Inclusive Branding Fuels Sustainable Law Firm Growth (Full Transcript)

[00:00:01] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Bernadette, and I'm Zach, and welcome to the Lawyer's Podcast, one of the many ways that we help attorneys build healthy firms, better, more sustainable lives, and, you know, better businesses. So today, Stephanie talks with Allison Harrison, one of our labsters, and one of my favorite people in the world, frankly, about winning the Reisman Award at ClioCon. And this is a pretty cool award for her entire team, but Allison does, Allison and her team do some amazing stuff at their firm, the ALH Law Firm in, where are they? She does the Seabus Mob, Columbus, yeah. She does her own podcast, they do some amazing Instagram and LinkedIn and social media, but she also does some really, really great, I could talk about it. Thankfully, Stephanie did the interview, because I would just geek out talking to Allison, you know, basically fanboying, which I'm doing right now, so, yeah. But stick around and listen to that conversation. Bernadette, Halloween is coming up in like two days. Do you dress up? Do you celebrate Halloween? Do you, like, I'm always curious about this with people, like, do you, you know, have you classically, like, gotten costumes? What do you do for Halloween?

[00:01:27] Speaker 2: Eat a lot of candy corn? Probably, I eat, oh God, no, I do not eat wax.

[00:01:34] Speaker 1: I made candy corn ice cream one time. Ew. My wife loves candy corn.

[00:01:39] Speaker 2: Ew, ew, ew, ew, Zach, now I am questioning our friendship, like, I- I understand.

[00:01:48] Speaker 1: I would think less of you if you didn't.

[00:01:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, so I don't eat wax. But I do occasionally dress up, so, let's see, last, I'm trying to think of, I don't know if I'm going to dress up this year, but last year I was, oh, what did I, what was I last year? I can't remember. I remember the year before, that one was really funny, I was a bumblebee. Nice. So, I had a bumblebee costume, I mean, it was a total bumblebee, I had the little stinger on the back and the things that just hopped up. The antennas, nice. Yeah, yeah, I like, yeah, I was a bumblebee. I can't remember what I was, I think I was something like a cowgirl or something, I think I was a cowgirl last year. Okay. Now I have to go look at the pictures, but yeah, I like, I like to dress up for Halloween more so now that I am like an adult and I don't have to take a kid trick-or-treating or anything like that, I like it more as an adult than I did as a parent, like an emptiness to an adult. I guess I've been an adult for a long time, but you know what I mean.

[00:02:59] Speaker 1: I used to, I've gone through phases of like how much I dress up. Most of my costumes have been relatively simple though, like I have a flight suit in my closet where I'm like, you know what, if I got to go to a party, I'll throw that on and some Ray-Bans and we're good, you know, whatever. A couple of years ago, I went as a Ted Lasso, which was relatively easy for me because I just shaved most of my beard and put on like a blue polo. That one was relatively simple. But my favorite part of the Halloween experience is actually the kids come by our house. We do a lot of decorations in the front yard and then we have, we're the people, we don't have kids ourselves, so we're the people in the neighborhood that give out like the full size candy bars. Oh wow. We're like, just everybody loves your house. Yeah. Take handfuls. We don't care. We bought a ton of candy. Take handfuls of it because we're going to eat it afterwards if you don't.

[00:03:58] Speaker 2: Exactly.

[00:04:00] Speaker 1: I love seeing all the kids come along with their little costumes. That's where I learned about the new characters on Disney, right?

[00:04:09] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. I can see that. I guess because I was a parent, or I guess I'm still a parent, I keep saying it in a past tense. It's like going away.

[00:04:21] Speaker 1: We're going to tell your daughter.

[00:04:22] Speaker 2: Yeah. I know. My daughter's going to be like, mom, are you trying to tell me something? But yeah, when I was parenting and it's just different, I've taken her trick or treat and just watching it and watching the little kids and all of that is different. But now going to an adult party with costumes is way, way more fun.

[00:04:48] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would imagine, again, not having kids myself, that the first couple of years you're like, oh, this is cute. This is amazing. And then they're like 12.

[00:04:59] Speaker 2: Yeah. And you're like, oh. This is work.

[00:05:02] Speaker 1: Yeah. I still have to drive you around. I have to stay up later than I wanted to stay up on Halloween. Yeah.

