Creating a Tech-Driven Solo Practice with Nate Cade | First Flight #11

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

So if I was starting today as a New Solo, I would entrepreneurial aspect, change the way they’re practicing leader, what it means to be, make it easy to work with your clients, New approach, new tools, new mindset, New Solo. And it’s making that leap, making that leap

Adriana Linares:

Hello and welcome to New Solo and Legal Talk Network. I’m Adriana Linares, a legal technology trainer and consultant. I help lawyers and law firms use technology better. I want to thank our partners in developing the New Solo first flight series for solo attorneys presented by ALPS Insurance. They’re interested in helping solo and small firms get the best start to their practices. We curated the best 12 episodes for new solos and partnerships with Alps. Today we’re highlighting a portion of the episode with Nate Cade out of Milwaukee. He worked as a big law lawyer and then set up his own firm with all the modern conveniences of a virtual operation. You know how I love to meet cool people who are using technology to make their solar practices thrive? And I hope this gives you some ideas about efficiencies to consider for your practice. Stay true to the end.

When I sit down with Rio Laine from Alps Insurance, Rio and I will get into ways those of you who hate being boxed in by the plan, don’t have to burn the boats to go solo. There are systems to keep you afloat. Plus the real dangers of working in pajama pants and why the happiest solos are the ones who never go it alone. And now my interview with Nate about leaving the committees and group think of big law and building a practice that fits him and his style. Tell our listeners a little bit about your practice.

Nate Cade:

Sure. Well, I’ve got a three person or three attorney law firm based in Milwaukee. I guess we are what you would call virtual in the sense that there is no physical office space. All the attorneys that work for me, including myself, my paralegal, a couple admins, everybody has a home office. And so we set our own hours, come and go when we want, spend quality family time and get to enjoy ourselves as well as doing work that we love.

Adriana Linares:

If I remember correctly, you’ve been practicing for a long time and you were general counsel somewhere, maybe a partner at a law firm and then decided to go out on your own.

Nate Cade:

Yeah, I started off with one firm here in town in Milwaukee, one of the larger ones in the state, and I was there about 15 years and then I left that firm, went to another firm, smaller, but it had many more offices and I was there for about two years and I also not only was a partner, but served as the general counsel for that firm and then decided to give this a try and go solo.

Adriana Linares:

I’ve had so many actually at this point in my life, most of my friends are lawyers because I spend so much time with them and I’ve watched so many lawyers take that leap and it’s regardless of how many times people like me tell them, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to get clients, you’re going to survive. That’s a scary thing to decide to do. So what made you want to do that and then where did you start?

Nate Cade:

Well, for lots of reasons, which I won’t go into, I decided I had to leave the firm I was at and I kind of faced this sobering choice of what do I do? I knew I had a lot of clients, I knew a lot of ’em would come with me wherever I went. I did have a couple of things lined up at some other firms and I got to thinking, how’s it going to be any different there Than It was at the other firms? Big law firms are great. They’re great places to work, great places to collaborate, certainly mentally stimulating. You get to work on fascinating things. You have all the accoutrements that you can imagine, but at the end of the day, most clients tend to choose the lawyer. And so I made the decision if I was going to do it, I had to do it. And I’m glad there wasn’t a plan B because I think I listened to a lot of podcasts and I just listened to one the other day where they basically were saying that people are more successful when they don’t have a backup plan because then you don’t fall into that, well, if it doesn’t work out, I can always do whatever. No, I have a mortgage and student loans and so I don’t have a plan B, this has to work.

Adriana Linares:

So you decided to go on your own and it sounded like you were confident that you at least had one or two clients to go with you. And I think when a lawyer can do that, that is definitely a huge start because you’ve got your first one or two clients and from there hopefully the rest just keep coming. What was your sort of plan or not plan as far as technology goes? When I work around bigger firms, I find that they have a ton of technology, but it’s not necessarily always used to the maximum. So were you inspired or uninspired by your previous bigger firm experiences?

