The Wellness Esquire Podcast

How Gwen Griggs and Whitney Harper Engineered a Better Law Firm

• Ariella Cohen Coleman • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this episode, I sit down with Gwen Griggs and Whitney Harper, the powerhouse behind Advos Legal. We dive deep into the "brokenness" of the traditional legal system and how they’ve engineered a new path. 

We explore the transition from the grueling billable hour to a value-based "point" system adapted from software development's Agile methodology. Gwen & Whitney share their journey from BigLaw and in-house roles to building a firm that prioritizes both client success and the humanity of the legal team. 


Gwen and Whitney are the co-founders of Advos Legal & Advos Pro.

Gwen focuses on strategic growth for tech-enabled companies and Whitney brings a unique P&L perspective to legal practice.


Resources Mentioned:

  • Advos Legal: The firm’s home for innovative legal services.
  • Advos Pro: Where Gwen and Whitney help other lawyers break free from the traditional model and the expectation that it has to suck to practice law, and guide lawyers to love their work and lives, and be richly rewarded by their practices.
  • Agile/Scrum Methodology: The software development framework adapted for the P3 method.
  • Hal Resnick: Business consultant mentioned regarding organizational design.

Host Info: Ariella Cohen Coleman

The Wellness Esquire: Creating a bold new path where wellbeing, happiness, and authenticity drive performance and success https://thewellnessesquire.com

Ariella Law, PC provides strategic legal support - from formation, contracts, and compliance to fractional general counsel - through project-based services and monthly subscriptions for entrepreneurs, growing companies, and mission-driven organizations. https://ariellaw.com/

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SPEAKER_02

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Esquire podcast. I am your host, Ariella. I absolutely loved this conversation with Gwen and Whitney, who lead Advos Legal, a law firm built around human values and that has reimagined how to serve clients and empower their legal team. They bring lawyers together through Advos Pro as well, where they guide their community to build law firms based on their own innovative point system that they and their clients absolutely love. These are two delightful and powerful women who went into law to have an impact, and they're doing exactly that. And they're doing it with a focus on joy, well-being, and connection. I know you're gonna get so much value out of this conversation. Take a listen. She is worked. Oh goody.

SPEAKER_00

Who knows what the answer was?

SPEAKER_02

I well, I'm so glad that worked because I was just saying to Gwen that this is my first time, which is very exciting, interviewing two people at the same time. And while I'd thought about, hey, isn't this fun? Like a new way of having these conversations, it it hadn't occurred to me until like about a minute ago. Does that change anything about the way people need to enter into the recording? Um, so I'd started to worry. Wait, I didn't look into that as an option. Is there like another way to send links and indicate like, no, we want multiple people here? And so I'm glad that worked out because I wasn't, I didn't have a plan for that. A link was coming, but I wasn't convinced it was gonna work any differently. All good. How fantastic. I'm so thrilled to talk to both of you. And um, this is I I like to do this in such a casual way. And the reason I started this podcast was because I was having all of these conversations with lawyers who have this focus on well-being because I do, and I would find my way to other people, and I would have the conversations and find the like-minded people and know that they're out there, but I'd find them one at a time. And each time it would be thrilling. And each time I'd think, why did it take so long for me to find them? And that so often when I'm connecting with lawyers that aren't part of these circles, they have no idea that anyone is having these conversations. And they're they're so thrilled to discover their first person who they can be authentic with and vulnerable and say the things they feel like they're not supposed to say out loud and look for different ways to practice. And so I just thought, well, what if I just put a microphone in front of us when I'm having these conversations with everybody and highlight that we're actually having these conversations far more regularly than a lot of people realize? And there are so many more of us than most people realize. And what if we could just develop this massive, you know, intentional legal community with everyone just being like, hey, we know that we're we're working in a broken system and we're not okay with it, and we have other options. Let's work together and change the whole thing as a group and help each other through it. So that's ultimately the goal here. And um so thank you for being part of this discussion because of having done all the work that you've already done and continue to do.

SPEAKER_01

First, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Right. I love what you're up to. I love, and I get it, right? We Whitney and I have had lots of one-on-ones, and we're like, there's so many incredible nuggets in that conversation that we heard and we had a chance to hear and share. But like, how do we exponentially um create momentum there? Um, and and we're all like it's that the power of a community, right? We're all on this journey, we're all doing the things we're doing, but we're doing it with our one life experience, right? And so collectively, like get there so much faster. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

So I was was just saying to you, I have not interviewed two people at the same time before. So bear with me as I learn how to do that. This will be fun. Um, either way.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_02

We're we're very good at at collaborating. But you can do these conversations together. So I assume that you've got this nailed. Um, and and I'm I'm so excited to have this conversation. So I want to start with going back just a few years and ask each of you what led you to law school in the first place? And just kind of in a nutshell, walk me through your career until the point or around the point, whatever's easier for you, um, that you started this law firm that you launched together. Gwen, we'll start with you.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Um I actually, very young person, middle school-ish, and I wrote a paper on Brown versus Board of Education, and it like this seed planted in my brain that a lawyer could have a huge impact. You know, one person from frankly humble beginnings, right? And they could have an outsized impact. And so, like, stake in the ground, that's what I was gonna do, and and charged forward. Um, 10 years out of law school, I sort of picked my head up and went, wait, wait, wait, how did how did I get here? Right? Like that before. Yes, yeah, like I had this dream and I had this passion, and then I did well in school, and so had some really incredible opportunities, but then I picked my head up and said, How did I get here? This isn't this isn't what drove me to to become a lawyer in the first place. So, how do I integrate what is really important to me with the practice of law and the and the privilege of practicing law, which I I think gets lost sometimes. Um so that in a in a quick nutshell was the winding path that that got us very close to starting the firm.

