Jordan Ostroff calls himself the “attorney with a life.” His mission is to help lawyers and their law firms make more money, work less time and live a better life. He only works three days a week.
He’s also the President of LegalEase Marketing, and Managing Partner of Jordan Law in Florida. Today we are talking to him about bridging the gap between who your ideal client is and how you reach them. Listen as he walks us through:
- The biggest mistake attorneys make in marketing (and how you can avoid it)
- The secret to identifying your ideal client (this one will flip your marketing script)
- How to easily (and reliably) turn every person in your firm into a sales person
- PLUS: Jordan’s #1 piece of advice for growing your law firm business
- And much more…
Listen now…
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Davina Frederick: Hello and welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. We believe all women lawyers deserve to be wealthy women lawyers. Our mission is to provide thought provoking, powerful and practical information to help you in creating your own sustainable wealth generating law firm without overwork or overwhelm so you can live your best life. I’m your host, Davina Frederick, and I’m so excited for you to meet our guest today, so let’s get started.
Jordan Ostroff is the lawyer with a life. He works three days a week 20 to 25 hours because he has firm systems and processes dialed in. And he’s hired an amazing team to execute it all better than he ever could. He then started a marketing firm to help other lawyers get the right cases to also live a wonderful life. So welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast Jordan. I’m so happy that you’re here.
Jordan Ostroff: I’m so thankful that you had me on.
Davina: I know we’ve we’ve been kind of connecting with each other a little bit over the past couple of years that I’ve been watching you grow your your marketing business and it’s really been exciting to watch so we’ve got lots of questions, lots of things I want to talk about. Um, let’s start with how you became an attorney. Was this something you always knew that you wanted from a little kid you were dressing up like Matlock and running around or what, how did that all come about?
Jordan: Yes, no, that that is exactly it. And it was funny because I I mean, I still don’t know what it really takes to be an attorney. I don’t know if any of us do but in sixth grade, I was able to shadow a judge because his mother was in the same retirement home as my grandmother. And then when I got to the University of Central Florida, I was on the mock trial team. So we got to do fake trials and I was like, oh, you’re just arguing with people and trying to convince them that you’re right. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life anyway. So it was a natural fit I guess even though I had no idea what it really would entail.
Davina: Fabulous so you like me you’re a fighting Knight. They used to be fighting Knights. I don’t know if they call them fighting Knights anymore like Golden Knights. I don’t know. I’m also UCF and Barry University law school grad. So we have the same we have that in common. I was probably a fighting Knight long before you were. Well I won’t tell you when I graduated but it was a long time ago.
Jordan: No problem so they they are just the Knights now. They, it’s funny, they really no real team is going to call themselves the Golden Knights. And then like three years after they dropped the name the Vegas professional hockey team became the Golden Knights, so whatever.
Davina: Yeah, it’s it’s there’s been a lot of transition with that university. And now I’m happy to report one of my nephew’s is just started his first semester there. And and it’s, and I’ve been driving out there see him is completely different from when I when I graduated from UCF, I want to say in 1990. 1990 so long time ago, and it’s changed so much. And I’m so proud of how much it’s changed. And the great, you know, so we have such a strong alumni network now. You know.
Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what they have 77,000 students every year. So our alumni network grows and grows and grows.
Davina: It’s crazy. I noticed in your marketing company, especially that you have a you have some Knights and you’re in there you have some other people who’ve gone to UCF that are working for you there in the marketing company, correct?
Jordan: Yep.
Davina: Yeah. So tell me about your decision to go you went through and you’re making arguments and you decided I’m going to go to law school and become an attorney. And then you got out and you became an attorney. What surprises were there for you when you did that?
Jordan: That’s a great question. So I knew I wanted to be a prosecutor. That’s part of why I went to Barry because they had a really good mock trial team. And and so when I got the job still in Orlando, and at the Ninth Circuit, it was interesting, because they were like, okay, here’s your 200 cases, these 10 are going to trial in the next 20 minutes, like go have fun. And they sat me down. And my co counsel was my intern who is not a lawyer who was his first trial as well. And so thankfully, I had, you know, at that point, what, six years of fake trial experience so once I stomached through, I was like, once I got through jury selection, I was like, alright, I know this part.
Like mark this tag that send this, this is the stuff for here. And so that was helpful. I mean, I guess the biggest surprise for me, in retrospect, was realizing like that was one of the few jobs where you would get to connect with a lot of other people of a similar age, or at least similar experience level. Because I mean, they hired I don’t know, 20-25 of us in the class. My wife was a PD. So she had, you know, maybe 15 or 20 people in her class. And so it’s been really cool to have a lot of these relationships.
Whereas if you went straight into a private firm, or hung a shingle on day one, you know, you’re going to be the only person there within you know, five or 10 years of you. Whenever the firm last hired an associate. And so it’s really interesting to see where all those people have gone now. You know, they’re judges, they’re managing partners, they’re running big firms. It’s been really interesting to see the the growth of my fellow colleagues.
Davina: Yeah, that’s tremendous, a tremendous way to start out making those connections. I, I went straight from law school into my own practice. And fortunately, I’m in a small county that has a really active bar. And so I jumped right into the bar right out of the gate. But I had, I’ve worked for a little, I’ve interned for the State Attorney’s office here in the 18th Judicial Circuit, and also for one of the judges. So I knew people that way.
But I imagine it’s a real bonding experience when you’re going and that’s your first job. Because you’re you have all the other people and you’re stressing out this, you know, oh, my gosh, now I’m actually needing to represent clients and be a trial lawyer. And you have that, you know, all those people are going through that experience with you at the same time. What made you decide to leave that and start your own law firm.
Jordan: So my wife left the PD’s office before I left the state, she went to work at a private firm, and didn’t like it for the opposite reason. Like at the PD’s office, her clients were too guilty. At the private firm or clients were too innocent. And so we were trying to figure out like what the future holds. So she wanted to try to go teach civics, seventh graders, you know, basically teaching them law. And so when she did that, I was like, alright, well, you know, now you’ve got the guaranteed salary. Again, we’ve got health insurance through you, like maybe I should start opening a firm. And so for my wife’s perspective, we talked about it briefly. From my perspective, we agreed upon it.
