Crushing the Challenge of Change in the Legal Industry with Moshe Amsel

When it comes to progress you can either get ahead of it, embrace it, or stand in its way and ultimately get run over by it. In today’s episode my guest Moshe Amsel and I  look at how you can embrace technology and the changes that occurred in 2020 to encourage growth in your law firm. 

In this episode we discuss:

  • The acceleration of change in the legal industry because of working virtual.
  • Setting yourself up for success by embracing change.
  • The potential of a new app called Clubhouse.
  • Why lawyers tend to be risk averse when presented with new technologies.
  • Managing blocks of work time in the home/work environment to become more efficient.
  • The pros and cons of successful online conferences.
  • The question of how our young people will be seeking legal services in the future.

Allison Williams: [00:00:11] Hi everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your Law Firm Mentor. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money. 

 

Allison Williams: [00:00:25] All right, so today’s guest is a special friend of Law Firm Mentor, as well as a very respected professional that Law Firm Mentor and as a company and myself, of course, as the Law Firm Mentor have had a lot of dealings with. So I want to introduce you to Moshe Amsel. Moshe is a certified profit first professional. He is the owner of Profit with Law. He is also a podcast host of the Prophet with Law podcast. And he is the innovator of the Law Firm Growth Summit. Now, for those of you that have been listening to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast for any length of time, you know that we are always introducing our community to the people, the places, the activities, the opportunities that exist for them to grow their mindset, grow their resources, and ultimately to grow their businesses. And the Law Firm Growth Summit is one way of doing that, which we’re going to talk about in this episode. But the episode actually starts in an area that I think is really underserved and under discussed at this time. It is the area of change and the rapid change that we are experiencing in the legal community as a result of all the things in our world not not limited to, but certainly including the pandemic. So for those of you listening to this at some point in time in the future, I am recording this in January of twenty twenty one. And we just came off of a really challenging year in twenty twenty during which a lot of lawyers were working virtually for the first time, and during which time a lot of lawyers had to hustle and pivot very quickly in order to address retraction in the marketplace, economic recession and all the consequences that came with quarantine as a result of the pandemic.

 

Allison Williams: [00:02:20] So while we certainly don’t spend a lot of time talking about the pandemic itself, all of the consequences of that are both upon us now, as well as foreseeing a cataclysmic change in the marketplace. So we wanted to bring you this episode to talk about the nature of change in the legal industry, but also to talk about the ways in which the Law Firm Growth Summit, which is now on its second iteration but dramatically different than before, is going to give you resources that are specifically tailored to your growth and evolution as a law firm owner. So before we dive into the conversation, I want to invite all of you to check out the Law Firm Growth Summit website. You can find it at law firm growth summit dot com forward slash LFM for Law Firm Mentor. And there you can see the dossier of some of the most amazing speakers that are going to be on the show this year, including the original shark, Kevin Harrington, and the innovator behind the profit first model, Mike Michalowicz. So we have a great conversation. Moshe and I, we dive into a lot of different iterations of change in the legal industry. I hope that you enjoy it. Thank you for tuning in. Here we go.

 

Allison Williams: [00:03:39] All right, my special guest today, Moshe Amsel, welcome to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:03:46] Allison, thank you so much for having me. It is an absolute honor and pleasure to be on this well known and esteemed podcast show, a side by side with somebody who is making real inroads and attracting a ton of attention in the legal industry.

 

Allison Williams: [00:04:02] Well, look who’s talking. Ok, so just so that everyone knows, I did not pay Moshe to say that, I just want to be very clear about that, but mostly as one of my favorite people, because he is somebody that I consider to be not just of esteemed quality in terms of what he offers to the legal marketplace, but he’s somebody who is an innovator. So we have his company, Profit with Law. He is also a podcast host. He has the Profit with Law podcast, and he is also the innovator and founder of the Law Firm Growth Summit, which we’re going to talk about today. But I want to start this conversation talking about one of the things that I think is developing a name for himself with building traction around, which is this idea of the change in the legal industry. So we know that 2020 was one humdinger of a year and a lot of people experienced cataclysmic change to their families, to their businesses and to the way that the legal industry is both responding to the change as well as evolving and growing from the change. So let’s talk a little bit about what you have personally seen with that. What is one of the things that are kind of coming to mind when somebody says to you, how has the legal industry changed?

