This is the first of two episodes of Lawyerpreneur that feature me as the interviewee. This episode first aired on Litera TV’s program “Inside the Firm” in August 2020. If you’re more interested in watching rather than listening, you can find Damien Black’s interview of me on Litera’s YouTube channel.
In Episode 40 of Lawyerpreneur, Damien and I discuss a smattering of topics that I wrote about in Level Up Your Law Practice, including abundance mindset v. scarcity mindset, approaching a healthy mindset with intentionality, facing your fear of rejection, and attempting to establish boundaries for a functional work-life balance.
Level Up Your Law Practice with an Abundance Mindset
You can listen here or on your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, YouTube, and RSS.
Today’s show is sponsored by ALPS, the nation’s largest direct writer of lawyers’ malpractice insurance. Right now you can get 25% off one CLE seminar from ALPS. Go to alpsinsurance.com/cle and use promo code LAWYERPRENEUR upon check-out.
Interview with Damien Black
Damien Black
Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for another episode of Inside the firm. And today I have Jeremy Richter joining us. Hi, Jeremy. How are you?
Jeremy Richter
I’m good. How are you doing?
Damien Black
I’m doing wonderful. Thanks for coming on today.
Jeremy Richter
Yep. Glad to.
Damien Black
Great. Well, can we start with you giving the audience some info on your background? What you do?
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, of course. And before I get anything substantive started, my five year old asked me if I would wave to him. So, buddy, hope you’re having a good day and be nice to your sister. All right. And so my name is Jeremy Richter, I have a law practice in Birmingham, Alabama, where I am an insurance defense litigator. And a lot of my work is car wrecks and slip and falls. And then I have some clients who, I never know what they’re going to send me. And so, you know, it’s one day to the next is always different. People will ask, you know, what’s your usual week? Like? And I don’t I don’t have a usual week. Well, I mean, I have in the last five months, because we’ve all been, you know, quarantined. But before that, there was no usual week. And so, but I also have a podcast called lawyer corner where I interview other lawyers who are doing interesting and innovative, innovative things, sometimes in their law practices, and other times completely outside of their practice areas. So yeah, that’s been awesome.
Damien Black
Well, thank you so much, we appreciate it. And there’s some other exciting things that you’ve been working on, like your book, your law practice. So let’s start with this. And what inspired you to write this book, Jeremy.
Jeremy Richter
So this is my third book. And it really, my first two books focused a lot on practice management and client management skills for particularly younger lawyers, I think it can apply to all lawyers. But I am, I guess, relatively a younger lawyer. I started a little bit later because I taught high school before, but so in my practice, I’m still relatively young. And so I’m writing from my own experiences, and not saying, Hey, I know all these things, and I’m a guru. It’s all been from a perspective of, hey, here’s what I’m experiencing, and how I’m dealing with it and what I’m learning along the way. And maybe I can make that learning curve, a little less steep. For those who are coming along behind me or beside me. The third book level up your law practice is much more introspective than the first two. And, you know, I’m looking here, I turned 38 this year. And so I’m looking at, I’ve got another 30-35 years of work ahead of me. And what do I want that to look like? And so a good portion of the book deals with mindset, and positioning yourself to have a healthy mindset and a sustainable practice that you can do over the course of a long career. And so that was a lot of the idea for the book came from, what am I dealing with, personally? And I think it’s fair to assume that a lot of other lawyers are dealing with the same thing, and how can I How can I navigate that? And then help other people do the same thing? Yeah, that’s great.
Damien Black
I’m sure that a lot of young lawyers will find a lot of value in the, the practical substance that you can provide, because I know so many people come out of law school, and they just don’t know how to actually, you know, start doing their job. And,
Jeremy Richter
yeah, I’m, we’re taught in law school, how to think like a lawyer, but not necessarily how to, like, practice law. So, you know, Yeah, I agree.
Damien Black
Yeah. So hopefully, for anybody listening, check that out if you need that detail. And so in your book, you talk about this, cultivating an abundance mindset. Can you explain what the concept is behind that?