So like, a week later, I was like, alright, hey, I put in notice, I’m renting space from so and so. And like, we’re putting this together. And thankfully, like she didn’t even finish the year of teaching. Like within, you know, six months of opening the firm, I had enough stuff for her to jump and, and she hated it. And I don’t blame her. It was dealing with, dealing with criminal defendants was a lot better and more rewarding than dealing with juveniles who didn’t understand the consequences of any of their actions. So yeah, so she jumped and has been working with me ever since. We each own half the firm and she likes being a lawyer. So she does all the legal work now.
Davina: Oh, awesome. So tell me about that. Tell me about growing the practice and what that was like. Because you, you have several people now working with you in the firm, but you’re not actually actively working in the firm, because you’ve gotten started in this other business. So what was that transition from point A to point B? What kinds of things did you need to learn? And, you know, what challenges arose that you were unexpected?
Jordan: Everything. You know, it’s it’s one of one of those, I mean, I say that jokingly, but I’m really not joking. I, I had the benefit of, you know, like, you talked about our legal community is great. So when I was ready to make that jump, I talked to a bunch of other criminal defense attorneys and some other lawyers in town about what the change would be like, coming out of the prosecutor’s office. And I got great advice, and really helpful stuff. And somebody offered me you know, paid for but you know, cheap space and whatnot. And he ended up throwing me some cases to get me started and whatnot along those lines.
But I never knew to ask, like the business questions. And obviously, law school doesn’t teach that. And so next thing, you know, I was able to generate a decent amount of business because I’d been in Orlando for that point, you know, 10 years between UCF, Barry and the prosecutor’s office. And so I had some connections with people and they were, you know, sending nice enough to send me some cases. But I knew nothing about, you know, I knew what to do with the cases from a legal standpoint, but not really how to manage the client experience. Not really how to provide value back to them.
Not really how to grow those relationships. And so I made a ton of bad decisions, and then finally, hit sort of rock bottom. Thankfully, it was just financial, not anything, you know, truly serious. We didn’t mess up any cases, we didn’t have any health issues, whatever. And that was the time where I was like, alright, one of us needs to learn business. And that was going to be me, because my wife enjoyed being a lawyer a lot more than I did, especially at that time. And so we sort of made that I want to say split like not physically but but a focus wise. And so she can cite all these cases for you and the dissenting opinion on this.
And on page 12, they argue you this, I can be like, hey, these are KPIs. These are the ones we need. These are the ones we track. These are the ones that move the needle. And so it’s been a lot, a lot better and a lot more fun once we’ve done that. Because we like, even though we work together, it’s really funny because we can tell stories, because neither of us are actually really engaging with each other except at our all office meetings.
Davina: Yeah, I think that’s what a lot of partners sort of want. I mean, if they’re good and successful in their business, they wind up having to sort of divvy up tasks, you know, and somebody is going to be the one who handles is going to be the decision maker and all things marketing and somebody is going to be the lead attorney. And you know, that sounds like you guys caught on to that pretty quickly. So that’s wonderful. You had mentioned some of the mistakes that you made. And one of them that was notable that that you mentioned has led you to creating your own marketing company was that you invested some bad marketing companies or decisions or whatever. So tell me a little bit about that. You don’t have to name names. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jordan: I mean, the short answer, the name is every single one that’s not like the 10 other cool ones like us. But anyway, but and, and to be fair, the marketing mistakes that I made at that time, were external and internal. You know, yes, I probably hired the wrong companies, because they didn’t make sure I had any sort of internal process. So whether they sent me good leads or not, I had no consistent follow up system. I had no sales training, I had no idea you know what to do with the leads. And so that was an issue in both directions, even if they were good. And then by the time I was able to get that part lined up, I realized most of the leads were pretty bad.
Coming in from companies that didn’t understand it. But ultimately, I didn’t know my ideal client, you know, I didn’t know who I wanted to come through the door. I didn’t know what success looked like in any of these campaigns. I didn’t know what was required of us internally, as you know, Jordan Law to make sure that we were doing right by all those leads, and then by all the clients. And it was figuring those things out, that really put me back on the right track. Or put us on the right track.
Davina: Right, right, I have seen that mistake, unfortunately, more more times than I like to think about. From clients who’ve come in and hired me with regard to coaching, it’s not knowing what you don’t know, problem, right? So you go and you hire a marketing company, because they’ve reached out to you and said, we can solve your marketing problem. But you don’t really, you know, as the business owner, you haven’t really gotten a good understanding of what it is that you need to know to make that marketing effort successful. So you wind up writing big checks, thinking that money, I’m just gonna throw more money at this problem, and it’s gonna solve it.
And really, what you need is to do what you did, which is, you know, step back and go, wait a minute, what do I need to know, as a business owner, so that I can vet people. It’s, it’s like, you know, I share with people that you need to, once you figure out who your ideal client is, where they hang out. And you’re, you get really clear on your brand, and your message, that is going to help you when people are reaching out to offer you like, this is my, this is the thing that’s going to solve all of your problems and marketing. And then you’re going to be able to look at that more objectively and say, well, wait a minute, that’s not where my clients hang out. I don’t need to go do you know, a series of TikTok videos, because that’s not where my clients are. It might be for some attorneys where their clients are.
And for attorneys, it might not be right. But if you don’t know the answers to those questions, you’re not gonna be able to give them the information, they need to be able to do the kind of job for you that they need. Have you found that to be the case, since you’ve started LegalEase Marketing, that it’s important for you to help your clients, you’re probably doing a little more to bridge the gap than maybe what you were experiencing. Because you know, that’s a problem, right?
Jordan: Yeah, I mean, look, ideally, my best clients also have a coach. So they’re coming to us with that coach. And I love it from the standpoint of you know, you all buttoning up the fulfillment issues, and you are really working through a lot of those things with them. And then when they’re like, okay, my ideal client is somebody 30 to 40 in this area of town with this and that. We can look at all right, these are the demographics of the platforms that those people are most commonly on. These are the, you know, the platforms that allow us to geo target and whatever, along those lines.
