Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] If you do it early and often, it does give you the ability to course correct or cut ties and hopefully avoid the pissed off review or bark complain or whatever that might come if you don’t do it soon enough and you wait till the end and they’re like, I’ve been pissed this whole time.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. And we really wish we had known. Right. And so yeah I could tilt it windmills and be aggravated that people don’t tell us when there’s something they don’t like, or I can find out a different way to ask and use it to ask them. Right. That’s one of the things I think that it’s understandable for lawyers to be frustrated when clients don’t share that information.

But the truth is that there are people who are intimidated by their lawyers, by any lawyer. They don’t wanna have an uncomfortable conversation. They don’t feel like going through the pain of changing firms. They like someone I individually and don’t wanna hurt their feelings. There’s all sorts of stuff [00:01:00] packed into it.

So fine, let’s let humans be humans and just figure out a way to ask them that people are more comfortable with.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview law firm founders and owners and hear about their journeys and lessons learned, and you, the listener, get to hopefully learn something along the way as well. So, today really excited.

We’ve got Meghan Freed with us today. She is a I’ll just call her a family lawyer, divorce lawyer, whatever you would call [00:02:00] it in Connecticut. Her firm is Freed Marcroft. And we’ve got a lot to cover today. So, Meghan, welcome. Why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us about your firm, your background.

Meghan Freed: Oh, thanks Jonathan. So I started out in the early part of this century as more of a traditional corporate litigator did well in law school and was a summer associate in one of our big firms here in Connecticut. Sort of followed that path for a while until launching the predecessor to Freed Marcroft which is called Freed McKean.

You and I both know Ryan well, my first partner and we had more of a general civil practice room and then. When we discovered that Ryan’s interest was falling more towards the personal injury practice and that my interest and my partner  Kristen, my current partner Kristen Marcroft, who I’m also married [00:03:00] to, so partnerships all around we were more interested in family law and so we, we wound up having two successful firms that were more successful than the one in their own right.

And so that’s how we hatched Freed Marcroft back in 2013.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You know, I have found just through the years, it’s really hard to do a personal injury contingency practice with a non-con contingency practice. There are people that make it work. I’ve seen it, but it’s just, it’s really hard to make that work whether it’s, I mean, lots of reasons why, but I have just found it hard to do.

Meghan Freed: I found it hard. I found it hard to do, and I know people do it successfully, but one of the things that we actually discovered early on is if I think about 2013 and where we were gravitating our first law firm business coach back then, who we started working with in about 2024, 2014. So [00:04:00] like first law firm, 2012, second law firm, 2013 trying to just like make a go of this thing, right?

And then we start working with the law firm coach anyway, in that first call with them the sales call, not our first coaching call. In the first sales call, they were like, if you’re gonna work with us, you have to level down to one practice area. And so it really drives home the point you’re making, Jonathan, where not only for us, did a PI hourly firm not work, because I think that’s like the first cut, right? Contingency, hourly, tricky, bad fellows. I get the appeal. But then for us, we wound up quickly discovering that, like, for example, I used to before law school I was a financial planner and I loved doing trust in state’s work.

I just felt like it allowed me to like take what I used to do and level it into a legal practice. I loved it. It was like more [00:05:00] a passion project though. And so we had to like tough love. Some of our baby had to go. And so that’s how we niched down into family law, which was definitely the heart of what we were both attracted to, but also, being able to dial in, especially as a newer firm into every investment we bank in marketing, in training, in what Lexus or Westlaw subscription you buy. Everything was geared toward this one practice area. So very early on we were able to go an inch wide and a mile deep where we had been trying to go a mile wide with not the law firm wasn’t at a point where that made any sense, but it was still extremely scary to do it.

But thank goodness we did.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, those are some really good points. You know, it sounds [00:06:00] great in theory. I mean, everybody’s like, well, you know, the contingency, we’ll get the big hit every now and then, and the hourly, or, we’ll just, it’ll keep the steady cash flow. It sounds great in theory, but it just it,

Meghan Freed: What paralegal are you hiring? What skills does that person need to have? I mean, oh my God. It, I mean, pass, I think we’re at the size now where we could add a second practice area. I wouldn’t go to something that had an entirely different billing model or anything like that because I’ve no interest in reinventing that particular wheel.

But we’re probably large enough to add on another practice area, and I still, it’s just not my jam at this point. Like, let’s just do the thing

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, There’s probably still plenty of growth you can do without it. So, okay, so, I do wanna dive into the niche thing, but I wanna go back because I was looking at your LinkedIn and did you work in-house for a while too?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, I did in the middle. I skipped that. So after the, like, there was big firms and then I was in-house, and then we started the firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: [00:07:00] Okay. ’cause I’m always curious, the motivations or the thought process behind some of the jumps people make? Because I mean, I know from my own experience, I’ve made a number of jumps. I’ve done a lot of different things.

And I can, if someone asks me, I could sort of tell you, but my sense just from my own journey and others, that there comes a time in many lawyers careers, careers, probably

Meghan Freed: is very nice.

Jonathan Hawkins: Four, four to eight years in where you’re just like, I don’t wanna do this at all. I’m just, I don’t, you know, and then you might jump at another firm ’cause you’re like, maybe it’s the firm. And then you go to the other firm and you’re like, maybe it’s not the firm. Maybe it’s being a lawyer. So then you try something else. So I’m curious, what led you, you know, you started out sort of, I’ll call it big firm, you know, traditional civil, and then you went in-house. What was sort of the steps along the way that drove you there?

Meghan Freed: So you remember when I said that I did well in law school and I wound up with the summer associate thing, and then the big firm thing just sort of happened. I really let that all happen to me. I had a scholarship for [00:08:00] law school and so it was a full ride. That’s amazing. Great. Right? But I had to stay in the top 10% of my class and my section, I went part-time.

My section was only 50 people, so the top 10% was a very small number right of heavens. So I was like, I better really study hard and focus on my grades. I didn’t think through why I was following the path that was available to me, other than it seemed to be what everyone was in a feeding frenzy over so that I should wanna do it.

So the first thing is, it’s weird that I even wound up in big firms. It was not, that wasn’t a thoughtful decision. When I was leaving my first big firm, it was exactly what you said. I was like this isn’t feeling right. Maybe I should go to that one and make more money. Right. [00:09:00] Well that was not better, right?

I wish the first firm had been matter to the second firm, but I learned the lesson that you don’t go somewhere for money if you’re me, right? Like, that has to be a component of it, but that alone isn’t the cure. And then after that I loved being in house actually. I just had done it. Like I, my in-house stint was complete.

And when I got to do a lot of stuff in-house, I was at a relatively small. Company with a tight legal group. So I got to have a lot of freedom within that structure. And it was kind of like a very tight, close knit law firm inside a company. And so I traveled extensively and got to sit with really experienced lawyers, and it, I really, it was a really great experience, but when I [00:10:00] looked up or over at larger companies in similar roles that didn’t look like the thing I wanted next, right?

I couldn’t keep doing my job forever. It was, it had lost its shine because it, I had just done it hadn’t, I wasn’t growing enough. I was still really young. And so. There, we there, I get a text message from Ryan McKean. I was sitting on a plane. I was always sitting on a plane ’cause I was in, in-house manage litigation in-house and I just was like flying around the country, right?

And so I, I got this text message from Ryan. He was like, do you want to start a law firm? So while I just chastised myself for the first decision where I went into big law without really thinking about it it was a text message that gave me something I, I never would have thought of. Starting my own firm and the comfort of [00:11:00] having the suggestion raised by someone I knew, liked, trusted Ryan and who had been doing a small firm, state-based civil practice.

I was a federal litigator prior to going in-house was the it wasn’t just the idea, it was like the safety net. I felt confident that the skills he had and the experience he had were some of the things I would’ve been most nervous about. And so that’s how we started. I definitely wanted more freedom. That was the primary motivator.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you decide to jump into private practice.

Meghan Freed: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Hawkins: How did you figure out what you were gonna do? There’s like, we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, family law and contingency and this and that. I mean, you had the civil litigation, you know, what was it? You were just like, I don’t care. I’m just gonna get in and figure it [00:12:00] out, or we’re gonna do everything.

Meghan Freed: Yeah, so Ryan had a lot of background and had been at a civil litigation practice, like a more general practice prior. So that helped that sort of set the stage. The original concept was just sort of a general civil litigation practice. That’s how we started. And then the niching down really happened after that.

Ryan was doing some PI at that time in that context, but a lot of it was things I was my work, he was teaching me. I was teach I took so many CLEs and Kristen, who at that time was with us and who had just graduated from law firms from law school rather, we were doing these things independently and together.

Some of it came from my prior financial planning background where I was more comfortable in the estate planning world. So that’s why I started to do some of that. But yeah, it was kind of a door law at the first, how are we gonna make this thing go? And what do we want to, we were [00:13:00] less focused on practice area, I would say, than what we wanted to have the firm be and feel like for us and for clients.

Jonathan Hawkins: So there’s some lawyers that just sort of always knew they were gonna start a firm. It sounds like that

Meghan Freed: Never, Never. Not an like, wouldn’t have, Nope.

Jonathan Hawkins: but once the text came your mind, something, some a flip was a switch was flipped and you just jumped on. Is that accurate?

Meghan Freed: flip was, Kristen’s switch was flipped. Shit. I was like, oh, that’s so it’s an honor. Be nominated was my approach. I was like, yeah, I mean, what? That would be cool, but you know, what do I know about running a law firm? We’re probably not gonna get any securities derivative cases in, and I don’t dunno.

That’s what I know how to do. Right. So Kristen was the one who challenged me and was really like, well, why not? Right? This is interesting. Why wouldn’t we think about this? Whereas I had summarily dismissed it [00:14:00] at first blush.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you’ve talked about this on other podcasts, you know, ultimately that partnership, you know, didn’t work out. You guys Went your separate ways, and we can get into as much as that as you want. But I’m curious just the experience of going into starting a firm, not really having a plan, really it sounds like

Meghan Freed: Right. Well, we had

Jonathan Hawkins: it out.

Meghan Freed: We had plans. We spent a lot of time on a lot of plans, but one of them wasn’t. What are our, what’s our like, preferred practice area? Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So with the, you know, benefit of hindsight, if there’s somebody out there that’s sort of, maybe I want to get, do something any thoughts on jumping into a firm with the attitude of we’ll just do whatever comes in versus, all right, let’s figure out what we’re gonna focus on.

Meghan Freed: Oh yeah. Okay. So now with what we’ve learned this is that, yeah. In the category of do, as I say, not as I do, right. We would’ve hired the coach first [00:15:00] and figured out. An actual business plan and gone forward that way, not that it wouldn’t have changed, not that we wouldn’t have gotten things totally wrong.

That’s part of the gig, right? It’s not gonna be perfect. But we would’ve changed the order, and I think would’ve started in a niche rather than corrected into a niche. That’s if I were gonna start if Freed Marcroft disappeared and we were gonna start a new firm, we would not ever do the general practice step.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So here’s another one. So, again, so the partnership didn’t work out. As you look back on it any lessons there that maybe, you know, I don’t know how to put it, warning signs. I mean, people come to me all the time and they’re like, we wanna do a partnership. And I usually send, I have a list of questions that have nothing to do with law, nothing to do with business. it’s sort of touchy feely kind of stuff. I, it, even if you go through those, those, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be successful. But I’m just [00:16:00] curious, you know, as people are out there thinking should I go in with a partner? