How Jim Built His Book of Business Inside a BigLaw Firm Using Networking That Works for All Rainmaker Lawyers

Ali Katz:
Hello, and welcome to the NewLaw podcast, where we guide entrepreneurial lawyers to build law practices into businesses they love. I'm Ali Katz. In today's episode, I'm talking with longtime lawyer Jim Carlisle about the value of keeping your beginner's mentality as you grow your practice so that you can truly be both the smartest and most approachable lawyer in the room that everyone wants to work with. If you're looking for practical strategies on networking and marketing that works with your strengths, well, tune into this episode. Lawyers. Let's get into it.

Ali Katz:
We are here with session number one, how to be the smartest and most approachable lawyer in the room that every client wants to hire and every referral source wants to work with. And my special guest today is Jim Carlisle of the Dinsmore firm. And, Jim, I bet you're sitting there wondering, how in the heck did I end up on this session on how to be the smartest and most approachable lawyer in the room. So welcome and thank you for joining me here today. We have a great program, and I just so appreciate you being here.

Jim:
Thank you. I'm very happy to join.

Ali Katz:
When I met you, I found you to be so approachable and just really so human. And I'll tell you, in my experience, that's not always the case for lawyers at big law firms. And when we began talking about actually how you built your law practice, what I found is that, oh, you actually built your law practice the way that we recommend our solo law firms and solo lawyers starting out build their law practice. So you had this small law firm entrepreneurial mentality, even though you were at this big law firm. And that is actually where I want to start after you tell us a little bit, Jim, not about the beginning, but what is your law practice today at Dinsmore? What do you do? Who do you serve, and how do you serve them? Share a little bit about that with us.

Jim:
Sure. So I've been practicing now three decades, as long as it's hard to believe, but three decades of work, I'm at a large law firm, and what I focus on is growth and exit planning with clients. So I meet clients and I help them to prepare three, five, seven years before they exit to get everything in order to strategize how to best position themselves for exit. And then I do the exits. I do the M&A work after that. But you can have a huge impact with business owners when you get in ahead of time, and you can help them get organized and they can realize such a higher value from that preparatory work.

Ali Katz:
So you're really building long term relationships with your clients right from the start. And did you start off that way when you started? Did you say 30 years ago? Where did you go to law school and when did you graduate?

Jim:
So I went to the University of Pittsburgh Law School, and I graduated in 1991.

Ali Katz:
Okay.

Jim:
And when I was in law school, I was working for law firms and also working for entrepreneurial businesses. And I realized very early I wanted to be financially independent, and I wanted to be stable and secure, so I didn't want to be at the whim of my employer as to my future. So when I started practicing, I was focused on business development and doing work for small clients right out of the gate. So I spent a significant amount of time doing that. And at big law firm, they said, you don't really have to do that. Why don't you just work on our clients? Because the partners wanted to get the proceeds of the origination credit for the work I was doing. They didn't really want me to develop my own clients, but I didn't have a blueprint or a protocol for how to do this, so I just did it through hard work. So I did both.

Jim:
I just worked endless hours developing my own clients, doing my own things, and also doing the firm work. And over time, that intersected quite well because I got the expertise doing the big law firm work, I applied that to the small clients. Over time, my small clients got bigger, my referral sources got promoted, and as time passed, I found myself with a mature practice that could have quite an impact. But I really built a small practice within a law firm at the origination of my practice.

Ali Katz:
Well, I want to just double down on that for a moment. Now, I also started out in big law, and I don't know how I. What I know is that when I started out in big law, I pretty quickly started to have a sinking feeling that I had made a mistake, that I had followed all the rules. I'd worked really hard in law school. I had even graduated first in my class. I'd gotten a job at one of the best law firms in the country, Munger, Tolles and Olson, and I was a mom. My daughter at the time was a baby. She was born during my clerkship, and I was the breadwinner in my family.

Ali Katz:
My husband was a stay at home dad, and I was making a six figure paycheck for the first time in my life. I'd always been a waitress up until then. This was like, a big deal. I was making, I think back then, 150-160 thousand a year. We had bought a house on the basis of that paycheck. And even though I was making all that money, I felt as if I never had another extra penny. I was so angry at my husband. He was a stay at home dad, and I was so angry at him.

