Senior Attorney Match Podcast

The Growing Importance of Tracking Digital Originations

In Episode 69 of the State of the Market for Law Firm Sales in 11 Minutes, Senior Attorney Match’s Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. addresses the following:

The Growing Importance of Tracking Digital Originations

 

As law firms continue transforming to becoming Digital Rainmaker law firms that originate clients via Multi-Channel Digital Marketing, their sale values will continue to increase because of greater predictability for client originations, as compared to depending on a limited number of traditional Rainmaker attorneys.

 

This episode addresses:

 

• How Digital Rainmaker law firms originate new business during today’s 3.0 Digital Era for the legal industry

 

• The importance of tracking digital originations in the context of law firm sales

 

• The rise of Law Firm Sales 2.0, which consists of: (1) Fixed payments attributable to data analytics that support how digital marketing efforts consistently generate a law firm’s originations; plus (2) Earnout payment terms, attributable to a selling law firm’s Book of Business.

Question 2 from Ep. 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: Why Do Key Employee Lawyers Want a Boss & Do Not Aspire to become Law Firm Owners?

During Ep. 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. addresses the following question:

Why Do Key Employee Lawyers Want a Boss & Do Not Aspire to become Law Firm Owners?

 

As Poock explains,

“What is it that key employee lawyers want? What they really want is a reliable, predictable, and safe job.”

 

Rather than aspiring to owning a small business law firm, most key employee lawyers want a boss because a boss will provide them with a reliable, predictable, and safe job.

 

Until Senior Attorney owners of law firms recognize the likelihood that their key employee lawyers prefer a boss, rather than becoming the boss, Poock explains the possibility of a collision of expectations, namely:

 

The goal for a Senior Attorney owner for key employee lawyers to succeed to ownership often collides with a key employee lawyer’s goal to maintain a reliable, predictable, and safe job.

 

When those goals collide, unfortunately, the following “Random Tuesday” event can (does) occur:

 

Key employee lawyers give their longtime Senior Attorney bosses 2 or 4 weeks notice about joining another law firm that can restore their need for a reliable, predictable, and safe job.

 

Rather than colliding, Poock shares that their respective goals align when a Senior Attorney owner, together with key employee lawyers, join a Growing Law Firm.

 

In that collaborative scenario, the following 4 winners result:

 

1. Senior Attorneys win by establishing a viable succession plan that includes sale terms.

 

2. Key employee lawyers win by maintaining their need for a reliable, predictable, and safe job.

 

3. The clients win via assurance that they will continue benefiting from ongoing, competent representation.

 

4. The Growing Law Firm wins by benefiting from new clients, an experienced workforce, and succeeding to decades’ worth of Subject Matter Knowledge to convert into much-needed Digital Content in today’s 3.0 Digital Era for the legal industry.

Poock’s Post from Ep 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: Warning to T&E Attorneys that Clients Do Not Necessarily Hire the Same Firm that Prepared an Estate Plan for Probate & Trust Administration

During the Poock’s Post segment of Ep. 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. shares the following warning:

Warning to T&E Attorneys: Clients Do Not Necessarily Hire the Same Firm that Prepared an Estate Plan for Probate & Trust Administration

As Poock explains:

“What we continue to see with Trusts & Estates attorneys is that when the clients for whom Trusts & Estates attorneys prepared wills and trusts - when they pass away, their children [and] their named fiduciaries, they will go to Google [and] ask for ‘Best Trusts & Estates attorney near me.’”

 

In terms of why children and fiduciaries ask Google, or their preferred AI thought partner, to suggest the best Trust & Estate attorney to hire, Poock shares the following:

 

Beneficiaries and fiduciaries want to hire a Trusts & Estates law firm that features multiple 5-Star Google Reviews and that publishes compelling content on their websites, as well as social media, as compared to returning to the law firm that prepared the original estate plan per the following mindset:

 

“Just because Mom or Dad trusted them, doesn’t mean that we need to.”

 

What can Senior Attorney T&E attorneys do now to preserve a significant, valuable aspect of their T&E practices, namely, the future probate and trust administrations on behalf of their Trusts & Estates clients?

 

Poock offers the following suggestions:

 

1. Consider Your Wills Cabinet as Estate Plans under Management: Please consider the estate plans that you have prepared as “Estate Plans under Management.”

 

Similar to financial planners who maintain Assets under Management, maintaining Estate Plans under Management involves: (a) Regularly updating client contact information; and (b) Periodically contacting T&E clients to offer to update their plans.

 

2. Establish Relationships with Named Beneficiaries & Fiduciaries: As a proverbial antidote to named fiduciaries and beneficiaries searching online for T&E attorney when a need to probate a will or trust arises, Poock suggests that T&E lawyers proactively establish relationships with both beneficiaries and named fiduciaries.