And it’s just it’s so funny to me, because, I say funny, because like, I hear a lot of things that I know, I said. You know, five years ago, or five years later, or whatever, you know, this works for so and so this works. This didn’t work for so and so. I’m like, right, but like, that’s not the point. The point is like, who are they trying to get in front of? What are they trying to do? What’s their price point? Who’s their ideal client? You know, and you’ll hit like, the biggest one, I think, is estate planning firms. You know, there’s estate planning firms that have the older person who’s worth $5 million, or more as potential clients, and the ones who have the brand new parents getting their first estate plan.
And so I’ll be like, well, the estate planning firm down the street, had a ton of success with this exact same marketing campaign. I’m like, right, but are they targeting the same clients? Like why, why aren’t you looking at it that way? And they’ll be like, oh, no, they’re targeting you know, the new parents. I was like, right. So when you’re talking about somebody who’s worth $10 million in assets, they’re not going to Google to find an attorney. They’re talking to the financial advisor. They’re talking to the divorce attorney.
They’re talking to their business attorney. They’re talking to you know, their friends about it. Whereas the new parent who doesn’t know a lawyer who’s like, oh my god, I need to know, God forbid we die, I need to make sure my kid goes to the right family member. Like they’re the ones who may get impacted on Facebook by seeing you know, your webinar come up or by, you know, talking about it on Google and whatnot.
Davina: They may be Googling.
Jordan: It’s just really fun to have those conversations because I’m like, don’t take this the wrong way because I was in your shoes. I’m just trying to save you from the $200,000 mistakes that I made between when I was you and when I was me.
Davina: Right, right, right. It’s so important to know who you’re dealing with and and you know, talking about estate planning using that as an example too. A lot of times people think, Well, you know, I’m serving this older clientele, but they’re not, they’re not thinking about the adult child of a parent, that may be really the influencer in that process. And do I need to do I need to think about who the influencer is, as much as I need to think about who the end client is.
So there’s a lot that can go into that there’s a lot of thinking that needs to go into marketing. And I know that for, that’s the challenge of a lot of attorneys who love being attorneys, and they started their own business, and they’re like, I don’t want to be a marketer. And it’s, it’s not about being a marketer, because you to hire marketers to help you. Like your, like your company, you can hire people to help you. But you have to be a business owner, right? If you’ve chosen to hang your shingle that’s part of it, is being a business owner, and making that decision.
And if you could partner up with somebody, and it sounds like the two of you have really good synergy in that one of you really loves being a lawyer, and the other one really loves the running of the business part. But you have to have, you have to have somebody in your business that likes the operations, right? Because if you if you don’t I mean, then you then you need to be working for somebody else, if that’s not your thing. And it’s, and it’s perfectly okay, either one is a perfectly good answer. But if you want a business that actually makes profits, like your business is done, then, you know, you kind of have to get in there.
And so for you, you really dug in to learn about the operations part. And then you found that you really enjoyed the marketing enough to actually go start your own marketing company targeting attorneys. Tell me what, besides your own experience, were you, were you hearing from other colleagues that this was a problem? What caused you to sort of flip that switch and say, you know, I really want to do this and pursue this as a as a marketing? What did you see that was a need?
Jordan: Yeah, I’ll jump into that in one second. But I really want to echo what you just said. The concept of if you go work for somebody else, and that’s what you like, and that fits what you’re looking for more, that is not a loss. That is not a mistake. That is not like there’s nothing, I feel like we get stuck on this concept where like, you have firm owners up here, and then you have lawyers who are employees below them. And that’s just not the case. Like it’s really about finding your happiness.
So I love how you phrased that. To go back to that question. So yes, and kind of that’s what that’s what happened with LegalEase. So I put together a group of other like, not necessarily like minded attorneys, but like a group of attorneys that we were all relatively as new to firm ownership. So maybe the one to four year mark, or something along those lines. And we were complaining about the exact same stuff. Like all of us had the same problems. You know, yes, there were maybe a couple more emergencies here for criminal defense firms than there were for estate planning.
And for family law, yes, there’s more, you know, client complaints and whatnot than there are in other areas. But for the most part, we had the same issues. And so the cool part was getting connected with Greg Eisenberg, who’s my business partner now at LegalEase and having him walk me through a lot of why we had made those mistakes. And that was actually he’s a fellow knight we we knew each other similar to you and I. Like in similar circles. And then I won UCF 30, under 30, he won the following year or two years later.
And so like through that, like that was at the exact right time for us to have this conversation. But all these attorneys I’ve been talking to, I went from like, excuse my language, bitching about my firm, to bragging about my firm, once we have these things lined up, and they’re like, oh, my God, like, help us through this. And I was like, yeah, cool. Let’s see, like, will it be transferable? Is it the same thing? And, and the reality of it is, the answers are different for everybody. But the questions are the same.
Davina: Explain what you mean by that. Explain what you mean by that.
Jordan: Yeah, so who’s your ideal client? Who are you trying to get in front of? What’s the purpose of this marketing campaign? You know, what do you need to truly be offering? What do your clients really want from you know? Those questions are questions that every single law firm needs to answer. You will have different answers. But from those, you get a much better picture of where to be, of how to be, of when to be, of what to say, of, you know how to physically target it, but also how to change the messaging. You know, if you are very industry, if you’re a b2b attorney who’s very industry specific. So you’re working with tech startups, they’re obviously looking for a different jargon and a different tone from you than if you’re that business attorney working with, you know, fortune 500 companies that have been around for 150 years.
You know, they don’t need that same concept of the startup stuff. They don’t need you to be on the cutting edge of technology, they don’t expect you to have some of those things. And so everybody will have those different answers. But answering those, like very similar core questions, really makes every other decision a lot easier. You know, should I do this marketing? Should I hire this person? What should I charge? Like you think about it from the client perspective, from an ideal client avatar perspective, and those answers become easier. Not easy, but easier.
Davina: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you think, so you got this group together, and you kind of they were your guinea pigs, right? Starting, you starting out. So let’s go with it, let’s see what we can do. And you and you discovered that there’s enough, there’s enough need there and enough commonality there, that you were able to help them, you know, avoid some of the mistakes you made. So before we get into maybe some solutions for people, talk to me about some of the mistakes that you see, that maybe you felt you made, or that you see other attorneys, law firm owners making, when they’re thinking when they’re looking at their marketing.