SPEAKER_02

Amazing. We're gonna get into the parts that didn't feel right.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Sure. I will say too, I had two and a half years at a workplace wellness company right before I before we launched the firm. And so that was eye-opening on so many levels. Um, just that the the belief that it couldn't be different, and then realizing actually it can be, um, that you have to build by the hour, actually you don't, right? So a lot of those um sacred cows in the profession make good hamburger less. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Whitney, what's your story?

SPEAKER_00

Um, kind of a funny moment when I realized, like, oh, law school is probably the thing for me. Um, so I had two women in my life who were just examples of professional badassery, right? My grandmother was an OBGYN when there weren't women physicians, much less surgeons. Um my aunt, her daughter, um, was a lawyer at a prominent firm in Jacksonville. Um, and I think she really loved what she did. In fact, I know she loved the work she did. Um, and she had a real mastery of it. Um, and by the end of her career was a bankruptcy judge. Um, so you know, had really achieved some success there. Um, but I also saw her working her face off and um you know not having sort of the family life that I think she probably intended. So it wasn't like a, oh yeah, I want that, I want to go be a lawyer, so much as like the substance of those professions was really interesting to me. So I went to undergrad and I decided I was going to um major in like political science, international relations, but I was gonna take the prerex for med school. And so you go in and you sign up for, yeah, I know. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna like leave all these things open to myself, right? I don't know what I want to be, but I'm gonna I can go ahead and take the prerex. Um and when you sign up for your political science classes, you have three days a week, an hour a day of class, you get three credits for the class, right? You sign up for what organic chemistry or whatever the prereq was, and it's you know, the class is three hours of credit for three hours in class, and then there's this lab that is also three or four hours a week and gets one credit. And so I was like, let me just see about how this works. And so I think I went to like a week of classes and was like, this is unjust, right? And when you look at that, you go, unjust. Like that's how you know you should go to law school. I don't know if that's a really good reason to go to law school, but that that certainly when I look back, like that's one of the moments that for me was like, oh yeah, this is how I think about things.

SPEAKER_02

I understand that. And I I think a lot of people have their own version of you look back and you wonder, that's the thing that made me go to law school. That's what led me here. But you know, you're 17-ish, 18, maybe a little older, maybe younger. Like, what do you know? Something has to lead you in a direction. And so something like that.

SPEAKER_00

I knew I wanted a career that would let me have impact, right? Like if I think about those two potential paths, I knew I wanted to be impactful. I wanted a career where I could make change and and really kind of be um be a force, you know? And and I think that was part of what was so attractive about lawyering was the many ways you could do that, right? The many ways that you could take that superpower and the that critical thinking and the logic and the the reasoning and and kind of creative problem solving and have some real impact. And um, and I think, you know, as you kind of play through the evolution of our careers um and into our practice, I yeah, I think it kind of shows through that we both were people who said we want to make a difference, and um, and it kind of didn't matter what room we were in, we were gonna make a difference in it.

SPEAKER_02

So, what did that first part of your career look like that ultimately led to the two of you deciding I still want to practice, but not that way?

SPEAKER_00

I had the shorter stint in kind of the big law traditional model. I was only there like two and a half years. Um, so I was in a bigger firm, doing some litigation and some um kind of employment employer side counsel and got poached to go in-house. And so pretty quickly, um, I had these two experiences back to back where it was like, oh, these are completely different ways of thinking about things, right? That in the law firm, you're the widget, like you're the star of the show, and everything revolves around like you getting your hours and winning the argument, and and you're not like you just don't have the same filter on things that you do when you're part of the business team or part of the client. So in-house, um, you know, you're sitting there as part of the management team going, I don't care how long it took you, I don't care that you won every point you argued. Did we get the result we wanted? Did we get the contract signed? Did we, you know, whatever it was, it's the business goal. And you pretty quickly realize, like, I'm not the widget, I'm not the star of the show. The organization is, and how are we going to get where we want to go and and get everybody to be part of the team that gets us there? Um, and so that was sort of my first two steps, and then jump the fence. We sold our company, and um, I got to jump the fence and help run a business unit. And so then you've got PL responsibility, and if you thought you had learned some things about being part of the client before, really learn it then, right? I was I was the client of both the in-house and outside legal teams. And um, and that shifted my perspective too. Um, and then when when that phase was kind of coming to its end, um I had a little bit of a breather, was able to stay home with my kids for a little bit, which was really cool. And then um needed to make a shift and let my husband take a turn with a little breather. And that was when a colleague connected me with Gwen. And Gwen, who I had been hearing about for, I don't know, like nearly a decade, um, from this colleague who had said we were so alike and all these things. And um, Kay, the the person who connected us, is just this ultimate connector um and is just so generous with that. It's remarkable that we had never met, the amount that I had heard about Gwen before this.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Okay, long-term matchmaking. So what happened when the two of you connected? Were you both already thinking I that you wanted something different, that you were launching a firm? What led to, hey, we've now met, you know, this new person, and then, oh, now we have a lot of.

