In this episode, Steve Fretzin, Colin Li, and Sam Alkoubey discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"It's super important for people to understand that as scary as it is to leave, once you make that jump, you're going to feel so confident and ambitious. That’s only going to provide more momentum for yourself to continue being more and more successful in what you're doing." — Sam Alkoubey
Connect with Colin Li:
Website: https://joinparadigm.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-li-607527b/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/practicepanther-law-practice-management-software/
Connect with Sam Alkoubey:
Website: https://www.practicepanther.com/
Email: Sam@PracticePanther.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samalkoubey/
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.
Sam Alkoubey 0:00
The biggest thing while a lot of people understand it, and they branch off and they take that jump, there are a lot of people who are just, it's scary. There's something to be afraid of from time to time when you're doing that, whether it's you know, leaving on your own and doing everything on your own. But I've seen it so many times where people do it, they jump aboard, they get on their own, they start working, and they come back to us and they thank us. You know, the best compliments I've heard are things like this has been the backbone of my business.
Narrator 0:30
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, we'll 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 0:53
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin. As the announcer just mentioned, I hope you're having a wonderful day. You know, as you guys know, the show is constantly trying to provide information, guidance, advice on how to be that lawyer, someone who's confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum, we have to take notes, you have to pay attention. And hopefully this show is offering you that type of guidance and advice and help. And today should be no different. I've got two terrific guests today. I've got Colin Li. And I've got Sam Alkoubey, who's both with Practice Panther and I'm going to have them introduce themselves and give a better introduction to my terrible job doing it. So Collin, you want to start?
Colin Li 1:33
Yeah, sounds great. Great to be on the show, Steve. So my name is Collin Li. I am the CFO and chief Revenue Officer at paradigm which is a family and suite of practice management solutions. And one of our one our top products is practice Panther, which is a legal practice management software that and we work with 10's of 1000's of attorneys every day to really automate their practices and help them really build out their solution. And I'm here with Sam, you want to do an intro?
Sam Alkoubey 2:03
Yeah, definitely. First of all, Steve, great to be here. Super excited. Love the show big fans over here. My name is Sam Alkoubey. I'm the head of sales at practice Panther, one of the founding employees at practicepanther. So I've been really able to speak with 10s of 1000s of attorneys over the years and really get, you know, a good feel for the market trends and what the technology has been able to bring to these firms and how it's been able to really benefit the different practice areas and the way that they can use the technology, you know, to really enhance their firms and their practices. So, again, just super excited to be here and talk about some fun stuff with you guys today.
Steve Fretzin 2:41
Yeah, well, I appreciate both you being on here and spending some time with me today. And let's start off with an easy softball question, which is what are the what are Listen, you know, this last year has been a real interesting one. And I think we're just before we started recording, we were talking about, you know, how, you know, obviously horrible the pandemic has been and the death in the tearing families apart and all this. And on the other side, it's sort of been a boost for technology. So what are some of the things that lawyers generally are challenged by as it relates to technology and getting it to work for them to make their lives easier? What are the things that they struggle with that you see every day?
Colin Li 3:14
Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to captures this by saying, like, echoing your sentiment on the pandemic was, was definitely a devastating time for us as a humanity. And for us, when when the pandemic hit a lot of tough, a lot of our customers were kind of scrambling, and a lot of attorneys out there were really scrambling. And what we saw was, number one, there's fear that the the economy was going to dry up and businesses were gonna dry up, too. We saw folks who hadn't been really using a lot of technology and using the in person methods for running your practice, like billing by paper, sending checks, and using that kind of as a crutch. Well, pandemic, pull that crutch from under them. And it was really time to adapt. Now, we, we wanted to come on your show today, Steven and talk about a couple of really like major points that we we learned from working with all these customers, and seeing what the biggest value add in terms of bringing technology into their space. And listen, we saw a lot of adoption, and where were these different points were in terms of helping award build their practice? So the first one really is around farm intake. Sam, you want to do you want to touch on this? I know this is a passion of yours?
