In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Jeremy Baker discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"It's an exercise in project management, starting your own firm. The kind of project management that I had to do over the last couple years is really no different, in many ways, much easier, than a lot of the project management that I had to do on major pieces of litigation when I was at the large firms." — Jeremy Baker
Connect with Jeremy Baker:
Twitter: @builderlawyer & @BuildChicagoLaw
Facebook: Baker Law Group LLC
Website: BuildChicagoLaw.com
YouTube: Baker Law Group LLC
LinkedIn: Jeremy Baker & Baker Law Group LLC
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.
Jeremy Baker 0:00
It's an exercise in project management starting your own firm. And you know, the kind of project management that I had to do over the last couple years was really no different, and in many ways, much easier than a lot of the project management that I had to do on major pieces of litigation when I was at the large firms.
Narrator 0:20
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 0:43
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the show. My name is Steve Fretzin. And I am a business development coach working with attorneys all over the country. And if you are the first time here in this show, it's called be that lawyer, and I interview rainmakers and technical wizards and marketing geniuses all in the legal industry, trying to help you get more information and insights about how to run a successful law practice. My guest today is a superstar named Jeremy Baker, a baker Law Group. He's an attorney. He's a writer. He's a teacher of construction law. Welcome, Jeremy. Thanks for having me, Steve. Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. My pleasure. Well, maybe give a little bit of background I didn't do justice to I'm sure. So give a little background for our listeners.
Jeremy Baker 1:28
No problem. Well, Steve, I focus exclusively on design and construction law. And when I tell people that most people immediately confused me with either a real estate lawyer or somebody that just handles construction defect litigation. And neither is exactly true. You know, real estate lawyers help people purchase property and leased property in a paid financing and get entitlements like zoning changes, my work is different. I help with the design and construction of buildings upon the real estate. And it's a very small sub specialty. I don't have data, but I'd guess that there's 100 real estate lawyers for every construction lawyer, maybe a few dozen that are very good in Chicago, and half my work is transactional and half is related to dispute resolution.
Steve Fretzin 2:10
Very, very cool, good stuff. And, you know, give the listeners a little bit of information about kind of what you're up to, because you've got some unique things going on right now.
Jeremy Baker 2:21
Well, most of my work, you know, falls into the two buckets transactional and dispute resolution. You know, on the transactional side, there's not many people out there that stop to consider the risk and complexity, financial and otherwise of major construction projects. There can be dozens of designers and contractors who enter into a complex web of interrelated contracts, and large sums of money change hands. So if one contractor is delayed, it can have a ripple effect to the entire project leading to major delays and expenses. And so with this in mind, to help people who design and build determine the most advantageous ways to structure their project, you know, meaning who's going to contract with whom I helped to allocate risks across the project's many contracts, including not just things like cost and schedule, but also insurance and density and bonds, responsibility for safety. And then during the project, I help to proactively avoid disputes and achieve Win Win outcomes. Under dispute resolution side, you know, I've litigated constantly for the last 18 years. And I do handle mediation arbitration litigation. And if I have a passion in the law, it's helping my clients avoid the cost and hassle of protracted litigation or arbitration. I'm a big believer in early cost efficient dispute resolution, you know, see very few design and construction disputes ever reach a bench or a jury trial. And taking a dispute to a final arbitration hearing is more common. But smart business people are starting to ask, you know, why are we spending so much money on lawyers to prepare for trials and seldom occur? I totally understand. So when it comes to dispute resolution, I'm laser focused on helping people resolve claims and you know, three months in that three years.
Steve Fretzin 4:04
Gotcha. So you have all this experience and knowledge. And so obviously, this shows about, you know, taking that knowledge and going out and getting clients or or marketing yourself and I know, from talking with you in our in our past relationship, that you have a real passion for business development, marketing, things that relate to growth. And so you just take a minute and share a little bit about what inspired you or directed you to that point.
Jeremy Baker 4:31
Well, I think it's a matter of necessity. Now, Steve, as you know, I have a newly minted solo practice. I opened my law firms doors in October 2019, after nearly 10 years at large law firms. So, you know, business development has always been something that I was interested in, but it's certainly much more central to what I'm doing now since I'm out on my own.
Steve Fretzin 4:54
Right, right. And so that was a big move and it's exciting stuff. What inspired I urge you to go out on your own. What was the what was the impetus? Well, I'm sorry, I know you have a story about it. So I'd love to hear it.
