How One Booked Transformed a Worker's Compensation Law Firm

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 13: Solo Practice to 60 Partners with Michael Bell

Imagine your firm 10 years from now. How much has it grown? For Michael Sullivan and Associates, the answer was 60 times. We sit down with Michael Bell of MSA for an in-the-trenches look for what that kind of growth looks like, and content marketing strategy that they’re using to continue to grow.

Note: Michael Bell sent us a correction – In the conversation he incorrectly referenced California SB 899 when in fact, it was California SB 863 that was passed in September 2012 that led to the tremendous opportunity discussed in the episode.

Last week we discussed marketing and operations with Zaira Solano

Michael Bell: [00:00:00] Somewhere around there, Mike made it, you know, was joking around. I have a new way of getting clients. I, you know, the phone rings and I pick it up.

Narrator: 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.

Narrator: Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody, welcome back to the case fuel podcast. I've got an excellent guest for you today in Michael Bell, who is the founder of law firm excellence, and he does consulting and runs a service that helps law firms build their content base in a way that's really, really unique.

Jan Roos: So I'm excited to show you guys how he does that. First of all, Michael, thanks for taking the time to make this call. Oh, you bet. I'm glad to be here. All right. Fantastic. So we kind of gave the broad strokes, but if you wouldn't mind go ahead and tell us the origin story of how you got to the place that you are today.

Michael Bell: I worked at a law firm for a lot of years. I started out as a kind of a paralegal at my friend's firm. I was kind of a part time gig for me while I was doing other stuff, [00:01:00] but I was with him as he started growing his firm around 10 attorneys. He asked me to take on a full time role. We called it the business manager at that time.

Michael Bell: So I was kind of focusing on business and as the firm grew, eventually my title shifted to executive director, but it was kind of always the same thing. You know, he was running the attorneys and the practice of law. And my job was to build all the systems in the firm to enable it to function as a business.

Michael Bell: And so I did that till about 2014. And then I started my own consulting firm and work with some different clients, but I've sort of moved into a role now working for that same firm that I used to work for as an employee running a a web product that they, they provide as a service to their, the same marketplace that they serve as attorneys.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So that's really interesting. And then we have listeners that are ranging all the way from very successful firms to solo practitioners, but for the solo practitioners out there that are looking to grow a firm, I mean, you basically lived the dream journey of what people are doing. So, I mean, [00:02:00] it's a very interesting to have the perspective of someone who's been inside a solo firm all the way to the point where they're making giant moves in their market.

Jan Roos: So I want to dig down on that a little bit. So what kind of things were, were these guys focusing on right around that spot? Potentially, if you have anything for the one to 10 mark on there. Yeah.

Michael Bell: It's so funny because, so look, I'm about 50 years old and one of my first gigs out of college, I was in a sales role.

Michael Bell: Add an insurance agency. And I ran into one of the mentors, one of the leaders of that firm years later. And I, I kind of joke with them. It's like, now I understand they were always like in the office with the door closed, like the top two or three executives, you know, that have these meetings and I never knew what that was about and I was joking with them.

Michael Bell: Like, Oh, now I'm in that kind of role myself. And I understand what's going on. You go in that office. And you confer because you don't know what to do. You have no clue. You're confronted with some new situation and you're just trying to figure it out. And he laughed. He's like, yeah, that's totally what we were doing that whole time.

Michael Bell: So I think it's like that in that, that world of a one [00:03:00] to 10 attorneys and, and frankly, 10 to 20 or 30. And at some point you kind of figure it out and you build the systems, but in a nutshell, that's what that journey was like. So what are some key areas that would be helpful to focus on?

Jan Roos: I'm curious to see what was really able to get these guys to take off.

Jan Roos: So, I mean, you probably worked on a lot of different initiatives. Like what were the things that ended up really moving the needle and allowing these guys to scale up?

Michael Bell: It probably would help to just have the context of the practice area too, because I think like there's a lot of similarities, but also practice area is such a huge aspect of, you know, I've looked at and worked with different firms and it really is, it's central to your experience, right?