Jordan: So the the biggest one for me now, in retrospect, for me, but also going forward, is that sales process. Because leads have no value. You can sit here and say, statistically, I close x percentage of these leads, statistically, they pay me x average, or they resolve for x or whatever. But like until they actually become a hired client, they’re worth nothing, or maybe even less, because you’ve paid for them, and you’re spending time on them, and they don’t convert. And so that becomes that sales process. And so like, we work with a lot of our firms to work backwards from that standpoint, you know, putting together groups and emails and whatnot in their CRM or incorporating stuff from the sales process through their coach, so that it’s consistent.
Because if you aren’t following up with leads the same way, you’re going to close them at a different rate. You know, you hear about attorneys all the time with that ebb and flow. So month one, you don’t sign anybody up, you’ve got no work. So month two, you call everybody back a million times, you sign up five cases. Month three, now you’re busy, you don’t call people back. And then you can’t really tell if the marketing is helpful or not, because you’ve completely changed the scientific method. You’ve included, changed the variable of your follow up. And so by having that in place, then you can work backwards.
So then you can see, you know, what platforms give you the best ROI. What specific ads give you the best ROI. What referral sources give you the best cases. Whatever it’s going to be, you just have to have that consistency on the sales process, to really know what you are doing to get people to that sales process, to that intake, to that consultation, to that strategy session, whatever you want to call it. Otherwise, you’re just kind of flying blind.
Davina: Yeah, I love it. I love what you’re talking about, in terms of looking at, you can’t find any of this out without looking at your data and your metrics and like, digging into what’s really happening. And one of the things that I’ve seen a lot of clients do, and I’m sure you probably have, too, is this idea of we think we know. Like we’re you know, we say well, you know, here’s here’s what’s happened. Of course, being attorneys, we say with such certainty. Here’s what’s happening is that I’m not getting good leads. Or, here’s what’s happening.
I’m and then when you start really asking questions, detailed questions about well, how do you know that? Like, what is your how many leads have you had? What’s your conversion rate? What did you know? Where are these leads coming from? I don’t really know, you know, and it and it can be a very slippery thing to figure out where your leads are coming from because we have such, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing your job, right, you’ve got a lot of messaging going out and a lot of different channels. And sometimes the way people function today, they may see your, you know, follow you for a while on Instagram and then see something on Facebook and then hear you on a podcast.
And then one day they call your office and they hire you because they have a need. And you’re like how did you find out about us? Oh, the internet. We have something there that’s not very reliable, which is the eyewitness right? You know, we’re how did you find out about us? Well, you know, the Internet, and I googled and maybe they googled you because somebody personally mentioned you or something. So you know, doing as much as you can by tracking data is probably a huge component of what you guys are doing, and helping your clients get clear on that. And am I, is that correct?
Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. And the cool part is, so obviously, look, tech technology advances faster and faster all the time. But I think that we have over the last five years or so had a lot of technological advancements in the tracking of technology. And it’s a weird kind of meta situation. But you know, you’ve got UTM codes. So you can go to Google type. If you Google UTM code, they’ll give you the generator. So it’s an extra thing at the URL. So you know, Davina Frederik dot com slash blah blah blah slash Facebook slash post on October 1, slash whatever it’ll show you like that is the specific post that they clicked on to go to the website. And then you’ve got call rail so you could put a different phone number on every single landing page.
So when they got to it, you know, they call the 407-111-1112. And you know, that came from this ad. And then you know, you’ve got the CRM, you can use different contact forms. So they filled it out on this landing page, that’s contact form, you know, AB, that’s on the 27th ad that you’re running. I mean, there’s all sorts of things you can be doing. The reality of it though is you got to look at what juice is worth the squeeze. Because you can track a billion numbers, but you may not have the time or the resources to do anything with them. So that’s a lot of what we’re doing also is like, look, best practice would be x, but realistic practice is y.
Davina: Yeah, yeah, I even as you’re going in, and you’re explaining all this codes, my eyes are glazing over. Because as, and I’m a marketer, like I think like a marketer, because that’s my career was before becoming an attorney. And I understand all that. And also, I’m not a data, like, I’m not a data person. I have to, as a business person, there are certain data that’s important to me, and then all else I want somebody else to handle for me, right. And that’s what I tell my clients. I’m like, you really don’t want to know, like, you just want to know, you want to know what you need to know, to make good financial decisions in your business. And so that, you know that when you’re investing money in what you need to be investing the money in, you know, to keep the machine going, and to build the machine and make the machine bigger, right.
So that’s why you hire people to help you with that. As you know, you, you went out, you got a passion for it, and went out and learned it and started a whole other business around it. But for a lot of people, they’re wanting to grow a successful law firm. And that’s what they want, you know. And so that’s where you, that’s where you start hiring people to help you do those things. And one of the no brainer hiring decisions is to find somebody who can help you with marketing. But I think the key is, like we talked about earlier, you have to know what that means.
Jordan: Absolutely. Yep.
Davina: So you guys, tell me about LegalEase and what you, the services you provide, because there are a number of them, but they all sort of come together in a cohesive way. And tell me, tell me why that is.
Jordan: Thank you, I’m honored that it is that you view it that way, because that’s the entire goal. So I always tell people, we’re more a fractional CMO for law firms than we are a marketing vendor. There are a million different vendors out there that will sell you that one thing, and it’ll work or it’ll work for somebody. So what we have done is we’ve taken that one step back into that fractional CMO role. So that’s really coming together and taking, you know, taking the business plan you’ve got from your coach, or diving into that ideal client, and really coming up with an overarching plan that makes sense for you to grow your firm that is custom made for you.
And so then we can see where can we add some things that are basically doubling down on what’s already working. So one of the biggest things I talked about now with people over the last especially, you know, 18 months, or whatever we are through, 20th month through COVID is social media. And I get all the time these firms look, we’re 100% referral base, we’ve always been 100% referral base, I’m not learning social media. I’m like, no, you don’t understand. What I’m telling you is we’re going to gear your social media to your referral sources. So when you can’t have lunch with people, when your state is locked down for whatever, from COVID.