Jeremy Baker 5:09
Well, you know, so I graduated from law school in 2002, and took the the Illinois bar and started off at a firm by the name of cozmo car, which is an amlaw, 100 firm, a big firm, as an associate in our Chicago office, and I was there for almost four years of rather intense thinkers from litigation. And I was lucky to first chair at disputes and you know, seven or eight states around the Midwest. But I decided to make a move, in my fourth year of practice over to ship harden, where I was for most of the last 14 years, until four months ago, I was a partnership harden, which is an M lab 200 firm with over 300, lawyers and offices around the US. And I decided to lateral over to shift harden in 2006, mostly thinking that I would really specialize in design and construction law as a path to becoming a real estate developer, which is something I'm still somewhat interested in. But when the crash occurred, and you know, Oh, 809. And that seemed like less of an appealing path, I really threw myself into, you know, developing my reputation, and really trying to figure out how to develop a great career as a lawyer in a firm. And that's really where my focus on business development took shape.
Steve Fretzin 6:33
Got it. So moving out on your own, obviously, you know, kind of can be scary, what what were some of the concerns or barriers that you had, in your way to do that, to leave the firm and to go out on your own? And that's pretty courageous.
Jeremy Baker 6:47
You know, it's interesting, I hear a lot of people saying, you know, that it's very courageous. And, of course, to some extent, you know, I can understand that there's obviously risk involved in that. I do think, though, that we're amidst sort of an inflection point and the practice of law. And I think that, as I look around, I see things changing a lot with lawyers and firms big and small. And, you know, to some extent, I decided that I wanted to get where I thought the market was going first. And you know, rather than, you know, maybe take the consequences of risks that would accrue, you know, over years or decades that I would just take all my risk at once, knowing that was about 20 or so years left in my career, if for some reason it didn't pan out, I'd have plenty of time to get back into the large law firm game.
Steve Fretzin 7:40
So you had a little bit of a little bit of a backup plan with that. But it was still something that I it's seems like you had a lot of impetus to make the move.
Jeremy Baker 7:48
Yeah, you know, and it's, it's, it's an interesting thing, because I never really decided to leave shift hard, and I never had any particular moment where I said, I got to get out of here. You know, I was, you know, as I said, I lateral there are no sex I made partner in 2012. So half my time was an associate as a partner. And it's really an outstanding from love, I was really fortunate to work with great people throughout the firm, but our construction Law Group was really special, really great mentors. And so there wasn't any moment where I said, I really need to to live, it was a slow realization over a period of years that on the one hand, it might be a good thing for my, for my family. And as you know, I've got four young kids, between the ages of four and nine, you know, but also, I discovered a very interesting world of technology and sort of the subculture out there of, you know, maybe 100,000 or so lawyers that are solo practitioners, or in small urns that are doing some of the most cutting edge things with technology and implementing lean methodologies to increase their efficiencies. And really, you know, getting after self improvement and improving our practices in a way that that really spoke to me and pulled me in. And, you know, over the last couple of years, I feel like the decision to go out on my own is something that sort of happened accidentally, over time, as I became completely fascinated with the small firm and solo law firm subculture that I discovered.
Steve Fretzin 9:29
And you know, you mentioned some of the technology and some of the innovations that you've identified and observed. What are one or two or three that you just blew your mind or that you that you would recommend or just want to chat about a little bit with our, with our audience as it relates to efficiencies and things that they should be aware of that you that you identify?
Jeremy Baker 9:52
You know, what really set me down this path was, you know, the accident of finding the purple pod Test app on my iPhone about four years ago, it was something I really never paid attention to, because I'm a music lover. And I spent all my time listening to music. But I discovered that there were a few dozen of these podcasts that focused on small and solo law firms were very interesting things were being discussed with regard to technology. And so, you know, I started to investigate, you know, a few dozen products that I found to be interesting, not for myself, but because my wife is also a solo practice lawyer, and I was looking for ways to increase her efficiency, so that she, you know, could earn more without, you know, taking a lot of time away from, from the kids. And what I found is that there are, you know, dozens of SaaS based programs that are comparatively inexpensive, you know, that you can get on a monthly basis, so no long term subscriptions, where, you know, if data is entered into one system, it can say, a CRM, at the time when you know, that person who entered the data signed up as a client, that data passes through these pathways called API's to other of these SAS based platforms. And so the data, you know, can carry through your system from end to end throughout the life of the case. So, theoretically, if somebody was to go to my website and type their name, then if my systems were working well, and they became a client, I wouldn't have to type their name again many times throughout the life of the case and be able to kind of port that data along with me. That being said, over the course of the last several years, as I've explored these products, what I found is that I was able to design my own sort of IT infrastructure that replaced a lot of the functions that the you know, large law firm performed, for me, whether it's intake, screening, whether it's preparing documents in ways where people can sign them with a finger, instead of seeing a piece of paper, you know, on their iPhone, or their iPad, practice management software that does time tracking, and accounting, and just has so many features that I never imagined would be affordable, and I think really weren't available on the market until maybe five years or so ago.