SPEAKER_00

So how to back-I think I'm showing up to meet Gwen because Gwen also knows everybody who I might need to know and like can help make some connections or point me in the direction of what my next gig is. And I'm pretty sure that when we sat down, like one of the first things out of my mouth was, I don't know what I want to be next, but it's not lawyering. Like I'm not, I'm not looking for a law firm role. I'm thinking like I have this business mindset and I like to solve the sticky problems, and maybe it's a COO something, maybe it's something without a real name. I don't know, help. Right.

SPEAKER_01

So like I sit down, I say that, and she's like, well, and for better or for worse, like I don't understand the word no. So it might be why I became a lawyer, but I heard her say that and I was like, oh, yay! Like she doesn't know what I'm up to yet. That we'll we'll figure this out.

SPEAKER_02

So when what did you already have in your mind?

SPEAKER_01

I had launched the firm in officially in January, and um this was right before Memorial Day, and we had more work than we could handle. And it's it's really interesting, those decision points. And so I was looking at space, and I said, if it's just me and the team, then I'm gonna rent this space. But if I end up with a partner, I'm gonna rent this space that's beautiful and like phenomenal across the hall. And I walked away meeting Whitney. I came home and I told my husband, and I still remember like so vividly. Like he's like, I remember where he's standing, what like I remember the you and I said, I just met my future partner. Just like that. Just like that. One lunch, one lunch. Right. That that was it. Well, you never know. I was gonna say, because um she saw all the things that were that were wrong with the profession that I did and was still very passionate about the profession, even though she said, I'm not gonna go practice law, she still loved it, right? And I could and I could sense that and I could feel that, and creative and business person, and had been in-house and so had seen it from that perspective. Um I just I just knew. I just knew. So, and we weren't dumb, right? So, like we didn't like you know, sign an operating agreement the next week. We we worked together. Uh, that was Memorial Day. We signed the lease for the bigger space. Um, we started working together that summer, and then by January 1st of the following year, we were we were wed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We were partners at that beginning stage, which was about 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, 2015.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. At that point, what were the pieces that you understood were broken about the system and you wanted to do differently?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I would I know. We lead and talk a lot about the billable hour because it is so tangible, it is so obvious. It um I I say often, right? If you're winning in the game of billable hours, that means you're losing in every other aspect of your life. And you've taken people who are driven and right, they want the gold star, they want the A, and you've put them in a business model that says, okay, the only way you win is to spend as much time as you possibly can doing this, right? It's just it's a terrible recipe. Then you add to it the client experience, right? The client's like, I'm afraid to call you because I have no idea what that call is going to cost or what it's gonna get into, or there's you've created an adversarial relationship with your client where you're not aligned. And just as a business model, who would design that that way? Um, but like that's what we lead with, but we but deeper than that, like you have the ability to design a business and a life you love, right? And yeah, and right, and and and so like that's that's the easy thing to point to, but it goes, it goes so much deeper. Like, are you taking really healthy vacations? Are you stepping away from the business? Are you taking care of yourself and each other? And it becomes part of literally our weekly meetings, right? We talk about books we read, and I mean the meaning for the whole team, right? Books we read and restaurants we've seen, and just like we are whole humans who are showing up in this workplace that wants to support the whole human. And that so it's it it starts like that's our that's the the point that's really pointed, but it's it's so much deeper than that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. There was when I was in-house, um, we had the pleasure of working with a business consultant who became kind of a mentor to me, uh, Hal Resnick, and I just adored the way he like with so much love um said to me and to our management team on several occasions um, you know, if you're not uh getting the results that you want from your business, I'm sorry to tell you, your business is perfectly designed to produce those results. So then he's like, you know, good news and bad news. Like bad news, you have a machine that's perfectly designed to deliver bad results. Good news, it's an engineering problem, not a personal failure, right? So like you actually have a design problem. So well said. I wish I could take credit. Yes, yes, it is. Um but it really, I mean, I think there's so much freedom in that. And particularly as lawyers who sort of have this, like, oh, that's you know, we're we're trained on precedent. And so the fact that it has been this way before must mean that is the way it should be, right? And and not that we don't, not that we don't advocate for change and those kinds of things, but but there is a a bit of that in the how we're like raised as lawyers, right? That it's I think sometimes necessary and refreshing to remind ourselves that we actually can build something that gives us different results, and we have the power to do that. And oh, by the way, this thing that we run as lawyers, this law firm or law practice is a business, and so it is just like all other businesses. I know, I know, shock and awe. Uh radical. You're so rad. And so, you know, you get to you get to design it and you can do it differently if you want different results than what tradition or precedent says you should have.