Michael Bell: So the firm practice, California workers comp. defense in California. Workers comp is big business and they represent employers, insurance companies and TPA claims entities and defending litigated workers comp claims. So it just gives you a feel for what they were doing. Typical attorney might handle 70 to a hundred cases.

Michael Bell: It's probably a little bit lower now, but during the time I was there, that was kind of the range. [00:04:00] So it's a high volume business. And in the early days, you're just scratching and clawing for business any way you can. But like those personal relationships are really important. And of course, this kind of leads to the theme of what I'm doing now.

Michael Bell: The firm that I worked for is called Michael Sullivan Associates. Just from the earliest days, Mike Sullivan was always interested in publishing and he would prepare these every time there was like a new law or maybe some, some important, you know, cases that would come out or some, some new regulations that would affect that industry, the way that he would get his mind around those things is he would write a summary, like a mini book that would explain to, you know, his clients, what the impact of these changes are.

Michael Bell: And he did that for himself as a way to better understand the things that were new. But of course, it's a great marketing tool as well. And so he would try to get those things distributed as widely as possible. That led to speaking invitations, not the most unique idea. A lot of firms do this, but they would offer to go in and present [00:05:00] to, you know, the claims department or train adjusters, that kind of stuff.

Michael Bell: So there was a lot of that in the early years. And that's sort of built into the foundation of the firm. Now, a lot of the associates and the managing partners do that kind of stuff as well.

Jan Roos: So that's interesting. You brought something up that I want to dig down a little bit deeper into, which is the fact that they're doing these tactics that other people are doing, like the education lunch and learn type thing.

Jan Roos: So what do you think you guys were doing differently that allowed you to get through where other firms might not have?

Michael Bell: One of the things that's really unique to Mike Sullivan in particular is, I mean, this is just a guy with a big personality. He's a pretty authentic person and, you know, he grew up in Orange County.

Michael Bell: He's kind of got that surfer dude persona a little bit. And, you know, not everybody loves that. But I'd say that the ratio is like sort of 20 percent of the people who encounter that kind of find it a little too loose and it makes them uncomfortable. They don't like it. But about 80 percent of the people love it because he's like real and authentic.

Michael Bell: And I don't think that's something you duplicate. I mean, that's just a [00:06:00] gift that he has, but that was a big part of you know, he was just out pounding the pavement and people enjoyed interacting with him. So that was a big factor in the early days for sure.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And you bring up something interesting.

Jan Roos: I mean, somebody doesn't necessarily have to take. The exact strategy of, you know, Hey, I need to be a surfer dude. If I'm going to get like into, in front of these businesses, but you kind of hammered on something that we've spoken about in a couple of previous episodes, which is like the importance of really defining your niche and authenticity is something that people bring up a lot in content marketing, because it's really tough to.

Jan Roos: Pretend to be something, but if you're communicating with the intent, that's representing who you are as a person, you're going to end up working with people that resonate with that. You resonate with a certain kind of people, basically, whatever you're putting out there is going to attract the people that resonate with you.

Jan Roos: And also I kind of want to stress that content marketing is sort of the flip side. So the world that we're generally living in, which is, it was predominantly based on search engine marketing tends to work really, really well for the consumer side of things. But from a B2B perspective, it's very tough.

Jan Roos: The [00:07:00] B2B consumer is both, you know, more network driven. You take somebody who's a successful business owner, chances are they didn't get up there by themselves. So they have a wide network and these people are all very interested in consuming content that keeps them at the top of their field. And then by putting the content out there.

Jan Roos: You not only are appealing to that person, but appealing to that person's friends. So it's a very interesting strategy, which looks like he's it's worked out pretty well for him as far as priorities as the firm scaled. Another thing we like to talk about a lot is sort of building out the skeleton of the business in terms of the operations, the hires, that kind of thing.

Jan Roos: What was that process like as the firm was scaling up?

Michael Bell: There were a lot of lessons, a lot of things we did well, but you know, we started early on, you know, I grew up as a kid, my dad got ink magazine and I don't know why, but I was like reading ink magazine at home when I was like 10, 12 years old and I really liked it.

Michael Bell: And so it's like, I have this sort of knowledge base of just all those years of being interested in sort of marketing and business. And we were struggling with [00:08:00] trying to figure out what to focus on. And I had this thought and I think it goes back to an article I read in Inc magazine once, but I decided I was going to start putting all the numbers that we cared about on a piece of paper.

Michael Bell: And we called it the one sheet. I think this article was something like there's some guy who owned a business. But he didn't work in the business. So his job was like, they would fax him this piece of paper every day and he would look at the numbers and he would talk to his managers on the phone about what changes to make, but it was all based on looking at the numbers.

Michael Bell: So we created this one sheet report and it was an iterative process. I mean, we did that starting somewhere around the 10 attorney level and it's still in place today, but it's very, very different now. Now they call it the model, but essentially what we were doing is tracking all the numbers that really mattered.

Michael Bell: And then over time, we started to get into making projections. You know, there's a substantial amount of administrative resources that go into this process. But what we found was that. [00:09:00] Managing to the numbers is incredibly useful. So it's something like this. You hire attorneys based on file count, and you perceive when it's time to find another attorney.

Michael Bell: You have an understanding of, like, what does it cost you when an attorney leaves? Let's say that an attorney leaves, like, I know that's a 50, 000 ding, right? Yes, I'm going to get somebody else, and then they're going to handle those same files. But there's going to be a period where there's those files are not being worked properly, that's going to hurt the client relationship.

Michael Bell: It's going to create a gap in the cashflow because even when I get the new person on board and they bill and those bills are out in the world, and then they bring the cash back when they get paid, there's an interruption in that steady stream. So now you're faced with the management decision of the attorney who's in your office telling you that there's something they're not happy about or there's some other offer they have or whatever.

Michael Bell: You have a clear understanding of what your cost benefit analysis is when you're in that conversation, right? Because you know your numbers so well. So you make value judgments [00:10:00] based on, you know, what your overall goals and maybe you still want to let that person go because the thing that they're saying is not something you want to allow to take root in your organization.

Michael Bell: But at least you know the decision. Decision you're making as opposed to just being like, clueless about what do I do now that this is happening? So I, I touched on a lot of ideas there, but the idea is, number one, is you understand your business really well, but number two is you perceive things when you're reviewing numbers, you perceive things that you wouldn't pick up as quickly any other way.

Michael Bell: So somebody's got like a, an attitude problem. Maybe the first way you notice it. Their billing is sliding, right? But if you're reviewing that stuff on a monthly basis, and you're in dialogue with all the managers about their, their various teams, you know, there's a process that's, that's causing the conversation to occur versus waiting until the person is so out of sorts that they go out and get another job or they start messing up their client files or something like that.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. This is something I like to hammer is, is like, there's really no coincidence. If you [00:11:00] look at the largest companies in the world and if you take a Procter and Gamble, for example, you know, if they're going to launch a dish soap in Canada versus Australia, they're able to know with basically a hundred percent certainty what the more profitable one to launch is because they have a handle on the numbers.

Jan Roos: And if you take that on the flip side, if you look at solo practitioners or, or really, you know, solo entrepreneurs at any level. The ones that end up getting a handle on that number. It's the numbers that actually allow people to scale to your point. It's like, you know, you don't want to leave this stuff to chance.

Jan Roos: Having these metrics to work on is really no two ways about it. So as you always see the commonalities, the people who are growing, the people who are posting revenue year over year, it's because they understand those numbers and they know when I talk to somebody and they say, Oh yeah, we're, we're looking to post a, you know, we're 22 percent growth this year.

Jan Roos: I know that that's someone who's going to be capable of making decision, and they're probably going to hit that one way or another. So that's really such an important mindset for people to grow. And for anyone who's listening, if the experience bears out, you know, if you're on the track where you might not have a really clear look at these things, it's not a, you [00:12:00] know, completely ivory tower come up with the perfect model, and then that's going to serve you for the rest of life.

Jan Roos: A lot of the times it's taking small steps to see, Hey, look, what's a, what's my average billing per client. If I end up getting this many more clients, then what's my practice going to look like next month? What's it going to cost to get those clients and being able to make informed decisions like that.