Jeremy Richter
Yeah. So the basic premise behind an abundance mindset is the idea that there’s always more where that came from. And so whether that’s knowledge or information, or clients, wisdom, there isn’t. It’s not a zero sum game. There’s always more and so we need to be generous and share information, and share ideas. And I’ll give you a really specific example of that, because I think the opposite side of an abundance mindset is a scarcity mindset. And that’s where you’re always like holding everything close to your chest, and you don’t want to share you don’t want to invest in other people. Because if I’m a partner and Help this younger lawyer, maybe he, my clients like him better than they like me and they start sending him work instead of sending me work. And so I don’t do anything to help him along the way or her along the way, I just keep everything to myself and never let them communicate with clients. So that’s that’s the opposite end of the spectrum. A really specific example of where I saw this, in my own practice is one of the earliest articles that I wrote for our Alabama defense lawyers magazine was about how to so some of the work that I do is trucking litigation. And it was about the admissibility of post accident drug screens, which is a super specific topic, that doesn’t really apply to a whole lot of people. But for those of us who do that kind of work, and may or may not have a driver who occasionally doesn’t pass the drug screen, it’s important to us to know what steps are necessary to either get that in or keep it out or whatever is necessary there. And another lawyer came up to me after reading the article and said, No, aren’t you worried about sharing this information, like you’re helping out your competition, and that is certainly one way to look at it. And it’s true that I’m likely, you know, giving information, but it’s not like it’s national security secrets, it’s this information I shared would still have to be applied by somebody. And I don’t think it’s terribly likely that another lawyer who reads it will be able to take a client away from me just because they have this one idea that I shared. And I can’t think I can’t allow myself to think that way. Because I don’t want to have a perspective of selfishness, or being unwilling to contribute to the law practice, generally. And, you know, the people that I interact with on a daily basis, I want us to be able to share ideas, and I want to be able to serve my clients better. And I want to help them be better lawyers and serve their clients better, too. Because I think that in the end, that’s better for all of us.
Damien Black
Yeah, no, that’s really good point. And I, I know that that happens all too often. So it’s a very real challenge. And so as far as like the scarcity mindset, are there other impacts that that has on like, where a lawyer may focus their time and energy?
Jeremy Richter
I think you can have broad reaching effects on where you choose to spend your time, even. What do you do on a daily basis? You know, it’s really difficult sometimes, for those of us who are in an hourly billing practice, like, I am in my firm, and, you know, the entire group of people who do insurance, defense or defense work, we build by the hour, and we built six minutes at a time. And it can be really difficult to choose to take time away from billing, to do the other parts of your business, that keep the business afloat, and they keep your practice afloat. Like you have to intentionally carve out time for marketing, for managing the business for doing all the things that helps you achieve, what your greater goals and vision and strategy are, for your work. And if you have a scarcity mindset, and you have the idea that I have to do everything. Now, you might not carve out that time, and you might not be intentional about growing your business, because you’re so focused on your profitability for today. And in this moment, and this hour, that you don’t allow yourself to, to dream and have a vision for what you want to do, and then act on those things that make that possible.
Damien Black
Yeah, so what can lawyers do to make sure that they have a healthy mindset?
Jeremy Richter
approach it every day? It takes it takes intentionality, and purpose. Because, for example, this is something I talked about in the book, one of the things that I struggle with, as far as mindset goes, is what I heard somebody called comparison itis and I’ve kind of adopted that term, and it’s envy at its core, and seeing other people get recognition for the things that they’re doing, or, you know, get accolades, or have success that maybe I haven’t received. And it’s just monitoring myself against my peers, when maybe I don’t even want to accomplish those same things that they’re doing or you know, And so one of the things that I have to actively choose every day is not to compare myself to others, I have to focus on my own path, my own objectives and goals and the things that I want to do, rather than seeing what someone else is doing or being recognized for, and allowing myself to be diverted to something that I’m not even interested in, just to try to achieve that same recognition. And so, you know, that’s a really specific example of having a healthy mindset, because that’s one particular thing that affects me. But more broadly, it’s, it’s recognizing the things that hold us back and choosing every day, and the moments within that day where we recognize that we’re being pulled away from a healthy mindset and a healthy path to get back to that. Yeah,
Damien Black
that’s really great insight. So do you have any tips on overcoming the fear of failure and criticism that you kind of touched on earlier?