And when you know, you can, you can’t get in touch with 50 people who are on vacation for all of July now that COVID is over or whatever it is, you can connect with them in that manner. And so we’re taking these things that seem to be totally different. But really creating that plan of where they go and impact what you’ve already been doing. And some of the stuff we execute. Some of the stuff we don’t. You know, we have people that are working with a bunch of other companies, and we’re just kind of overseeing everything. And making sure the great blog post written by this company becomes a great Canva social media posts from this company, and just tying everything together with that tracking.
And that’s totally fine. You know, my thing is, I want attorneys to be happy. I’ve seen way too many have their life ended early through their choice or other decisions they made because of being miserable somewhere. You know, obviously, we’ve got a huge mental health issue in our profession. And I don’t think we do ourselves any service by not having law school teach you any semblance of business, because I think that financial pressure exacerbates whatever underlying issue that people have. So I’m hoping to fight against that a little bit by free advice and good help and great clients and doing great work for them and whatnot.
Davina: Right. I totally agree with you. And it’s something that whether you’re working for a law firm, or you started your own law firm, and you’re growing it. If you are working for a law firm and you’re wanting to move up the ladder in the partnership level, you’re still you still need skills, in how to make money and how to get clients. You know, when you when you’re starting out as an associate, you know, the strategies for larger law firms is you know, we have associates who are learning how to be great attorneys. And then when you get to a certain point, you know, that’s when you start really focused on growing a practice. But you know, I work with a lot of business owners as you do.
And it’s one thing that’s kind of been my mission from the beginning with this is that it, I started my own practice when I was in my early 40s. When I graduated. It was a second career for me. I had a lot of business knowledge and skill, and it was a challenge and it was stressful, and it affected me negatively and affected my marriage negatively. And because it was just I had so much anxiety all the time about all that I didn’t know. And so I’ve kind of been on a mission to help, in my case, women law, women law firm owners, although I have had male clients before, I’ve just kind of kept niching down my brand.
And working with women law firm owners to help them, you know, step through the fear and realize that this is doable. If you go to law school, and if you could pass the bar and you can become an attorney, you can figure out the business skills that you need to have a successful wealth generating business. And what I hate seeing is people go for decades, not making any money in their business, because they don’t know and they keep giving away services, because they feel sorry for people. And they’re not taking, they’re not putting their own oxygen mask on first. You know, and it’s so frustrating, because there there are what is so wonderful about social media, there’s so many resources out there now.
You know, when I, when I started my practice, if Facebook was just a baby, and Instagram wasn’t even a thing, right. And now there’s such an availability of, and I love social media for the ability to connect, without having to leave your desk and drive an hour and eat some rubber chicken lunch, and come back. You know, like, and you’re sweaty, and you’re if we’re both in Florida, so you’re sweaty anytime you go outside, especially in a suit. And so, you know, I think it’s terrific because you can network at any time. You can get into the networking meeting at any time just by logging on to whatever your preferred social media account is where your, your best referers and your prospective clients hang out, right? How cool is that?
Jordan: I love that mindset on it. And even, and even for the lawyers that don’t run their own firm. Look, there are entire practice areas that didn’t exist for 14, 15 months, you know, we couldn’t do evictions. If you were at a firm, and you were just milling through that work, you probably didn’t have a job at some point during COVID. But if you were at a firm like that, and you were generating you know, several $100,000 a year in business in evictions that don’t exist right now, firms probably went out of their way to keep you because knowing once the evictions happened, you get back to generating, you know that business to cover your salary.
Like it gives you leverage, whether it’s your firm or not. Having those cases, having those connections, having that rainmaking ability, having whatever you want to call it, it just it will allow you I think to be happier, because you’ve got more power, control, leverage, whatever we want to call it.
Davina: One of the one of the things you were saying earlier is you’re dealing with attorneys who say I don’t, I don’t want to be on social media. One of the mistakes I think a lot of people make is they think to themselves, it has to be me. Like I’ve got to go do the dancing, the TikTok dancing, or I’ve got to be on Instagram or whatever. I’ve got, listen, I have an Instagram, Social Media Manager. And she’s just like, really, Davina, you need reels, reels, you need to do reels, and I get it. I’m also like, yeah, and I need to get to a point where it’s not me doing the reels, right? So there are other ways
Jordan: You got to do the reels. You’re totally right.
Davina: To get your message out there and get get people, make people aware of the services that you provide that you know, people out there need. And it doesn’t have to be a you thing, like we often think it is. When we think of social media and think well, I’m gonna have some Facebook all the time, and blah, blah, blah. And if that’s your thing, and you would like to do it, then yes, but if it’s not your thing, there’s plenty of other ways to get business without having to go do this thing on social media that you don’t like. And there’s, and there’s ways that other people can run social media. And there’s ways that you can start a podcast or you can, you know, give webinars with people. And I mean, there’s all kinds of things that you could do, where we use technology. And it’s not what some people may envision, right?
Jordan: Yes. And look, here’s the thing. We only have so much time there’s everybody has the same 24 hours of the day. I am totally on vision prospecting, like that is my thing, is pushing the companies forward and doing the prospecting through content creation and whatnot. So what do I lose out on? I lose out on actually being involved in fulfillment. Whether that’s the marketing side, whether that’s the law firm side.
So what I never understood is when you have these people that are in the content creation, but also want to position themselves as the best person to do the work, when the client is not going to have that experience. So if you look at a lot of my social media and my company’s social medias, we’re doing employee spotlights. We’re doing testimonials that highlight people that aren’t me. So when somebody calls our firm because they know me, and we don’t ever talk because I don’t do the call. I don’t do the work. I don’t do the negotiation stuff. They know that they’re going to great people. Why?
Because that engagement with me, that engagement with us, has talked about how amazing Andrea and Lianet and Luis and Kim and Thane and Heather and everybody else are through specific client testimonials. Through specific clients saying how wonderful they were to work with. Through having you know, seeing them on some of the videos and some of the content and whatnot. And also, then it saves me time from creating a lot of those videos. So there’s a win win win in theory.