Nate Cade:

I don’t think the big firm experience really did anything because most firms tend to have, they have committees, there’s groupthink, you have all these levels of decision making. I had an iPad When the iPad first came out, I actually wanted as part of a contest for an organization I was at and I used to travel all the time. I mean I had platinum status on Delta and it was all domestic flying, but I didn’t take a laptop. I actually had an iPad and I would take it on the plane. I wrote briefs, I could edit, do everything. And for a couple of years that’s all I did. So when I made the decision to go on my own, the easiest thing I think was the technology and not so much of just going and buying it, but what I tell everybody who’s thinking of doing something on their own or making a shift is Google. And so I literally had a spreadsheet of every expense that I thought I was going to incur from bar dues down to cost of computers and every single thing I went through and I googled and I tried to figure out what was the best in breed. So what’s the best VOIP, what’s the best document management, what’s the best cloud provider, you name it, and then you test everything out so that

Adriana Linares:

You took a lot of time to test stuff out too.

Nate Cade:

Yeah, I took a couple of weeks. I mean, once I made the decision and it was a go, it took about 10 minutes to turn everything on, but I had already, once I made that decision, it was just click, click, click, click, done, and I’m lock and load and we’re

Adriana Linares:

Up. I want to go back just a moment because when you were talking about I got this iPad and it sounds like you got a long time ago, one of the first iPads or versions of an iPad, what made you just decide that that thing was going to be able to do it for you? Have you always been kind of into technology or did you look at this thing and go, wow, what inspired you to just go to the iPad? Because I think that alone is interesting that you got it and you immediately said, this is it. This is all I need.

Nate Cade:

I think part of it is if you’ve traveled, laptops have certainly gotten lighter nowadays, but back in the day, traveling with a laptop was very clunky and wifi certainly has helped. It’s gotten better, it’s gotten easier and faster. It’s now in hotel rooms. And so once you got over the mindset of needing a flash drive or a disc and you could either have something emailed or you could store it in the early versions of a Dropbox or any of the other iterations, that’s what made it easy. And a lot of it was just you have to with the iPad, I planned early, so if I knew I was traveling, I would make sure I downloaded a lot of stuff. So I had one really big client when I switched firms and when I interviewed with the general counsel, they had about, oh, it was about 600 plus pages of all of their cases over 10 years. And I remember sitting down with him in Chicago at a meeting and he would tell me a little bit and then I’d say something and finally he goes, where do you know this? I said, well, I’ve pulled every case you had for the last 10 years.

He said, seriously? I said, yeah, and when you’re on a plane, you’re captive. So once you get used to that technology and you get used to playing, a lot of apps are free, sometimes they’re 99 cents a buck, 99, and you just kind of play with it. And that’s what I think technology, it’s like having the trainer in a law firm. It’s great that they train you, but once they leave, will you remember what you’re doing? And the only way for something really to work is for you to play with it. And after you play with it long enough, that’s where you’re going to learn. Not someone saying, okay, now you do this, now you do that. It’s okay if I hit this button. It is not going to set off the nuclear codes and blow up anything. And once you can accept that, it’s just playing, it’s just having fun. Why do kids play with computers and don’t have any fear whatsoever because they don’t know any better?

Adriana Linares:

Yeah, I love that approach, that attitude, and it’s just so refreshing. And I will say that when the iPad came out, the look and feel of software was just forever changed or our expectations of it, and it became lot easier to just pick up a program. They’re obviously inexpensive, but just became easier to learn how to use them. Very user-friendly. Unlike the programs of days of old where a trainer would sit in front of a group of lawyers in a law firm and often still does today, trying to teach them how to use a program that I say all the time. I’ll look at an old, what I call a traditional practice management program, and I’ll say, my God, it looks like Fred Flintstone designed this during his best design days when he was at the peak of his gooey work. This is what Fred Flintstone did.

It just sounds like you have always, somehow, I guess you just had it in your heart, Nate valued what technology could do for you as far as being efficient. And that’s why I think you probably run, and as far as I know from the little bit of the insider knowledge that I have about your firm, a pretty efficient law firm, so you decide to go on your own. You tested a bunch of technology, you actually tested and played with it, which most lawyers don’t do. So I think that is a huge tip that I hope listeners take away from this is that there’s value in taking that time to test drive, right? I mean,

Nate Cade:

Well not only test drive, but the beauty of it is if you make a mistake, most software now for the most part is SaaS service. As software, you’re not buying long-term contracts. And I am always, I get one of the things I get as an email is the techno lawyer, and I click through that and I’ll look through it and it will say, Hey, there’s this new software. Okay, well I play with it for a couple of weeks, do I like it? Does it need some refinements? And this is not the Titanic. The thing can be turned around very quickly. So that’s what I think you always have to do. You’re constantly playing and seeing what is the best and what will help you better than anything else.