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, that’s really hard. And for me, I have a fear of rejection and being told no. And I know that most people don’t like it. And I was talking to somebody recently who’s in sales, and they are really capable of just shrugging off No, and it doesn’t have any effect on them. Because they hear no 100 times without a yes. And they, they’re totally fine with it. But I’m not geared that way. And being rejected being told no, the potential of failing at something really has the capacity to hold me back from things. And so it’s choice. And it’s understanding that even if you do fail at something that brings along its own opportunities, and, you know, you’d have to frame failure in the right way. And sometimes a moment of failure or a particular failure, and it feels bad, there’s no getting around it, oh, your feels bad. But it also, if you understand and take the time to analyze why the failure occurred, you can then position yourself to be more likely to succeed in the next go round. And so you just have to not let it totally derail you, and just choose choose to, you know, look at the failure and take a step back, what were the causes? What did I do wrong? What could I do differently, to achieve a different outcome, and a lot of that focuses on, you need to focus on the process, and not necessarily the outcome of the failure. Because sometimes, you can do all the right things, and still not have a good outcome, because there are things that are beyond your control. And this is something I watch a lot of sports, and it’s something that Nick Saban talks a lot about, and Bill Belichick talks a lot about. And the former gm of the Philadelphia 70 sixers, whose name totally escapes me right now, talked a lot about focus on the process, and not the outcomes, because you might do none of the things correctly, but have a successful outcome that you can’t replicate. And so I’ll give you an example of we tried a case in February of this year, which is probably one of the last cases that actually tried before the whole world sat down. And it was a case where my client rear ended another driver with some passengers in the vehicle. And it was a clear liability. My my client was at fault. She agreed that she was at fault. The question was, were the people that she ran into actually hurt in the accident. And so we presented some evidence that maybe they weren’t hurt. And they presented some evidence that maybe they were. And ultimately, we got a defense verdict that was really favorable for our client. And the jury agreed that the folks weren’t hurt. And but I say that to say, a different jury, on a different day, could have had a different outcome. And so I intentionally and maybe this, I don’t know if this is healthy or not, but I didn’t get too excited. Again, the moment I was excited, but I didn’t focus my excitement on we won. Because I knew that a different jury on a different day may come back with a different verdict. So what I had to look at was even in that success, okay, what did I do wrong? Along the way, that put me in the best position to have the success, even though the ultimate outcome was in the hands of 12 other people. And so even in cases where we have not had good outcomes, you have to go back and look and say, okay, was there anything we could have done differently? Or should have done differently? Or didn’t we do everything we should have. And this was just the result. And so, you know, when you look at failure, when you look at rejection, what you have to consider is more than just that the immediacy of the outcome, you have to look at what got you there? Yeah,
Damien Black
I couldn’t agree with you more on the fact that, you know, failures are going to happen, but if we can just learn from them, so that we can try to prevent that going forward. You know, a lot of times, you get a lot of success out of those failures, and you learn things that you never would have learned how to not fail. So that’s a really good point. And so on the topic of like failures, and I’m going to tie that to like making mistakes. What’s your Do you have any tips on the best way to handle a mistake? Like with your client? How do you? How do you deal with that?
Jeremy Richter
You have to head it off at the pass. And you have to say, Hey, I made a mistake. And I screwed up. We had a case a couple of years ago, where there was this really bizarre case law from the 1920s. That was dealt with this one very specific issue. And when it first came up, in our case, I wrote an article about it and put it on my website. Because, you know, it’s this crazy case, and it’s still good law, because no court has ever overturned it. And so I wrote an article about it, because it was really interesting. Well, as the case progresses, and a couple years later, I see that we’re approaching trial, and opposing counsel from the other foot, well, someone from opposing counsels firm, has subscribed to my newsletter, and has read that article. And I realized that like, I may have given them some information here that they wouldn’t may not otherwise have been aware of, because this was really obscure. And so, you know, I had a choice to make in that moment of, do I let this thing go and see what happens? Because maybe nothing happens? Maybe it was somebody totally unrelated to the case. And it just happened to be from that same firm? And it’s totally happenstance? Or do I go to the partner that I’m working with and say, Hey, here’s the thing that I think might have happened. And this might have been a result that I gave them some information that is beneficial to them, and they might not otherwise have had. And so you know, that was a screw up on my end, because I should have waited to write that article until long after the case was over. And so I had to go to the partner and say, Hey, here’s what happened. And, you know, I work with that partner, every day. And we need to be able to trust each other. And so I had to own that mistake, or potential mistake, so that we could continue to have a functional relationship, because maybe they maybe nothing comes of it. And maybe they never know that happens. But I know, regardless of that, that I haven’t been honest and forthright with somebody that I work with every day. And that we need to have a really good relationship. So when you screw up, you got to own it. And it’s always better on the front end. Ask Richard Nixon. You know, it’s just, it’s just better to own it on the permanent.