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:05:12] Well, Allison, I recently was having a conversation with somebody and I wish I would remember which conversation it is. I got to go back in the zoo archives to figure out who it was. But somebody said a line that I just grabbed and ran with. And I’m using it all the time now. And that is twenty twenty five came five years early for the legal industry. The legal industry has been changing slowly, slowly. And it’s no secret that legal tech, legal innovation has always been behind the eight ball, has always been playing catch up with other industries that are out there.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:05:46] Part of the reason that that’s happening or that’s happened in the past is because in the legal industry, there’s, there are opposing forces that don’t want that change to happen, namely the the bar associations and the and the people who feel like the profession should be a a profession that is looked up to as this is the only way to get things done. And they see technology as a threat to that. The reality is, is that technology is not a threat. Technology is going to solve a lot of problems that the legal industry has, like equal access to justice and affordable judicial services. Those are just some of the things that implementing technology and in in the right way is going to completely open up who can actually have a lawyer represent them because it is less expensive for the lawyer to to represent them, because a lot of the things that they’re spending their time on now can be automated, can be delegated, can be handed off to somebody else. So I think that this underlying shift in the legal industry is something that was already in motion. And it’s just that when we were forced to go remote, we were forced to do business in a different way. It’s suddenly forced the hand of the courts, the bar associations, everybody to kind of pivot and change the way that they’re doing things. Who would have ever thought that you can have a Zoom hearing with a judge? A year ago, nobody. They would have told you you were nuts, they all said there’s no way. That’s never going to happen. You know, what’s his name? There’s somebody who is who’s always been ostracized for his opinion on where the legal industry is going. I’m forgetting his name. I bought his book. It’ll come back to me. But he in the 1990s, he was talking about how the future is that lawyers are going to communicate with their clients by email.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:07:56] And do you know that he was stopped from… Richard Susskind as his name, so Richard Susskind was banned from stages. People did not want to have him speaking because he was saying this blasphemy, that attorneys are going to talk to their clients via email, which is so unsecure and unprofessional and not and not proper. Right. And we are sitting here twenty five years later. And it’s funny, you know, looking back, of course, he was right. And we need to we need to look at examples like that to be able to see that change is not a bad thing. And if we resist change, we’re setting ourselves up for failure. And if we embrace change and figure out how can we use this to the best of our abilities, we’re setting ourselves up for success.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:08:50] A great example that I like to use. And I got this. I’m stealing it from Simon Sinek, one of the people I really love and follow all the time. Simon Sinek uses this example when he when he wants to show you how what how to look at change and developing new ideas with things. When Netflix first started and they had this DVD mail in service and they also started this online streaming service, the biggest thing that people were interested in was the mail and DVDs because there was no late fees. You can hold on to the DVD as long as you wanted and you mail it back when you’re ready. Then you get the next movie. Their streaming service wasn’t even something that was being paid attention to. Blockbuster. The CEO of Blockbuster saw what they were doing and went to his board of directors and said, look at this company, Netflix. What they are doing is ingenious. They’re going to cannibalize the movie rental business. We need to do the same thing. The board of directors said, no, we’re not doing it. Do you want to know why? Because 13 percent of the revenue came from the late fees and they were not willing to say no to 13 percent of their revenue stream, 13 percent, because they you know, they were looking at the trees instead of looking at the forest. They did not see what was coming. They couldn’t see the future.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:10:07] They were only looking at the here and now and how it’s going to hurt their business right now. And if we look at that example, there are no Blockbusters now. Right? I think I think Simon quips that there is one Blockbuster in like Vancouver, Canada or something like that. Right. But there are no Blockbusters. It’s gone. The business is gone. Why? Because their board of directors could not see the future. And look at Netflix. Look at the powerhouse that Netflix is. Right. So how do you get your law firm to be the next Netflix of law and not the next Blockbuster of law? And that’s where we need to focus the conversation. That’s where we need to start looking as we grow our businesses, as we develop our systems, our processes, the technology we use. We should always be looking from a lens of what does the future look like and how do I set myself up for the future instead of thinking about what’s available to me today and how is business done today? Always be future thinking. And when you do that, you’re going to start seeing opportunities. Allison, a great example is this crazy app called Clubhouse, right? You and I both I mean, at the time that we’re recording this, we got invitations to Clubhouse around the same time. 

 

Allison Williams: [00:11:20] Last week, I believe it was. Right.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:11:22] Yeah, it was last week.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:11:23] It’s less than a week. Right. And we join the app and you probably were the same way as me. I was like not another social app. I am not checking this thing out. Well, one of my coaching clients mentioned it in a coaching call. Then I saw it on Facebook, then I saw it somewhere else and I said three times in one day I’m checking this thing out. And I got the app, I got an invite from somebody and I joined. And immediately I was able to start assessing the situation. I was able to see the immense power that that app has, the immense capacity and capability that it has to bring me business. Right. The the amazing potential that that app has. And I also saw the amazing pitfall, the the ability to suck you in and draw you in and just suck the life out of you because all you’re doing is Clubhouse app and you’re ignoring your family and your friends and all your other responsibilities because you just got into this thing. Well, guess what? You and I, we both we’re on the same page. We’re innovators. We saw this app and we said this is potential. We are going to jump on this. I am going to be doing a Clubhouse room every single day leading up to the Law Firm Growth Summit, which we’ll talk about. And you’re doing the same.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:12:39] You’re not doing it daily, but you already. We each hosted a room. We had great people in there, great feedback from it. It even created leads for our businesses. And I just released an episode of my podcast on the Problem with Law Podcast. I think it’s episode 165, all about the Clubhouse app and how attorneys can use it. And I am whipping up a course that attorneys can consume in a single day to figure out how to bring in leads into their firm from the Clubhouse app. Now, it’s not for everybody. Not every solution is for everybody. And by the way, if you want access to that free course, it’s profit with law dot com forward slash clubhouse. I hope that was OK for me to share that, Allison.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:13:24] But my point is that we have gotten to a point where you need to be able to make decisions on the fly to recognize opportunity when it presents itself and to take advantage of that opportunity the moment it presents itself. I mean, you look at the the crash in the stock market when covid was released. Right. And everybody has seen the charts. It’s like this V this huge V, right. Imagine the people who when it crashed to the bottom, they were like, oh, my gosh, we’re going to be stuck here forever and sold all their stocks. And then two months later, it’s almost back to where it was before and they missed the entire recovery. They lost fifty percent of their portfolio and now it’s gone. Right? You you can’t make decisions from fear. You can’t make decisions from what your past experiences are. You have to make decisions from where are we going. What is the future? If you had confidence that we’re going to as a as a human species, we’re going to overcome a global pandemic somehow, some way. Yes, they’ll be casualties, but we will survive, then you wouldn’t have panicked. You would have been able to see what’s coming. And I think that my job as somebody who is seen as an innovator and a leader in the legal industry is to help people see that when it first started, we did a ten day live stream. I don’t remember. Were you involved on that when we did that?