Sam Alkoubey 4:35
Yeah, definitely. In you know, like Colin was saying, pre pandemic, a lot of firms, although they thought, Hey, I'm using technology in a really great way It took the unfortunate pandemic to make them realize, wow, there's a lot more I could be using within the technology in this industry. And we're just seeing it on an everyday basis how more and more firms are adopting this and one of the big things, you know, is firm intake right? So I really encourage anyone listening to this, what you really want to get done is build out Intake Forms filled out electronic intake forms, and put them on your website, embed them onto your websites, this is super important. The reason behind that is because, you know, if I'm a potential client in, you know, Northeast Florida, let's just say, and I'm googling best attorney near me and family law, and I get all these websites and all this stuff coming up on my search engine, when I go into a website, and I go to the Contact Us page, and there's a form and it's pretty, and it's laid out with logos and your colors, it stands with me, it resonates with me as a potential client. And if I'm filling that out, on your side, now as the attorney once that form is submitted electronically, all the information can now come right to you within your practice management program, to your email, and What's this doing for you, as an attorney, it's really qualifying the client that you could eventually have an initial consultation with, right, so you're going to get the message, you're going to understand the practice area, you're really gonna have a good idea of who you want to talk to do, I want to even have a consultation with this person to weed out the rest of them. So I understand, you know, who I should be working for, and working with, as I'm continuing to grow my business out. And some of the best things I've seen with some of our clients over the past few years, is the ability to create intake forms for the different practice areas. So if I'm an all around attorney, right, I do criminal law, but I also do family law and estate planning, I may have three or four different intake forms on my website. So when a client comes to it, hey, this resonates with me, or, you know, this pertains to me, I'm going to fill this one out. And then as the attorney, it's coming in with different filters to your practice management program, you're able to filter out, hey, I want to see everyone that signed up on my website today in family law versus criminal law and create those different consultation, appointments, and so on and so forth. So this has been a huge thing for attorneys throughout the pandemic, because they've been able to get in a lot of traffic on their website and really get Alliance through the door that way as well.
Steve Fretzin 6:59
I mean, you might even be able to customize that form to maybe qualify or disqualify someone, meaning if they can't answer a question or fill it out properly, then they may not be qualified as a lead. And maybe it cuts back on time, because you're meeting with more qualified people is that a part of it.
Sam Alkoubey 7:15
That's a 100% a part of it, you hit it right on the head there. And to your point, also, people are getting more comfortable with technology, not just in our world, but industries across the board, right. So if they're going to a website, and they're seeing that, and they're able to fill it out and get to you, that's, you know, one up on maybe the rest of your clients that you could be talking to the other thing that I really like to see people do and what they've been able to do and adopt more is not just even putting the intake form on your website. But hey, Steve, you're my attorney, I come to your office, nice, beautiful office, I walk in, you hand me an iPad with an intake form on it, you know, sometimes I go to a doctor or something, and they give me a slab of paperwork. And I got to go through and fill it out. And I don't know about you guys, I have horrible handwriting. So I end up feeling bad that they're gonna have to read this handwriting put it into their system. If you hand me an iPad, and it looks super professional, really nice, technologically advanced, and I can fill that out on the spot. I mean, again, it just gives me such greater confidence in the lawyer I'm about to hire.
Colin Li 8:14
Right? Sam brought up two good points. Really, one thing that kind of pushes all this with the pandemic underlying is that listening traditionally, a lot like a lot of marketing, and putting your firm out there and intake maybe coming from, you know, outs, like mailers, or some billboards or traditional methods. But when people went social distancing, where are your leads coming from? They're coming from the internet. So really, having intake forms on your website is going to be is critical. Now in person having having it in your, on your iPad, when you come in for a consultation, say we're going on threats and and partners, right? They Steve, we're seeing like folks getting the vaccine, people going more in person. And this is really going to be a boost for us in the long run as we enter into a less of a social business, maybe more of a hybrid model where there are some more in person interactions. So that's that's going to be really key for not just folks who are still doing social distancing. But I've gone to the office as well.