 

As Poock states, “Let them know who you are . . . You care about the people for whom you wrote the estate plans, and you can let [beneficiaries and fiduciaries] know: ‘We're here for you.’”

 

3. Update Your Website & LinkedIn Profile: Considering the likelihood that named fiduciaries and beneficiaries will search online for a T&E attorney to administer their loved one’s estate plan, Poock suggests the following:

 

That Senior Attorney T&E lawyers update their websites and LinkedIn profiles to establish a digital assurance that the firm that prepared the estate plan for their loved one has the experience and capability to administer the plan, as well.

 

Regarding the significance of this warning in the context of selling a T&E law firm, Poock explains the following:

 

In Law Firm Sales 1.0, purchasing firms pay a selling law firm upon an earnout basis, namely, fee sharing upon revenues derived from a selling law firm’s defined Book of Business.

 

Importantly, if estate planning clients do not return to a purchasing law firm when the need arises to administer a will or trust prepared by a selling law firm, the following negative consequences will occur:

 

1. The potential value of a selling law firm’s Estate Plans under Management will become unrealized; and

 

2. The expected earnout will not match a selling law firm’s expectations, despite having prepared hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of estate plans.

 

As Poock advises, “If you want to get as high of an Earnout as possible when you sell your firm, [i]t is just so important to keep in touch with your clients.”

 

And, as Poock suggests, “[R]each out to your clients; get that updated contact information; learn more about who the beneficiaries are, who the fiduciary is; keep in touch with them and let them know your firm is here for them and their families for years and decades to come.”

Question 1 from Ep. 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: What is a Digital Rainmaker Law Firm?

During Ep. 32 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. addresses the following question:

What is a Digital Rainmaker Law Firm?

As Poock explains, during a very short time period between the “Digital Pivot” that occurred worldwide in 2020 and now in the mid-2020s, Digital Rainmaker Law Firms have “e-merged.”

The e-mergence of Digital Rainmaker Law Firms resulted from the attention of today’s and tomorrow’s clients shifting to searching for lawyers and law firms online, as compared to the pre-2020, pre-Google Word-of-Mouth Era for business development for lawyers.

As Digital Rainmaker Law Firms continue growing, Senior Attorney-led firms offer the following 3 resources to boost that growth:

 

1. Book of Business: The Books of Business of a Senior Attorney-led firm present instant client growth.

 

2. Experienced Workforce: Senior Attorney-led firms offer experienced lawyers and para-staff who can capably produce the sophisticated legal services that Digital Rainmaker Law Firms need to provide to their clients.

 

3. Digital Content: The Subject Matter Knowledge that lawyers at Senior Attorney-led Firms have developed over decades presents treasure chests of content to convert into digital content to attract the attention of new clients to a Digital Rainmaker Law Firm.

 

Poock also explains that those 3 needs will become less valuable over time as:

(i) The cost of Digital Rainmaking for new clients becomes less than paying consideration for a Senior Attorney’s Book of Business;

(ii) Homegrown talent and AI decrease the need for lawyers and para-staff from a Senior Attorney-led firm; and

(iii) AI produces sophisticated, digital content without the need of the decades of experience that lawyers at Senior Attorney-led firms offer.

And, regarding sales of Digital Rainmaker law firms, Poock shares the following:

As Digital Rainmaker Law Firms continue developing measurable Digital Value and Brand Equity, they will benefit from higher sale prices per Law Firm Sales 2.0.

 

Unlike Law Firm Sales 1.0 in which law firm value relies upon the transfer of the good will of 1 or more Rainmaker Attorneys, the value of Digital Rainmaker Law Firms involves greater predictability, attributable to data analytics that show and measure digital sources of a selling law firm’s revenues, including (i) The submission of website contact forms; (ii) Calls and texts generated by phone numbers assigned to particular digital marketing campaigns; (iii) Rankings for key phrases; and (iv) More.

What is a MSO & What Benefits Do MSOs Offer to Personal Injury Law Firms?

In Episode 68 of the State of the Market for Law Firm Sales, Senior Attorney Match’s Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. welcomes Boris Ziser, Esq. of McDermott Will & Schulte to discuss Management Services Organizations (MSOs) and the benefits that MSOS offer to Personal Injury Law Firms.

During this episode, Attorney Ziser addresses:

1. What is a MSO?

 

2. Insights about the benefits for certain Personal Injury Law firms to set-up a MSO

 

3. The role for MSOs as Private Equity firms continue entering into the single event Personal Injury Law marketplace

 

While explaining the functions of a MSO in the legal industry, including for certain Personal Injury Law firms, Attorney Ziser points to the value that MSOs provide by separating the non-legal functions of a law firm from the practice of law.