Ali Katz:
Every day he would go to Starbucks and spend whatever, $4 or $5 on a Starbucks. And I was like, oh, he's spending all of our money. And I didn't feel like we had any. And that was confusing to me. And I was pretty miserable. And I was spending an hour each day commuting away from my daughter to just spend all day working on these huge transactions for Warren Buffett and others like him. And I began to have this sinking thinking, feeling that I'd made a huge mistake. And what I came to during that time was I needed to build my own practice within the big law firm practice just like you. It sounds like you came to that as well. And I began to realize, oh, I can create meaningful practice here. I just need to be able to serve my own clients. I need to be able to serve my own clients with estate planning and be able to serve the people in my community. And I went to the law firm partners at Munger Tolles, and I said, hey, can I do this? And they graciously said yes. And that is, from what I now understand, a very rare thing because that was opening them up to liability that they didn't need to take on. They didn't need my small clients, but they wanted to keep me.

Ali Katz:
And so they said yes. And I'm so grateful to Munger Tolles for that. It's just a wonderful firm. And Jim, I'm curious about that for you. How did you get the firm that you were working with to say, like, was it no problem, you were just able to take on these small clients? And they said yes. How did that go?

Jim:
Yeah, it was a case by case process. I'd have to go in and make the pitch for why that new small client would be an asset to the firm or an asset to me and a way for me to learn. And I think I built up enough goodwill by working hard enough on the firm's projects that they gave me latitude to proceed. And I think it's not the only way to get the experience and the information, but the big law side gave me a lot of training and expertise that it would have taken me a long time to get outside of that. So I always feel like you always have to invest in learning. So you've got to keep pushing to learn every day, new things, new subject areas, and to stay current on your areas. Big law was like drinking from a fire hose to start, because you got a lot of that fast. But I kept up with that.

Jim:
And so I built up some goodwill that I had some flexibility and latitude to develop my smaller practice at the beginning.

Ali Katz:
So I'm sharing this with you, and I'm asking Jim to share this with you so that you know that wherever you are is the perfect place for you to be. Wherever you are is the perfect place to be. You can create the practice that you want wherever you are. Now, if you're just coming out of law school and you're working at a big law firm or somebody else's firm, and you're starting to get the idea, I want to do things differently. You can do that if you are out on your own already, either as a solo or in a staffed practice, and you are realizing that you want to do things differently. You can start from wherever you are right now. The important thing to know is that as you get started building your law practice into a business, whether entrepreneurially. Entrepreneurially, yeah, I can't say that word.

Ali Katz:
But you know what I'm trying to say? At a big law firm or in your own practice, it is going to be a bit like a fire hose, because you still need to learn a lot. You still need to learn a lot. And that learning never stops. That learning never stops. And so I really want you to get prepared for that reality and get excited about that reality, because it can actually be really fun to keep learning as long as you recognize that it doesn't ever end. I don't think you ever get to a place in your practice or in your business where you're like, yeah, I'm done. I've learned it all. I'm still learning new things all the time.

Ali Katz:
And I have that beginner's mind mentality with everything that I come to. And when I'm on a steep learning curve, I actually get excited. I get excited because here's what I have found now, 20 years later, and maybe, Jim, for you, too, actually learning keeps me young. It keeps my mind flexible. It keeps my neurons going in a way where I'm living. I'm the most alive that I can possibly be. And I think that keeps us living longer, feeling healthier, loving our lives when we're willing to keep learning new things. So, Jim, I love that you really shared this foundation of really learning.

Ali Katz:
And one of the things that people repeatedly say about me that they really appreciate about me, and that they will appreciate about you, too, is that I say the things that others don't say. And I think that's one of the ways that we actually get to be the most approachable lawyer in the room is just by being willing to do things that others are not willing to do. And so for you, Jim, back in the day, that was, you're going to go out and do networking. You're going to go out and talk to people in your community and share with us a little bit about what does that networking look like back then when you didn't really know much, probably relative to today, and then maybe what it looks like for you today.

Jim:
Back then and I attend many networking events a month because I think you can never stop marketing. I always like to have a pipeline of the next projects, and I always did. So I would attend Chamber of Commerce events, high tech council events, whatever the business group meeting that I thought my prospective clients were at, I would go to those meetings and I would treat them like a work event. So some people would go to meetings like that, that find the group of people that they already knew, go off in the corner and get comfortable with them, have a few drinks, and call it a night. I made sure I said hello to the people that I knew, but I forced myself to get around the room and to meet new people and to develop new relationships. And when I would develop those relationships, I would try not to spend too much time with any one person, because that can take away your evening, your opportunity, and remember, you're working, so you want to meet as many prospects as possible. So I would spend enough time to build a core relationship, get contact information, and then follow up after the event, because I could always develop it later. Don't spend too much time with one person.