Steve Fretzin 9:16
Yeah, likely Listen, me that intake is really important in so many levels, but just to get someone comfortable with you and to give you the information and put it all together. What's another key technology that you guys are seeing impacting lawyers today?
Colin Li 9:30
Yeah, I've got two in mind. One is just reporting on what on on marketing spend, right. So demand generation has everything it's gotten a lot more competitive, and so many more attorneys are going on the line to stablish their presence and and get their leads. So using using reporting in in your practice management software, we've provided that practice catheter and other solutions as well, but really understanding what the ROI for your marketing spend is, is going to be, it has been really critical for our customers who thrive through the pandemic, or, and we see continue to thrive. So what are you getting out of your dollar? Right? We see this all the time, we were working marketing, and like it's something that we advise our customers on all the time.
Steve Fretzin 10:17
You know, it's funny, I put out an article in the Chicago daily level attend, and we're taping this in mid May. And it's about the show Gold Rush. And it talks about, you know, mining for gold, and then it goes to mining for business. And one of the main things that it talks about is the importance of understanding, you know, how your equipments working, how your team is working every day to get the most out of the mind that you're in, you know, if you're gonna mined for gold, you might you want, you want to get every drop that you can get. And I think people are missing the boat on it, I wouldn't say it's just marketing, I would say it's definitely looking at your ROI and your spend. Also your time, I mean, time is directly correlated to money in how lawyers bill, and you've got to look at your business development, too. And see, is this networking group working for me? Or that I can do to improve it? Or maybe get out? And same thing, you know, with taking clients out for lunch? Is that really an effective way to go or games or sending them gifts? So all this stuff works together? But I think having a way to track that in a system? In the rule of thumb for managers, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. He has ever heard that before? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it's an old saying in the management space, but it's true. And so you have to have a system, it's a technology that helps you track it.
Colin Li 11:26
And, and that's the feature here that we've really seeing blow up is is our tagging capability that practicepanther where you can, if you do say you have a lead that comes in through the intake form, you can tag it based on what what source it came from. So so that's that's one, the second one, you mentioned bolts deep. And so you want to see like, how much how much revenue top line you're bringing in based on what your spend is, well, wouldn't be nice to be able to collect on all your top all those dollars. And really our big are the biggest, the biggest momentum that we've seen that that's really helpful Lobert attorneys in the pandemic, and will, I think we'll see this forever is online payments, yeah, e payments. So we actually launched a, an E payments, feature that's, that's fully embedded in practice Panther in September, and our customers have really take taking that piece the heart. And really, during the pandemic we saw, you know, you know, we actually measured this and came out with this white paper report earlier this month in May. And what we saw was, on average, customers who got onto our E payments platform got paid 20% faster, and over 7% more on the dollar, they collected 7% more on the dollar. Now imagine if you're an attorney who's who's running a solo, practice your bootstrap, you're spending money on marketing, you're spending money on business development, getting getting that money faster and getting more of it, it could be a make or break for you.
Steve Fretzin 13:02
And that a lot of downside there, right? Not a lot of downside. Gotta get in the dollars, I mean that it's funny, because I've been doing online, you know, this year in particular, and I used to get everything in written checks. And I'd have to deposit all these checks and communicate with my bookkeeper. And it's all gone. I've got one, I literally taken one check out of maybe 50 or 60 clients that I have, I take in one check a month. And it's an old school guy who's a buddy of mine refuses to fill out the form. But I said, Alright, so I got one check, I have to deposit it's not the end of the world. But yeah, it's so much faster, having people on automated payments and getting those the emails out and having that all be automated. And so I'm assuming that's that's a big is you're saying it's a big part of what practice Panther does in that automation?
Colin Li 13:46
It is and, you know, a sample tested more than I do. But like, this is a it's like a game changer for a lot of firms, whether use us or just use online payments. And yeah, it will, it will reduce the headache, you'll get your money faster, you won't have to think about it so much.