Damien Black
Yeah. and maintain that trust, which is, you know, the most important part. Yeah, so let’s switch gears for a moment. Everybody who knows, a lawyer knows that their client is the number one priority. It’s, you know, what keeps them at the office and away from their families late at night and missing holidays and things like that? What can lawyers do to prioritize themselves and their families and the things that, you know, matter to them?
Jeremy Richter
And that’s hard to, you know, a lot of people joke that being a lawyer would be easy if it weren’t for clients. And, you know, I think everybody who’s in a service industry has to make the same choice of, you have to decide what your priorities are. And, you know, for me, one of my priorities is to have dinner with my family every night. Now. Sometimes, if I have an out of town deposition or I’m getting ready for trial, there are things that become immediate and have to be attended to. But on a daily basis, my, my priority is to be at home, have dinner with my family. And so I have to choose how I want to make that possible. And one of the ways that I do that is by getting up early and working before going into the office. So that instead of you know, and this is all about choices and how people want to work, and this is what works for me, and it’s not going to work for everybody. Some folks like to roll in at nine and leave at six or seven in the evening. And like they’re good with that. I would rather wake up early work before going in the office, go in, and then be able to leave at my normal time. Now, certainly all of that has changed in the last five months, and working from home has become the norm for so many people. And where, depending on where you live, some of us are getting back into the office where you know, we’ve been, but I think a lot of our lawyers still are experiencing that flexibility of okay. Some people have figured out working from home absolutely is non functional for them. Whereas for me, I really appreciate it and like it. And I’m still choosing on some days to go ahead and work from the house, depending on what I’ve got to deal with that day. And so it’s a matter of prioritizing, and then continuing to choose that priority. But also, in order to be able to do that, you have to set clients expectations about your availability. And that’s something you’ve got to do on the front end. Because if you don’t establish on the front end, clients are going to decide what their own expectations are for you. And act on that. And changing it midstream is incredibly difficult. And so whether that’s in initial engagement letters, or whether that’s in initial conferences with clients, that just has to be addressed upfront of Okay, these are my hours, this is how you can contact me. And you have to be the ones who actively put that in motion. There’s a lawyer that I’ve interacted with. And whenever I send her an email, I get an auto reply that says, I only check my emails at these two times every day. And I think it’s like 830 and 430. And if you need me, in the meantime, you can call my assistant and here’s her phone number. But she is setting the expectation not only for her clients, but opposing counsel and I think it’s in there that she’s not checking it on the weekends of, Okay, if you send me an email, here’s what I’m going to catch it. And so everybody that interacts with her knows, that’s her availability, there is no flexibility there. And you and you can accept it or not, it doesn’t matter. That’s, that’s the way she’s chosen to handle it. And so it’s just setting expectations, and then reinforcing it with your behaviors. Because if you don’t, if your behavior is different from what you tell your clients that expectation is, then they’re going to go with what you’re acting. And if you’re answering the phone at eight o’clock at night, then then they’re going to assume that’s when you’re available. And there’s another lawyer, plaintiff’s lawyer that I know fairly well. And she had a client call her on Christmas Eve. And she answered the phone. And the client said, this is an emergency. She said, like, is this really an emergency? Or, you know, like, is it not? It’s an emergency. Okay, what is it? What’s the status of my case, which is not an emergency. And this lawyer told her client said, Look, if you need a lawyer who’s available for you, at six o’clock in the evening, on Christmas Eve, you need to find a different lawyer. You can call me back. You know, when we’re in business again, and that’s what you have to do sometimes is you have to your behaviors have to reinforce your words. Yeah. Yeah.
