RJon Robins - Profit First for Lawyers

LTL – RJon Robins - Show Notes

 lovethylawyer.com

 A transcript of this podcast is easily available at lovethylawyer.com.

 RJon Robins is an entrepreneur, attorney, and author who helps small law firm owners grow and manage their businesses more effectively. He runs multiple businesses that provide management support to small law firms, serving over 500 firms, many of which are among the fastest growing and most profitable in the country. His career began as a small law firm owner, but after struggling with the business side of running a practice, he joined the Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service. From there, he moved on to raise venture capital, work with an accounting firm, consult for mid-sized law firms, and eventually build his current business model. He is also the author of Profit First for Lawyers, a bestselling book that focuses on helping attorneys prioritize business profitability. In the episode, RJon discusses the common management mistakes that lead to bar grievances, the importance of having clear business processes, and why profit must come first for any law firm to succeed. He also shares personal stories about building his business with his wife and how their family life integrates with their work. Tune in to hear valuable insights on why law firms fail, how small firms can access high-level business expertise, and what attorneys need to do to run both successful practices and businesses.

How To Manage A Small Law Firm
 https://howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com/

Louis Goodman

www.louisgoodman.com

louis@lovethylawyer.com

510.582.9090

Musical theme by Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, Maui

Technical support: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, Oakland

Audiograms & Transcripts: Paul Robert

We'd love to hear from you.  Send us an email at louisgoodman2010@gmail.com.

Please subscribe and listen. Then tell us who you want to hear and what areas of interest you’d like us to cover.

Please rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Louis Goodman
www.louisgoodman.com
https://www.lovethylawyer.com/
510.582.9090
Music: Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, Maui
Tech: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, Oakland
Audiograms: Paul Robert

louis@lovethylawyer.com

Transcript

Louis Goodman / RJon Robins - Transcript

[00:00:03] Louis Goodman: Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. I'm your host, Louis Goodman. Today we welcome RJon Robins to the podcast. Mr. Robins is an eight-figure entrepreneur, licensed attorney and author. He's a nationally recognized authority on advising and managing small law firms and profitable business ventures.

He speaks to thousands of attorneys every year, and has been recognized by Inc. Magazine. He is the author of several books, including Amazon's bestselling Profit First for Lawyers. He wants you to be working on your firm rather than in your firm. RJon Robins, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer.

[00:00:51] RJon Robins: Thanks, Louis. Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:00:53] Louis Goodman: It's a pleasure to have you. I've read your book. Holding it up here so everybody can see it. Jon, where are you speaking to us from right now? 

[00:01:03] RJon Robins: At this moment, I am speaking to you from my wife's home office in our home in Coconut Grove, Florida, because my office has some work happening in it, and so I'm down here in her home office.

[00:01:16] Louis Goodman: Can you explain what sort of business you have right now? 

[00:01:22] RJon Robins: I have multiple different businesses. They all serve the same target audience, which is the entrepreneur who owns their own small law firm. And by small law firm we typically mean, I mean, the biggest law firm that we help to manage is $35 million, but typically we're talking under $5 million in revenue.

Everything from the startup. There's multiple stages of growth that a law firm typically goes through as it grows, so we serve the same audience in different ways. We manage over 500 of some of the fastest growing and most profitable small law firms in the country actually. 

[00:02:02] Louis Goodman: How long have you been doing this type of work?

[00:02:05] RJon Robins: I began doing this kind of work on August 24th, 1999. It was the first day that I reported for duty as a small law firm management advisor with the Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistant Service. 

[00:02:18] Louis Goodman: Where are you from originally? 

[00:02:20] RJon Robins: I'm from Miami, Florida. Miami Beach, technically. I was born in Miami Beach, grew up in Coconut Grove. For people who are not from Miami, you could just say Miami. 

[00:02:29] Louis Goodman: Is that where you went to high school? 

[00:02:31] RJon Robins: I went to high school about two miles from where I live today. 

[00:02:35] Louis Goodman: So where'd you go to college? 

[00:02:36] RJon Robins: My first year of undergraduate was Northeastern University in Boston, and then I transferred to the American University in Washington, DC.

I have an interdisciplinary degree from the American University. Satisfied these requirements for this interdisciplinary degree called CLEG. Communications, Law, Economics and Government. So that's what I did. I graduated from the American University as a CLEG major. 

[00:03:01] Louis Goodman: Now you ultimately went to law school. Did you take some time off between college and law school or did you go right to law school after you graduated from American? 

[00:03:10] RJon Robins: No, I went straight through to law school. 

[00:03:12] Louis Goodman: So where'd you go to law school? 