Sam Alkoubey 14:04
Not even just you know, getting paid one invoice online. But think about you know, as a lot of attorneys we've talked to that were struggling during this pandemic, unfortunately, their clients too are struggling, right. So if I'm now going to frets and and partners, and I'm like, Hey, I know I owe you, you know, $10,000. But I really need some help. Can you put me on some sort of payment plan with E payments now you can just set it and forget it right. So for the next 10 months, Sam's credit card will be deducted $1,000 each month for 10 months. And that's it. You don't have to worry about it now. Whereas in the old days, I say the old days, but you know you have to go Yeah, you go collect them paper checks, like you said maybe one out of 50 clients is good to provide some sense of nostalgia and collecting that paper check. But if you could do something like e payments and really have your firm adopt such an awesome piece of technology, and like Colin was saying, you know, this is just growing at a tremendous rate. And again, not even just in the legal industry but almost every industry, you're seeing FinTech come out more and more than, and why not be a part of that if you're a lawyer that's trying to grow your business, as you know, solo two person, firm, whatever it may be.
Steve Fretzin 15:10
Yeah, my wife is still, she's not listening to this, I don't think but she's still writing checks, like she pays, you know, I pay a lot of the bills and in the family household, but, you know, she's still writing checks, like, Oh, I ran out of checks, and you got to bank on my checks. Like, weird that you're writing checks, everything is done on my phone, I deposits. Exactly. All that stuff. And I don't know, some people are a little bit behind. I mean, I had I keep giving her my old iPhones just to show you like she's way behind and stuff like, that's okay. That's not you know, it's a good move. Some people are slower to adopt or adapt than others. So what other what other automations are hot right now, that's like you got if you're a lawyer, and you don't have this while you're really missing the boat.
Sam Alkoubey 15:51
Yeah, so I mean, touching on the E payments, something else that you know, can come from this next feature that I'm talking about, or this piece of automation, is the ability to really bulk invoice, right, if I'm a solo practitioner, again, and I went off on my own, I took the jump and you know, things are going fine and well, but I have a high volume of clients, if I'm in, you know, happen to be in that type of law or practice. And I have to send out to 300 invoices a month to manually go through those and check them and go through them and send them out one by one, it takes a lot of time. If you can even say 468 10 hours a month, and you can allocate that time to actually doing the work that you're really being hired to do. Again, you're bringing more money through the door, which you can then reinvest into your marketing into the other things in the business. But bulk invoicing is huge. So if you're not already doing something like this, you might want to take a look at practicepanther, whatever it may take to be able to get out multiple invoices within just a few clicks. And going back to some of the things you know, Khalid mentioned, our tagging feature, which is basically the ability to filter things out. If I again, I'm the type of lawyer that's doing criminal law, Family Law, I can now invoice all my family law clients with one type of invoice all my criminal law clients with another type of invoice. So being able to send out bulk invoices, and then get paid on those electronically. Again, I mean, it's just a game changer, and it's in a time saver overall. And then that also ties into a lot of the other Automation features that you're going to be able to do with the bulk invoicing like, you know, running different reports, seeing how much of those are coming through on E payments, you know, maybe that one out of 50, I'm being able to record by cheque. But again, just bulk invoicing is huge. And then there are some firms that I've spoken to that used to print out all their invoices, give it to their paralegal, they would go through them one by one to approve them, and then give them back to the attorney, put them in a mailer, send that put the stamps on them, send them out. Whereas in practicepanther, you can do all of this inside of the system, right? So you're going to be able to have someone come in, log into their program, go through the invoices, click Submit for Approval, then frets and and partners difference in the main attorney can just go through them in three clicks, send all those invoices out, get paid on all of them. And for those invoices, by the way that are outstanding, because not everyone obviously pays on time. There can also be invoice reminders that gets sent out. So if you're five days late, and the payment hasn't been, you know, paid by the due date, it's going to automatically without you having to do anything, send out that invoice once again. So to remind the client like, Hey, this is due five days ago, let's get this on. Otherwise, you know, compound or simple interest may be tacked on to the invoice. So bulk invoicing has been a huge piece of, you know, technology behind what a lot of attorneys are doing with us right now.