Jan Roos: It's like, you know, there's small steps that people can take that will eventually scale up and allow you to, you know, as you grow, have the information that you need to know what it's going to take to go to the next level, if that's something that somebody is interested.

Michael Bell: It can be kind of hard because any sort of effort that you expend on growth.

Michael Bell: Sort of like it's good for you in the future, but it's taking away from you today. It's almost always painful because if you've got a trial coming up, like you're, say you're, you're the leader of a five attorney practice. I mean, you are in it. Absolutely for sure. You couldn't even afford to just be the boss.

Michael Bell: And just turn over all your files. And you're probably the best attorney. Not probably, you're definitely the best attorney. And you're the one who's the [00:13:00] best at marketing. Right? So you're doing everything. And then, like, a guy like me comes along and says, Yeah, you need to start, like, thinking about, like, looking at.

Michael Bell: Like reports and making projections, you know, it's crazy the way that Mike Sullivan did it is he sort of struggled and did the best he could until he could afford to hire someone like me to come in and start working on that stuff. And it wasn't until we were around 10 attorneys. And so he had to wear that hat himself until that point.

Michael Bell: And that it's a drag, there's just no getting around it. It's like. That five to 10 attorney level is a painful period in the growth of anybody and of any firm that's trying to grow past that. It's really, really tough.

Jan Roos: No, that's a really good point too. And, and like, even at the smaller level too, I like to talk a lot about the transition from referrals to, to finding outside ways of finding things.

Jan Roos: And it's like, you know, there's always this, this balance between comfort. And what's going to be scalable. And a lot of the times in the context of the solo practice, it's like, okay, am I going to keep hitting the BNI meetings and the bar associations and hang up business cards? [00:14:00] Because the leads that come through that are always really friendly people.

Jan Roos: Whereas somebody that you might be coming from, you know, cold lead on the internet might be really bristly. And then it's, it's easy to kind of go. Slide back into those old patterns, be the hero in your business. If you're at that five to 10 attorney level, and you can go through an entire day, it's going to be a great rush.

Jan Roos: You're going to sleep like a baby that night, but you might have to take a little time off the table to go build these things so that eventually you're not going to have to do that. And in the moment, it's really, really tough. To go that, like you said, but you know, the reality is if people are committed to growth, that's something that they absolutely have to do.

Jan Roos: You can't only scale being a hero attorney for so long. At some point, you have to just suck it up and go through that slog, whether it's a couple months, whether it's a couple of years, if you really want to make it through that next level.

Michael Bell: Yeah, one of the things I like is the concept of the 20 mile march, where it's good to have that hunger for hitting your goals, and you really, really are inspired, but on the other hand, it takes a recognition of the fact that you're going to have to identify the things that are going to be effective and just be committed to doing [00:15:00] them long For them to have that impact.

Jan Roos: Absolutely. That's a super good point. Now I want to transition a little bit. So we've talked a little bit about the process of scaling up, but I know at the position that you're working in now, developing these really high level content plans. Now, can you tell me what it looks like for a much larger business?

Jan Roos: Once somebody is scaled up, what, what are you doing right now to take firms like this to the next level?

Michael Bell: You know, I've been working a lot, continued to work with Michael Sullivan and associates. And the thing that, that I've been working on actually for many, many years, initially within the firm, and then now in a kind of unique role that's outside the firm is essentially I think it was in 2011, they launched a legal treatise.

Michael Bell: It's called Sullivan on comp as in workers comp. And Mike and a couple other authors had started working on that, I think about five years prior. Imagine this for five years, they worked on preparing, they used to call it the book, but it's actually grown into being a multi volume 13 or 14 book [00:16:00] set, right?

Michael Bell: It's huge. It's like a million and a half words on the subject of workers comp. Essentially what they did, they read all the cases, they read all the laws. And they, they essentially like wrote a practice guide from the ground up and they didn't even look at the other practice guides until after they had already written, created the outline and put all the material, done all the writing.

Michael Bell: And then they went back and looked at those other practice guides to see, Oh, other important concepts that we didn't include. Obviously we want to include those as well, but they, they really started from scratch. The thing that's really interesting is although it's a practice guide for attorneys and it's fully footnoted, they actually wrote it with claims adjusters in mind.

Michael Bell: Yeah. And the analogy that I use is like Newsweek articles. So if you read Newsweek on a complicated topic, there is going to be some complexity to the article, and maybe you need to read it at a ninth grade level. But what they intentionally didn't do was they didn't write it like a legal textbook with the legalese, you know, sort of approach.

Michael Bell: And that was [00:17:00] really, really kind of a winning formula because it's very readable and a lot of people rely on it. And so in 2011, they launched that to the industry, selling the books at conferences and working together with a a marketing partner, Warcom Central, who kind of had A lot of prominence in the community and so is available both online and in this book form.

Michael Bell: And they really, really focused their much of their marketing effort instead of selling the firm, they were selling the book. And we are at an event where the clients are gathering. And they're coming to your booth because if you're selling the information, then, well, maybe there's this question in the back of my mind.

Michael Bell: I want to get answered. I saw this many, many times, you know, we're at a conference. There's five defense firms. They all look exactly the same, same backdrop, same four guys in a suit. And ours was the booth that was hopping, like it was about the books and people were there just asking questions. And so the clients were getting the idea themselves.

Michael Bell: Oh, this is the [00:18:00] firm that I want to hire. So the books were kind of like the sideway in or something, you know, instead of trying to knock on the front door,

Jan Roos: going back to that content thing, it looks like you guys were really able to differentiate yourself because, you know, it's really easy for anyone to say, Hey, we're the top firm in X, Y, Z district, or.

Jan Roos: We're thought leaders and something like that. But when you said, look, I, we literally wrote the book on this stuff, you know, it carries a lot of weight these days, which is pretty interesting.

Michael Bell: Now here's the challenge though. I mean, it took a lot of resources. I mean, first of all, the managing partner, I mean, this was taking up 50 percent of his time.

Michael Bell: And so the firm wasn't really like thriving during those years that he was writing, because. That's what he was doing all the time. And then he had like, it was so much work that he couldn't do it himself. And so he was hiring other people. So he was out of pocket paying these people to help them on the project.

Michael Bell: You know, when you go into a thing like that, you got to know that you're really doing it all the way to the end, because otherwise halfway through, it's going to look like a bad idea. And it did everybody around him was like, why are you doing this?

Jan Roos: I mean, going [00:19:00] back to the 20 mile March, like, you know, it's, it's.

Jan Roos: really tough around mile 12, but they ended up getting him through and it looks like that really paid off for him. I want to say like, once this whole process was kind of wrapped up, a question that always comes up is, you know, what's the time to getting results from this? So could you tell me a little bit more about what sort of,

Michael Bell: It's hard to say, you know, the idea originally was we're going to write it and then publish it, but a couple of years into it, all the resources are going to creating this thing and it's not done yet.

Michael Bell: And he got the idea and I think this was a really good idea to publish one of the chapters as a free preview. I think we printed up about 5, 000 of those and just gave them away to everyone. So, and it said right on the cover and inside the text, this is a free preview of a complete set that's being published soon.

Michael Bell: So he was. We're already using this thing even before it was out as a marketing effort. And that was really, really, I think the start of it. Okay. So that would have been about 2009 [00:20:00] and the book itself was launched in 2011 and sometime around. I'm not sure about the dates. I'm doing this from memory and I might be wrong, but let's say it was September, 2013, I think it was, or it might've been 2012.

Michael Bell: I think it was 12. There was a new law passed for California practitioners, SB 899. And that law was a. Big deal in the California workers comp industry. It kind of like came out of nowhere because there were some negotiations behind the scene, you know, the sort of labor and, and I don't even remember the story so much, but it just kind of came out of nowhere and it was happening.

Michael Bell: And everybody was blown away by this thing because it was a huge shift in the way that the law was practiced. And here's what happened. We already had our entire process in place. We had a team of writers. We had been working together for several years. We had the editors. We knew how to produce books.