 

Allison Williams: [00:14:55] I was.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:14:57] Yeah. So we did a ten day live stream every single day. We did like an hour where we covered another topic of how to deal with this sudden thing that’s happening with covid. That 10 day live stream generated well over a thousand email subscribers to my email list, and it brought in the first hundred people into our law firm growth incubator membership, which we I mean, it was a crazy price that we offered at the time. We just decided to create this product to help people get through. It was something I was going to do anyway, but I wasn’t planning to do it then. But I reacted to the situation and said, I want to help people now. I want to I want to expedite the creation of this product so that we can take people on this journey through… And that became a new five thousand dollars a month recurring stream of revenue. In the heat of covid. 

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:15:56] Now, I’m not saying that to toot my, toot my own horn, but I’m saying that to say, look, there’s always opportunity, no matter how bad the situation is. And you have to look for those opportunities to be able to explore them and take advantage of them instead of hiding in fear, looking at where things are today and saying this is the only way to do it.

 

Allison Williams: [00:16:17] So Moshe, you’re always such a wealth of information. And I love that. That one question prompted so many different areas that we can explore with this. And I want to specifically ask you about Clubhouse, because. One of the things that I love that you mentioned was the idea of you got the, you got the little tickle like somebody said, hey, there, there’s this thing, then you float in the direction of that. You just said, let me try, test, see. And then opportunity sprung open. And we know that in the legal industry we tend to be laggards, right? We tend to be on the low end of the early adoption phase. We don’t like to just jump without seeing. We like to test the waters. We like to make sure that there’s a lot of people that are born into something before we do it. What would you say to someone who says all of this growth and all this change is around and it’s scary and I have to deal with it, but I don’t want to be the first one or the second one. I want to make sure that before I put my time, my money, my energy, my resources into something, that it’s tried and tested enough that I’m not going to risk my license or the bar being what it is, they still police us, right? We still have to be on on our P’s and Q’s. Like, how do I, as a law firm owner who has that concern, address that concern, but still take advantage of the new wave of activity that’s out there, things like Clubhouse?

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:17:39] Yeah, absolutely. This is a a great question. And the first thing that we want to look at when answering this is why are lawyers so fearful laggards? What why? Why are they like that? And I don’t think it’s your fault. I think that this is ingrained in you during law school. It is beaten into you during law school to, you have this framework and this set of rules that you live by. And I am not saying that it’s wrong. I’m not questioning that. I hold the legal profession in high esteem for that framework and for the ethical responsibilities that you have. I’m an accountant by trade. I have similar framework and similar boundaries, although it’s not nearly as well regulated or or or as strict as the legal industry. But it’s certainly there, especially for people who hold a CPA license, and that’s, again, state by state. But it’s a similar idea to what the bar is.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:18:48] You have to recognize that this is the way that somebody at some point decided they wanted you to behave, right. And the same way that we’re starting to recognize that we have been inundated into a social society where black lives don’t matter, right. Where we’re anti-immigration, we’re going to build a wall around our country, you know, to prevent people from getting in. And I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong. Right. And by the way, Black Lives Matter, I don’t want you to take what I just said the wrong way. Right.

 

Allison Williams: [00:19:24] Moshe, given whose podcast you’re on. It would be very interesting if you were taking a position to the contrary. Just to put that out there.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:19:32] Allison, you know, I love everything that you do. And I love everything every every black person that I have encountered that has been involved in my life in any way, shape or form, whether it’s on the paramedic truck or whether it’s my neighbor or whether it’s you or an attorney in my coaching program, you all are smarter than a lot of us white folk, right, you are,

 

Allison Williams: [00:20:03] Now wait a minute Moshe! Let’s not alienate both of our audiences by starting the gradation. Right. We don’t want the gradation in the converse anymore, but we want it in the current inception.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:20:14] Well, my my point my point is, is that there’s no difference. We’re human beings, right? We all have feelings. We all have brains. Our skin color has absolutely no meaning on our our intellect, our ability to eat or to be able to do what we want to do. Yet our society has made it harder for people who are black. And lawyers, your society, the framework you’ve been placed in, has made it harder for you to be risk takers, for you to be willing to live on the edge. And this is the point I wanted to get to. So hopefully I didn’t offend anybody in the process of getting here. But now you understand my point. My point is, is that you need, the first thing to do is to recognize that you’ve been placed in a box by somebody else. And it’s not you’re not there because you yourself are a risk averse. As a matter of fact, I would I would encourage you to look at other areas of your life and see if you’re willing to take risk, if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably own your own law firm. That is the riskiest move you can possibly take.

