any more involvement in the onboarding after that very first email until the first day they start. And then I'm usually the first person they talk to. And we do those by zoom obviously now, and then we go from there.

Elise Buie: And in that interim time, all this activity has occurred where. Equipment has been sent to my IT guy. He puts all the software on, he then sends it to their home. He shares screens and gets everything set up for them. The admin person makes sure they have all the weather, whatever monitor set up they want, or everybody wants it different.

Elise Buie: And so they get all their equipment, all their everything. And then like a gift goes out and health insurance forms go out. It's just an entire system. And we send them assessments. I always want to know what motivates everybody, whether you're a freedom person or a connectivity or [00:21:00] appreciation, I like to know what everyone's jam is to help the team work together.

Elise Buie: So like the lawyer on the team is the manager of each team in our office. So they know like, How can they best communicate with that person on their team and meet them where they need to be?

Jan Roos: Yeah. I want to take a quick aside just to nerd out. What are some of your favorite tests or quizzes or diagnostics that you work with your employees with?

Elise Buie: We use Jay Henderson's, the real talent. I think it's called real talent assessment. I love that one. We also all do the Colby test in our office. So I like to know where they land there. We also have our Clifton strengths strength finder So we have a big chart so we can see Where everybody is and I have a really interesting office a lot of intellectuals and a lot of people who are executing Like they're both on What else do we use?

Elise Buie: And then we use this other one. It's called the motivational assessment. I don't know if it has a specific name. And then [00:22:00] we actually just signed up. We're going to do a rapport building session with a coach that I have worked with on her team, and we're going to all do the CVI. And and then we're going to do a rapport building.

Elise Buie: I'm definitely one of those woo kind of bosses. I like all that. I like to see how we all work together and I like to make sure I have people in the right seats where they're compatible in that they help each other be their best selves rather than fighting against each other or incompatibility.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And I have to say of the, we actually recently at KSU ended up going through a lot of this stuff for the Colby exam. I love that stuff. And we've had a couple of situations where people, the role that we hired them for wasn't the one that ended up thriving in. And in retrospect, a lot of this stuff ended up like making sense in the background, but it's always good to go that, but I wanted to follow in when you're mentioning building rapport.

Jan Roos: Cause that's one of the things that I've heard as an objection to why people don't want to have in the office. It's Hey, we're going to miss out on the water cooler talk or people aren't going to collaborate as much, and I know you mentioned [00:23:00] Slack earlier, what are you doing to help facilitate getting, more of a collegial environment within the employees and that kind of stuff.

Elise Buie: I would say Slack, definitely. We are huge Slack users, and we have different channels, like there's the paralegal channel, where just the paralegals are on there asking each other questions or getting advice. We have just the lawyer channel, but then we also have all channels, like where we have a random channel, where it's like Our funny memes, our pet pictures, or whatever.

Elise Buie: We have a bazillion different channels for different things, and we are very active in Slack. Even though sometimes it's work related, like I have to tell you, the other day, one of these things I was supposed to be on a quote unquote vacation. Our family, we had just bought a boat, and I was out learning to drive the boat.

Elise Buie: So I'm technically on a vacation. Of course, that's the time that we're going to have an emergency client matter, Police are involved. We're trying to serve somebody in another state. We're doing restraining orders. It's like crazy and it all needs to happen in about an hour.[00:24:00]

Elise Buie: Literally, the Slack channel was, if I could just capture that, I like wanted to show everybody in the world that this is how a good team works. People were just like, what do you all need? The legal team that was trying to make this happen, They needed help. Every paralegal was like, what can I do to help?

Elise Buie: And people were like, okay, I'll do the service in California. I'll do this. I got this. I got this. Watching this team come together and make this happen, where the whole filing occurred was like seven minutes to spare. And I was just I sat there just really with tears in my eyes because I'm like, this is exactly how you want things to be.

Elise Buie: And I think of our client being able to call us up the night before and say, I need to do this very emergent thing. And we've got till 11 o'clock tomorrow for us to be able to be like, yeah, no problem. We got you. And that's [00:25:00] huge.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And I want to dig in a little bit more as far as a Slack is a technical solution, but it just seems every single time we have one of these stories is people know the right thing to do and how, how it's to be expected or jumping into help.

Jan Roos: So as far as like building the expectations in the system, how are you inculcating these views into people? And and do you have any sort of recommendations that do you have people read certain books when you guys have an internal process or like, how do you keep this culture so strong?

Elise Buie: We've been working really intentionally on culture. Like we do our team meetings, we have these team standup meetings on Wednesdays and then we do longer meetings, either monthly or quarterly, depending on what's going on. And culture has been an important thing for us. We talk about it, we encourage it.

Elise Buie: I've hired professional coaches to come in. If I've had situations where. Sometimes people will have a conflict that maybe like the paralegal level and instead of working it out there Somebody might come to me directly and i'm going [00:26:00] to be i'm going to bring that right back to them And i'm going to say no you don't bring me into this You know You all need to work this out at this level and then you know if there's a problem and you need a third party To help facilitate any communication.