Adriana Linares:

It’s true, and it’s just, again, just lawyers finding, deciding to take the time to do that is so rare. So I really hope that anyone listening, thinking about going on their own either takes good advice from podcasts like this or actually takes the time to do that. So what were the first couple of programs or services that you decided were going to be the ones to help you build your successful law practice?

Nate Cade:

Definitely VOIP phone. So that was the first thing. You had to have a phone and I wanted to make sure that the messages came in as emails so that if I’m out, I didn’t have to dial into a number and I can listen to them wherever and I could forward them. And then I guess from there it was just kind of testing out different things. So I tested a number of client document management systems. The great thing is they’re all the trium for 30 days, and I put in dummy data and three or four of the big ones and just kind of played with them, what does it look like on the iPad? What does it look like on my Mac? Does it look like on this? I actually had my assistant who knew I was contemplating leaving, so she would play with it at home. So I put in some dummy data and kind of got her opinion as to what she thought and kind of went from there and made a decision.

Adriana Linares:

Great. That’s very smart. Just this weekend helped a friend set up his Clio account, and I assume much of what you were talking about was probably maybe the client portals, which I love. And we’re going to talk about your use of a client portal in a second, but I told him, I said, create your first matter and your first client in there and make your client, your girlfriend. Then send her an invite to connect and then go sit next to her and watch what she goes through to log in and to get into the portal so you’re familiar with it and you can explain to your clients, this is how you’re going to do it, or it’s not that hard for me. Those portals are, I mean, just the future of communication with clients. I think they’re amazing. So I think that’s great advice. Get in there. If you’ve got a wife, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, I guess it could be anybody, set them up with an account or set yourself up with, most of us have more than one email address with the guest account, a client account, a fake account and check it out, see how it looks. What do you do for a receptionist?

Nate Cade:

I don’t gone to the virtual receptionist yet. For the most part. If someone, they can leave a voicemail, they can hit a button to go out to another one of the people on staff. I haven’t gotten to the point where the volume is call every three minutes that I need a receptionist. And I’ve debated about hiring something like a Ruby, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet. If I pull the plug Up,

Adriana Linares:

Pull it yet,

Nate Cade:

But I haven’t found a true need for it.

Adriana Linares:

Well, that’s good. What about practice management? You said you kicked around some tires, got in, did some test driving, and then you ended up picking which of the, do you want to tell us which ones you test drove first and then which one you picked and why?

Nate Cade:

I used my case, but I did my case. I did Clio and Rocket Matter, so I test drove them all, put in the dummy data, and I just thought that at least for me and for my former assistant who was helping me, that seemed to be the one that was, I guess most intuitive and easiest to use. Great.

Adriana Linares:

And you’re still using it?

Nate Cade:

I am still using it. I still recommend it to everybody, but I also tell ’em to try several of them and test drive. I think it’s a preference issue. And like I said, if something comes along and someone else makes a better mousetrap, I have no problem in switching if it’ll help me.

Adriana Linares:

One of the things that I really love about you is that you’ve leveraged their technology and the way you use it on your website. So if someone goes to cade law.com and that’s CADE law.com and hovers on your about link, they’ll see another link that takes them to a technology page. So you’ve been, why’d you do that? Let me just ask you, you’ve got it right there. You’re leveraging the fact that you use technology and you’re going to use it to communicate with your clients. What made you think to put this on there?

Nate Cade:

Honestly, I don’t remember that. That was a couple of years ago and that was right when my case, they actually designed the website and it’s out of date. I haven’t added the other people yet. That’s just one of those things that unfortunately is sitting there, but it was just something we went back and forth with and they actually, I had a prior company doing the website. I thought they were horrible. I won’t say their name, but they charged a lot of money and getting updates was a pain, and their response basically was Learn HTML five,

Adriana Linares:

Oh dear.

Nate Cade:

And I could do it. And my comment to them was, I’m willing to pay money, but I shouldn’t be paying basically three, $400 an hour, which is what I would earn to learn HTML five.