Steve Fretzin 18:38
Right. And let me let me segue in this is going to be a little bit of a twist or a little different direction than we've been going. But I think it's really interesting. How automation has changed the level of interest or confidence in someone and I'm not trying to like get people to leave their law firm. I'm definitely not saying that. Although, you know, people are going to make a decision for a variety of reasons to leave a law firm, whether it's their choice or not. And they're going to look to go out on their own. And I'm just feeling like, there's never been a better time. Or maybe like for some lawyers, the fear level would have been a nine out of 10 to like, set up your own shop and hang your own shingle. But I'd love for you guys to share because you guys are in the trenches with these guys all the time. What are you seeing as far as like the confidence of lawyers to realize that they can go in and automate low overhead? Whether they take some clients or they don't, that they can set up their own shop and be successful calm? What are you seeing on that?
Colin Li 19:35
And yet we're seeing a lot, Steve and we actually actually, your your question brought up a really good example in my mind. We have we actually had three farms that can't come to mind or it's a group of six attorneys. The end they paired off and created their own practices during the pandemic, that was just practicepanther customers and they were talking them a bunch. And they essentially said, Listen, before we came across you, we were, you know, they had been in big a lot before. And before they came across us like, they were a little daunting. They're a little daunted on like, how do they How do you even set up like a law firm? They were very well versed in like practicing law. Yeah, they saw our solution and saw, wow, this is kind of like a law firm in a box. You know, all you really have to go through is your onboarding. And from learning the tool, you actually learn the practice. And and so, you know, we stay in touch with with these are these practices, we actually featured them in a blog post not too long ago, of law firms of diversity, they were able to launch during the pandemic, and they've been really thriving sense.
Steve Fretzin 20:46
Yeah, I think I think it's, you don't even need it. I mean, it's good to have a website, I'm not going to knock websites, they're important. But like for some, just just to get the first three to six months knocked out, you get it, you get your system in place with a case management program, you get your LinkedIn up to date. So that represents your website, potentially, if you don't want to end up don't have the money to invest yet. And you know, there's a couple other basic things, you'll get your insurance set up and whatever. And then it's just about, you know, business development, right. And in marketing, just making sure you're getting out in front of people. Sam, any thing to add on to what Carl and I are talking about.
Sam Alkoubey 21:20
I think the biggest thing while a lot of people understand it, and they branch off, and they take that jump, there are a lot of people who are just, it's scary, there's something to be afraid of from time to time, when you're doing that, whether it's you know, leaving on your own and doing everything on your own. But I've seen it so many times where people do it, they jump aboard, they get on their own, they start working, and they come back to us and they thank us, you know, the best compliments I've heard are things like this has been the backbone of my business, you know, I come in every day is what I use, this is how I get going. And to your point, Steve, it doesn't have to be the website. And other things don't have to be the first thing in place, you just need a central hub, a real central location of where everything is being, you know, deposited and being accounted for. And I think that's why it's super important for people to understand that as scary as it is to leave. Once you make that jump, you're going to feel so confident and ambitious. And it's only going to provide more momentum for yourself to continuing continue being more and more successful in what you're doing.
Steve Fretzin 22:18
Yeah, I mean, you've got the software, you've got virtual assistants, you've got, you know, the all these different things that didn't exist five and 10 years ago. And so people that are fed up with the situation, the politicking, whatever it might be, yeah. And they're they're on the fence about starting their own firm or getting a partner together, something like that. It really hasn't been easier than it is today. And the pandemic just put a big exclamation mark on that to say, yeah, it's not that hard. And it's, again, may not be for everybody, it's certainly not for everybody. But it's nice to know that there are you guys in place and others that can help to take the pressure off.