Jim:
And most of the time that I spent talking with people, I would be talking about them because they didn't care to hear about my law firm and everything that my firm does and everything that I do. They care about themselves, and they care about how I can help them. So I would find out enough about them that I could then talk about what I do that actually relates to them. And then through the preparatory stuff, because I always read the Wall Street Journal every day. And now, for example, I go to all the Leinberg information services materials and study those, so that when I'm in an environment and there's a subject that becomes relevant, I have something to say about it, and I don't know what that subject is in advance because I don't know what matters to that prospective client. But when I have them talk about themselves, then I find out what it is and I can throw in a couple informational passages that will cause them to want to talk to me again. And if I get that far, that's enough. That's all I need to do with that person.

Jim:
Move on, move and see what else can be accomplished tonight while I'm working at this event. Even though it might appear social, it's work. So that's the way I approached it originally.

Ali Katz:
And still today. And still today.

Jim:
Today I forced myself because luckily after doing this for a long time and momentum builds with your practice where you can say, I don't have to do it because I can't keep up with the work I have now. But that's not true. The minute that you stop your pipeline, I think things go sideways. If you're not growing, you're shrinking. And the minute that you stop your mind from growing with new subjects and advancing your learning, I think your mind starts to shrink. So I keep my foot on the gas in both those regards now as well.

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years, plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Ali Katz:
So Jim, what you just shared is absolute gold. And I want to break it down for everybody to make sure that you really got what Jim just shared with you. Because no matter what your practice area, no matter what your business, if you wanted to build a business outside of the law, what Jim shared is gold here. And you're getting it because you're a lawyer and you're getting it because you're an estate planning pro or you want to be. But it applies across the board to business. And I want to just break this down. First of all, what he said is that he went to where his prospective clients are. Some of you are spending way too much time with other lawyers.

Ali Katz:
Now, I'm really glad that you're doing that because you're here, but unless those other lawyers are in other practice areas, they're typically not going to send you business. Now, we do have a network of lawyers across the United States called Personal Family Lawyer and that network sends each other clients, so that can be great, but you need to get into your local community where your clients are. Now, what does that require first and foremost, it requires you to know who your clients are. Most lawyers, unfortunately, do not get this, and they try to serve everybody, or they try to serve too broad of a range of people. I did it myself in the early days of my practice. I was afraid that if I focused my attention on one group, then it would rule out everybody else, and there wouldn't be enough. One of the biggest impact decisions that I made in my own law practice in the early years was that I chose back then to focus on serving families with young children. Every lawyer and business coach that I spoke to back then told me that if I did that, I would starve.

Ali Katz:
There wasn't a market for serving families with young children. And they said, oh, Alexis, if you do that, you're going to. Families with young children don't want to think about estate planning, talk about estate planning. They don't want to pay for estate planning. And yet, I knew they were wrong. But it still took me a while to be willing to focus my marketing energy there because I was scared, because I thought, oh, there's not enough of those. There's so many of those. And that is the case for any niche that you want to choose.

Ali Katz:
Now, here's the cool thing. When you choose a niche, everybody else comes to you. So once I started focusing on families with young children, the business owners showed up that had young children. The senior parents of those families with young children, the high net worth families, the LGBTQIA, everybody showed up, but I was focusing my marketing on the families with young children. And then I served a broad range of who showed up. And, Jim, it sounds like back in the day that you focused very specifically on serving the business owners in your community. And is that still the case today? Is there, like, a specific description, you know, about those business owners that you serve?

Jim:
Well, the thing that has worked with me is in the conversations when I could guide them was to talk about growth and exit planning, because talking about somebody's business, it leads to, what's your business worth? What's your net worth? What's your family situation? What's your lifetime objectives? What are you looking to achieve? What do you want to leave to your family? So when you have those discussions, you're stepping into their innermost circles, and if they'll trust you with that, they'll trust you with anything. So I found that if I could get a client to be talking about those subjects. I would get the ability to do a growth and exit plan for them. And then beyond that I would get all the other things that other lawyers would separately market for. So there might be lawyers that would say, I want to go and try to get that business owner to do their shareholder agreement with them, and that's what they'd go talk about. Well, I didn't talk about that necessarily. I talked about the most important need that they have. And then, by the way, if they had a shareholder agreement problem, of course they were going to call me because they trusted me with everything.

Jim:
Not to mention I had the information about them individually and business wise, so they didn't have to call me from scratch and tell me the whole story. I already understood the story, so I wasn't an order taker where they tell me I want a new shareholder agreement, they would ask me, they would say, here's what I'm thinking. I think I might need this. What do you think? And I would have earned my right to have an opinion about that because I already knew what they were trying to achieve about their business and their personal life, so then I could weigh in on it. So that put me in a position of being a trusted advisor, and that's the best position to be in.