Adriana Linares:

I mean, come on.

Nate Cade:

So that was their response. And they advertised at some of the big shows and everything, and I’m sure they’ll be at the tech show and some other

Adriana Linares:

Places, I’m sure I know who you’re talking about.

Nate Cade:

I could have said, well, I paid a lot of money on the downstroke and I’m going to stick with it. But my case contacted me. I saw they had just come out with it. I looked at some of the templates they had and I said, well, I think it was like 500 bucks to do the initial website and $50 a month to maintain it. So it was like, okay, I can say I am stuck and stay with what I have or turn around and switch. So I think the other people were a little shocked. I switched so quickly, but I won’t suffer the fools long enough. So it’s move on and get with it.

Adriana Linares:

I love this because it says whether you wrote this or they did, it doesn’t matter because it’s there and it says you go to about, you go to a technology and it says, our firm uses a secure online portal to communicate and share information with clients. Tell me about engaging your client. When you engage the client, do you say to them, we’ve got this portal, this is how we’re going to communicate. Because for me, what I want lawyers to do is, and I hate to use this corporate e word, but I’ll use it just for this purpose, onboard their clients on how to use the program. It’s pretty self-explanatory. All these client portals are, and I tell my lawyers, my clients who say, my clients will never use that. They won’t be able to figure it out. I say, look, if your client can upload a picture to Facebook, believe me, they can figure out how to use these modern simple portals.

Nate Cade:

You know what? And part of it I think is you get to know your client. I have some clients who are just fantastic. I have a much older couple out in California that I was doing some work here. They’re retired and they log in and they pay their bill online and they click a couple buttons and it’s done. And then I have other people who turn around and they do the, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing, and they throw their hands up. So I would say about 90% of my clients will get an electronic bill. So usually my case will send them an electronic bill, but then I also follow up with A PDF just so they have something physical in case they have to save it or forward it on to someone or whatever. Or alternatively, I will mail if I have to. To me, it’s all depending on the client. There’s some clients who are really competent and there are other clients who won’t be able to do anything.

Adriana Linares:

Yes, I have the same problem. You also use net documents, which is really one of my favorite programs. And what I get a lot from lawyers is I’m too small. I’m either just a solo, which you were when you started, or it’s too expensive. Help me make the case for why a program like NetDocuments in managing your documents in a sophisticated way is valuable.

Nate Cade:

I didn’t need net docs until it was more than me. I mean, that was really when I hired the first lawyer to come on board, I needed something. There’s lots of options. I know there are people who think Dropbox is secure and no disrespected Dropbox, but it’s not secure.

Adriana Linares:

Well, it’s not a proper document management system for a law firm.

Nate Cade:

Well, you can’t search you. I mean, you can do things, but you can’t do things. So I made the decision when she accepted my offer to come on board, it’s like, okay, I’ve got to do something. And once again, I just started Googling, I started searching and I came across net docs. I actually kind of went into it haphazardly because apparently you need to have so many licenses for them to play nice with you. I think it was five or six licenses, and I was only going to have two. So they basically said, here you go. And I screwed everything up, uploading it. I remember spending all of Thanksgiving,

Adriana Linares:

Oh my gosh,

Nate Cade:

Uploading just a ton of files and then it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. We just couldn’t get it to work. So I followed up. They kind of said, well, we don’t do that level of support. They basically train the trainers for law firms. And they went through a list of names and then as soon as they said Adriana ris, I said, ah, I know that name.

Adriana Linares:

We didn’t get to talk about that,

Nate Cade:

But I love that

Adriana Linares:

Story.

Nate Cade:

So I listened to your podcast. I’m like, okay, at least I know that name. And she sounds very, very competent on the various podcasts. So that is more than anything you can at least if someone’s competent work with it. So ended up working with your colleague, Alan, and first thing Alan said is, okay, you screwed this up. I’m like, okay, fine. He

Adriana Linares:

Said it in a very nice way. I’m sure

Nate Cade:

He did. He did. But the funny thing was he said, okay, we kind of talked to the way I wanted the architecture of the net docs, the way I wanted folders and consistency and everything. And he worked his magic behind the scenes. And then he said, okay, here’s what you’re doing. We did a couple of training sessions. I love the fact that you don’t need someone physical. It’s all usually a go-to meeting.