Colin Li 22:52
Yeah, and and really, overall, the the shift we've seen is before the pandemic, it was a competitive advantage to have a case management solution like ours. Now, it's a requirement to really compete in the space. So it's table stakes, and you don't want to fall behind the competition, you want to have an online presence, you want to have your case manager solution, you want to be active on LinkedIn, like Steve Fretzin, and anything on LinkedIn only.
Steve Fretzin 23:19
What's LinkedIn?
Colin Li 23:22
King Steve?
Steve Fretzin 23:23
All right, well, out of my bad, but I definitely putting out an effort, that's for sure. Alright, so we're going to wrap up with a final question. And this is in no way shape, or form to take away from your competitors or to take away from the different people that are helping lawyers out there the way you guys are. But what's one thing that you find sort of separates practice Panther from other case management software's? And we'll keep the answer short, and sweet, and then we'll move on. But I'd love to hear what you guys are saying. Like our differentiator is...
Sam Alkoubey 23:54
I'll go first real quick on that, I'm not going to point out a specific differentiator, I'll just say overall, in my sentence or two, that you know, a lot of firms when they go to a program, they don't want to have to adapt to the program, whereas practicepanther will adapt to your firm, right? You want the program to be customizable. You want to have that personal level of service. And that's what we've been doing from the get go we've created from when I first started, it was just a simple program, easy to use, and more and more from the feedback of our incredible clients. We've been able to build out this robust and amazing program, but it's always been about adapting the program to the firm and not the other way around.
Steve Fretzin 24:30
Terrific. Yeah, that's that's important. Collin?
Colin Li 24:33
It's the views of us fan fed and it's really easy to learn. So you can you have the power and you have the simplicity.
Steve Fretzin 24:41
Yeah, and I'm not I'm in my family. I'm considered a decent technology guy cuz I can change light bulbs and I can, you know, find how to get up multiple monitors to work at the same time. But generally speaking, I'm a simpleton on most stuff. And so uh, yeah, ease of use is really important in the customization really important. So If people want to check out practice Panther further, they're interested in exploring it. How do they get in touch with you to Sam?
Sam Alkoubey 25:07
Yeah, I mean, they can email me directly Sam at practice Panther calm, go to practice Panther comm slash demo, if you want to speak to one of our amazing representatives take a look at our program. And you know, like I've been saying, if it's not our program, you know, at least talk to us get an idea of what's out there, we're, we take much more of a consultative approach. We're not shoving this down your throat, because we are confident that you're going to be happy if you do move forward with us. But we want to make sure you have all the information you're supposed to have when doing such research. And you know, I remember when I first came on board, it was like telling clients if you don't choose a program today, or in a week or in a year, I'm going to talk to you in five years, and I guarantee you by then you're going to have chosen something because that's just the way the world's moving right now.
Steve Fretzin 25:48
Yeah, and the five years is up. It's up man. calls to make. Yeah, that's right. They're already on board. Steve, we got him a few years ago. Okay. Good answer, Collin.
Colin Li 26:00
I my point Paswan on that is, is just listen, we, we're here to just help attorneys, we're here to help them fix or fix reach their goals, whether it's in business or personal. And at the end of the day, like Sammy said, we take a consultative approach whether you go with us or not, we just want you to like be able to better your practice and better your business. So Practice Panther comm you can sign up for a free trial you can sign up for a demo, you can reach out to Sam but I really do think this is this is a huge value add to any attorney out there whether you're you know looking to break out on your own doing it with a couple friends or you have an existing law firm.
Steve Fretzin 26:44
Yeah, well listen, I appreciate you guys coming on the show and sharing you know your ideas and what's going on with automation and why this this you know your software so not only popular, but also why it's helping you know, people to achieve their goals. So, thanks again. I appreciate you guys much. Thank you Steve. Thank you. All right, good. And listen everybody thank you for spending some time with Sam Collin and myself today. Um, you know, the goal always is to be that lawyer someone who's confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Stay safe be well, we will talk to you again soon. Take care.
Narrator 27:19
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for drilling 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.