 

Allison Williams: [00:21:25] So, Moshe, I just want to interject here, because one of the things that I love about us is the fact that we have the ability to disagree. And when we do so, we oftentimes do so from a place of agreement. So this happened actually the other night when you hosted your room on Clubhouse and a lawyer started talking about. It’s a lawyer I actually adore, Kimberly Bennett, started talking about her view on subscription models and the evils of the billable hour. And I agree that the billable hour presents problems when it is used the way it is used now. I don’t believe it’s the inherent problem. But we agree to disagree. Right. So the one that I love that you said that I do agree with is that we are acculturated to be as conservative as we are. But I don’t know that I think it starts with law school. I actually believe that people are drawn to this profession because they already have a level of risk aversion. And I think if you look at things like assessment tools that I’m a particular fan of, like I’ve done probably a dozen assessments of my own, I know that I am an INTJ woman, which is the point zero eight percent of the population of the type of personality that I have. I also know that in the Kolbe, I’m inherently risk averse and I know a lot of lawyers that fall into that category. We’re compliance type people. We’re the DC’s of the world. Right? That the DISC and know whether it’s the person being drawn to the law because the law is a conservative profession or the profession making it far worse. I think there’s a little bit of both that puts together the human that then does not do the things that we need to do. And that’s the reason why so many law firms did go out of business during covid. And, you know, our resulting acculturation, I think, exacerbated a condition that was already there. But those are my… 

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:23:07] Allison, you know, what’s interesting is, is that you say that so many law firms went out of business. And at the same time, on the flip side, I see so many law firms that have had their best year ever in twenty twenty. I have so… 

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:19] I hate to say it, but I’m in that category. You know, we had a fabulous year this year.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:23:24] That’s what happens when you put spouses in the same in the same house and they can’t leave for six months.

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:31] All right. So it’s not just domesticity, right? It’s not that that we are terrified of each other and hating each other, hating being around each other. But I also think it’s that, you know, one of the things that I tell people about building a law firm is the fact that when you create a law firm, you’re creating an entity outside of yourself. Right.

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:52] You’re not just creating you plus a secretary, or you plus a team. Right. A lot of people treat their practice that way and it never grows beyond a practice. But I created a business and I help lawyers to create a business that’s designed with enterprise goodwill. So that means that at some point when people encounter my law firm, they are going to encounter my law firm, never having heard my name, never knowing anything about me. They know the brand that is Williams Law Group. And when you create that, it is much more easy to sustain and avert the crises of market attrition, evolution in the market, because what happens is your brand is able to wither throughout the ether as other brands are falling away.

 

Allison Williams: [00:24:40] So John plus secretary doesn’t get the same level of traction, doesn’t have the same staying power as an entity that is known in a community. And it’s not as challenging as people would think to build that. But I think a lot of us just don’t know to build that. So we became we become a job that happens to have our name on the door. And that’s really where a lot of lawyers suffered through this process. So there were those of us, though, that kept out there hustling, even when you were John plus secretary and the will. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Right.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:25:11] Absolutely, and you know, what’s interesting is, is that if there’s nothing else that I have learned through the pandemic and there’s definitely parts of my business that have suffered that I couldn’t keep up with, but throughout the pandemic, I have learned that I can be super productive in four hours a day.

 

Allison Williams: [00:25:29] Well, with all those kids in your house, you better be.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:25:31] Yeah, exactly. That’s that’s the that’s the point. Right? The kids were home yet we still have to get work done. And my wife is she’s working too. Right. So we split the day. She got four hours. I got four hours and yeah I did some work at night but it’s not sustainable every single night over and over and over again. So I, you know, I picked up and picked and chose the nights that, you know, that I was going to do that. But ultimately it was those four hour time slots during the day which ended up being primarily calls with other people. So I didn’t get a lot of busy work done, but it’s really enlightened me to hey, I survived for nine months on four hour workdays. Well, actually, it’s not entirely accurate because it was March to September. Then the kids went back to preschool. So the last couple of months I’ve actually had more than four hours a day. But the point is, is that it wasn’t that, you know, my business didn’t go down the tubes, you know, didn’t go, I didn’t go out of business because I only had four hours a day.

 

Allison Williams: [00:26:35] You kept the main thing, the main thing.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:26:37] Exactly.

 

Allison Williams: [00:26:38] During that time you let all that other crap that, all that icing, all of that gravy that we think is so necessary, it suddenly then becomes unnecessary when you got to do what’s necessary to make money and serve clients.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:26:50] And I’ve been saying this to other people for the longest time, but I haven’t been taking my own medicine. Right. Parkinson’s law, which is what profit first is based off of. And for those of you who don’t know, I’m a profit first professional, go buy the book, Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, who, by the way, is going to be one of the keynote speakers at the Law Firm Growth Summit. But Profit First is based off of this principle that’s called Parkinson’s law, that when you have a finite resource, your consumption of that resource, your need to consume that resource is going to expand to the entire resource available to you. And it works with money and it works with time. And if you if you have never been very diligent about putting money away in savings like a 401k where it’s kind of like siphoned off your paycheck before you get it.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:27:40] Or you have your own savings plan where you put money into a savings account, somehow that money manages to go away and you don’t even know why, like where did it go? And whether it’s personal or whether it’s business, it disappears because somehow we managed to find a use for it. And time is the same thing. We we decide our workday is eight hours a day. So we work for eight hours whether we have to work for eight hours or not. And as business owners, you get to control that. You come from an employee world where we’re trained to clock in, clock out and get our work done during that time period. But when you own your own law firm, you get to decide. When you clock in and clock out, you get to decide what your priorities are. And if you are really honest with yourself, try to force yourself into that box. Give yourself only four hours a day and then see how you do.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:28:33] And the truth is, is that you can look at all I mean, not you, Allison, but you the listener can look at your entire life. And I will guarantee you that you have thousands of examples where you had a deadline and you spent three or four weeks leading up to the deadline, getting almost nothing done. But then right before the deadline, you managed to knock the entire thing out in a matter of hours. But it takes us three or four weeks to get to that point, so if we are able to and this is totally off topic from where we want it to be, but if we are able to make yourself deadlines that that are real, that feel real. Now, I don’t say that, I’m not saying go, let’s make another pandemic, but the pandemic has enlightened us to the fact that, you know, we can be productive with less time. We can be productive with less money. We can we can we can step up our game and we can get results from it. And that’s that’s another great lesson that I learned over the last nine months or so, is the power that I have to be able to do things even more efficiently than I thought I could.

 

Allison Williams: [00:29:43] Yeah, I definitely think this is a conversation for another podcast, the lessons learned from the pandemic. And I am actually very much seriously considering bringing together a lot of people in the legal space just to have that conversation, because I think a lot of people didn’t do the retrospective because they kind of got through the traumatic episode of suddenly having to be virtual if they weren’t virtual before and suddenly having their kids at home while they’re trying to work. And, you know, I have one client that right. I mean, literally two or three months before the end of twenty nineteen, they started their law firm and then all hell broke loose. So they kind of started it as a result of trauma. Their boss closed shop and then died. And then they had to start a law firm and you know, they had they had almost a six hundred thousand dollar year during covid. And the question was, how did, exactly, how did they do that? Well, I would love to say, oh, we coached them into that. And certainly our coaching assisted them with that. But really, what was at the heart of it was exactly what you’re talking about, right? When you only have a finite resource, you use the finite resource, you figure out how to get scrappy, how to get efficient, how to get things done instead of the time suck. That is, we all that we all have it. The Facebooks of the world, the Clubhouses of the world. Right. Whatever the newest thing is, we allow that to suck up our time and energy.

 

Allison Williams: [00:31:04] So without further ado, though, I do want to pivot now and talk about what I think is going to be the great resource to help people with exactly this issue, this issue of cataclysmic change, how to deal with it, how to incorporate the principles of change into your law firm and be successful on the other side of it. So let’s talk about what you have created, which is really taking on a movement in a life all its own, the Law Firm Growth Summit. So first of all, I know that the first time you did this was in twenty eighteen and I was honored to be a speaker at the Law Firm Growth Summit at that time. And I know that it has taken on a massive revolution since that time. So first of all, what caused you to want to create this then and how is it going to be different now?