Davina: Let’s dive into that a little bit more, because one of the things I really want to talk about is this idea that as attorneys, we have to be the one to sign up clients. And this is a big like, I introduced this to my clients, as a little bit of thought work. You know, and what every time I do, there’s always this sort of, like, I don’t even understand. Like, how can anybody but an attorney do a consultation? I don’t understand like, you know, their head starts sort of spinning around and off their neck, because it’s mind blowing for a lot of attorneys. Because for the longest time, and that of the whole tradition of the law firm was is that, you know, you you made an appointment, you talk to a lawyer, and the lawyer signs you up.
But we’re seeing that shift for a lot of people I know, it’s something I’m advocating for my clients, is like, you need to be moving out of those initial consultations and those, because they’re really sales conversations. And we need salespeople, we need people who are intake people who are getting people signed up to work, to have the client retain the firm, then they meet the attorneys who are doing the work, right. So tell me about that for you, because I know you have that in your business, and what does that look like? So
Jordan: So, here’s, here’s what that problem really boils down to. It boils down to the attorney or the law firm as a whole, not knowing their true positioning statement. Not knowing really what sets them apart, not really knowing what their sales pitch is. Because without that information, you can’t really explain it to somebody else. You know, the attorney can sit in there and pull out of their butt the 1000 cases they’ve handled in the recent rules and whatnot. But they’ve got no system in place to get somebody else to understand that. That being said, I do all the sales calls currently for LegalEase.
I actually close fewer of them, a lower percentage than our salesperson. But our problem was, they were so effective at signing up people that weren’t a good fit for us yet, in in both directions. And so it was a lot easier for me to come in and be like, hey, don’t hire us now. Because you don’t have the fulfillment lined up. Like, go get a coach, go do this, instead, go follow this, go go grow to this amount, and then come back to us, for us to take your marketing there. Because we’ll be you know, it’ll be too successful and you, or won’t be successful. Because you can’t handle the extra cases. But from the law firm perspective
Davina: Then you’ll be freaking out about malpractice, because you’re getting all these cases that you can’t handle. Stuff’s falling through the cracks and all that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Timing of things is important. Definitely. And it’s not something that people should start with. I also think what you said too, like you have to, you have to really master and understand your sales process yourself and really understand what it means to, and get over the idea of like you’re doing sales when you’re doing consultation. When you’re meeting clients, as an attorney, your goal there is not to just give them a legal education in their initial consultation with you, which is what a lot of attorneys do.
We jump right in and start solving the problem before they’ve even retained the firm. And instead, there should be a process in place that that helped makes them feel heard, and helps them identify, helps you identify whether or not that’s a good case. And I always tell my clients like the the objective of your prospective client and your objective are different in that conversation. Right? Have you found that to be the case? You’ve taken back the sales conversations at LegalEase but you’ve taken them back for a very specific reason. Is it something that you plan on keeping though? I would imagine it’s something that you’re planning on eventually turning?
Jordan: Yeah, no, no, the days of that are numbered, because it is there are too many of those sales conversations, which is a great issue to have. But yeah, but along lines of what you’re talking about with that, you know, having those discussions. The crazy part about this, and I did not intend this to work this when we did it at the firm, you actually can turn everybody at your firm into a salesperson unknowingly by having these sorts of conversations. So we do every Monday, actually both companies, but for the law firm for this purpose, we do a modified EOS level 10 meeting. And so as part of our issue identification, I’ve carved out 20 minutes of that time for us to have like group conversations.
And so you know, the first week of the month, we go over all the monthly numbers so everybody knows we’re totally open with everybody on all of that stuff. And then the other weeks we’ve got different discussions. So every like four to six weeks we do a why should people hire Jordan Law over any other firm conversation with everybody. I don’t care if you are our brand newest intern. I don’t care if you’re reception, I don’t care if you’re in intake. I don’t care if you’re one of the attorneys. I don’t care, whatever it is along those lines, you’re in this conversation talking about it.
And we change up some of the questions. So like, I’ll ask people, you know, I’ll ask the paralegals. What are you hearing from clients in a positive manner? Like what are they telling you they appreciate. Like, oh, you know, when I get on with Andrea our receptionist, she’s able to get me into exactly to the right person, I’m not going through a phone tree through whatever. Great. So that’s something that clearly means something to people, whether they’re potential clients or new clients. And we’ll walk through this thing over and over again.
So since we started this, relatively consistently, every four to six weeks, I have seen our referrals from our employees go up, because they have friends and family members who now like they are feeling more comfortable explaining about our firm and what they do, and hearing the feedback and whatnot. Also backed by the fact you know, we’re tagging them on social media with the great reviews that share them as well. And it’s been really funny to see people that are truly not in a sales role, be able to be better at it, because they actually understand why people would want to work at our, would want to hire our firm.
Davina: I love that. I have a friend who’s a who trains organizations to great selling organizations, so that everybody in your business is selling for you. And they understand. And what I love about what you’re doing is, oftentimes, attorneys will, they don’t want the referrals that their staff are bringing, because they’re not they don’t, they’re not a good fit for what they’re doing. And it’s because they haven’t trained people to be able to talk about what they do in a way and and get it clear in their, in everybody’s mind on the team.
Exactly what makes an ideal client for our firm, and what’s a less than ideal client for our firm. Because I think that everybody in the organization has to know the answer to that question. Because if not, that’s where you’re going to get people who aren’t a good fit coming. And then they’re gonna say, but yeah, but they’re my, you know, brother in law, sisters, aunts, cousin, you know, whatever, right. And so we need to, and then we’re giving away free services to a family member of, you know, and it just becomes a mess. That’ll ruin your business, it’ll ruin your business. So I love what you’ve done with that.
Jordan: Thank you. And and again, it was completely unintentionally. It started out as like, hey, let’s get this information over to intake, let’s get this information over to, you know, anybody doing the consultations, and then that ended up being a ancillary benefit of it, which has been very cool to see.
Davina: Right, right. So let’s talk, about we’ve talked a little bit about, I want to make sure that people understand too what the services you provide, because it’s not just social media, right? We’ve talked a lot about social media. But do people still need a website?