Adriana Linares:

Definitely.

Nate Cade:

And every time I hire someone new, I make arrangements and there’s a new training session. Sometimes I’ll sit in on it just to refresh, but it was an easy decision and part of it was it is expensive. It’s basically $50 a license, but at the same time, if you want to have all of your documents secure where you can access them anywhere you go. I did a trial in January for a week, and it was great having all of the documents in Net Docs. It was the county just north of Milwaukee, they had wifi. I could on the fly, go through everything. So if there was a document that I didn’t have electronically on my laptop or on a flash drive or something like that, I could log into the system and pull it down instantaneously. And to be able to have that and to have that where they even have the ability, they have a iPhone and Android app.

So to be able to click a button and the client asks you a question, I was doing a prep session before a trial in February, and the client asked me something and I didn’t bring the whole file and all I had was my phone. And I said, give me a second. And she’s like, what are you doing? I said, just hold on. And I literally punched up and then show her I had the affidavit, or no, I’m sorry, it was a deposition transcript. I said, is this what you were looking for? She says, yeah. And I said, hold on a second. I clicked a button, I emailed it to her. Awesome. She goes, holy crap, how’d you do that? And I said, well, it’s the technology.

Adriana Linares:

You’re like, I’m magical.

Nate Cade:

But just having that at your fingertips to be able to wherever you are at to be able to, as long as you have the ability to get onto the internet, you have the ability to access the files. And that gives you power and the ability to be anywhere, anytime. And practice law.

Adriana Linares:

I know I love it. I would love to be a lawyer today because I’m not a lawyer, but these tools, they’re just amazing. What other cool technologies do you use that helps you run your practice that you like or uncool technologies? Maybe there’s something uncool out there.

Nate Cade:

Well, I am all about real estate in the sense of I have a 27 inch desktop iMac, but then I have a 27 inch screen that goes with it as well. So I have 2 27 inch screens side by side, so I can keep all my communications, my email and Glip on one and all the other stuff and you can move ’em back and forth. I think that is just a godsend. Totally. One of the things that I tell everybody to get is I have a Fujitsu scan, snap the IX 500, and I make sure I buy one for everybody in the office, even if they think they’re not going to use it. It is just I think a game changer. And everybody who is relying on outdated technologies is just, I think they’re missing the boat. And even from a cost saver, it makes no sense to print as much. I mean, you’re always going to print paper that you’re never going to get away, at least not today to be paperless, but you’ll be paperless. The guy that I used to know here in Milwaukee, Ross Codner, that was his saying. And it’s true paper, but print less of it. And once you get to that mindset, I think it’s easy.

Adriana Linares:

I think Ross Codner must do a little jig on his grave every time somebody says that about him. And his very now famous and well used slogan of the days long gone. That’s great. Mentioned that everyone is virtual and everyone gets to work from home or from a remote office, and you do that through all these great technologies that you’ve implemented. And tell me, did you decide to do that from the beginning? Because I mean from the beginning, did you think, well, I’m not going to incur office space now. I’ll get it later. Or from the beginning, did you think I’m going to run a virtual practice because I can and I want to and I’ll probably be happier this way?

Nate Cade:

I think when I first did it, I kind of fell into it because I didn’t really know where I wanted to office. A lot of cities, Milwaukee has got different sides of town. You’ve got the north side, the west side, east side, downtown. People are really strange because you don’t think about it when you’re working downtown in a big firm, but there are a lot of clients who don’t want to, if you’re downtown, they don’t want to come from the west side and have to deal with traffic or you have to kind of figure it out. And as I kind of went and every month that I enjoyed working from home, I get to see my kids when I want. I’m not worried about, oh, they’ve got something at school. So I’ve, you’re always in your head saying, okay, it’ll take me 30 minutes to get there, and if I leave exactly at this time, I can get out of the parking structure here.