SPEAKER_02

Mind blowing. So I know that now, after 10 years, you have this P3 method, which is how you price your services and work with clients. I bet it didn't start out that way, though. Or did it? I mean, how similar? How how did you start out working with clients in that way since you were anti-the billable hour? What did you start with? And how did that then evolve into what you have now?

SPEAKER_00

So when I met Gwen, she already was I think mostly not billing by the hour. But the question that we were wrestling with was if you aren't gonna bill by the hour, bill by the what. Right? We we wanted to know for ourselves and for our clients, like how do we measure, how can we be accountable to delivering what we've said we're gonna deliver. And I mean, speak for myself, I'm a gold star seeker. If you tell me I need, you know, eight hours a day, I'm gonna give you 8.5, right? Like I want, I mean, Gwen said it earlier, gold stars, A, right? And so if I don't have a way to measure what I'm supposed to be doing, I'm gonna be a little adrift. And I needed that ability to quantify, but I also you know. I think when you're building something new, if you just try to say to a client who's used to at least having hours that they can look at to check the bill, if you just say, Oh, just trust me on this, it's gonna be, you know, X dollars and you'll get what you get, because I know how much you should get for that. That feels a little unhinged. As a client, I wouldn't love that either. So we knew we needed a system. Um, and we tried lots of ways, uh probably every way, not to do it right. We did, and I think the the big thing everyone thinks it would be is flat fees. And we tried flat fees, we tried scoping specific projects, and you get really um, oh my gosh, I found one of our early proposals recently, and the amount of time we were putting into those proposals trying to like lawyer the scope. Are you thinking about what are all the things that have to be in this project and what are the boundaries and when are we outside of scope and what do we do if we're outside of scope and all of that, and also just kind of the approval seeking that you do when you're charting a new path. And look, it's real the other way. Um I think we had like an eight to ten page, you know, eight to ten slide PowerPoint that was you know, a lot. And then 10 minutes after the client says yes, the scope has changed. Something new has come up. There are new facts, the client makes a different choice, and now we've got a rescope, and that whole thing is just exhausting. And so that was um pretty quickly evident that that was not gonna be the way. So then a friend of the firm um who just it I I love having good thought partners. And Michael White is nothing if not a good thought partner, and he one day was sitting down with us, and we're kind of puzzling through what is gonna be the way and how we how are we gonna quantify in a way that can be flexible and durable through complex work. Um, you know, we're not talking about just doing very simple, very clearly defined things. We're talking about MA and capital raising and all sorts of creative projects that our clients need to do as they're growing. And um he one day said, you know, software developers have figured this out. And their that agile scrum methodology where they're quantifying knowledge work into they call it sprint points. Um that's kind of what you need to do. Like I think you can think about it that way. And so we dug in there and found a variation on that theme that really works beautifully for legal work.

SPEAKER_02

That's so cool. And I I love I love how you got there because there are also my husband started out at his career as an engineer, and there are things where he'll look at you know different ways that the legal profession operates, and even looking at the way we redline, and he's like, This is so stupid. We've been doing this for so long. We too are knowledge workers, and there is a better way. What are you people doing?

SPEAKER_01

So true.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I so I love, I love not only where you've landed and your description around it, um, but the inherent process of going through trial and error and mistakes. Um, or maybe it's not even right to call them mistakes, just the process of learning how to do this differently. And I want to talk more about that and sort of just your process in going through that experience, because I don't know if you've heard, but lawyers tend to be very um, I have to do it right on the first try. Um, that tends to be our approach. And that's not really how the world works and how trying new things and evolving works. And and it it can be that fear of making mistakes and just not knowing exactly where it's gonna end, where you begin, can lead us to just go nowhere. So talk about what that what that evolution really, you know, looked like, but maybe even more so felt like and how you navigated that together, knowing that right now I'm working with clients and it's the wrong system, but I don't have a better one. This is not, this is not gonna be sustainable, but I don't know what to do tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01

