In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Adriana Linares discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"Essentially, for $150 a month per head, your firm can run efficiently, securely, and mobile. I could not have given that number 10 years ago." — Adriana Linares
Connect with Adriana Linares:
Website: LawTechPartners.com
Show: New Solo Podcast - legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/new-solo/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adrianalinares/ & linkedin.com/company/lawtech-partners/
Twitter: twitter.com/AdrianaL & twitter.com/LawTechPartners
Facebook: facebook.com/lawtech
Instagram: instagram.com/LawTechPartners/
LiteraTV: lawtechpartners.com/category/podcasts/literatv/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Adriana Linares 0:00
Essentially for $150 a month per head, your firm can run efficiently, securely and mobile. And I could not have given that number 10 years ago, when I started doing this, it was off, you're gonna have to have a server that's going to be a minimum of $8,000. You got to keep it maintained. And it's just it was very expensive.
Narrator 0:26
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin!
Steve Fretzin 0:48
Hello, everybody. Welcome to be that lawyer. I'm Steve Fretzin and hope you're having a great day during this crazy Corona time. And I just wanted to let everybody know that, you know, look, it's business as usual. It's time to build business. It's time to grow your your law practice. And I've got three great books on Amazon that can help you with that sales free selling the attorneys networking handbook and the ambitious attorney. So if you're interested in learning a little bit more about business development, check out one of those three books, and also my YouTube channel at Steve fretts. And enough about that today, I've got a great guest in Adriana Linares, and she's a legal technology consultant president of law tech partners. Welcome to the show.
Adriana Linares 1:32
Well, thanks for having me. It's fun to be the interview he versus the interview or
Steve Fretzin 1:37
Yeah, your How long you been doing your podcast.
Adriana Linares 1:40
It's been about six or seven years, and it's called New solo. So if you don't mind the shameless plug.
Steve Fretzin 1:45
Plug away, yes.
Adriana Linares 1:46
I love having lawyers listen to it in the name implies that it might be geared towards new solo practitioners. But the truth is I have a really a varied topics and all kinds of guests on there. So any lawyer in any practice for any number of years can always pick up a tip or two.
Steve Fretzin 2:02
Yeah, well, I think we're on the same page. We're looking to help people and try to make sure that they're they're just making less mistakes and making more money and organizing the way to get things done. Right. Yeah. So before we get into your more into your bio, because I want to hear a little about your background, just as is a fun way to start. Is there something kind of fun and interesting about you that maybe even your listeners don't know?
Adriana Linares 2:26
Yeah, I thought about that, when you were sort of softball needs some questions. And I thought, you know, I'm pretty nerdy and pretty techie. I don't have a lot of hobbies. And I tend to spend a lot of time in front of my computer. But because of COVID, I actually developed a new hobby them super happy with and I've super got into houseplants. So I've become a amateur houseplant collector.
Steve Fretzin 2:50
Yes, behind your very, very cool.
Adriana Linares 2:52
And it's really a nice hobby. And being at home a little bit more with a little less travel has enabled that to the point where it might be getting a little over the top.
Steve Fretzin 3:03
So okay, well listen, that's all right, we got to go a little crazy. During these crazy times. Is there a plant that you would say is your favorite plant out of all the plants?
Adriana Linares 3:10
Yes, I love any of the prayer plants. And those are plants that they're interesting to compare plants, because during the day, their leaves are exposed, and I guess to get fun, and then at night, it's very creepy. Actually, they fold up and become really straight. So there's about one or four of those. right the first time I noticed, I did not realize I bought a PR plan. I woke up in the middle, I had to go to the bathroom. And I was like, whoa, wait.
Steve Fretzin 3:38
It's a sure it's not a zombie plant. Right.
Adriana Linares 3:41
So they're really neat, you know, truly living living being.
Steve Fretzin 3:44
Well, very cool. Very cool. So um, I guess I'd like to hear more about your background and what got you into technology and working with lawyers.