[00:05:08] Speaker 2: And then I have to monitor this candy because.

[00:05:11] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:05:13] Speaker 1: Yeah. Because there are people out there just given like whole handfuls of whatever. Like you. People like you. And full size candy. You're like, what is the deal here? Why are they doing that? I got to inspect this. Yeah.

[00:05:24] Speaker 2: That's fair.

[00:05:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. My wife gives away a potato every year. She puts a raw potato in the bucket and somebody grabs it every single year. And I'm like, this is very odd. Halloween's a weird holiday.

[00:05:38] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:05:39] Speaker 1: I could talk to you about how excited I am about Halloween forever. But really, I'm excited about this episode with Alison Harrison. So I want to hear it. Let's pop on over to Stephanie's conversation with recent Reisman Award winner, Alison Harrison.

[00:06:09] Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Alison Harrison, founder and owner of ALH Law Group. We are a state planning probate and business litigation firm in Columbus, Ohio, servicing Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

[00:06:19] Speaker 4: Hello, Alison. Welcome back to the show. Yeah, it's good to be back. I think this is number three. We might have to get jackets like Saturday Night Live eventually.

[00:06:29] Speaker 3: Yeah. I'll put Zach on that.

[00:06:31] Speaker 4: Well, you've had a big week because we were at the Clios conference earlier this week at the time that this episode's coming out. And you got some pretty nice awards and a recognition there. Do you want to tell us your big news?

[00:06:45] Speaker 3: Yeah. So I got the Reisman, I learned how to pronounce that word during this process, for diversity and inclusion, which is amazing. And I got to share it with my team. I had team members go to ClioCon with me, which was phenomenal for so many reasons.

[00:07:01] Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that. Congratulations. It's fun. And as I was thinking about it and watching you get this award, it's been nice to really watch you as a business owner grow, your firm's grown a whole bunch, and you've grown a whole bunch. And I wonder if we can share a little bit of that story because I think it's really awesome.

[00:07:24] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been in lab for five or six years, somewhere in between there. And it really has been the time in which my firm's had all this growth and really built our brand. And so like two things happened kind of at the same time I was in lab, which has been really fun. I think when I joined, I was a team of three or four and pretty much everyone had left and now we're a team of 12.

[00:07:49] Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about your brand too. So not only is your team growing, I mean, I think they're related because I think once you got really clear on who you are and who you want to serve, probably a lot of that growth happened.

[00:08:00] Speaker 3: Yeah. 100%. Right. I'm a LGBTQ owned and women owned law firm. And there's not very many of us out there to have one of those, let alone be gay and queer or queer and LGBTQ owned. And so and just leaning into it, I think, you know, when I started lab, I was just like, yeah, I'm gay. But like, that was it. It wasn't part of the brand. And we really leaned into it. And it's been incredible, the response. There's so many clients who are like, yes, I chose you because you are very clear about who you are online.

[00:08:27] Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think I feel like I was there. And I remember the day that this epiphany sort of hit you and we pressed you on it because we too knew. I mean, you came up with this great tagline. We've probably talked about it on the show before, because you say estate planning for the theys and gays. Did I get that right? Gays and theys, but close enough. All right. I have I have the shirt too. So, you know, and it's so great and people hear it and love it. And we were talking about hiring and I was like, you know, anyone you hire, like they got to be you got to be willing to own that. Like at the time, it felt like that was your brand, but maybe you just weren't really leaning into it all the way.

[00:09:06] Speaker 3: Does that feel right? No, it's 100 percent. It was just like, yeah, we have this. It exists. But we just really, really leaned into it. And it's very clear in any of our marketing that that's who we support. And it's that it's had this other effect, too, because we support the LGBTQ community and we're loud and clear about it. We've also found a lot of minority business owners, minority estate plans, like just kind of anyone who doesn't fit the mainstream has come out and found us and we're like, oh, we really want to work with you because you're open or you're willing to talk to us or we answer the phones and no one else does. It also helps. We have a couple of people on staff, one person in particular who's trilingual or multilingual. And so we can help clients who don't necessarily have English as a first language. So it's kind of been this snowball effect.

[00:09:55] Speaker 4: Yeah. I think sometimes people are worried about being that open and being that transparent and what if it turns some people away? And I think that's kind of the point.