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:31:52] Yeah. Allison, thank you so much for asking. So initially, you know, you said at the beginning you called me an innovator and I don’t like to pat myself on the back and give myself names. But if we’re going to go, run with innovator, I will tell you that when I decided to create the summit, it actually it kind of came off of a lunch that we had together. So we sat down and had a, we went out to a steakhouse for lunch one day and we were talking about creating potentially creating an event, collaborating the two of us. We had a couple of other influencers, micro influencers that we wanted to bring on stage to create an experience for people to get access to to us and in a more intimate environment where we can take them on a journey that has, that has a means to an end. Right. That has that takes them to a destination.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:32:42] And after that conversation, I started to think about, OK, you know, who’s going to show up to this thing? Where where are we going to have it? Where, you know, where’s it going to be? And I started to question, like, why is the industry doing everything in person? Why are we ruling out the people? Because I started thinking about my own responsibilities. What’s my, how’s my wife going to feel when I disappear for three or four days for a conference I’m hosting? It’s hard enough. I have to negotiate to get to conferences I want to go to. Now I’m going to create my own and add to add to the mix and leave her stranded with the little ones at home. Even if it’s local, you know, I’d have to be there in person dedicated to it. So I started to question this idea that we have to go somewhere in person. And then I started to question this idea that it needs to cost money to go to this event. And I came up with this idea that wasn’t really new, like the online summit model has existed in other industries for for a couple of years at least, if not if not more. And I said, why not legal? Why not create the transformation that we want to create, but do it virtually. Do it on a platform that people don’t have to leave town for three days. They can show up. And we didn’t do three days. We did five days. And because we did it in a format that was, you know, sessions were prerecorded, delivered every day, people could consume it on times that worked for them so they can work around their appointments.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:34:12] They can, you know, if they couldn’t make it to to the to the event live, they could buy the recordings and get access to it perpetually, which I keep getting feedback from people that did that, that they’re still getting value from the sessions from December of twenty nineteen. But ultimately, I wanted to create a resource that was accessible to way more people than they could have by going to an in-person event. Well come, come 2020 and here enter covid. Right. And the same way that everyone else has needed to pivot for covid, I find that I believe I need to pivot as well because every in-person conference has gone virtual and has essentially destroyed the virtual summit model that worked so well for us. We had over twenty three hundred law firm owners there.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:34:59] We have people, you know, one attorney that came back on a recent call and said, hey, I was struggling. I thought I was going to close the doors to my firm. And I attended sessions on this in this day. And I attended the live Q&A that night. And I asked a question and that question was answered by a few of the speakers. And I took their advice and I implemented it in my firm and I had my best year ever this year because of the things that I implemented from the Law Firm Growth Summit, I was able to not only turn my firm around, but enter into this period of covid where everybody was going out of business, and thrive during that during that period, because those changes that I made and it’s people like that, that really give me the the feedback, I need to know that we’ve made a difference.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:35:43] So all these live events went virtual and essentially created the series of webinars that people are tired of. People are missing. There are some things that are missing. They’re missing human connection. They’re missing experiences. They don’t want to sit behind a screen watching webinars for three days. And that was my model before. So I went back to the drawing board and I said, OK, I was going to do it again in December. I actually was going to pull back a little earlier. I said, let me let me hold off. Let me start asking my audience what they want. Let me start asking the vendors who are going to sponsor this, what they want, and let me create something that everybody wants and is not available right now. And that’s where the current model for the Law Firm Growth Summit that we’re going to be hosting February 9th to 11th evolved from. And instead of a event that is, it’s still virtual. OK, so you don’t want to go anywhere because I don’t think anybody will go anywhere anyway in February. But it’s still virtual. But we’ve completely changed the model and it is now going to be a live delivered conference that we’re trying to mimic and create the experience of an in-person event without you being there. And one of the lines I have in my promo reel is you can’t, we can’t virtualize hugs, but we pretty much can virtualize everything else. And we are going to have networking sessions. We are going to have the ability for people to connect with each other. Both people they know, people they don’t know, make those new connections. We’re going to have amazing sessions, but we’ve structured it in a way where we are delivering exactly what you need to be able to figure out how to set yourself up for success in the future so that you’re not the next Blockbuster of law, but you’re the next Netflix of law. And we have essentially broken it down to five topic areas. Right.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:37:37] So we have a marketing track and not like Clio did an event recently, they did an online event that was more interactive than a lot of the other events. Right. And and they tried and they they were successful with some of the things that we’re going to be doing. But there were some things that didn’t work at their event. But one of the things that their event does… So two things about their event. First of all, their event is not specifically for law firm owners, it’s for anybody.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:38:06] So you have all kinds of staff coming to the event. So therefore their their topics are catered to that audience. So they’re not all about law firm growth. We’re entirely 100 percent about law firm growth. But more importantly, you have to choose. Do I want to go to this? Do I want to, do I want to learn about marketing or do I want to learn about staff development? What we’re doing with this event is we are creating a structure so that you are not, you are choosing, you’re not choosing where to hone in your skills when it comes to these broad topics. Each one is going to be delivered separately. So we’re going to have a section all about how to market yourself in the new world. Right. How is marketing changing and and how do you need to pay attention? And we’re going to have a mainstage session. We’re then going to have a panel discussion of experts. So each of these panel discussions are going to be six experts in that field that are going to be able to answer a ton of questions about where are we at now? Where do we need to go in the future? What’s going to be the next new thing? How do we how do we create our marketing plan around it, how do we pivot stuff like that? We can do that for marketing.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:39:18] And then from there, one of the things that my clients said we want, and people say we want is hands on workshops. People I’ve heard this over and over again. I don’t want to go to an event and walk away. I don’t want to go to an event and walk away with a to do list a mile long that I’m never going to look at again. And what we decided is we’re going to do hands on workshops after every single one of these mainstage panels discussions. So after the panel discussion happens, we are breaking out into into workshops, and you’ll have to choose between six of them. But those six panelists are each going to lead a Hands-On workshop on a very specific topic with a very specific deliverable. So when you leave, you’re going to leave with this thing completed. And we think that that is going to be the most impactful way to run an event. We’re going to create an experience. We’re going to have entertainment. I’m not going to tell you what that is right now. We’re going to have entertainment.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:40:11] We are going to have and a we’re going to have a grand prize giveaway where we’re giving away some amazing stuff. We’ve already announced we’re giving away a Peloton bike plus or Tred your choice or cash if you’re already good in that area. And, but we are going to be announcing bigger prizes than that and you’re going to be able to earn entries to that by participating throughout the event. So we’re going to gamify the experience and make it fun. And we’re going to have these networking opportunities. We’re going to have vendor booths where you can connect with vendors that are going to really help you take the next step in those areas.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:40:47] So. We’re doing all of this online. Yes, you can show up in your pajamas if you want, but you can also treat it like a real event and you can clear your calendar and say, I’m going to the Law Firm Growth Summit and it might be downstairs in their basement, which is nice because you get to use your own bathroom and your own coffee machine. But at the same time, you’ve got to clear the distractions and show up, because this is not the kind of thing that you want to go and watch the replays later. Sure. Buy the replays. So you could watch them later because you’re going to have questions. I don’t remember what they said. Go back and watch it. You can get in and catch up, but you definitely want to be there to experience this. It is going to be the best event the legal industry has seen, at least in the virtual environment. And maybe if we if we pull it off successfully and we have the most amazing event ever, maybe we go hybrid, maybe we do an in-person and a virtual together the next time, once we’re traveling again. So, Allison…