Steve Fretzin 12:28
Gotcha, gotcha. So what would be one or two things that you would tell, let's say a lawyer who is interested or has a mindset of at some point going solo, that lesson that you learned or something that that you would, you know, just a recommendation that you would make before someone makes that jump?
Jeremy Baker 12:47
One thing I would say is that, you know, there's a lot of lawyers out there, and I was one of them for a long time that that really thought that starting my own practice would be impossible, and wouldn't be something that I would ever want to do. And as I mentioned, Steve was a long process of sort of coming around to think that that wasn't the case. But one of the things that was helpful for me is when I realized that the process of figuring out all of the different aspects of the practice that I would need to put into place to function really isn't as complicated as it seems, you know, when I was, you know, in my former career, at the big law firms, I worked on projects that were far more complicated with far more variables than, you know, really are things that you need to consider when you're setting up a law practice. And, you know, like anything, when you start with a blank piece of paper, which is where I was when I first began, on this path, it's really an exercise in issue spotting, you know, figuring out, you know, what are the things I need to decide what are the things I need to buy, and anyone who is considering going out on their own, first of all, they can reach out to me, I'd be happy to help them. But, you know, if you were to take your podcast app and and search out these, you know, several dozen podcasts about small firm and solo law practice, I think it really would help with your issue spotting. After I listened to a few 100 of these, I had a pretty good idea of the technology is out there. And also, you know, what are the sorts of things that concern lawyers, what are the pain points. And it's kind of like legal research, where after a while, you begin to see the same cases again, and again. And you know, that you've sort of ventilated the issue for listen to enough podcasts. And I started to hear people talk about the same issues and the same technology again, and again, it gave me some confidence that I had my arms around a lot of the decisions that were to be made. And you know, it's an exercise in project management, starting your own firm. And, you know, the kind of project management that I had to do over the last couple years was really no different, and in many ways, much easier than a lot of the project management that I had to do on major pieces of litigation when I was at the large firms.
Steve Fretzin 15:00
Are there? Are there things that you would recommend? I mean, if somebody is on a budget, I mean, if somebody has, you know, $5,000 a month to spend on overhead, you know, from rent to an assistant to phone systems? What if somebody really doesn't have that they want to go on a shoestring? What would you What would you say to them?
Jeremy Baker 15:22
Well, I'd say it's a great time to start your practice, because almost all of the things that you need, you can purchase on a monthly basis. And to give you an example of something that is not what I would consider to be groundbreaking technology, but just almost miraculous in terms of not having something like this five or 10 years ago, I use Microsoft Office 365. And I think I paid something like $15 a month for it, and the you know, the email, the calendar, and function is great, but then the ability to have, you know, a very large amount of cloud based storage for documents, you know, if you really needed to go out on a shoestring budget, you know, you'd want to have professional liability insurance, you want to have another important things like that. But you could probably start your practice just using, you know, office 365, as a framework, you know, have gone a little bit deeper than that there's a number of different practice management, software products that are out there. As I mentioned, I've got, you know, a CRM that connects to the back side of my website, and you know, collects information on, you know, new leads. And that system connects to my practice management software, where I'm able to track my, you know, my matters and record time and do my billing. And there's a variety of different excellent platforms that are out there for that I happen to use a product that is produced by Clio, which is probably the big dog in law practice management software. But I've been blown away by everything that Clio is able to do in terms of running my practice. And, you know, it's something that you can get on a monthly basis for comparatively little money. So I would say that is a great time to be starting a law practice on a shoestring budget, because you don't need to make those long term commitments and buy things that you know, years ago required, I don't have, you know, an office with a year long lease that I'm tied to, I don't have a library full of paper books, I don't have a server room full of computers and air conditioners to keep them cool. Everything that I need to practice, I can get on a monthly basis, and it's all hosted and stored on the cloud. And so it's, it's a very good time, I think, to be thinking about an entrepreneurial move, even if you're on relatively small budget.
Steve Fretzin 17:45
Right on, right on. So let's move into a segment I like to call they never taught this to me in law school, which here covers a lot of ground as a non lawyer, I hear that pretty pretty much every day. And so is there one thing that you would say to a young lawyer who's going on l three, coming out of law school that you'd say, Hey, you know, this is this is what you need to know, or this is something really important as it relates to growth, practice management, marketing, networking, things that are, you know, that they they're just not teaching in law school.