There's there's a couple things that come to my mind. One is we we got very clear about who our ideal client was and and who we can serve, who we're gonna serve really well, where can we add tremendous value, and landed on um growth stage companies that didn't have an in-house council because we'd been in-house, right? And so we and we knew the value of that strategic thinking and project management mindset that if you're going to a big law firm, you're not gonna find your, you know, needle in a haystack, maybe you would find the one. But generally speaking, that's that's not how we're trained, it's not how we think. We wait for the client to tell us to do the thing and we do it, right? And and we, you know, you're general counsel for a while and you're used to saying, okay, tell me why you're doing this, let me understand where you want to go, and then let me help help be the thought partner of helping you get there. I'm not just gonna take the order, and I'm often gonna say, not the way you think. I'm not gonna say no, but but I'm gonna ask why. And we're gonna work on together figuring out how to get where you want to go. Um, if you want to be a successful in-house lawyer, right? And you're not gonna say no to everything that gets asked of you. And so we got super clear on who we wanted to represent. And then honestly, they wanted to see us successful. They loved the model that said, I know exactly what I'm budgeting. I you're gonna tell me when I'm on track or off track. And so it turned out that our clients tend to be tech companies and they could continue that conversation of t-shirt sizing and you know, small, medium, and large size points and and true project management, which um we it was absolutely missing when we went to look for that in 2015, and we ended up having to use um some software that is not you know specific for legal, because everything that was specific for legal was some variation of a task manager, right? That it it wasn't actually you know project management, and there's so much value in being able to explain to the client here's where we are in this project, right? And and you're on track, off track, or here are the variables that have happened that we didn't anticipate, right? It's it's the power of communication that again, things that we did not learn in law school. We didn't learn to talk about price, we didn't learn to talk about project management, and we didn't learn how to communicate anything other than you're gonna win the case or not win the case or win this motion or not win the right, like, and that's that's not what businesses really need. They need that, or they value very much the the thought partnership. So definitely like picking, picking the the right clients was a huge, a huge component of how we were able to iterate because they're iterating too, and they're not they're not afraid to give us good feedback. Some of the examples that come to my mind, there was a time period where we were reporting, we've got this great system, it can spit out reports in all the different formats. And we were sending these reports to our clients as an attachment or as a link, right?

SPEAKER_00

Well, actually, nobody's opening the link and no one's looking at the one in the history of the link ever opened the link.

SPEAKER_01

Other than we had to, we had to like experiment with where can technology be amazing and where does where do we really need to be white glove? Where do we need to like distill it down and make it make more sense and summarize it and deliver it to them so they can consume it and make good decisions, not just say, I told you, I told you you were off track because I sent you that report. Like that's that's not actually meeting the client where they are. So that's that's how we got really comfortable with experimenting.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I think that that experimentation and like being feedback rich um is a big part of the mindset that we had to have in order to learn and grow and and to be comfortable in the not knowing the exact answer, but knowing we're getting closer to it was like being willing to do small experiments and and to say, this is how I'm doing it right now, and I'm gonna learn and and we're gonna iterate. And we we're lawyers, we have thick skin. So we can take the feedback from the client and say, okay, that didn't feel great to you. What would be better? How do we solve for that? And sometimes it was feedback as simple as um the client, you know, if we can talk about price on the front end and we can say this project's gonna be two or three points, and the client can do that math and say, Oh, this is a like a half point value to me. Right. This I don't want to solve a$500 problem with a$5,000 solution. Let's not do that. And letting the client give us that feedback, we learn the client better, but then we also have the opportunity to give them other options. Here's some other ways to solve for it, or you know, some ways to address it without needing us. And so you learn sort of how to navigate those conversations with the client when you can be open to the feedback and and not take it personally, right? Going back to this isn't a personal failure, this is an engineering problem, how are we redesigning? Um being being open to that, I think was a in hindsight a big key to how we got from from there to here.

SPEAKER_01

You know, the other thing I will uh will add real quick is um I chose a great partner in it. So like as we were going along, I had spent more years, as Whitney referred, more years in big law, more years in in-house. And and frankly, that there's a ton of value in that, and it was one of the obstacles because your point about perfectionism and com, you know, like it needing to be perfect and needing to look perfect, like I had spent a lot, I had spent more years um in that world and and having um someone to reflect on, you know, someone to like run it by, learn from, grow from, give feedback to, right? How is this serving the client? Asking asking that question and realizing that that a lot of the ways I had learned to do things were almost CYA, very CYA, more than they really were value to the client. But they were so ingrained, it was hard to let go of those things. So sure.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you you understood on a certain level that this isn't working, but then it takes so much more work emotionally also to realize how many more layers you have to dig through to really unravel everything that you you think you know or believe. Right.

SPEAKER_01

And our third partner in Advos Pro is not a lawyer for almost for that part of that same reason. It's like because she can, she's six lean, six sigma, but systems and operations and process, she's very much looking at the process with a business mindset. And and even you know, with our different experiences, she'll be like, Really? You really you really doing that? And I'm like, You're right. Yeah, I don't I can't have a good explanation. Like maybe there's a better one.

SPEAKER_02

It's amazing how much that fresh perspective set from someone who hasn't been trained the way that we have can just come in and say, Why on earth would you do that? And then we can stop and go, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03

Very good question.

SPEAKER_02

It's a great question. I can't answer it. And I'm now a bit concerned about why myself. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

So can you you mentioned in one of your examples, uh, Whitney, a little bit about the point system. What can you share? Um, just about, you know, for those lawyers who may not be familiar with the agile system and how software engineers operate, why are we talking about points? And not only why are we talking about points, but how does that a lot of what you both of you talked about with the client experience that inherent is that in that with this point system is transparency with the client. So everybody knows what's going on routinely and you can plan better. So, how does this point system work practically speaking and benefit everybody involved?