Michael Bell: And what happened was they kind of met for a weekend, they split up the work, they did the analysis. And I think it was within a [00:21:00] week that they put together a 150 page guide to this new law that was rocking everybody's world. And we got it out. We made it available for free as a download. And I think within a couple of weeks we had the hard copies and it literally blew everybody's mind because it was really, really good.

Michael Bell: And so everybody was like, you know, how did you do this? Because if you were just a firm that decided to do that, you couldn't do it. You had to already have the infrastructure in place. So it was all those years of preparation met the perfect opportunity. And because it was such a big deal and everybody was scrambling to understand it, we did a bunch of webinars for free.

Michael Bell: And I think we had like a thousand people on each of those webinars. And we did like five of them or something. So that was like the big break that really kind of took the sales of the book way up. And, you know, the phone started ringing for the firm and somewhere around there, Mike made it, you know, was joking around.

Michael Bell: I have a new way of getting clients. I, you know, the phone rings and I pick it up. And that was so funny to us [00:22:00] because that was never how it was before that. You know, it's like you, you sort of pursue someone for months and you're taking them out to dinners and, and trying to get into their office and they keep blowing off your appointments.

Michael Bell: And, and now it was like a total shift because we really were the experts at that point,

Jan Roos: you know, in the eyes of the industry. It's where preparation meets opportunity that you end up getting the, like the, what people would refer to as luck, but another good point is it might not have been a breakout success on the first iteration, but the systems and stuff that you guys ended up building really allowed you to capitalize on that.

Jan Roos: So that's pretty interesting.

Michael Bell: I mean, it was also luck though, because that changed in the law. There was another one about five years ago and it's sort of pretty stable right now. So it's sort of like, when are those things going to happen is you certainly can't plan for that or count on it.

Jan Roos: As far as you mentioned a couple of things before, so they're the printing out of the documents as well as the webinars and stuff.

Jan Roos: So you guys have this great resource. What were you doing to get eyeballs on it?

Michael Bell: I think the partnership with work comes central was [00:23:00] really huge for that. You know, they already had a huge audience. I mean, it was sort of is the gathering place for practitioners, both like, you know, on the applicant side and the defense side, the claims experts, all those people, everybody already kind of relies on work comes central.

Michael Bell: So that was a huge part of it. And that's probably the primary thing. I mean, we, we sort of, as a firm, we're developing the mailing list and I'm sure they emailed their customer base. I think that was pretty much most of

Jan Roos: it. So if the real lever here was having this distribution channel with a partnership, how do you guys go about establishing this partnership in the first place?

Michael Bell: I think Mike had already been publishing his 50 page, a hundred page guides on there and they were getting read. And that was like an asset for them because Mike creates this valuable content posted on their site and that's adding value. for their audience. So there, there was already that relationship.

Michael Bell: So it was kind of like a call and, you know, I remember some early getting together for lunch with some of their people and we were, some of our people would go and, you know, propose that idea, but it was sort of like just sort of saying, Hey, I'm thinking of writing this book. You know, what [00:24:00] do you think about it?

Michael Bell: You know, you want to be a part of this. Yeah. Right. And, and sort of just going from there and then going through the whole process and hammering out the details.

Jan Roos: Ultimately, it was, it was really a win win for those guys. And, you know, when you invest, you guys have invested the time into creating this resource.

Jan Roos: It's value that these guys can add to the market. So basically, you know, if you have sort of time to invest in this, for anyone trying to take away a strategy, investing in this content, even if it doesn't provide direct sales for something like this, it really tends to open the doors for, for these resource partners that can be a huge lever down the road.

Jan Roos: And then basically to kind of put this all, it sounds like something, this has been like a really successful journey for you and the firm, what kind of, in terms of, you know, whatever numbers you're comfortable sharing, what have been like the results in terms of how big, how big the business has grown, how many partners you guys have added, what is the real effect of all this stuff in the end?

Michael Bell: Yeah, I think the firm is currently around 60 attorneys. I know they have nine offices throughout the state. And you know, that's really important on the defense side. Being a statewide firm means that you can have a relationship with a national client, like [00:25:00] a grocery chain or something, and you can serve their needs and all the, all the markets that they do business in, in your state.

Michael Bell: There are some of our competitors that are even doing business outside of California. They have Arizona locations and Nevada and et cetera. But I don't know, I'm kind of going off track, I guess. Yeah, that gives you a sense of the impact during the time that I was in the executive director role, this solvent on comp product had already been out for many years, I mean, the phone was ringing with people who learned about the firm, maybe through recommendation to someone in the industry or something like that.

Michael Bell: But essentially you could trace it back to the solvent on comp product.

Jan Roos: We've gone from a solo practitioner to somebody completely statewide. And you know, the largest economies in the world within a pretty short span, like we're talking 10 or 15 years here. So, you know, it's not an overnight success story, but by all means, when, when somebody has a plan, they're willing to invest the time to creating value.

Jan Roos: This is what ends up happening. If you want to become a household name, this is. You know, the work that it takes to get there and you guys are actually working on a new product, if I'm not [00:26:00] mistaken. So would you mind telling me a little bit about what's going on with you guys? Right?

Michael Bell: The partnership with work on central was really fantastic.

Michael Bell: I think for both parties for a long time, but ultimately, you know, like, like any business partnership that's sort of been in place for years, you know, sometimes there comes a time where it just makes sense to. To part as friends, but go your own way. And so the firm ultimately decided that they wanted to bring it in house.

Michael Bell: Ultimately, they wanted to devote more resources to continuing to grow it. Just given where the firm was at, they felt that that was you know, the time was right, that, that it was something they could do. So essentially they've launched their own website and they're now addressing all the operational issues themselves.

Michael Bell: Directly on the Sullivan on comp. com website. You know, that's sort of my baby. I helped them to build that, work with the developers and put that in place. I run the operations for the website and it's sort of something that looked like it was going to be sort of a part time gig, but it's become a little bit full time lately over this past year and a half, but it's also been a lot of fun and so I've allowed that to happen because I [00:27:00] really enjoy it.

Michael Bell: So that's kind of where that's at and what my role in it has been.

Jan Roos: In terms of like the day to life stuff, what are you guys focused on? For it's, it's, it's mostly development work. What's kind of like the timeline for this? Like what kind of stuff are you guys focusing on today to take things to the next level?

Michael Bell: There's another set of features that are really important that, that we're working on rolling out. You know, the book is a content website to subscription products. So people pay to access the content and we had to, you know, first. So to get it up and running and just all those not that exciting, but certainly important features, like how does the customer, you know, what's in a customer account, like how do we get the billing to work and all that kind of stuff and of course the content and making sure that it had good search functionality and now we're working on ancillary features that are important to people in this industry.

Michael Bell: Tools like calculators and things like that. So we launched in February, 2017, a little bit over a year ago. And the last year has been really focused on, you know, making that transition for everyone, getting everybody in our system, making sure we had all the billing info, getting everybody's renewals processed, all [00:28:00] that kind of stuff.

Michael Bell: And so this year we're focusing on adding features and really marketing now, now that we're on the new platform, we want to reach out to everyone who maybe has heard of the product, but they haven't really. Checked it out, or if you haven't used it in a while and try to really focus on it, you know, increasing the, the user base.

Jan Roos: Years later, this is the kind of stuff that people are focusing on. It's really awesome that you guys aren't resting on your laurels and it's continuing to innovate and provide more value for this, which is ultimately what got you guys to the success in the first place, this is sounds like it's been an incredible journey.

Jan Roos: Michael, so much for sharing the story with us for people that might be interested in getting into contact with you, what's the best way to find you online.

Michael Bell: My website is lawfirmexcellence.com I'm easy to find through that. There's contact info on there and it just kind of gives you a good overview of what I'm all about too.

Michael Bell: All

Jan Roos: right. Fantastic. Thanks again, Michael. This has been an awesome value. And I hope the people that are listening to this that are committed to growth will take some of these strategies seriously, because there's some, some serious gems in here. So until next time, thanks for listening to the case field [00:29:00] podcasts and we'll, we'll talk to you soon.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Growth podcast for show notes, free resources, and more. Head on over to casefuel. com slash podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.