Damien Black
Everybody seems to be moving towards this. recognizing the importance of work life balance, and I think attorneys have been behind the ball on that for such a long time. And it’s really nice to hear that some people are really trying to change that. So because it has such a big impact on people’s mental health and their family lives. And so I think these are really good tips for just setting those expectations because if people are in agreement with you on The hours that they can contact you, then that would remove so much frustration, you wouldn’t be angry when they didn’t answer the call, you know that i think that’s some really great information. And so let’s talk about efficiency. What do you think are some, like high level tips on how to work most efficiently?
Jeremy Richter
I think for me and something I’ve, you know, and a lot of this has changed in the last five months of like, What does efficiency look like? Now, as opposed to what did it look like in January. But one of the important things I think that for lawyers to do is delegate non essential tasks. In an ideal world, aside from marketing, and building relationships, and those sorts of things, the things that I would do on a daily basis, or billable tasks, and anything that can’t be billed to a client, that’s administrative, should be done by somebody else. And so for lawyers, it’s a matter of recognizing what are the tasks that are important enough and urgent enough that I need to be the one to handle it? And how quickly do I need to do that, versus if it’s urgent, but not important, I need to hand that off to somebody else. Or if it’s not urgent, and not important, maybe nobody needs to do it. And maybe it just needs to go to the trash can. Because there’s a lot of things that occupy our day that aren’t important, and don’t have any immediacy about them. And we could, you know, have more time in our day to do those things that have to be done. So recognizing what tasks can be delegated to others, and whether that’s associates or administrative staff and support staff, paralegals, and what has to be done by you can give you more opportunity to focus on the strategic decisions that you’ve got to make make to move both your caseload forward and your business forward in the way that you need to get it.
Damien Black
Yeah, that ties so well to the values that we have at Litera on just really helping lawyers focus on what matters, removing that administrative burden, so that you can focus on the high value work that really makes an impact for your clients.
Jeremy Richter
Yeah, sometimes it’s not people. Sometimes it’s technology and software that can alleviate that for you. I’m with you on that.
Damien Black
Yep. That’s great. Man, we have so much more to cover.
Jeremy Richter
out of time. This
Damien Black
is so great, I might have to have you back on here, because you’re sharing such great information. So let’s talk let’s continue on the client path for a moment. What can lawyers do to help potential clients find them?
Jeremy Richter
You’ve got to be present on the internet. That’s the world we live in now. And especially in this moment, there are no or relatively few face to face meetings, like all my clients or corporate clients, but we’re not going to conferences. We’re not, we’re not out in the world meeting each other. And so if a client has a need, they have to be able to find you on the internet, you’ve got to be present with a website, you need to be engaged in whatever social media it is that that’s where your clients are. So if it’s corporate clients, like for me, that’s, that’s LinkedIn. And for, you know, like my podcast, and for my website, that’s Twitter. And so you’ve got to know where your clients are. And then you have to be establishing your expertise with the information and the content that you’re providing. And so that even before they ever contact you, they have a know an opportunity to know who you are, personally, what your expertise base is, so that they can establish that you’re somebody that can help them with the problem that they’re experiencing. And so I think those are really essential aspects of providing potential clients that information to make a decision about you.
Damien Black
That’s all great information. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation with you. We’re about out of time. But I wanted to leave our audience with information where they can find you and find your podcast and
Jeremy Richter
the other resources that you’ve created. So my website is Jeremy W. Richard calm, and that can take you know, the books, the podcasts are all there. The podcast is called lawyer printer, and it’s wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find it. And then my books are wherever, wherever you buy books, they’re there, most of everybody gets them on Amazon, and they’re certainly there too. And I think probably LinkedIn. My name Jeremy Richter, and Twitter is at Richard JW. And those are all the places that you can find me and find the information. About me and what I like to talk about. Awesome. Well, thank
Damien Black
you so much again for coming on today. This was really great information. I really appreciate you. And I hope you have a great day.
Jeremy Richter
Thanks. You too.
Damien Black
Bye, Jeremy.
Jeremy Richter
See you later.