You don’t think about that stuff. And it just kind of developed. And the first lawyer that was working for me, she’s down in Illinois, and so it made sense. There’s no need for her to commute. She used to commute all the time. We worked together at the first firm I was at, and she made this commute and she hated it and was miserable and she’s got a young daughter. And so for her, this was heaven and it just made sense. And I suppose you can get office space, but it’s always interesting to hear I’m helping a lawyer I know with a firm, a friendly firm breakup, and he was telling me the other day what he pays for rent. And there’s two lawyers, a paralegal and a couple of assistants, and it was like seven grand for this space and they had to pay that every month. I mean until the lease is up. And I’m thinking, okay, that’s seven grand that I don’t have to spend. That’s insane having been, I was a partner in a very big firm. I know what their overhead is.

My overhead is a 10th of theirs, and that’s including paying for my own healthcare. So why would I ever go back short of someone writing a check with a lot of zeros? It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense to at the end of the day, not have flexibility and money and everything else. I would much rather enjoy this once you get over, I used to wear a suit every day, even when they went casual, I had a tie and did all that. And then once you’re out on your own and I’m wearing shirts and a t-shirt and a hat, a Harley baseball hat, and I’ve got a TV in my office, after a couple of months you realize that people don’t care. Clients, I always ask people, how many clients have come to your office in the last 60 days? And when they start thinking about it, usually it’s something like they have a depth prep, so they’ve got someone to come to their office. And I said, wouldn’t it be easier if you went to their office? Well, I suppose,

Adriana Linares:

But that’s the way we’ve always done it.

Nate Cade:

But every guru tells you you’re supposed to get out of the office and go visit the client, visit ’em on the factory floor, visit ’em in their office. What better way than to actually go visit them. And this forces me to get out to have to go see them. And I think it makes for better relationships than them saying, okay, now we’ve got to come downtown to go see the lawyers and everything else. You’re not seeing the king anymore. It’s not kissing the pope’s ring and genuflecting.

Adriana Linares:

That’s awesome. I totally agree with you. Hey, if a brand new lawyer walked up to you and said, Nate, what are the top two things you learned by doing this that I should not screw up? What would they be

Nate Cade:

Doing by going out on my own?

Adriana Linares:

Yes.

Nate Cade:

Well, one of the first things I think is, and I told you this and I’m still trying to hope I set the record, is I pay every bill pretty much the day I get it. I call it poor man’s accounting. You can spend all the money on cash flows and projections, but at the end of the day, I can look at the bank account and I know what’s in there and it’s my money because there are no outstanding bills. So everything is paid and so what’s in there other than payroll is pure cash. And so we can debate about the time value of money, but I know that money is my money period. And I’m not doing the mental gymnastics saying, well, I know I’ve got this bill or I forgot about that bill. It’s done. The other thing is I will say is I’ve got some vendors, for example, my process server, they will jump hoops because I pay their bill immediately and they know it. I can call them on a Sunday night and say something is critical, and they will say, we’ll, come get it right now. No problem. We’ll drop everything. You don’t get that all the time. But they also know that I make them a priority.

So I try to get money from clients ahead of time to hold in trust, but I also know that I’ve got the cashflow that I pay the bills no matter what period.

Adriana Linares:

Great. Got another one.

Nate Cade:

The other thing I would say more than anything is especially for someone who’s young, actually I’ll say two, two more. So I’ll say three. So pay your bills in advance. We talked about technology, but you need to learn to use it. I had an associate years and years ago who I remember asking him to fax me something on a Friday night. He was working late, and then Monday, I’m like, where is it? He goes, well, and he was trying to explain how he’s sending it from his computer, but it wasn’t working. And I said, they have this whole fax department here at the law firm. And he goes, well, I don’t know how to use it. And I said, okay, let me tell you a little secret. You have no value to me as an associate. I don’t turn to you and say, what do you think?