Jordan: Yes. Probably more than ever, or at least, you need some way for people to hire you virtually, digitally, whatever. I think that’s probably a website. I think at this point, it’s weird if some, but I’ll leave it out there for that one random attorney in some town that doesn’t have one that still does really well.
Davina: I still advocate websites, because I think they are your, they’re your virtual office that’s open 24, 7, 365. They don’t take holidays, they don’t call in sick. They’re there. And there’s a button that they can click and get book, a call book, you know, like, reach out to you. There’s a phone number that people can find. And so you guys are you’re, you’re doing, you’re helping clients with that. I call that like, this is your virtual office, and everything else is our garden path sort of back to it. You know, you’re and when you look at your website, this is you’re coming into your lobby, and you’re seeing, you know, you’re that’s your introduction to me, especially since so many of us don’t have physical offices anymore anyway. Right?
So this is a place where people can see, get a sense for your brand, who you are, what it’s like to work with you. I know, in your, on your LegalEase website you have, I can tell that you’re somebody who has a sense of humor about things, because of the way the copy is written. You’re man who lives in shorts and flip flops. Yeah, I can see that looking at everything you’re doing. And I’m going okay, so he’s got a different sort of attitude about what it means, what it means to practice law.
You know, so you’re not stuffy person, not there’s anything wrong with people who are more buttoned down, because sometimes their clientele connects with a more buttoned down look, you know. So that means at a seriousness, you know, there might be some people who practice in estate planning, and they’re dealing with older clients, and to them their expect their expectation of what an attorney looks like, maybe different than clients you would work with, right? Tell me about that. Tell me how that came about?
Jordan: Sure, I mean, look, the really the end result of that is I’ve had people message to me like, I don’t think you take this seriously, and I would never hire you. And I’m like, awesome, I really appreciate that feedback. Thank you so much. And a lot of times if they’re doing it, if they’re not doing it in a jerky way, like I’ve had people do it in a very like you’re an a hole way. I’ve had people do it in a very like, this is my feedback for you. For those people. I’m like, hey, look, here’s five names of amazing other attorneys or amazing other marketing companies that take it super seriously. Try them out. Like that’s the better fit for you.
I’m totally cool with that. Go have fun. I’d rather you find somebody who’s good then struggle around and hate the marketing profession. Hate the legal profession whatever. Um for me a lot of it was like this is the best question that anybody can ask, and every time I have a guest on my show who says something along the lines I asked a very similar question. Because like, it’s me. Like that’s the end result of it and I think all of us are looking for this how do you come up with a brand. How do you come up with it with a shtick.
How do you come up with a thing. But like really, it just has to be you and I really looked at like what makes me happy. Wearing a suit does not make me happy. We talked about Florida weather and whatnot. And it’s gonna upset people and I’m totally fine with that and um you know, I’m I’m in my 30s but I let as many gray hairs come in as possible so I look a little bit older. So the shorts and a T shirt at a at a meeting is helpful. And then like we’ve got the Citrus Club in downtown Orlando that’s a great networking opportunity. You have to wear pants so I didn’t join. Like flat out that was my reasoning and not obviously not that I want to show up in underwear, but like I want to show up in shorts.
And so I found people that are cool with it and there are plenty that aren’t. And there are plenty of potential referral sources that we don’t have a good meeting, and we go our separate ways. And there are a ton of potential clients that we don’t have a good meeting and we go our separate ways. And that’s totally fine because the referral sources that I do have and the clients that I do have I genuinely like. We genuinely enjoy hanging out and playing golf and going to lunch and go to magic games and whatever it is. We genuinely love supporting our client’s businesses in you know local, they’re a local restaurant well guess what they’re going to cater our next office meeting. Yada yada yada because we found people that like us.
We found people that we like, and we’ve really committed to that brand of you know being approachable and being nice and having a sense of humor about things as much as we can. You know there have been plenty of conversations my wife has had with people that just lost a kid to a car accident, or you know something along those lines. And obviously like a we’re not starting that conversation out with a joke. But when they go to the website they’re gonna see our family. They’re gonna see you know, all of us hanging out.
We did last week was national comic book day so we had everyone in the office dress up. We got some funny stuff and posted it and did it bother people? I don’t know. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, but like there are definitely people that engaged with it and thought it were so cool that we’re sharing you know, their childhood memories of comics or their favorite movie Marvel movies over the last 10 years. And those are the people we want to work with.
Davina: I agree with you. I mean i think it’s we talk about ideal clients oftentimes people think in terms of money. Can they pay me? Are they, do they meet this demographic? But sometimes I know clients, well not sometimes I know clients really are are they going to be a good fit to work together. Like I have something called a right fit call and the purpose of that call is not just so people can you know make the decision to hire me. It’s me making decision whether or not I want to take them on as a client. Because I know that I have had enough experience now to know that there it’s not they’re not going to be happy later down the line and neither will I if they’re not a right fit to work together and work with my company.
So I believe that I once had a coach say something along the lines of like if you’re not repelling people, you’re not attractive you’re not highly attractive enough. And I want to be highly attractive in my attracting those right fit clients so I it makes me happy when I find that there are people I’m repelling right because then you know okay well my messages hitting out there. So for me it often will come up in you know like sharing my point of view sometimes in the political or current events or things that are going on and people go oh my gosh, you’re like you’re talking about politics. I’m like yeah but but I’m comfortable with that because you need to know you’re gonna be working with right.
If you’re if you’re working with my company, if you’re working with my team, it’s gonna be you know, you need to know who that is. Because it’s not, it’s and I need to know who you are. So I think it’s really important and it and there’s plenty there are plenty of people out there who will be highly attracted to your style and your way of working and your business brand and your message. And there are going to be other people who may go oh I really like you know I really like what he’s saying he does in this company but you know, like I just I just think he’s not taking it seriously enough. And then you okay, well that’s not then you might be okay to work together. But then again, if it bothers them deep down that much, then they can hire somebody who’s you know, wearing a tie.