[00:10:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, it is because you want to work with the clients you want to work with who live kind of your core values and being very transparent about them. It helps those people find you and for the people you don't want to work with to move on to another firm. And I think you see that if you went to Clio at the Riesman's because myself and Zach up in Nebraska, he's really leaned into his queerness as well. And he's the fastest growing firm or was awarded that by Riesman. And so I think both of us having the award and both of us having leaned into who we are speaks leaps and bounds for how powerful that is.

[00:10:42] Speaker 4: Yeah. Let's shift a little bit to the growth that you've had because I mean, I'm sure as people are listening, they're like, what, 2 to 12 or 14, you know, like some of the numbers that you've had in terms of your team growth, the number of cases you can take. That doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen without some growing pains. So many.

[00:11:05] Speaker 3: Which one would you like to talk about?

[00:11:07] Speaker 4: Well, I mean, put yourself back in the shoes of where you were when it was two and which one would you have liked to have heard the most? Like which if you could go back, what do you know now that you wish you knew then and what would you say to that person?

[00:11:20] Speaker 3: You know, it's so hard to think about what the firm was like when we were only two. I mean, I know kind of the people that were there, we didn't have a roadmap. We weren't necessarily goal setting. And I think that's the difference right now is like, I know what I'm trying to achieve this year, next year and five years. And that's just wildly different. The other thing is how hard it is to manage people. Like I had this idea for growth and as I get more people and I love my team. My team's amazing. It's just it takes time. And so really understanding as you add people, how much time as an owner and a manager is that going to take up? Which means you have to delegate more stuff so that you can help develop talent and handle those things that pop up, whether it's a client that's being really difficult or a billing issue or just getting someone logged into their computer because they didn't do their two factor authentication. Like there's just so many other things that come up that I don't think anyone really prepares you for.

[00:12:18] Speaker 4: It just doesn't make sense. So managing the people is a job unto itself. And I think sometimes we think, well, I could just grow, hire more people and there'll just be more people to do the work. But they don't realize that your job actually has to shift into a different job as you hire those people.

[00:12:38] Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a huge difference of like you become a little bit of like a mentor and the coach, as the way I think of it, because you go from being a doer to an overseer. And that's sometimes a hard mindset shift. I know some attorneys, they don't want to do it. They want to be the doer because they enjoy the legal work. And so taking yourself kind of out of that, or at least making it less of your priority can sometimes be difficult. I love it personally. I like being kind of the quarterback or the coach, not necessarily in the nitty gritty of the legal.

[00:13:14] Speaker 4: Was there a moment where that transition that you needed to make was really apparent to you and what did that look like?

[00:13:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, we did a retreat last year and this is not something I like to admit, but like my hair was falling out because I was so stressed from trying to do all the things. And so my team, we sat down and listed all the hats everyone wears and we were writing out mine and we ran out of room on the piece of paper. And so just that visual activity of writing down everything I was doing was just like, holy smoke, something's got to give. And then we worked on delegating it. And we're in the process of needing to do that again because we keep growing. We had added four people this year. And so there's just a lot more hats that are getting worn.

[00:14:00] Speaker 4: One of the things you said there is so important that I want to highlight. The exercise isn't a once and done, right? You have to keep doing it. You have to keep reevaluating what should your role be next and now what do you get rid of and now how do you shift the team?

[00:14:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's in one of those books that I've read. I can't remember which one. And it's like you have to figure out like what's taking up 80% of your time, but what's the most that you're valuable? It's like the 20% you do is what you're most valuable and it's how do you get rid of the 80%. I think that's the analogy, Stephanie. Correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers. But redoing it, I think it's something that I personally need to do about every six months just because of how quickly things change.

[00:14:41] Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I agree. I think that makes sense. And I've talked about it on the show before. You're right. That mindset shift of I'm not the doer. I have this new role and my job is, and we talked about this. We just talked about this with Debbie in our book, Next Level Leader, right? It's like going from the expert to problem solver to multiplier and architect because now you're going to build the people and the systems to allow the work to happen, not just do it yourself.

[00:15:06] Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's kind of fun because I'm starting to see that with my attorneys because we've added more paralegal and admin support. And so watching them go from, oh my gosh, I have to do everything to, oh, that isn't actually what I need to be doing. I have a better value add doing this task and letting my paralegal do this. And that's actually been really, really fun.