[00:03:14] RJon Robins: I went to Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. So I moved back down to Fort Lauderdale, south Florida from Washington DC, and I graduated in two and a half years.

[00:03:27] Louis Goodman: When you graduated from law school. What was your first legal job? 

[00:03:33] RJon Robins: I ended up meeting the former chief bankruptcy judge for the Southern District who introduced me to the then current chief bankruptcy judge for the Southern District who let me come in and do basically a unofficial internship clerkship, and it ended up being about six months.

So I did that and that was a great experience. I thought that was a terrific experience. I would encourage anyone who has a chance to work for a judge to go work for a judge. And then I opened my own law firm, and my firm was not a very successful business because they don't teach you anything in law school about the business of running a law firm.

[00:04:18] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I wanna talk about that. But let's, 

[00:04:21] RJon Robins: I'll talk about that all you want. 

[00:04:22] Louis Goodman: Yeah. Okay. 

[00:04:24] RJon Robins: But, you know, they don't teach you anything in law school about the business of running a law firm as, as most of your audience, I think probably realizes. 

[00:04:31] Louis Goodman: Yeah. 

[00:04:31] RJon Robins: And so I had my own law firm, but I didn't know how to market a law firm. I didn't know how to meet with a prospective client and convert them into a paying client. I didn't know how to create processes and systems and procedures to work efficiently and in a systematic, organized way. I didn't know how to do financial controls. I didn't know how to do pricing strategically.

I didn't know how to do anything. So I fumble, bumbled my way around that for a while until I discovered the Florida Bar had a department called the Law Office Management Assistant Service, and the Florida Bar created the Law Office Management Assistant Service, also known as Lomas back in 1980 when they realized that they were prosecuting more lawyers for violating bar rules due to law firm management problems than anything else.

[00:05:18] Louis Goodman: Yeah, 

[00:05:18] RJon Robins: the majority of law, the majority of bar grievances, 54% of bar grievances actually, and also 54% of malpractice actions, not coincidentally, by the way, start off as avoidable law firm management problems. These aren't incompetent lawyers. These aren't lawyers who are using drugs or stealing from their trust account or doing wrong by their client. They just don't know how to run the business, and the business runs them into the ground and creates all kinds of problems along the way.

So I called the Florida Bar and I asked for help, and what they said to me was, in essence, you are describing an effect. This effect is very well known to professionals who have been running the business of a law firm for a hundred years. If you'll take care of these causes, the effects will get better. They didn't put it to me in the exactly those terms, but that was the gist of it. I took care of the cause, the effect got better, I called for more help. They told me the next thing to do. I took care of it. It got better. Cash flow started to improve. Cash flow started to get more predictable. Profits started to go up. Work stress started to go down. Things just got better because I took care of the causes. 

[00:06:38] Louis Goodman: Can you talk a little bit about the kinds of causes that they identified that I assume then led you into the business that you're in now?

[00:06:50] RJon Robins: The causes that I was experiencing back then specifically? 

[00:06:54] Louis Goodman: Yeah. And that the Florida Bar said, hey, deal with these causes and your problems will get better 

[00:07:02] RJon Robins: A leading cause of Bar grievances, is poor definition of who your ideal client is. Obviously, right. A leading cause of bar grievances is running marketing without key performance indicators.

So you run your marketing without key performance indicators, so you don't know when to turn it on. You don't know when to turn it off. You turn it on, you turn it off, you turn it on, you turn it off. When you're full of work, you turn the marketing off. Then the work, you work your way down the pile of work, and then you become desperate.

So you turn the marketing on, overspend on marketing, by the way, which makes you more desperate for cash later. And then the first crazy client with a crappy case that comes in the door that, you know, you shouldn't take, you take 'em anyway. And you know, next thing you know, you wind up with a bar grievance.

This happens all the time. Like all the time. All the time. It's so common it's unbelievable how common it is. 

[00:07:56] Louis Goodman: And these were things that the Florida Bar identified to you, maybe not in exactly those terms? 

[00:08:02] RJon Robins: I was early enough in the process that I wasn't beginning to experience those effects yet.

Remember, I had just graduated from law school. I had just opened my own law firm. I was still within my first two years of having opened my law firm when I contacted the Florida bar. So I was way early in creating that kind of a mess. The story continues. If I can just jump ahead just a little bit. 

[00:08:26] Louis Goodman: Please.