 

Allison Williams: [00:41:47] Let’s not go iterating it again. Let’s talk about the great iteration that you have right now. So we’re coming to the end of our show. And I just want to make sure that I get this one question out there, because it is a burning question that I always want to ask a guest when they talk about some event that’s coming up. So you’re going to have the experience for them. They’re going to have an experience, not just simply sitting in front of a flat screen, taking notes. And as somebody who hosts events, you know, we had our Marketing For The Masters Virtual. We had our Legal Sales for Attorneys and Non Attorneys Virtual. I know what that experience is of putting people into groups, giving them something to do, creating something on the fly through their activities at the program. But what do you want people to walk away from this experience with? What are they coming to get that they can only get or that they are primarily going to be focused on getting when they attend the Law Firm Growth Summit?

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:42:39] Allison, it’s a great question and it goes back to the discussion at the beginning of this podcast, at this juncture, the acceleration of change in the legal industry is huge and law firm owners are each individually left to figure this out on their own, to try to figure out what is the best way for me to, what should I say yes to, what should I say no to? And how do I go about building my firm now? Twenty twenty one and beyond. What has changed and what do I need to do differently? And what we want you to leave with is we want you to leave with clarity and an action plan for yourself on the things to say yes for and the things to say no to so that you can be not just relevant tomorrow, but relevant 5, 10, 15 years from now. I recently did a podcast episode on my son’s five year birthday and I, and the episode was all about my son, who’s five now, is going to need legal services 15, 20 years from now.

 

Allison Williams: [00:43:39] What kind of crime is he committing?

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:43:41] No, no why does it need to be a crime? He’s smart enough, he’s doing. He’s doing great.

 

Allison Williams: [00:43:47] He’s going to need a pre-nup in fifteen years! 

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:43:49] Maybe. Maybe. So so my you know, what is the five year olds today, that even the 15 year olds today, ten years from now, how are they going to be seeking legal services? What are they going to be asking for? What are they going to be demanding in that transaction? How are they going to be requesting that you, that you bill them? Well, you know, those are the questions that you need to be asking, and those are the questions we’re going to be answering at the Law Firm Growth Summit so that you can all, the work you’re doing today is not going to waste because next year we have something else that accelerates change by another two or three years. And you have to scrap what you did and start again. We want you to be at the forefront. We want you to be on the cutting edge so that you are the relevant law firm, not just tomorrow, but years to come. And you’ve positioned yourself strategically to be the winner.

 

Allison Williams: [00:44:41] Oh, wow. OK, so much as always, you have given us so much information, so many things that we need to be thinking about as law firm owners that want to move ahead, stay ahead and keep ourselves excelling and growing in business. And to, of course, my tagline, never stop growing. So to that end, Moshe, please let people know how they can find out more information about the Law Firm Growth Summit if they want to attend, if they want to get information so that they can get signed up for this this revolutionary program.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:45:10] Absolutely. So if you want to check out more information on the event, you want to see who else is speaking. We didn’t even talk about that. We’ve got some amazing speakers. We’re adding more every single day to the page.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:45:20] Go to law firm growth summit, dot com forward slash L-F-M for Law Firm Mentor, law firm growth summit, dot com forward slash L-F-M and check it out. The speakers, the agenda, what you can expect, if you have questions. We have different ticket packages available depending on your needs. And we cannot wait to greet you February 9th in the morning.

 

Moshe Amsel: [00:45:48] It is so exciting at the time of recording this. It’s literally five weeks away. By the time you release, this we’ll probably be four weeks away. And you know this. You want to jump on the bandwagon. You don’t want to be one of the people that says, you know, when everyone says, hey, were you at the Law Firm Growth Summit? I’m like, oh, no, I missed it. I wasn’t there. You don’t want to be one of those people. The FOMO is going to be real. It’s going to be like, I can’t get into Clubhouse. That’s what it’s going to be like. So you definitely want to join us. I can’t wait to see you there. Allison, thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And just keep doing what you’re doing. I mean, it’s just making waves… and changing lives…

 

Allison Williams: [00:46:26] Same here. Always a pleasure to have you on the show. And I want to thank our audience once again for tuning in for another episode of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. You heard today my wonderful guest, Moshe, himself the founder and innovator behind the Law Firm Growth Summit. And of course, I am your Law Firm Mentor. Everyone have a wonderful day.

 

Allison Williams: [00:47:04] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s guest and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you own a solo or small law firm and are looking for guidance, advice or simply support on your journey to create a law firm that runs without you, join us in the Law Firm Mentor Movement free Facebook group. There you can access our free trainings on improving collections in law firms, meeting billable hours, enjoying the movement of thousands of law firm owners across the country who want to crush chaos in their law firms and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a great day!

Snip-its:

00:10:35 – 34 Seconds – Moshe

So how do you get your law firm to be the next Netflix of law and not the next Blockbuster of law? And that’s where we need to focus the conversation. That’s where we need to start looking as we grow our businesses, as we develop our systems, our processes, the technology we use. We should always be looking from a lens of what does the future look like and how do I set myself up for the future instead of thinking about what’s available to me today and how is business done today? Always be future thinking. And when you do that, you’re going to start seeing opportunities.

 

00:16:30 – 32 seconds – Allison

one of the things that I love that you mentioned was the idea of you got the, you got the little tickle like somebody said, hey, there, there’s this thing, then you float in the direction of that. You just said, let me try, test, see. And then opportunity sprung open. And we know that in the legal industry we tend to be laggards, right? We tend to be on the low end of the early adoption phase. We don’t like to just jump without seeing. We like to test the waters. We like to make sure that there’s a lot of people that are born into something before we do it.

Contact Info:

Moshe Amsel’s Contact Info

https://www.lawfirmgrowthsummit.com/LFM   

Name

Moshe Amsel

Law Firm Name

Profit with Law

Website

https://www.profitwithlaw.com/

Email Address

mamsel@dreambuilderfinancial.com

Phone Number

(845) 504-0910

Facebook url

https://www.facebook.com/profitwithlaw

Twitter Handle

@moshe_amsel

Instagram Handle

moshe_amsel

Allison Williams Contact Info:

Scheduler:  https://meetme.so/LawFirmMentor 

Moshe Amsel 

Moshe Amsel is the host of the Profit with Law Podcast and the Law Firm Growth Summit. He helps law firm owners grow their practice with a focus on creating generational wealth.

 

 As a married loving husband and father of 5 children ranging from 21 to 3 years, he is very familiar with the struggles of running a successful business and still prioritizing his family. 

 

Moshe has 20 years experience in the IT industry as a business executive. He has extensive experience in Sales and Marketing, having closed over $30 million in sales in a single year. In addition to Profit with Law, Moshe also owns an accounting practice, DreamBuilder Financial, where he helps clients with business advisory and tax strategy services.

 

Allison Williams

Allison C. Williams, Esq., is Founder and Owner of the Williams Law Group, LLC, with offices in Short Hills and Wall Township, New Jersey.  She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Matrimonial Law Attorney, and is the first attorney in New Jersey to become Board-Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in the field of Family Law. Ms. Williams is a member of the New Jersey Board on Attorney Certification (NJBAC) – Matrimonial Committee, a New Jersey Supreme Court committee that determines eligibility of candidates to be certified as a recognized practitioner in the field of matrimonial law.

 

Ms. Williams has been named a Rising Star Attorney by the New Jersey Super Lawyers franchise continuously from 2008 – 2013, and has been named a Super Lawyer by that organization for 2014 – 2019. In 2016, she was featured in the Super Lawyers publication (Williams v. The Rubber Stamp), she has been named one of the Top 50 Women Super Lawyers in New Jersey from 2017-2019 and in 2019, was voted in the Top 100 Super Lawyers in the State of New Jersey.

 

Ms. Williams is an accomplished businesswoman. In 2017, the Williams Law Group won the LawFirm500 award, ranking 14th of the fastest growing law firms in the nation, as Ms. Williams grew the firm 581% in three years. Ms. Williams won the Silver Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.  In 2018, Ms. Williams was voted as NJBIZ’s Top 50 Women in Business and was designated one of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. In 2019, Ms. Williams won the Seminole 100 Award for founding one of the fastest growing companies among graduates of Florida State University.

 

In 2018, Ms. Williams created Law Firm Mentor, a business coaching service for lawyers.  She helps solo and small law firm attorneys grow their business revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.  Through multi-day intensive business retreats, group and one-to-one coaching, and strategic planning sessions, Ms. Williams advises lawyers on all aspects of creating, sustaining and scaling a law firm business – and specifically, she teaches them the core foundational principles of marketing, sales, personnel management, communications and money management in law firms. 

She received her B.S., magna cum laude, and her M.S., summa cum laude, from Florida State University. She received her J.D., cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law.