[00:15:25] Speaker 4: Let's talk about that for a second because one of the things you were mentioning to me before we hit record is that for years you've been in lab, you've been coming to LabCon, going to conferences, going to other industry events, reading. I know you read a lot of business books like me. And so your development has been on this trajectory and now you're realizing that you've got to figure out how you do that with other team members. And I wonder if you could talk about that and what you're thinking there.

[00:15:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. It's harder than you think. It really is. We started off the year having book club. It was really, I made everyone read a book and we had a lunch and they had to talk about it. But it was really helpful. We follow the traction and EOS model. And so I had everyone read what the heck is EOS. And it was really fun because we'd running the level 10 meetings, which is like a core staple of EOS. But no one understood why they were called level 10, what any of the agenda was. And then I was like, it's sometimes hard because I've read so much to realize they haven't. But I think with that kind of spurred this desire to keep learning. And so after that, I probably pulled 10 books off my bookshelf and handed it to different team members to address something that was a question that they had. And by and large, they've read them. And so I think also finding these conferences like Clio Con and looking for other national opportunities because I am always a little disappointed in what's available at the local level for this type of growth.

[00:16:51] Speaker 4: No, I hear that. And I agree. The book club idea, love that. And I just read this post. And so I don't know what you think, what anybody would think about this. But it had this list of books and this person was like, I'm going to pay my teenager $100 to read and discuss all this list of books with me before they go to college. And it was a lot of the books that you and I've read, like business books and personal development books. And I was like, hmm, I wonder if I can bribe my kids to read these books because they are good. There's some good principles in there.

[00:17:26] Speaker 3: I had a couple of people who complained about reading it. And I was like, I need proof that you read it. Whether you read it or you use Claude to give you the salient points, I'm not going to track your time to make sure that you read it. But I don't think it's a bad idea because some of the things like you want the key takeaway. It's not that you need them to read 300 pages. You just want them to get the core concepts. Exactly. And let's be fair, a lot of business books are repetitive.

[00:17:51] Speaker 4: Yeah, you get it. There's a key chapter in there that talks about it and there's a lot of fluff. So I don't know. I hope people don't say that about our books. I try hard to be like, okay, are we delivering throughout? Because I've read a lot that I'm like, I've got this one.

[00:18:06] Speaker 3: On to the next. Well, and it's hard because there's a few authors that write several. And so you buy multiples and you're like, well, this is the same as the last one, except for this chapter.

[00:18:15] Speaker 4: Which, by the way, good marketing note, right? We talk about that all the time. And I know you repurpose your content because that's what everybody else is doing.

[00:18:24] Speaker 3: So you should do it too. We started just republishing old blogs because we're like, no one remembers what we put out two years ago. And so that's a very easy social post. It's on brand. It talks about what we do.

[00:18:35] Speaker 4: I love that. So you've grown a whole bunch. Love that. You've had to grow your team. Now you're having to think about how to manage your team, how to make sure they're developing and growing in their new roles. Yeah. What else? Anything other big topics we should cover?

[00:18:53] Speaker 3: I think managing change. That's probably one of the other things that I've been having conversations about is how much are we changing on a regular basis? And it used to be these big changes, new tech stack, new whatever. And now there's all these micro adjustments that might even be harder to manage.

[00:19:11] Speaker 4: Yeah. And something you say that reminds me, as a leader, you're changing because you're trying to improve your firm. But if we just look out into the world, the pace of change in the world right now is faster than it has been. And probably, I think they're saying like today is the slowest day of change you're going to experience.

[00:19:33] Speaker 3: It's insane. I mean, just trying to keep up with everything that AI can do, let alone anything else. It's really difficult. But the thing I will say that I'm taking away from all of it is it's really reducing the number of systems we have to use. One of the things that my team had complained about for years is I kept adding new software, new systems. And now we're just like, well, can we get rid of that? Can AI do that? And so it is streamlining a lot of the work we do.

[00:20:02] Speaker 4: All right. Well, that's good. So that's positive.

[00:20:05] Speaker 3: Yeah. But it's also changing the way we do everything, which are those micro changes everyone's struggling with.

[00:20:11] Speaker 4: Well, I think that's part of it as a leader, too. Now your job is about managing that change and managing your people and the why and the expectations and explanations of what's happening.