 

Addressing the potential concern for unauthorized practice of law by non-lawyer owners of a MSO, Ziser points out that lawyers will presumably not violate ethics rules and risk their bar licenses by permitting non-lawyer involvement in decision making about a law firm’s practice of law.

 

As Ziser says, “[T]he notion that Private Equity, which owns a service provider, is somehow now controlling the law firm, I just don't think that's true. And, by the way, it isn't good for business for the Private Equity firm either, because if there is such a violation . . . if the law firm goes under, for example, there's nobody to pay the service provider. That's not going to help grow the enterprise.”

 

In his concluding remarks, Poock reiterates Ziser’s point that MSOs will enhance the enterprise value of law firms as MSOs improve the business of law, which will result in higher prices for law firm sales. 

Poock also points out that Private Equity has expressed particular interest in Personal Injury Law because of the volume of clients that Personal Injury law firms can represent, plus the predictability of revenues due to many Personal Injury Law matters involving insurance companies paying on behalf of defendants.

Poock’s Post from Ep. 31 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: “Don’t Get Caught Watching the Paint Dry.” (Shooter Flatch, Hoosiers, 1986)

During the Poock’s Post for Ep. 31 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. shares the following:

For those Senior Attorneys who do not adopt Multi-Channel Digital Marketing for business development, Poock suggests considering selling their law firms during the second half of the 2020s while their firms continue offering the following 3 resources that purchasing law firms want and need:

1. A Book of Business that presents instant client growth

2. Experienced lawyers and para-staff

3. Subject Matter Knowledge to convert to Digital Content to attract the attention of potential clients who search online today for lawyers and law firms to retain.

Poock also points out that Growing Law Firms will soon have a lesser need to purchase Senior Attorney-led law firms because of the lower case cost acquisition that Multi-Channel Digital Marketing presents, as compared to purchasing a Book of Business from a Senior Attorney-led law firm.

And, as a warning to those Senior Attorneys who do not adopt Multi-Channel Digital Marketing to grow their Books of Business, Poock quotes Shooter Flatch’s famous line from the 1986 movie, Hoosiers, in the context of Growing Law Firms that continue to want and need the 3 resources outlined above: “Don’t get caught watching the paint dry.”

Question 1 from Ep. 31 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: What Law Firm Sales Trends Do You Foresee in 2026?

During Ep. 31 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. shares the following 4 trends to expect for law firm sales in 2026:

1. The phaseout of Law Firm Sales 1.0 for Senior Attorney-led Law Firms

2. The increase of “unexpected” key employee departures from Senior Attorney-led Firms

3. The normalization of Digital Rainmaker law firms

4. The rise of Law Firm Sales 2.0 & 2.5

An In-Depth Q&A Session about the State of Private Equity, Valuations, Multiples, Platforms, Roll-ups & How to Prepare to Sell a Personal Injury Law Firm

In Episode 67 of the State of the Market for Law Firm Sales, Senior Attorney Match’s Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. welcomes Seth Deutsch and Jordan McMillian of Samson Partners Group for an in-depth focus on the entry of Private Equity to the Personal Injury Law marketplace.

This circa 45 minute podcast episode involves a Q&A format, in which Seth and Jordan discuss the following:

1. Why did Samson Partners Group identify Personal Injury Law as ripe for opportunities for Samson’s Private Equity Legal Alliance?

 

2. Could you please share 5 factors that Samson considers when valuing a PI law firm?

 

3. As sales of PI firms continue to buzz throughout the industry, what range of multiples of EBITDA do you observe and foresee?

 

4. What is a MSO, and what role do you foresee for MSOs in the sales of Personal Injury Law Firms?

 

5. What do you foresee as opportunities for platform acquisitions and tuck-in acquisitions during the next 5 years?

Why Many Senior Attorney-led Law Firms Will become Worth Less during the 2nd Half of the 2020s

In Episode 66 of the State of the Market for Law Firm Sales in 11 Minutes, Senior Attorney Match’s Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. addresses the following:

Why Many Senior Attorney-led Law Firms Will become Worth Less during the 2^nd Half of the 2020s

 

As Poock explains, today’s Senior Attorneys, who have practiced 30+ years, developed their Books of Business during the pre-Google, 1.0 Word-of-Mouth Era as Rainmaker Attorneys who handed out 100s or 1000s of business cards per year, attended multiple networking events per month, spoke in-person anywhere and everywhere, sponsored local events, and advertised in-print, on radio, sometimes, on TV.

 

Today’s Senior Attorneys developed valuable Books of Business filled with clients and referral sources as Rainmaker Attorneys.