Adriana Linares 3:53
So you know, it wasn't necessarily something I chose to do. I'm not a lawyer. I was a geography major in college. And then I got a master's degree in corporate communications. And what happened is there was a job opening in the Orlando Sentinel, a law firm looking for a computer trainer, and I was 26 years old. I said, Well, I don't know anything about law, but I know how to use a computer. I mean, it was 20 something years ago. And I got interviewed and the gentleman who's still my friend today that basically gave me my big break into the business said, well, kid, you don't know much. But you can probably learned and I think my lawyers are gonna like you. So here's a job. And that was it. I started working on what a Florida's largest law firms in 1998. And I spent eight years at that firm plus two years at another large law firm. And then I went out on my own because big law firms are, they're difficult to work inside because it's hard to start a project and ever actually see it finish and there's a lot of late hours and there's a lot of pressure, but I realized that I truly enjoyed working with it. Lawyers, I liked the profession of law. And I knew that I could help them with all the technology and practice specific things that I had learned working at big firms. So in 2004, I started law tech partners. And now I'm an independent consultant and trainer. Most of my clients are solos and small firms and midsize firms. And then occasionally, large law firms hire me as an extra trainer or when they're doing big rollouts to help their internal team with training and floor support. So the way I help lawyers is right now most of my work for the past, I'd say seven or eight years has been helping lawyers and law firms move from traditional practice management programs, like Amicus pro law, PC law, to cloud based services, and helping them just run mobile efficient, secure practices. So I do a lot of training. And then I do a lot of implementing of some products and tools and services that I really like.
Steve Fretzin 5:54
So I would imagine that the current environment is sort of a hot time for you because everybody's moving mobile, and everybody's looking cloud and trying to get organized and efficient.
Adriana Linares 6:04
It was I'll tell you, March and April, and may, we're just an absolute zoo, but most of my existing clients, because that's what they had hired me for, we're in pretty good shape, where the influx of trouble came from, or the lawyers that I helped through my work with the San Diego County Bar. So I am outsourced by that Bar Association as their technology and practice management advisor where they can make an appointment and meet with me and they they come with all kinds of questions. How do I update my WordPress site? How do I go paperless? I just got Microsoft Teams, the courts are using teams, how do we use it? Oh, I need to figure out how to use zoom. So those attorneys that came out me sort of random, were really hard. And I had three firms that said, our servers in the office and now we're all working from home, what do we do? So those were really challenging and fun. I you know, admittedly, for me, it was it was crazy. But it was fun. Because we got them, I got the move really quickly. And I'd like to say that I'm very proud of the profession for how quickly it pivoted to a work from home environment. I think all the time about what this would have been like 10 years ago, when we didn't have as many affordable cloud based programs. And if the adoption process hadn't started, but you know, back then we would have been in a lot of trouble. today. Thankfully, for most lawyers and law firms, these tools and services are affordable, they're easy to implement. They're easy to train on, they're easy to figure out. So I feel like the profession made a huge turn in a very short time period.
Steve Fretzin 7:47
Yeah, it looks like most of the lawyers I work with and talk to were able to very seamlessly move to home based office or, you know, move to zoom or have their files available and everything. So let me ask you this from a standpoint of technology as it relates to efficiency as a lawyer, as a law firm, what are kind of the top two or three issues that you see occurring that they would call you for that they would need your help with?