[00:20:24] Speaker 3: Yeah. This came up on my coaching call last week, actually, was like, I need to be clear when I do hiring posts that we will change. The way that we did it today is not necessarily the way we're going to do it in four months. And I have to be very clear that if you work here, that has to be part of your DNA versus hiring folks who like, change sounds great, but they don't really want change. Because that is, to me, natural. I always want change. But I have come to find out that a lot of people like the same thing and consistency.

[00:20:59] Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. We added it as one of our core values. So drive changes now because we were like, we need to be upfront that not only are we going to continue to change, but we're trying to drive change in the legal industry. It is literally part of our mission. And so we made that really explicit. But I think too, one of the things you mentioned to me that I think people probably will resonate, you may have hired, the person that you hired when you were a team of four may no longer work and fit now that you're a team of 12. And I'm curious if you could talk about that.

[00:21:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something that's kind of hard because as we grow, the needs change significantly. And as a team of three, we have a lot of one-on-one time with each other. As a team of 12, I don't get to give the same level of attention to every single person. And so there's a little bit of a hierarchy that starts to form just because I only have so many hours in the day. And so making sure that folks are understanding and willing to move kind of in that direction is really important. But also understand our clients have shifted. When I started my firm, I primarily represented car dealers. I still do a lot of that work, but we are also doing a lot of representation of trans folks, of LGBTQ couples, just people who had someone die, and minority business owners. And so it's just like the complexity of what we're able to do now is so different. And so making sure that folks can stay up on the change that happens in your firm as you grow is somewhat difficult.

[00:22:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And I totally appreciate it. Like, yeah, if people were used to, I get Allison time all the time. And now they're like, they don't. And people will respond personally to that, like, wait, what happened?

[00:22:52] Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's not that I don't like you any less, like, it's just I literally don't have more time in the day. And I also have a lot more responsibilities, which sounds ridiculous, right? I hired more people and I have more responsibilities. But there's just all of these other like HR things that come up that you didn't have when you had two people and the banking gets a lot more complicated. You know, it's these little things that just start to snowball and take up a lot more time.

[00:23:21] Speaker 4: I think a lot of people listening will really respond to that and that will resonate. And sometimes we wonder, I think it helps when we name it and people hear, oh, I thought it was just me. And I remember when I had my firm, you know, we started with two lawyers and a legal assistant and grew to a team of 20. And I often said that I had to rebuild my firm, I think two or three times, because even like the process that works when you're two or three, it doesn't work for seven and it doesn't work for 20. So you kind of have to get in there and keep working on it.

[00:23:52] Speaker 3: You have to know what's going to break, like you just have to be prepared for a system or a process to break every time you add someone. That's kind of just my approach that I'm not shocked, I'm not thrown off, it doesn't derail my day. I'm just like, okay, cool. That's the thing that's going to break. Let's fix it. And then, you know, when we hire the next person, we'll figure out what breaks and fix it.

[00:24:10] Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it. So any thoughts on what's next for you now that you've racked up more awards, national awards, all these fun things?

[00:24:20] Speaker 3: You know, the thing that I'm excited about is we recently got the NAMWOLF certification, National Association of Women and Minority Law Firm Owners. Now that says NAMWOLF, I don't remember all the letters. And I'm excited to try and leverage that for some bigger clients because that's, you know, really looking at big corporations, which would be an interesting growth opportunity. And then, you know, I don't, we keep growing. And so I had a five-year plan and one of my wonderful attorneys was like, you know, that five-year plan said we were going to hire four to six people and you already hired four in year one. And I said, thanks for the reminder. So I don't know, you know, I do all this planning, but either we achieve it or it changes before we get there.

[00:25:06] Speaker 4: I love it. I love that we've gotten to be a part of your journey. And I especially love that I got to be with you in Boston to celebrate your award because I know it's so fun and I feel a tiny little part of that, like that's my little heart on stage. So I'm so happy for you.

[00:25:22] Speaker 3: You should. Lawyers was a huge part of getting me there. The coaching calls keeping me motivated and LabCon giving me like the tools of the tech to to make it happen. So thank you, lawyerist.

[00:25:34] Speaker 4: Thank you. Love you. Thanks, Allison. It was always great talking to you and I know we'll have you back. So we'll look forward to that next conversation. We'll see what you're what you're tackling next. Thanks, Stephanie.