SPEAKER_00

So, all right, the best analogy that I can think of is we are we're taking a client's matter and we're breaking this matter down into its component parts and we're sizing those pieces into points. And I think about the points like tokens at an arcade. So, fairly universal experience. If I give you 10 tokens and you go into the arcade for the first time, you maybe have seen Ski Ball, and you're like, I'm gonna play Ski Ball 10 times, right? Then you get in there, and over in the corner is Laser Tag, and it has lights going on, and there's much more happening, and it takes longer, and it's just more complexity, more bells and whistles. Laser tag is not one point, right? One token. Laser tag is four or five. And so you look at that and you say, I thought I wanted skee ball a whole bunch of times. Now I want to play Laser Tag, I can I can trade my tokens. I can buy more tokens if I want, or I can choose to use the same tokens and use them differently. And that is sort of at its core, the way we think about our work is points are based on size, complexity, and urgency, kind of a value rating. So it's not people always say, Well, isn't it just hours? Like, haven't you just said, well, one point is equal to X hours? And I think everyone who implements this system probably uses some measure of hours in the beginning, as they're trying to get their arms around, like how what is the real complexity as between this item and that item? But if you keep doing that, you're gonna run yourself into the ground because when you work on a um on a price for value basis, you now have an incentive to go get more efficient. And that's where we look at this thing and go, oh, right, you're running a business. And so, you know, everything else that you buy an item from or a service, I can understand the value to me and the price that I'm gonna pay for it. And do I really care how long, how much effort someone has to put in to do it? No, I really don't. And if you can do it faster for me, would I rather that than if you take longer? Generally, yeah. You know, I want it done well, but I don't want longer for the sake of longer. And so divorcing those two things and saying, I actually want the value and I'm happy with the price. I'm thrilled to pay this price for the thing. And I want you incentivized, dear lawyer, to go do your best work for me and to do it as efficiently as you can. And that's great. Let's go do it. So the points really are about size, complexity, urgency, which is great. Um, because when you're feeling by the hour, you don't get like the the midnight hour does not cost more than the noon hour, unfortunately. Um and the I have to have it right now hour, where you're you're causing all sorts of internal um kind of junk that doesn't have to be there and kind of damaging yourself. Um all of those things get to be more about a business decision and more about the value and the expertise you bring. Um I know in our world, there are there are a couple of things we do, like a term sheet when we're doing MA work. And I think about a term sheet as a pretty small item, but the value of that term sheet to the overall transaction is tremendous. And so thinking about, you know, divorcing the time it takes to draft a three-page term sheet from the value of it and the price for it is pretty important.

SPEAKER_02

So, for both of you, how does working with this value-based or value-oriented point system impact your well-being and how you're actually able to show up every day as yourself, feeling like you can show up authentically and in a sustainable way because you get to sleep and take care of yourself. And Whitney, I know you posted, I don't know, somewhat recently about well, I I I'm in charge of how I, you know, work and operate. And so when I have a family health thing going on, I'm able to go off to wherever that is and work from right your mom's porch. And that's just the way I get to do this, and that works for me.

SPEAKER_00

For sure. No, I mean, I think that's that's a huge part of it is the the flexibility, the understanding that the money we make in revenue is not tied to the hours we burn, and instead is about how can we leverage systems, leverage technology. Um, and I I talk all the time about technology doesn't just mean you've got to go deploy the robots, right? It doesn't have to mean an army of AI. Sometimes technology is little T tech, like checklists and delegation um and you know document automation or whatever. There's there's a ton of stuff that can be lower, lowercase t tech that's really impactful. Um, but when you when you have divorced literally the number of hours that you had your nose at the laptop for the day from your ability to make a living and to serve your clients really well, um it's it's pretty game-changing. It really is. And I think it even changes like the client relationships. Like in the example you're talking about, I was still doing client work. I was sitting on my mom's back porch waiting to take her to an appointment, talking to a client about selling his business. And we spent the first probably 10 minutes talking about family medical stuff and and just how grateful we both are that we have businesses that let us help our family members when they need it and sustain ourselves really well. Um, and I think clients value that, they understand it and they they feel the care for them as well. So Gwen, I'm sure you've got some good thoughts on that one.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I'll add um creativity is a component of it. So so I remember very distinctly being um a partner law firm, drafting a purchase agreement, and you know, pulling the document up and filling in the names and you know, and uh and thinking to myself, I've not invested the time to figure out how to automate this, how to um, how to create the systems and the process so someone else could do the first draft. And I and I probably never will, because I get incentivized to spend time doing this. And and if I fast forward my life, 20 years from I'm gonna be doing the same thing, which was one of the turning points for me. I was like, absolutely not, right? Like I need to be creative, I need, I need to evolve, I need to feel like we're moving in a direction that's growth, growth, right? Growth and learning. And so today, right, every time we do something, we're thinking about could someone else be literally, I look at my week, could someone else be doing this that would it would be new for them, it would be novel for them, it would be interesting for them. Like, what of my work can I can I take off my plate so that I am really doing the work that only I can do, that I love doing, right? That's that's that's valuable. Um and you know, Whitney touched on a little bit about the humanity of it, right? It's not just our experience as a human, but we get to know our clients in a way. They're they're willing to tell us things and share things with us because the beginning of those meetings are there's no clock. There's no clock. So, right, if they're whatever is happening in their life, um like we we get the details as if we were part of the team that can that cares about them. And one of the stories that has been really impactful to me, obviously, we're talking to people who don't have the experience of our model. And so there was a particular investment banker friend of the firm, and um, you know, my age ish, our age ish, and he'd had All of these experiences, really, really, really successful, raised capital, um, and got to a point. And when he was talking with us, he was like, I have, as I'm talking to you, I realize I don't know a thing about any of the lawyers who've ever done work for me in the 20 years that I've been a banker. I don't know if they have a family, I don't know what their hobbies are, I don't know where they're going up. I know nothing about them as a human because I understood that he tells the story. I was trained as a young investment banker to picture a stack of$100 bills going up in flames every minute that I'm talking to the lawyer.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