Ali Katz:
I mean, I hope you wrote down those questions. You're going to have the recording of this. You can watch the replay and write it down, pause it and get those questions. Because what you'll see there is that Jim is bringing curiosity about them. That's one of the first things that we start with in our training programs on life and legacy planning is how do you get curious with the people in your community, whether, again, no matter who you're serving. For me, when I was serving families with young children, it would be, have you ever thought about what would happen to your kids if something happens to you? And then how do you set context to ask that question? Right? You can't just come out and ask it. So we teach that in our programs. But Jim just gave you a list of questions.

Ali Katz:
And if you're serving business owners, this is the conversation that you want to be in with the business owner clients that you serve, really with anybody that you serve. If you're a lawyer and you're in that high level conversation with people about the things they care about most, then immediately they're looking to you as a trusted advisor. Now, the other thing that Jim shared here that is absolute gold is always being out there. Always being out there and being in the place again, where your prospective clients are now, you can't be everywhere, but you can be in places that you really like to be where your prospective clients are, which is, I think, actually one of the best parts about building a business around a law degree is that if you're somebody who loves sports, guess what? You can build your practice serving people who are sports agents, who are athletes, and you can get to go to sporting events as part of your networking. But what Jim said as well is that when he's out at these events, he knows he's working. He knows he's working. And so what does that mean that he does? He's meeting as many people as he possibly can, and he's asking them about them, and here's the linchpin, he's getting their contact information and following up. So just coming back then to the other thing that Jim said is that he said he had to force himself to do it.

Ali Katz:
You are not going to build a business sitting behind your computer. You're just not going to. I know a lot of you want to. Getting out there, it can be scary, it can be uncomfortable, it can be a pain to get out there and meet people, but it's the best way to do it. It's the best way to do it. And even once you get your paid ads working right, that's the Holy Grail. Everybody wants paid ads leading to people to book a call with you and engage you for your services, right? Oh, if I could just build my business based on paid ads to a funnel, it's not really it. That can be a strategy, and I strongly recommend that being a strategy.

Ali Katz:
But continuing to do the networking, continuing to do the meeting people, continuing to force yourself to get out there and get in connection, is really always going to be part of the mix. It's always going to be part of the mix. Now, the thing that Jim said that I think is really critically important, and I want to make sure that we touch on before we go today, is that he always had something in the back of his mind that he would be able to tie into what he heard from. Remember, he's starting off getting to know them, what's most important to them, and then he's got this bank of things that he can talk about that he could even follow up on afterwards. Well, where did he get that bank? Where did he get that bank? He got that bank from reading the Wall Street Journal every day, because that's what his prospective clients were reading. Now, look, if your prospective clients are moms, you don't need to read the Wall Street Journal every day. What do you need to read? Whatever they're reading is what you need to read. You need to read the parenting books.

Ali Katz:
You need to read the baby books, right? How to raise your kid. If your prospective clients are sports agents, then you want to read the sporting whatever the sports agents are reading, right? If your prospective clients are in the entertainment field, you want to be reading whatever that magazine is. I don't know. That goes out to the entertainment folks, but for Jim, it was the Wall Street Journal, because that's what his clients, his prospective clients were reading. Could be the New York Times for you. You find out what are they reading, and you read that. But then Jim mentioned there was something else, and that was that he stayed educated on the top news and stories in our industry in the world of estate planning and exit planning and the economy, because that would allow him to be the smartest lawyer in the room. Not just the most approachable, not just the most human, but also the smartest on top of what he needed to know so that he could hear something they said and say, oh, I know something about that.

Ali Katz:
And it doesn't have to be a lot, right? Just a little, because they don't actually want to know a lot until they're in an actual session, but just enough to get them interested in having a session. Jim, I want to thank you so much for just being willing, really walking your talk. It's one of our values here at NewLaw business model is we walk our talk. I see you walking your talk as well.

Ali Katz:
Thanks for listening. If you want the kind of support that you heard me giving in this podcast, go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and book your call with a law business advisor so you can map the path to discovering exactly how you can turn your law practice into a business you absolutely love. But before you do that, connect with us on Instagram at newlawbusinessmodel. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And of course, we would love your five star reviews on wherever you're listening to this episode. And after all that, go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and book a call with one of our law business advisors. I look forward to seeing you on one of our future coaching calls. Bye for now.