[00:08:27] RJon Robins: I ended up calling so much and implementing what they told me to do, and one day I said, look, I'm having a lot more fun with the business of running the law firm, even then, the practice of law. Do you have any suggestions, recommendations, career advice, and the person I was speaking to, unbeknownst to me was the legendary JR Phelps, which if anyone knows anything about the business, the history, the business of the management of the business of law firms. You know, JR Phelps, he's a legend. He's passed away, but that's who I was talking to the whole time, all those months, and he ended up recruiting me.

And so I closed down my law firm and I went to Tallahassee, Florida. Where I became the first lawyer in the history of the state of Florida, actually the only lawyer in the history of the state of Florida to ever serve as a full-time small law firm management advisor with the Florida Bar's Law Office Management Assistant Service.

And while I was there, I was there for four years, the disciplinary committee recognized that the majority of the bar grievances that they were prosecuting were due to law firm management problems.

When I tell lawyers who have law firm management challenges is number one, it's not your fault that no one ever taught you about the business running a law firm.

Number two, it's not your fault that your law school professors punted the ball by saying, just be a good lawyer, everything else will take care of itself, which is totally not true. There are no magic law firm management elves who come along at night and take care of your business to reward you because you're such a great lawyer.

And what I tell them also is, you know, you don't have to live this way. It could be better. And the final thing I tell 'em is no one's gonna name this disease after you, right? If you're having a marketing problem, if you're having a cashflow problem, if you're having a staffing problem, if you're working too many hours, if you're burning out, if you got all the, no one's naming any of these diseases after you, right?

No one wants, I mean. Could you imagine how scary it would be, the doctor comes to you and says, oh my God, we've never seen this before. We're gonna name the disease after you. No, you want the doctor saying, we've seen this a million times. We know exactly what to do, and it'll get better.

There's nothing new in the business of running a law firm that we haven't seen over and over and over and over and over again. It's a very simple business to run. Law firms are very, very simple businesses to run, which is, which breaks the heart of a lot of lawyers who like to feel like their problems are a special snowflake problem, but they're not.

[00:11:08] Louis Goodman: Can you talk a little bit about your career path from that job at the Florida Bar to where you are and what you're doing now, and then we'll get into some of the specifics of substance of what you're doing now. 

[00:11:26] RJon Robins: I was at the Florida Bar. I was there for four years. I made a three-year commitment, but I ended up being there for almost four years.

JR helped me develop a business plan, and so I wrote out a business plan, and I raised venture capital with one of the largest independent accounting firms in the southeast. The business model was basically to outsource the C suite functions of the small law firm because what I had seen for four years with thousands and thousands and thousands of law firm owners in every different practice area you can imagine from all different walks of life, is that they're small law firms.

We're never gonna be able to get over the hurdle without access to high level experienced C-suite professionals. C-E-O-C-O-L-C-F-O-C-M-O. But they couldn't get access to these professionals until their firms reached that next level. So there was a catch 22 that does keep the vast majority of small law firms stuck as small law firms.

So we developed a business model where we would do like a timeshare, fractional C-suite solution so that a law firm that's grossing, you know, maybe $500,000 could have access to a CEO who's earning $250,000? Well, how is the owner of a $500,000 law firm ever gonna get the attention, the attention or the assistance of a CEO, an experienced, trained, qualified CEO who's earning $250,000 a year on a $500,000 gross revenue law firm, they can't do it. So we developed that business model. I sold that business model to the accounting firm. They were my first venture capital backer. The accounting firm, after a while, made a strategic decision to go in a different direction on the advice of a really brilliant consultant who they brought in, business strategist, consultant who they brought in, who offered me a job.

And so I left the accounting firm, and worked for this consultancy where I got to travel the country working with, and this is really cool because I got to work with mid-size law firms. So suddenly I went from a world where I'd only ever been inside of small law firms to now I'm working with 25, 50, a hundred lawyer firms, and I'm seeing why they don't have the same problems that the little firms do.

The small law firms have these problems because they don't have these CEOs and COOs, and CFOs, but the big law firms do. It was, it was just basically proof of my thesis. So I spent three years doing that and then I started the first iteration of the business I have today. 

[00:14:17] Louis Goodman: So let me ask you this. You said earlier that a law firm is really one of the easiest businesses to manage. 

[00:14:28] RJon Robins: Simple. One of the simple, simple business, simple and easy are the same thing. 

[00:14:32] Louis Goodman: Okay, let's go with simple then. And you've written this book, Profit First for Lawyers, which deals with lawyers who are trying to be successful business people and in addition to doing a good job practicing law.

And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the basic principles that you talk about in the book so that people can have profitable law firms. 