Elise Buie: Yeah, then I can come in but I mean I think hiring coaches has been really helpful in that regard because You I like to think I know how to communicate well, but at the same time I'm mindful that's not my expertise. And so I think utilizing other people's expertise in that area And I am definitely the goofy employer usually on Sunday night or Monday morning early There'll be something that's on my heart that I want to tell our team.

Elise Buie: So usually Monday, they start out with a big email from me about something that I've been thinking about and usually I'll send them something like that helps us remember it. Whether it's like a journal, we're going to practice gratitude. I recently sent them that. And then I've been thinking about balance lately.

Elise Buie: And so I'm actually in the process [00:27:00] of preparing a Peloton giveaway, a quarterly giveaway to my team where people could get a Peloton, either the bike or the treadmill to try to help them have balance and be able to. To go out and do some exercise and do something that they like, cause it gets rainy here in the Northwest in the fall.

Elise Buie: And I think it'd be good for them to have something where they could have indoor and be able to do it. And so we're working on that. And I do tend to be, I love gifts. And so I tend to be like a gift giver. When I see an attorney that's really been working hard, I'll figure out what can I do for that attorney that will be meaningful to them.

Elise Buie: If they've been really putting in a lot of hours. I sent out gift certificates the other day for two attorneys to these really nice hotels. I'm like, Go take three days, go enjoy yourself and people get flowers when good things happen or you know Just silly things. I sent a funny plaque to one of my attorneys recently It was like super lawyer time and she's I didn't get to be a super lawyer And so [00:28:00] she is hilarious and she had this funny saying so I had this plaque made up for her and Had it sent to her Just trying to be mindful of what everybody needs and acknowledging their contributions.

Elise Buie: And I think if I am modeling that, then they also do that. They come to cheer each other on. We had an attorney with a major victory recently. On a Saturday, I put something in Slack because the client actually reached out, so I wanted her to know immediately what this client said and how happy this client was.

Elise Buie: Our entire team responded on a Saturday to congratulate her, and I just thought that's so cool too, just to have that kind of caring attitude. Yeah, I think we're very blessed. I think we have an amazing team with just phenomenal people. Care for each other, really having each other's backs, which is not always the case in law firm.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Ultimately it sounds like they're going to bat for you [00:29:00] because you're going to bat for them. And it's really, that's, it's this sort of model of servant leadership, which is really rare to find in the world in general, I have to say, but no, it's also the thing too. It's people do model what the leader is thinking, what they're focusing on and that kind of stuff.

Jan Roos: And just to that end, it's obviously this Rome wasn't built in a day. But as far as somebody who might be resonating with what you're seeing right now, like what have been the most important books, podcasts, movies, resources that have led you to this mindset that you're using today?

Jan Roos: Wow. That's a huge

Elise Buie: question. I love to read everything. Gosh, what would I say? There's so many different things. One of the books that I love a lot, but this is radical candor. I definitely have this mindset of let's all just say what we need to say, and be respectful, but not have any of the divisiveness or, what I consider like catty girl middle school behavior.

Elise Buie: Let's just get out there and say what we have to say. Ray Dalio [00:30:00] resonates with me a lot because he's a tough boss, I think in many ways, but at the same time, he's open to being called out himself. And he puts himself out there and that he encourages his team to push back on him, to come up with ideas, to offer solutions.

Elise Buie: And that is something that's very important to me. I don't like to think of myself in a role. Sometimes people describe leadership like as a pyramid kind of thing. I don't think of it like that. I very much think of us as a team and we all have different roles on our team. And it's interesting, something you said, and this is the thing that I think and I feel very strongly is the more I can pour into my team, the more they pour into our clients.

Elise Buie: And so if I can just Really pour my heart and soul into our team Then they feel that they feel taken care of [00:31:00] they feel full They then are able to offer that exact same thing to our clients Which in my mind is the ultimate goal that we are providing a service for our clients where they feel appreciated They can feel full and they can then start making better decisions During a time that is so conflictual and so heartbreaking And so That is how I feel like I can really help my team.

Elise Buie: And that's what I try to do is really be there for them. And I provide them books all the time around things. If I think that maybe an attorney is struggling with delegation, I'm going to send them a book. Or if I think an attorney, gets defensive about something. I send them the four agreements.

Elise Buie: That's one of my favorite books, just different things. I'm always sending them things about random coaching things. Maybe secretly, I want to be a life coach, but I don't know.

Jan Roos: You can be a life coach class CEO, but it's almost like you're a life coach to the team. You can pursue [00:32:00] your goals and then maybe in a less direct way.

Elise Buie: Exactly.