 

In the early 2020s, though, Digital Marketing Disruption entered into the legal industry as a result of society’s digital pivot in 2020, which resulted in clients beginning to search online to find lawyers and law firms to hire, rather than asking a relative, friend, co-worker, etc. for a referral.

 

The digital pivot by clients to search online for lawyers and law firms has resulted in the rise of Digital Rainmaker law firms that embrace Multi-Channel Digital Marketing to attract the attention of today’s and tomorrow’s clients.

 

During the second half of the 2020s, those Senior Attorney-led firms that continue relying upon Word-of-Mouth for business development will unfortunately become worth less as follows:

 

1. Short-Term: A decrease in annual revenues due to originating less new clients than during today’s 3.0 Digital Era for the legal industry.

2. Long-Term: Less value of their law firms’ Books of Business due to not replenishing their Books of Business with new clients and referral sources similar to during the pre-Google, 1.0 Word-of-Mouth Era.

 

As Poock points out, despite a Senior Attorney-led firm generating less new clients, the value of their firm will become worth less, but not worthless because Growing Law Firm purchasers continue to want and need the following 3 resources that Senior Attorney-led firms offer:

 

1. New clients

2. An experienced workforce, consisting of lawyers and para-staff

3. Subject Matter Knowledge to convert to Digital Content to attract the online attention of today’s and tomorrow’s clients who search for lawyers and law firms online.

 

As Poock warns, though, “[I]f you are not replenishing your Book of Business as well as you did pre-Google, now is the right time to sell because over the course of the remainder of the 2020s, the value of Senior Attorney-led firms will become worth less, even though not worthless at this time.”

Q.2 from Ep. 29 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show: I Lead a Trusts & Estates Law Firm that Has Prepared 500+ Estate Plans. What Are My options?

During Ep. 29 of the Ask the Law Firm Seller Show, Jeremy E. Poock, Esq. replies to the following Question 2:

I lead a Trusts & Estates Law Firm that has prepared 500+ estate plans. What are my options?

Initially, Poock explains that the owner of a Trusts & Estates firm needs to determine what the firm has in terms of:

1. Its sources of revenues and amount of revenues per source (egs. Drafting, Probate/Trust Admin., Real Estate, etc.).
2. The firm’s client list, including updated information about names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and cell phone numbers. Importantly, for T&E firms, updating client information should include updating contact information about fiduciaries named in the firm’s estate planning documents (egs. Personal Representatives and Trustees).
3. Inventorying the number of estate plans under management, including ideally, determining how many clients have re-published their estate plans with another law firm, moved out of state, or may have already died.

Regarding sale options, Poock shares the following 3 options:

(a) Sell to or merge with a Growing Law Firm, and preferably, a Growing Law Firm that focuses on T&E or maintains a T&E department (Preferred)

(b) Pursue an internal succession plan (Potential)

(c) Maintain the Status Quo, i.e., establish no succession plan (Risky)

Poock points out that Growing Law Firms offer the preferred option because they want and need the following resources that Senior Attorney-led T&E law firms offer:

(1) New clients;

 

(2) An experienced workforce, comprised of both lawyers and para-staff; and

 

(3) Subject Matter Knowledge to convert to Digital Content to attract the attention of new clients who search online today (and tomorrow) for lawyers and law firms to retain.

 

Poock also observes the following trend that jeopardizes a particular, future value of Senior Attorney-led T&E Law Firms:

 

Digital Marketing Disruption in the legal industry means that, despite T&E law firms including a “blue back” page in their estate planning documents that lists the contact information for the law firms that prepared a given estate plan, surviving family members and fiduciaries have begun by-passing those “blue backs” in favor of asking Google or their AI thought partner to suggest the best T&E attorney near them to administer a Will or Trust.

 

If the families of estate planning clients do not return to the original firm that drafted an estate plan to assist with Probate/Trust Administration, the future value of that firm will become jeopardized because of the expectation that surviving loved ones and fiduciaries will seek Probate/Trust administration services from the same firm that prepared a client’s estate plan.  

 

Poock concludes with offering the following suggestion to T&E law firms that have prepared 500+ estate plans and may (should) have growing concerns that families will not return to their law firms for Probate/Trust Administration of the plans that the firm has drafted:

 

Maintain contact information for clients’ named beneficiaries and fiduciaries for the purposes of:

 

(i) Establishing a relationship with the firm that prepared an estate plan; and

 

(ii) Minimizing the risk that beneficiaries and fiduciaries by-pass the firm that prepared a client’s estate plan in favor of asking Uncle Google or an AI thought partner to recommend an alternative law firm for Probate/Trust Administration services.