That's it, couldn't get much more visual and thinking. It's gonna change the way you interact with with your attorneys. And so it goes both ways, right? Like we get to be more human, but but we get to know our clients better and they get to be more human. And I like that's why we went to law school, right? We went to law school to be helpful and and human. And yeah, and the model that says, I only care about how much time you spent, takes takes that out of it.

SPEAKER_00

And I'll I want to add on this piece that from a conference we were at recently, we were talking about this, and someone said to me, How do you how do you know that you're getting value out of every minute of your lawyers? was basically the question. Like, how if you're measuring these points and you're not tracking people's time, like how do you know you're squeezing every bit of value out of your people? Right. And I kind of was kind of like, I don't, and I don't want to. I what I want, I want to know when we set a metric for our team that we are, if you know, hey, here's the gold star. If you produce this many points and you know, you're producing quality work, then you're profitable. And you know, we can build incentives around all of that, but you then can make choices about do I want to, you know, when I have hit my target for the day or the week or the sprint or whatever, do I want to work more? Do I need more time away? Do I need time with my family? Is it rest? Is it you know, all the things that make us whole, healthy humans? That's the point, is that we can build this value-based exchange where we also value the humans in our business. And whether it's you know, us as the owners of the firm or our team, what we want is a thriving team. We're not we're not trying to squeeze every drop out of everyone and leave them wrung out on the floor. Like that is not the point. And I think it was the question was just so like, oh yeah, that is actually what our traditional billable hourly model is after. It's like, let me squeeze every bit of it out of you, leave you wrung out, and then ask for a little more.

unknown

You know?

SPEAKER_01

Well, and the truth is too that with the points, you're closer to the value that the client is actually paying you for. So if if I'm just tracking time, then I'm then that's not really taking into account how much gets written off, how much gets paid. Is it is it written off because we have a diff we picked a bad client, which has nothing to do necessarily with the associate billing the time, right? Like there's there's so many variables in there versus the client is going to pay for the point. Now we can measure was the point delivered in a quality way, and there's like there's all these secondary layers that go along with the system that measures quality and measures did you get it done, which is what the client cares about. Not did you work on it, right? Did you spend hours drafting, but you never actually delivered anything to me, right? Like that is there's a disconnect where we think that spending time on it means it added value. Maybe, maybe not, right? Um, so it's been a it's been a great journey to like substitute, substitute that out.

SPEAKER_02

How have you been able to recognize the impact of caring for your own and well-being and for the well-being of everyone on your team? The impact on the work that you're doing for clients, the experiences that you're having with those clients, the interactions, and just the outcomes and the overall success of your firm, as opposed to doing it, you know, the well, why are you know, how are you, how are you squeezing all every everything out of each lawyer? That that approach, I think we can all agree, does not work and it's not sustainable. But for those who are new to this idea, how do you even understand the connection between the well-being and performance and however you consider you know what success is?

SPEAKER_00

So I think of three key metrics. And Gwen, I'm curious if you have a different lens on what how you would measure that or what comes to mind for you. Um we measure client NPS. So, you know, the net promoter score on a scale of zero to 10, how likely are you to recommend Advos Legal to a friend or colleague? And um, we know it's working on that side because we have the legal industry on a scale of negative 100 to 100. I think our um, I think our average is in like the low to mid-30s as an industry, right? 32, 34, something like that, um, up from something in the high 20s. So yay. Um, but ours has been consistently in the mid-90s. And it's not because we're selective about who we survey, we survey everyone. And um, and we take the feedback to heart, right? We've gotten some great negative feedback that has helped us to shape the firm along the way. So that's you know, it has happened, but but it's helped us to get clear on who we serve well and and how we serve them well. So we know that the client experience is great. We do the same kind of survey with our team. So we do an internal employee NPS, and it's also high 90s, um, reliably, and we ask for feedback and we talk about the feedback. You know, people can give it anonymously, and we're talking about it with the team, and we want to know if something doesn't feel great about your experience working here, like let's talk about it, let's solve for it, let's redesign. Um, and the third one, um this is maybe says more about who I am than uh than what you've what the holistic measures are, but the third one's profitability, right? In a in a practice like this, where we are able to, and it kind of comes with the team experience piece, right? Where we are able to do the things we need to do to be healthy and whole and be with our people and and all of that, we are still in a really profitable practice. And I I would say more profitable than we would be on an hourly basis. Um, and so more joyful and more profitable is a pretty good place to sit.