Jan Roos: Yeah. But ultimately it's it's also so rare these days too, because it's just everyone's worked a couple of bad jobs and there's nothing more soul crushing than coming in and taking orders from somebody who you genuinely hate. It's been a while, but when I was younger, I've had a couple of roles like that.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's tough too, because it's I think ultimately what it keeps coming back to for me. Is just it's consideration and you're really considering people at a very deep level. And that's not something you can fake that you can't have this cargo code cult approach to Oh, how are we going to make a good culture?

Jan Roos: And it's I heard my five step checklist to appear that I care about what's happening. It's it really comes across as extremely genuine and you can get genuine good results after that being the approach. One kind of last parting shot. If you had to start all over again, what would be One of the things you'd recommend to somebody who wants to have an outcome like you have that might be three years earlier on the [00:33:00] path.

Elise Buie: Be willing to let go of team members who are bad fits, who don't bring that same level of positivity or the right kind of culture. I've held on to employees in the past that kind of brought toxicity into a situation, but it's not, And I would, I'm always that person who's okay what did I do to cause this?

Elise Buie: Maybe I said something wrong or maybe I modeled something in a way that, and so I would spend all this time thinking about what I did. And obviously I'm not saying you shouldn't think about that. Clearly you should, I think, Put a mirror up to yourself when things are going wrong and try to figure out what part you are playing in it.

Elise Buie: But I do think there are times where maybe you're playing a part, but maybe there is actually a problem. Either the employee's got personality issues or some kind of, real issue in letting go of that quicker because it does, I think, bring negativity into your office. But more importantly than that, the [00:34:00] energy that I would expend dealing with that was so misplaced.

Elise Buie: I then And I've come to understand it so fully now, it didn't allow me to maximize my office in such a way that then benefited all the other employees. I was so focused on whatever that problem employee was, and that, that was taking away from everybody else. And now, when I have had to let go of somebody, The amount of growth that occurs in the freedom, it's pretty compelling.

Elise Buie: It's one of those things that if you can just get through that painful scenario of letting go of somebody that maybe wasn't the right person in the right seat, or maybe it was actually the wrong person, like that you can't find a seat for, being able to be strong enough to let that person go, and then, Just watch your team soar after that.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And it's interesting too, because we talked about a lot of positive stuff, but as a caring person, that's probably one of the [00:35:00] hardest things you have to do because you want to make it work for everybody. Sometimes it's like, when you realize you've been driving with the parking brake on. Oh, okay.

Jan Roos: Gotcha. Okay, cool.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. So it's been a really great conversation. I know you got a couple of things going out, so you guys want to hear more from Lisa. What'd you got coming up?

Elise Buie: One thing is I am doing. Speaking at the Lawyer Mom Summit that's put on by Carolyn Elephant, who most people know her.

Elise Buie: She wrote the book Solo by Choice and she has the blog My Shingle. She is putting on the Lawyer Mom Summit. She's hoping for a thousand Lawyer Mom law firm owners and that's on. September 30th and October 1st, and it's literally, I want to say it's a 39 registration. It's like the first year of the summit, and I guess as a mom, which we didn't even talk about, I am a mom of a blended family of six children.

Elise Buie: So being a mom and being a law firm owner at the same time have been a huge part of [00:36:00] what I've done and why I've done what I've done. And so I am just, I could not be more thrilled to be a part of this and I'm so excited that Carolyn is doing this. And I think it is going to be huge and especially moving forward.

Elise Buie: I think we are seeing even more where women are having to navigate now remote schooling. Running a law firm, running their family. Women are stepping up in ways that I'm awe inspired by so many people and what they're pulling off now. It's just stunning to me. And then I'm also doing a presentation at the Associate Academy, which is put on by the Maximum Lawyer Group.

Elise Buie: They have started an Associate Academy. So for younger lawyers, and I'm doing an entire session on managing associates and that is obviously one of the things I love. Yeah, so both of those I think would be great. And of course, I think everybody should always go to Clio, puts on an amazing conference, and now they're doing it virtually as well this year.

Elise Buie: And so I'm [00:37:00] super excited for that, because everybody should have an amazing practice management software, so you can be prepared when somebody falls off a horse.

Jan Roos: Yeah, of course. And then it's yeah, I was going to ask you, I was like, how are they doing that this year? Virtual, that makes sense.

Jan Roos: And I'm good. Actually. Yeah, we had we're going to get a quick shout out to Moshe himself for me pioneering that in the legal space. Yeah. That was another decision. Turned out like it aged super well, at least. Thank you so much for this conversation. And I wish we had another hour to go.

Jan Roos: Maybe we'll have you back on before. for a long, but it's been an absolute slice and anyone who's interested, absolutely check that out. She's like this all the time. so

Elise Buie: much. And I hope you have a great rest of your week and a good weekend.

Jan Roos: Okay. Same. Absolutely. For you. Maybe cool down on the the Saturday message.

Jan Roos: I'm just kidding. All right. Awesome.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth podcast for show notes, free resources, and more head on over to casefuel.com/podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next [00:38:00] episode.