[00:15:07] RJon Robins: I have worked with tens of thousands of law firm owners. The business has to come first, and I understand that that is not a politically correct point of view, but it is real. This is the practical, politically incorrect. Been in the trenches, been through the wars, got the scars, the battle wounds to prove it. I'm telling you, the business has to come first. Why? Because nothing is more sad and disappointing, and frustrating and demoralizing and just grinds you down more than having a person who has the potential and the will and the desire to be an amazing lawyer, but lacks the resources to do it, right?

[00:16:07] Louis Goodman: Yeah. 

[00:16:08] RJon Robins: So if you've got no profit, then you can't pay rent. If you've got no profit, then you can't hire an amazing staff. If you've got no profit, then you can't train your amazing staff and keep them. If you've got no profit, then you can't do great marketing that gives you the option to say, no thank you to a bad client, or even the wrong client with the wrong case, right? If you've got no profit, you can't be the person you promised your clients you will be for them. 

[00:16:44] Louis Goodman: Let me shift gears here a little bit. What do you think is the best advice you've ever received? 

[00:16:50] RJon Robins: I'd say the best advice is don't work with people you don't like working with. 

[00:16:58] Louis Goodman: Yeah. 

[00:16:59] RJon Robins: Don't work with clients you don't like working with. Don't work with staff you don't like working with. Don't work with vendors you don't like working with because if you don't like the person and if they don't genuinely like you. When, not if, when there is inevitably a problem, because there's always problems in every relationship, right? If there isn't a genuine feeling of, I like this person, you're not gonna be predisposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

And very often it's just that predisposition to give each other the benefit of the doubt that comes from a genuine appreciation, affection, or like of the other person. That makes the difference between finding a way forward together versus, you know, having an argument or just going your separate ways and wasting your time. I think that's really some of the best advice I've ever gotten. 

[00:17:53] Louis Goodman: Let me shift gears here a little bit. I'm wondering what your family life has been like and how your business and your practices fit into your family life and your family life has fit into the work that you do. 

[00:18:08] RJon Robins: Yeah, so it's really funny because we have law firm, so I'm 53 years old. My wife is 52 years old, and we have one child, he's nine years old. And we have law firms that we've been managing since before he was born. Like a lot of our members have been with us since before he was born, and I love the way that they recognize how my stories and my lessons and my analogies and my references have grown with him.

Right? Because before he was born, you know, people would talk about bringing their kids to our live quarterly meetings and I'd be like, no, I don't want any kids to come to our live quarterly meeting. This is a serious business meeting. Right. Now we have a kids entrepreneur club, and the kids, every quarter they have businesses and they write little business plans and, you know, and it's really fun to build a business that you can share with your family, right? Even if they don't work in the business, it's just to be able to bring them to it and share it with them. And I love that.

My wife was the senior art director for VH1, MTV, and Nickelodeon when we met. Shortly after I started this business, I needed someone to help me. And so she stepped in and she just basically started creating the processes and the system and the procedures and she's absolutely brilliant administrator and she's a brilliant with all technology and all that.

So she was our chief operating officer until the business got to $10 million. Then she replaced herself with other people. And if anyone's working with your spouse or significant other, I think the best piece of advice I can give there is, and I mean this really sincerely, invest in a marriage counselor preemptively.

We didn't go to a marriage counselor because we had a problem in our marriage. We didn't wind up with a problem in our marriage because we had a marriage counselor helping us navigate the different roles. 

[00:20:09] Louis Goodman: Yeah, I have a few sort of lightning round questions. 

[00:20:13] RJon Robins: Yeah. 

[00:20:13] Louis Goodman: What if you came into some real money? Let's say you came into three or $4 billion. What, if anything, would you do differently in your life? 

[00:20:20] RJon Robins: I was actually having a conversation similar to this with my wife over lunch in preparation for your show and the conversation we were having is if money were no object, what would we do different in the business?

[00:20:33] Louis Goodman: Yeah. That's that. That is what this question is. I don't put it that way, but that's the question. 

[00:20:40] RJon Robins: And it's funny because we just came back from spring break. We went for spring break with several other families and some of the families are very, very like Uber ultra wealthy. And one of them was saying, why don't we go and raise a bunch of money to help you grow your business faster?

And money isn't what's stopping me from growing, there's not one single thing that I could think to do that I don't already have the money to do. I don't need more money to increase marketing. I don't need more money to increase sales. We've had a waiting list for the better part of three years.

The big limitations we have for growing the business are recruiting and technology, and it's not technology we can buy. It's technology we have to build. And I could throw all the money out in the world. It doesn't matter because it's gotta come from our head, you know, 'cause we have to design it.