Jeremy Baker 18:19
Well, there's so many things, Steve, but you know, in keeping with your area of expertise, one of the things that I wish someone had explained to me when I was in law school was that most of my career, I would have to be focused on client acquisition, which, you know, is the blinding flash of the obvious, I think, to a lot of people who are listening out there, but there are different kinds of clients in different kinds of practice areas. You know, my wife's practice, for example, which is estate planning, is something that many, if not most people, at some point in their lives are going to need so you know, my wife could walk up and down Michigan Avenue. And every single person that crosses her path is, you know, potentially a client and every person on you know, the sideline of the soccer field, and our kids playing the potential a client for her. I think that, you know, is almost sort of more like a retail practice. But there are other kinds of practices, in many respects, you know, what I do, that are not like that, you know, I could walk up and down Michigan Avenue all day long, and, you know, never encounter the CEO of a major company that would want to hire someone like myself for the specific kind of work that I do. And so I wish that somebody helped me understand in law school, that I shouldn't be thinking just about what practice area do I want to be in and do I want to be doing transactions or do I want to be doing litigation? I wish somebody helped me understand that if I could project forward 10 or 20 years In my life, and ask myself what my goals would be personally and professionally, what kind of practice area would I want to get into, given the need that I'm just going to have to develop my own book of business. And so I might have gone into a different practice area, one that is more retail one where you know, the need is more prevalent for people that you pass on the street than something like what I do, because it is, at times a little more difficult to, you know, find the people who have the ability to hire me. That being said, I think I missed my calling in life, I think I probably should have been an architect. So, you know, being a design and construction attorney in Chicago, now that I have a better handle on the business development side of things is something that I really enjoy. And and with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure I would have done anything different.
Steve Fretzin 20:53
Now, listen, I mean, there's a lot that they're gonna have to figure out at some point, you know, to teach networking to teach business development, basic level marketing, how to go solo, I think there are some practice management classes at different schools, but it's not at all where it where it needs to be. And I think, you know, the lawyers need to know kind of what, what's going on is they're coming out of it again, if they're going in house, or there's some other elements, then they might be okay. But for many of the of the attorneys coming out, they've gotta think about it, even the even the associates that have been practicing for three to five years. I mean, they've got to start thinking strategically about their future, the way you did. So listen, Jeremy. So wrapping up, how do people get in touch with you? Or is there anything you'd like to promote your website to let people know how to get in touch with you?
Jeremy Baker 21:39
Well, yeah, you can get in touch with me to my website, which is www dot build Chicago, law.com. That's build Chicago Law. And, you know, I really have enjoyed the journey that I've gone on in recent years. And I would be very pleased to to hear from others who are thinking about leaping out on their own, and I'd be very happy to help them in any way that I can down that path, if that's where they decided to go.
Steve Fretzin 22:08
Yeah, I think that's a really great offer. Because I think there is a lot of fear out there and people that that, you know, again, it may not have to reinvent the wheel, if they if they've got a friend and me or you that can help them with some things that, you know, the automobile has been built, they just have to copy it, or they just have to work off of something that's already existing.
Jeremy Baker 22:27
Yeah. And I think that there's a real emphasis there. Because I look around and I see the practice of law dramatically changing, you know, everybody sort of says that, you know, things are changing, I think they're, they're changing much more quickly than a lot of lawyers who tend to have a head down, you know, billable mentality realize, and a lot of the technology that I've seen rolled out in recent years, I believe, is going to make it easier for law firms to get by with less and less young lawyers, less and less associates, there's a lot more automation, artificial intelligence, practical applications, that might make it harder for somebody to be a lawyer without their own book of business. And so it's my it's my prediction that in the next three to five years, there will be, you know, droves of former law firm attorneys that are designed to strike out on their own some out of necessity and some simply out of the, you know, the empowered realization that it's something that they can do.
Steve Fretzin 23:35
Right, I think we're already seeing some of that happen. And it's it is going to continue, especially as things get more and more challenging and have you know, heaven forbid, there's a recession coming at some point that's also going to be a factor like it did. As you mentioned back in 2008. Nine. Jeremy, listen again, I want to thank you, I really appreciate you being on my show. And best of luck to you. I know you're you're going to crush it out there. So thanks for being with us.
Jeremy Baker 23:59
Pleasure being here Steve, thank you.
Steve Fretzin 24:01
Awesome and Hey everyone, I want to thank you for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed today's show and enjoy Jeremy's story and that you're one step closer to being that lawyer confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Thanks, everybody, take care.
Narrator 24:20
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.