Jordan: It’s funny like the way that you phrase it about that right fit call. I love it in both directions. Because you’re going to get some people that are like, oh, that sounds like the ultimate luxury of business. But then you’re getting those other people like no that sounds like the core necessity of business to truly weed out the wrong people and focus on the right ones and do everything or I shouldn’t say do everything, gear everything towards engaging with those great people.
Davina: Yeah, because, you’re because you, you know you don’t want people those are the people if they’re not a right fit. Those are the people who down the line, you’re going to be having heartburn over and staying up. Worried about not able to make them happy. And those are gonna be the people who are worried they’re gonna go write you a bad review, and all that stuff. And it’s and I’ve just found as I’ve learned that the hard way, but it’s not something that I don’t think it’s something we come right out of the gate feeling comfortable doing.
You know, when you’re first starting out, you may feel like, oh my gosh, I just need to like, get experience and get a lot of clients and do a lot of it. But the longer you’rein business, the more you’re like, man, that just ain’t worth it. Like there’s no amount of money, right. And for them, I don’t want them to have a bad experience, either. You know, I think there are some people who are better suited to work with different coaches than me.
Jordan: I love that.
Davina: And, you know, and I don’t want them to have that experience, because this is who I am. And that’s not going to change and, and when I’m hiring people on my team, I always go back to my core values. And if you’re, if you’re not aligning with my core values, then it’s it’s okay. It’s nothing wrong with you, you can have your you know, but there are certain things that drive me nuts. Like, if I’m a proactive communicator, so I can be very flexible. As long as people are communicating with me proactively, that there’s an issue.
But when you’re coming up past a deadline, and oh, I didn’t get that done. My head is gonna explode. So I know this about myself. It’s like, know thyself, right? As a business owner. And it’s the same with your, your team, attracting your team, as well as attracting clients. The more you know who you are and what you want, right? Have you found that in growing your your team?
Jordan: Absolutely. And to be fair, like I wore a suit every day for like two and a half years when I first opened my firm, and I was miserable.
Davina: I’ve seen you in a suit.
Jordan: Not recently. I did a, I actually did one hearing virtually during COVID for my wife, she had a we had a emergency with something in her family. And literally we called the judge we’re like, hey, it’s virtual. Do you mind if he does it from the office in a polo shirt? And the judge is like, yeah, sure, no problem. And I won the hearing. And it was awesome. And that’s been like, I can’t even tell you the last time I was actually physically in court.
Davina: Yeah, yeah. My husband has been was a computer technology consultant for law firms for many, many years. And when he first was, you know, had his business he was wearing, you know, dressing nice, the tie, and everything because he’s going to work with attorneys. His dad was an attorney, you know, and all this. And he says, but like, it’s hot in, in, in the south, and I’m crawling around on floors, plugging in things, and he’s ruining clothes. Forget this. So he’s switched to jeans. this way before Mark Zuckerberg came out with, you know, jeans and a T shirt, and that CEO, look.
He and people were appalled by this. And he’s like, I’m just not doing it. Like it’s I, it doesn’t even make sense. And he says, if you don’t want to work with me, because I’m not wearing a tie, like you’re hiring me, for what’s between my ears. For my brains and the way I think, and you know, the way I can solve your problem, and if I can’t, and it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, if I’m solving your problem, right? I’m not, you know, obviously not offending, right. So like you were not wearing, he’s not wearing some of the T shirts that he likes to wear now that he’s older and not in that business anymore.
But you know, I do think it’s important to embrace who you are, know who you are. And that goes way beyond wardrobe, even. You know, like you’re talking about in your brand. So before we wrap up here because we need to, even though I could probably talk continue talking to you for another hour, since we have so much in common. Tell me what is the idea, the one lesson you’ve learned, or the one idea that you want to share with law firm owners out there with regard to growing their law firm business.
Jordan: Know your ideal client, cold, inside and out. And when you get those ideal clients, buy them lunch, have them come to the office, ask them as many questions as they will allow you to, and really figure out what you’re missing. You know, what is that extra thing that you can add? What is that extra? What is that phrasing you could change that would make more sense to them. Like really build that relationship as best as possible and execute on those suggestions.
Davina: Wonderful. Great advice. I love it. Thanks so much for being here today. And I’m glad that we finally got a chance to chat and talk and I’ve already, my brain is poppin with people that I’m going to send your way. So tell us how we can connect with you and find you.
Jordan: Honestly. So for law firm owners, the best place to connect with me is probably on LinkedIn. There are only two Jordan Ostroff’s in the world that I’m aware of. There is I guess, a female Jordan Ostroff, d y n. But d a n and it’s just me and a sales guy in Boston. So I’m the lawyer with the beard and go ahead and connect with me there. I’m really trying to give people free info to help them get to like that half a million dollar a year in generation because that’s where you’ve got the money to invest in good marketing.
That’s where you got the stuff to really spend on bringing in some outside experts who are awesome. Before that I find firms are kind of cutting off their nose to spite their face sometimes by committing money they don’t have. That’s the best one. Otherwise legaleasemarketing.com or Jordanlawfl.com for the PI stuff in Florida.
Davina: Wonderful. Thank you. And I am going to jump in and agree with you on that. I think that’s an important point that we didn’t get to talk about was, at what point are you ready to hire a hire a marketing company to help you or other services like that to help you. And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. One of the things that I start out with my clients. I wrote about in my book is that if you haven’t yet set up kind of a basic, foundational organic platform, and just using the organic you know, using organic reach and you and your own marketing skills first.
And you’re not ready to invest in paid, you know, advertising and things like that. So I think it’s really important to get the foundational part first. And doing that work that you’ve talked about, which is really getting clear on your who your ideal client is the best place to start and really digging into deep what that means, right?
Jordan: And a ton of, and everything I think that we’re talking about here is those core things. It’s a little bit of time and elbow grease. You know nothing in here do you have to spend a bunch of money on. Ideally long term, bring in an awesome coach, bring in a marketing company to get a you know, second set of eyes, third set of eyes on it, but today, tomorrow, right now, you can do all of this for free.
Davina: Yeah. Wonderful, great advice. Thanks so much, Jordan. I’ve really enjoyed it, and appreciate you being here.
Jordan: Thank you so much for having me.
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