And somehow you are going to have the witty answer or the correct answer. You’re there to know the technology and to be a backstop. So I made him and another guy go through training, and so they actually showed him how to use the fax machine, the mail machine, the copiers, and I said, that’s on a Friday night or a Saturday when the assistant’s not around. If you don’t know how to use it, what value do you have? So definitely for someone who’s young, and especially if you are working in a firm or you’re interning, that is where you provide your value. That is where if the partner doesn’t know how to get onto Westlaw or Fast Case or whatever, that’s where you provide the value, not that somehow you’re going to get the footnote and it’s just going to. The other thing that I would say, and I think you should always be trying to, if you’re young, always be trying to learn information now is cheap. And in the sense of it’s no longer, you can go online, for example, and take classes at MIT or the University of Pennsylvania through Coursera, and I’m signing for a couple of those. I listen to podcasts when I work out, and whether it’s NPR or your podcast or Lee Rosen And Even relearning Spanish, to me, learning is there’s so much value in not just saying, oh, that’s boring. But you incorporate if you know, have a long drive, listen to a podcast, and you start to learn little things that when you are counseling a client, you’ve heard something, you’ve seen something, you have the ability to have a conversation and clients, they want to feel safe and secure, and that you are knowledgeable not to the point that you’re talking down to them, but they want to know that you have an understanding. And so learning is to me, one of the most critical things that anybody can do. And you should be doing it constantly nonstop, whether you’re reading, whether you’re taking courses online, whether you’re listening to podcasts. If a young lawyer asked me, that’s where I think they should be spending a lot of their time.

Adriana Linares:

That was Nate. Kate, a big law attorney turned solo talking about his experiences leaving a large law firm and starting his own solo practice. I hope you liked meeting Nate. This is part of the New Solo first flight series presented by Alps Insurance. I’m joined by Rio Lane. Alps is director of Strategic Partnerships. Rio helps attorneys protect their practice even through transitions like Nate’s. Hey, Rio.

Rio Laine:

Hey Adriana. Thanks for

Adriana Linares:

Having me back. Always happy to have these fun conversations with you. As we always say, you like me, have met a lot of solo attorneys. Do you meet a lot of attorneys like Nate who did not have a backup plan, and what do you think about that when you’re launching your solo practice?

Rio Laine:

So I actually meet a lot of solos who sometimes don’t have a plan at all. At all. Yeah. They’re like, yeah, I’m just going to go and I’m going to do this thing and I’ll figure it out. And having a plan is great. I mean, not having a backup plan, I’m kind of a overly cautious person, so for me, that makes me nervous,

Adriana Linares:

But well, we want that from you considering the role you have.

Rio Laine:

Yes, exactly. My job is to think about those things, but generally speaking, the determination that you need to have confidence behind having an plan confidence, yeah, it’s pretty fantastic. And I think it really kind of helps drive him forward and helps him focus on his practice and just getting it done. And yeah, I mean he is like, this is it. We’ve burned the boats. No going back, let’s do this. And it is pretty exciting and also really I think is a good motivator.

Adriana Linares:

But from a risk management perspective, did your pump start to sweat a little bit?

Rio Laine:

Yeah, little bit. Little bit.

Adriana Linares:

What advice can you give us? So let’s say you’re not going to have a backup plan. Could we figure out a way to cleverly disguise a backup plan and maybe give us some suggestions about what we might do instead, or sort of have think about?

Rio Laine:

Yeah, I think a really good, it’s really good to keep in mind balancing your passion with preparation, right?

Adriana Linares:

Yes.

Rio Laine:

Maybe you don’t have to have a backup plan, but maybe you have some general ideas about things that could happen that you could do if your plan does not work out. It’s really important to remember that sometimes things happen, things go sideways and you have to change the plan. You have to adjust and adapt. So maybe having some kind of general idea of different options is a good way to not have a backup plan, but also kind of have a backup plan. I think a good way that we could potentially disguise a backup plan too is to have things like systems in place, have your intake process in place, budgeting, having your budget in place, scheduling time for client. I mean, those things all tie into kind of discipline, and that is really what sustains a lot of solos. And really make sure that you don’t have to have a fallback plan. You already have this safety net built for yourself that you can fall back on in case things don’t go according to plan, but isn’t necessarily a built out backup plan.

Adriana Linares:

So Nate was ahead of his time back then when I interviewed him in that he had set everyone up to work remotely, and then the pandemic came along, which it’s funny how far back in our memories that is, and he was already set up, but that happened, and that really changed I think a lot in the business as far as allowing people wanting your people to work from home. Nate had done that way back then. Everyone’s at home in their jammies. It’s no wasted time at the water cooler, no office rent, there’s no commute, just everyone performing optimally. What could go wrong with like this Rio? Let’s say we want to launch or we want to be that solo that doesn’t have an office. We work from home. And what are the things we should keep in mind when it comes to a risk management perspective?