So more money would not, we do very well, and I don't need any money to do everything that I want to do to grow the business. I need more superstars. If you're a purple unicorn superstar, ambitious entrepreneur listening to this, please get in touch with me. We have opportunities for you. That's what I'm looking for.

Don't need money. Got plenty of money. 

[00:21:56] Louis Goodman: Let's say you had a Super Bowl ad, someone gave you 60 seconds on the Super Bowl, and you could put any message out there to this huge audience that you wanted to. What message would you know RJ Robins put out there? 

[00:22:10] RJon Robins: I have a new book coming out that you haven't seen yet because the manuscript just got completed and the publisher just gave me the publishing deal on it, and the book is really meant for the small business world more generally than just law firms. And one of the things you gotta understand about how to manage a small law firm is that we are fundamentally a personal development business. We do personal development for entrepreneurs who happen to own law firms. Because without the personal development that we do, all the mechanical stuff that we show you how to do, I mentioned law firms are very simple businesses to run. Without the personal development is what causes the lawyers to make it complicated. So I wrote this book called The Truth Teller, and I would use that ad to promote that book. 

[00:23:03] Louis Goodman: Well send me a copy and we'll get you back on to I will talk about that.

[00:23:07] RJon Robins: I'd love to. I think you, I, I think you might enjoy it. 

[00:23:09] Louis Goodman: I'm sure I would. I enjoyed the book of yours that I read. 

[00:23:13] RJon Robins: I'm being humble. It's amazing. Everyone will enjoy it. 

[00:23:16] Louis Goodman: RJon, what is the best way to get in touch with you? If some lawyer wants to talk to you about help with their firm, their marketing, their running, their practice? What's the best way to get in touch with RJon Robins?

[00:23:31] RJon Robins: I'm gonna teach a lesson to everyone here who has a law firm, by the way I answer it. So I'm gonna do this deliberately, if I may, please. 

[00:23:42] Louis Goodman: Please. 

[00:23:45] RJon Robins: I don't want anyone getting in touch with me directly until they get some free samples of what we're all about, because if you don't like the free samples, please don't waste your time. Please don't waste my time getting in touch with me or my team. So the best thing to do would be to either go to our website. How to manage.com. Sign up for some free resources. We've had a waiting list for the better part of three years. While you're on the waiting list, we will give you so much free stuff.

We will give you free courses. We will give you free workbooks, we'll give you free webinars. We'll give you free live events. You can come to live events for free. We'll give you free coaching. We'll give you so much free stuff while you're on the waiting list. By the time your number comes up, you've decided that you wanna work with us or you don't wanna work with us, and then it's a really easy decision in the relationship for both of us.

If you don't even wanna do that, you can download, you can go to the podcast Profit First for Lawyers. You can go to Amazon, buy the Profit First for Lawyers book. The point I'm making is take advantage of some of the free stuff we have to offer. If you're not sure what free stuff to take, go to the website, schedule an appointment to speak with someone from my team, and someone from my team will get on the phone with you.

They'll help do a little diagnostic of your firm and they'll help you find the right stuff and give you for free. We'll even pay shipping and handling for a lot of it. We're just, you know, we're very blessed. We have got great members for many, many, for decades at this point. At least a decade.

It's good to start giving people lots of free resources and free help before you start doing business with them. It sort of flattens the curve on the relationship and makes it much more comfortable for everyone. 

[00:25:42] Louis Goodman: Say one more time the web site so people have it. 

[00:25:48] RJon Robins: How to manage a small law firm or how to manage.com.

[00:25:54] Louis Goodman: Great. RJon, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we haven't discussed? Anything at all that you wanna say or put out there? 

[00:26:03] RJon Robins: Yeah. You know, at the risk of sounding like I'm just trying to butter you up, I want to tell you that I really appreciated your story about how and why you decided to start this podcast.

I thought that was really courageous. You know, you didn't know anything about the technology, you didn't know anything about podcasting. You'd never done something like this before. But you say, you know what, I'm interested. I'm curious. I'll give it a try. And that's how all great things start. And so I really appreciated that and I mean, I'd like to hear more about that when I interview you on my podcast one day.

[00:26:33] Louis Goodman: I'd be honored to be there. 

[00:26:35] RJon Robins: Awesome. Thank you. 

[00:26:37] Louis Goodman: RJon Robins, thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. 

[00:26:43] RJon Robins: Thank you. 

[00:26:37] Louis Goodman: RJon

[00:26:43] RJon Robins: What was it, the answer you were expecting? I knew you were gonna ask me this question, but I knew this question was coming and I've been trying to decide what's like the best thing to say.