Adriana Linares 8:12
I'll tell you, the number one issue is always training. A lot of firms will buy software implement software, they don't train the staff or they don't train themselves. And a perfect example is Microsoft Word. How many secretaries paralegals and attorneys have actually ever had a formal training session in Word, very few. So they struggle, they don't know how to format properly, they get aggravated fonts don't work the way they should, or they want them to when they copy. I mean, the simplest things in Word are really challenging sometimes. And that's for that reason is somebody you know, an attorney will say to me, my secretary is very good with words. She's been using it for 20 years. Well, my answer to that is I've been driving a car for 20 years, but I couldn't fix it. If it broke, right? I need I would need training, I'd need to hire a professional. So training for sure is always the biggest problems. I walk into a lot of firms virtually now that have good technology, and they're not taking advantage of it. The second issue, I would say, is not realizing the tools and services that you're already paying for. So Adobe Acrobat is a great example. Most professional legal professionals will be paying for some professional version of a PDF manipulation tool. So not Acrobat Reader. It's free but Acrobat Pro, and then they'll go by DocuSign or hellosign. On top of that, not realizing that the ability to send documents for a signature is already inside of Adobe Acrobat, and Microsoft Office 365 is another one so many good tools and services inside of there and they don't realize they're paying for it. So I would say when it comes to technology that they already have it's training and not realizing the features and the benefits that are in it. Then the third problem is just not having technology. A lot of lawyers are still trying to run a law practice even solos. Without a practice management program. There's no excuse for that today, you can get a modern practice management program for $50. a month. Clio is my personal favorite, I install, implement and train it all the time. There's no installation, sorry, I should say install that. And for lawyers that are struggling trying to manage their bills through Excel, manage their documents, through File Explorer, emailing documents, with clients, still texting with clients, and getting too many phone calls. A lot of those things that keep attorneys up at night can really be addressed with a practice management program,
Steve Fretzin 10:41
Do the practice management programs that you work on and train on, do they also include some form of a CRM client relationship management tool, too? Because obviously, I'm in the business development space. So I'm always looking for what's the new hot add on or product there?
Adriana Linares 10:56
That's a great question. Because we haven't had in legal really good legal specific CRMs until the past couple years. So give you two things to look at Lexa kata was a standalone product that you could buy, it was geared specifically toward lawyers. And it's like a con bond style of moving a potential new client through the intake process. Let's got acquired by Clio. So now it's part of Clio. And it's called Clio grow, you can buy it separately, or you can buy it with the practice management program, which is nice, because once the potential new client goes through the intake process, the conflict check clears. Then you export them basically into the practice management program with all of the details from that intake process. So that's a nice standalone product. Or if you're already using Clio with an add on, then a very formidable competitor that has come up is called lawmattics. Lawmattics is a perfectly standalone product. But it integrates with several other practice management programs, including Clio. And it was started by Matt Spiegel, who was the founder of My Case, which is a competitor. So you know, he's got good experience and build it, he was a very successful attorney himself, and then got into software development. So those are probably the top two right now that are legal specific law, Maddox is a is like Salesforce for lawyers. And then I would say Clio grow is like, maybe what act was one. So for, I'd say, 75, 80%, of the lawyer that I talked to Clio was good, when I have a very advanced attorney, which I bet your clients are probably going to be in this category, man thematics, is something to consider.
Steve Fretzin 12:49
Yeah, I mean, that the sad reality is, is that many of them don't want to get into software, they already feel like they have enough of it. And they, so they're using an Excel or they're using some other format. And I know it's not great, but it's, you know, it's like, I don't want to have to, you know, beat somebody up too badly to get them into a software that they're just not going to use. And I think the key element is training. So, you know, for example, if they get lawmattics, that's great, or if they get that the Clio grow, but if if they're not trained on it properly, I think that's where the failure occurs.
Adriana Linares 13:21
That's right. And in this specific example, grow doesn't require a ton of training. Again, it's a little life more lightweight. Lawmattics requires time, attention, and some customization to get it to work well, but the attorneys that have gotten on it, that I've talked to just love it. I mean, they're the types of attorneys that would build their own Google AdWords campaigns, you know, build their own documents and hot dogs. So it's a little bit of a different breed. But they're both really good products.
Steve Fretzin 13:52
Yeah. And then the other issue is that I'm working with a lot of attorneys that are in law firms. And so then it's like, how did they add a software into, you know, into their, into their system when they're already kind of structured in a different way or without one?
Adriana Linares 14:07
So that's a tricky problem in law firms.