SPEAKER_02

More joyful and more profitable. I like that.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

What about you then? You know, I just would add similar, like back to the we measure what matters. So if it's not ours, what matter? And then you took look at our core values, and we we have a metric for each of our core values. Um, but the other part is anecdotally, right? Like talking to our team and hearing one of our paralegals said once she started going to some of the paralegal organization meetings, and she came back and she was like, I I couldn't go anywhere else, right? Like, like I'm hearing the complaints that they have and the way they're being treated and the way the their experience of of working is, and I realize like how incredibly different it is um working here. So those stories help us to to make sure we're listening really well, that back to the feedback rich. We've we've got a whole system and process around how we how we share feedback and um how we make sure it's not personal, right? It's it's back to the it's a design. Either maybe you didn't get trained on it, our system didn't work, right? Or you're a human and you had a bad week, right? Like that happens too.

SPEAKER_02

So um so talk about that. How do you because we all have bad weeks, but it often feels like we're not in this industry, it feels like you're not allowed to. So when you have a bad week, not if, because it's a when, how do you manage that internally and with your team and personally and and make it clear to the team it's gonna happen, it's okay, and here's how we deal with it. And whether you kind of know proactively or in hindsight, you realize, uh-oh, didn't realize how how much I was struggling, and and now we've got to fix some stuff.

SPEAKER_00

So I want to take this one because I want to brag on Gwen. Um, Gwen has this beautiful way of thinking about it, it wasn't a bad week, right? It's like there's some some aspect of last week that didn't work. Um, so in our team meetings, um, every Monday, toward the end of the meeting, we look at what's ahead for this week, but we also talk about what worked and what didn't from last week. And just as a group, like what worked well for me and what didn't. What did I struggle with last week? Um, and it's that's probably not in my nature as that that introspection reflection. I'm just like a charging forward and and not really paying enough attention, I think is my tendency to to like not look at it and and learn the lesson. Um and it's been great, I think, for learning, learning the lesson myself. But the other thing that's beautiful is when you create this environment where we're all talking about from the top, all the way down and all the way around, we're talking about what worked and what didn't. We're also you hear it with a with a filter of how can we all help? Right? What if if somebody was drowning last week? Maybe I can look at what I could pick up from them, or what stuff could we adjust dates on? Um, or just even like if you've got too many events on your calendar, how do we how do we shift them around or whatever? But um, you know, those those little things where you just kind of build that team resiliency um and the ability to support each other, I think is it's huge.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was gonna point back to our weekly meetings because they're they're they're half hour, really quick check-in. It everything we do is agenda driven, right? So it's not just like random conversation, it's it's very scripted, but it gives you the chance to say, like, I didn't get to work out last week, I didn't get enough sleep last week. Like those are the things that we're talking about. And then we're learning from each other when that when that happens, what do we do about it? Right? How are we gonna make this coming week better? And and literally, I heard it um Monday. One of the newer um team members said, How can I help, you know, the other two paralegals on the team, right? Like, what do you have on your plate? I know you're busy, I I have some capacity, help me, you know, let me know how I can how I can help. And so you just it's just ingrained in the you know daily or weekly meetings, but um being honest about it, I think is is the core.

SPEAKER_00

And I think us talking about the fact that like we need sleep, we need to work out, we need to get outside in the middle of the day, we need to move more, or we need to like I only want to work with people I'm really enjoying, and I'm not enjoying this one, right? Like all of those things, it it says to the rest of the team, those things matter in this culture. Those are part of what we're measuring when we're asking, is this working for you? You know.

SPEAKER_02

I love that so much because that then allows everyone to say, oh, Gwen, I was gonna say I have to hop off.

SPEAKER_01

I've got so you know, feel free to continue.

SPEAKER_02

We can be done. Okay. I was gonna ask if there was anything else that you wanted to share quickly to wrap up, or we can just say, thank you so much. I'm so delighted that we got to do this. And I'm so thrilled to be in touch with you and and just really grateful for all the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I would love to continue the conversation and I will I saw on your website all of your like hacks and you know, tips and tricks. And Whitney thinks I have them all, and you taught me some things.

SPEAKER_02

So let's do a part two and get into that stuff. I love it.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. Really love that. Have a great day. This was so good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Stay tuned for part two. Now, think about what small action you can take to support your well-being. Maybe it's taking two minutes of quiet, no music, no podcast, no phone, no scrolling, and just breathe. Maybe it's calling a friend, maybe it's grabbing a drink of water, maybe it's doing five squats, maybe it's saying something kind to yourself. Whatever it is, do something just for you. Also, be sure to subscribe and send the podcast to a colleague. And if we're not yet connected on LinkedIn, please fix that. I'd love to know you. See you next time.

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Ariella Cohen Coleman

Host
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Talya Drissman Woolf

Producer