Rio Laine:

I will say, first off, I work remotely. I love it. It’s fantastic. And I mean, it doesn’t work for everybody, but if it works for you, it is a really good way to go. But it does introduce some new kinds of risk that you have to be aware of, especially if you have support staff or other members of your team who are also working from home. So for example, there can be gray areas around workers’ comp. What if someone gets injured in their workplace, which also happens to be their home?

Adriana Linares:

Oh, that’s a good question. We’ve never talked about that.

Rio Laine:

So if you’re a solo and you’re running a business, you need business insurance. If you have employees, you need workers’ comp, and you need to check into your policy to see how that is handled. And that’s something that you can potentially ask for coverage for if it’s not already included. But it’s really important to think about because yeah, what happens when your workplace doubles as your home? Definitely something to think about. And I think another really big one, and I’m sure Adriana, you know all about this, cybersecurity. Yeah, that’s a big one. I mean, every remote, if you’re going to have a remote setup, you have to make sure that everyone on your team has secure wifi, password protection, ideally A VPN. I mean at Alps, we see this all the time. I think I’ve said this before, literally a couple times a week. You’re vulnerable to data breaches, and usually that comes from your email. So you have to make sure that everybody who is at home has a network that’s set up to protect against those vulnerabilities.

Adriana Linares:

So this is a good opportunity, Rio, for you to remind us, and I’m wagging my finger in the air about an attorney’s responsibility to supervise and do that from a remote setup, but also protect client data and how it ultimately falls on them. If let’s say a legal assistant has a problem like that, can you talk a little bit about that and just reminding us and put some ideas into listener’s heads about what they can do or what they should know about that?

Rio Laine:

Yeah, as I’m sure everyone knows, you do have a duty to supervise non-law staff duty of confidentiality, and that can be difficult when you’re working remotely, right? Supervising your staff in particular. When it comes to confidentiality, a good way to mitigate that is to make sure that your staff are using dedicated hardware for their

Adriana Linares:

Work. Yes, I love this idea.

Rio Laine:

They’re not mixing personal computers with work computers because that opens you up to all sorts of vulnerabilities if they click on a malicious link in their personal account, on their work slash personal computer. I mean, there you go, data breach right there. So making sure you have separation of work and home is really, really helpful and important.

Adriana Linares:

This sounds to me like an opportunity for an attorney to purchase a laptop. It becomes an expense for them. So you purchase a firm laptop and then you ship it to the virtual assistant and have it set up that way and make sure that they’re only using it for firm related business, that it’s encrypted when it gets there, that maybe you’ve put a password manager on there where you’re able to manage and control the passwords that they have access to. That seems like an easy thing to, again, mitigate risk and something we probably don’t talk about enough because one of my biggest nightmares is imagining a legal assistant who has an all-in-one computer in her kitchen where the kids sign on to do their homework on the same computer that earlier she was helping to work on someone’s estate plan.

Rio Laine:

I will also say when it comes to supervision, if you want to get into it, if you’re having dedicated work computers, there is software that remote IT teams will use to keep an eye on their remote employees, what they’re doing on their computers, et cetera. This is where maybe getting the help of an IT professional would come in handy if you’re not sure how to set all that stuff up by yourself. But that’s also a way that you can monitor what people are doing on their computers, on their work laptops. So if that’s a road that you want to go down, it is absolutely possible. So good things to think about is, yeah, how are you keeping an eye on folks? How are you supervising them? What is that going to look like in your remote firm?

Adriana Linares:

Well, as always, Rio, thanks so much for coming on New Solo and talking to us and it was really fun to catch up with Nate again virtually, although he is still a good client and I would dare say a friend of mine, and it’s always really fun to hear that he is still doing well. He is not just a solo, he has definitely grown his practice and I think that gives everyone out there who’s thinking about doing this Hope Rio, remind everyone where they can find friend or follow you or ask you any questions if they’re looking to shop for some insurance or follow up with you on anything we’ve talked about on the first flight series.

Rio Laine:

Yeah, absolutely. So don’t be shy. Reach out. I love to connect, love to answer all the questions. You can contact me at R Lane, LAIN [email protected]. It’s Alps like the

Adriana Linares:

Mountains. Thanks everyone for listening. We’ll see you next time on New Solo

Announcer:

From nine to five my all this time, won’t anyone, I was thinking this was the way to go and you up your puppet. I.

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