Steve Fretzin 14:10
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. So let me ask you this as a legal you know, technology strategist, what would you tell my audience of lawyers, something that's truly critical to their success as a relates to growing a law practice in leveraging technology properly,
Adriana Linares 14:27
Systems and efficiency and training back to training. So, you know, a lot of times, especially if it's a firm that started as a solo practitioner, maybe just a couple of partners that got together, a lot of processes are either in their heads or they just never been documented. So writing down systems and processes and then updating them regularly as things change is just critical. Otherwise, everyone's just spinning their wheels. And then I think the biggest from a sort of information management issue is documented Email management are just killers. And today, and I don't even mean just today for the past 10, 12, 15 years, trying to figure out how to manage emails, just it's a killer kills lawyer. So they use Outlook as a document and email management system, which is not designed to do. So my suggestion is always to look into a proper document management system and an email system to help with that efficiency of storing, organizing, searching for and retrieving documents, you'll regularly hear me say on my podcast that a lot of lawyers keep a haystack in case they ever need a needle. And that's what they do with their documents. And it's just piles and piles, I mean, digital, oftentimes, of documents that have no organizational structure, they just keep them in case we ever need it. Well, that needle becomes really hard to find if those documents and emails aren't stored in a really efficient way. So another product that I like a lot for that is called net documents. It's a very sophisticated legal specific document and email management program. So I encourage lawyers to look into the good software and write software. And then if you want, I can kind of give you a quick monetary breakdown of what I think the suites set of products are that lawyers should have.
Steve Fretzin 16:23
Sure, that'd be great. I think that's super helpful.
Adriana Linares 16:25
Yeah. So if I was starting a law firm today, which I'm not a lawyer, but of course, I help a lot of lawyers start law firms. But if it was mine, I would for sure have office 365, which should cost you eight to $12 a month per user, I would have Adobe Acrobat, DC, which is about $15 a month per user. So right there, we're only at $30 a month, then I would add on a product like Clio for practice management, it's about $50 a month. And Clio has good competitors, and they're all about $50 a month, we're still only at $80 a month per user to have three incredibly critical business operations services, then I would layer on net documents, it's about $70 a month per user, if you have a very email and document intensive practice, which I've never met a lawyer that doesn't. And right there, and then you know, maybe a couple add ons, like maybe you need QuickBooks Online, maybe you like word rape or intelligent editing, some add ons for word and stuff. So essentially, for $150 a month per head, your firm can run efficiently, securely and mobile. And I could not have given that number 10 years ago, when I started doing this, it was off, you're gonna have to have a server, that's going to be a minimum of $8,000, you got to keep it maintained. And it's just it was very expensive. Today, you can run a really nice, efficient law firm for very little dollars, get the money right back.
Steve Fretzin 17:54
Yeah, I mean, look, if you're charging, you know, 400 an hour while you've covered your costs times two and in an hour of your work. So look at it that way, isn't is is that investment, not to mention, the time savings of time is money, and you're dealing with time management through the software, then you're getting that back in spades anyway. Yeah, for sure, though, that all plays out. So let me ask you, when you're dealing with the small, the small firms in the Solo's, do they have some unique challenges that, you know, that are maybe different from some of the bigger firms that that that are out there?
Adriana Linares 18:29
Well, yes, but not in a bad way, you know, bigger law firms are, it's hard to turn that ship, though I think solos and small always have an advantage and be quickly becoming more efficient, and making those changes and implementing them. The challenges. I think the biggest challenge solos and smalls have is finding good tech support, not support for the legal specific products, because most legal specific products come with really good tech support. It's things like getting audio and video right for a lot of these zoom meetings that we're doing now. It's dealing with the virus if there happens to be one, it's dealing with a wireless network, it's getting the printer connected, it's so it's what I call break fix problems. That seems to be I mean, if I could solve a problem worldwide for solos and small that would be somehow giving them the right tech support without getting robbed or you know, without having some IT guy that comes in and says, Okay, we're gonna install virtual machines, everybody's gonna have North McAfee don't need that anymore. And just layers on a bunch of stuff that they they don't really need. So I would say that's probably as far as big and small, big law firms have built in IT support and they have built in legal trainers like I once was. solos and smalls don't tend to have that infrastructure, which is why going like through cloud based services is really helpful because less break when you Cloud baited.
Steve Fretzin 20:02
Alright, so I have a final question for you. And I'm curious to see how you're going to manage this with your with your experience and your imagination. And that is the future of technology and law. Like if you could Fast Forward five or 10 years, like what are you seeing change, or that's different than today, if you had that to put to put that out there,
Adriana Linares 20:22
what I see and I really hope for is seamless integration between products. So right now, what I love and I see a lot of is attorneys getting creative with something like Zapier where I've got a maybe I'm a G Suite user. So I've got Google Sheets, and I use Ruby receptionist, and I get a call from Ruby receptionist, and then maybe I use this app to log that call into a call log. What I am seeing more and more is just the native ability for products to talk to each other. I just watched a webinar from Adobe, it was on E signatures, and they're signing tools. And they are heavily and I didn't realize this, which is why I'm saying it is just just all this cool stuff that's happening. They talked about their heavy and direct integration with Microsoft Office products. And one of the things that they pointed out which I didn't know, I can't know everything. So I looked was if you are a team's user, you can go into teams, hit the little ellipses, search for an app, pull in Adobe Acrobat, DC, and then be able to send documents within your team. And remember, in a team, you can work with clients and external people. So right within the team, you can send documents out to be signed or through go through a signing cycle. So that's what I want to see more of things just working together and less bandaging that we have to do, because now attorneys are really jumping on things like calendly and acuity and Grammarly. And so now we've got all these disparate products everywhere, but we desperately want them to work together. And I think all these companies are working toward that they recognize that so they're either going to build in the services to the platform that they have, or they're going to make that integration better. And I just I've seen a lot of adoption from lawyers these days there, especially after COVID. I mean, we were on the way there anyway. But now it's just been accelerated. I keep calling it the technology enlightenment period.
Steve Fretzin 22:19
Okay, I think that's a good, good way to phrase it. Yeah. So the integration of all these different products working together to again, just add more efficiency to what the lawyers are trying to do. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Well, is wrapping up anything you'd like to promote? Or do you want to share the name of getting your podcast? Solo
Adriana Linares 22:39
Yeah my I have a podcast on the legal talk network. It's called New solo. And I also have a 30 minute segment on laterra tv. So the Laterra is actually a company based in Chicago, a pretty big company, they geared toward enterprise level law firms. And they have been streaming hours every day of legal specific content on YouTube. So I have a series on there that I just started a couple weeks ago called law tech Connect, where I interview lawyers and I like to say I disarm them with my wit and humor and, you know, get their pearls of wisdom and success out of them. And then my website is law tech partners calm and from there, you can find friend or follow me and I'm always looking for new clients. And I'm always looking for new guests to probably like you or Steve. So if you are a solo or small, firm practitioner that has a good story to tell, and especially if you're using technology in a creative way, reach out to me, I'd love to talk to you.
Steve Fretzin 23:35
Yeah, might be able to help you out with a couple of those too. Great.
Adriana Linares 23:38
And I'd love to talk to a lawyer that works for an in the surfing industry.
Steve Fretzin 23:42
Oh, that's interesting.
Adriana Linares 23:43
And Women. I love talking to female lawyers. And of course, you know, we all love seeing different kinds of lawyers these days. So
Steve Fretzin 23:50
Yep, yep, that's great. And there's a wide variety and it keeps stretching out. So I love it. Very cool. Well, Adriana Linares. Thank you so much for being my guest today. I think this is terrific and incredibly helpful for the lawyers that are looking to get their technology up to par. I hope so. Or under Par.
Adriana Linares 24:07
Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it. I'm always happy to have conversations like this.
Steve Fretzin 24:12
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And Hey, everybody, I just want to thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed today's show and that you're one step closer to being that lawyer someone who's confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care and be safe. Take care, everybody. See you later. Bye.
Narrator 24:29
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website Fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.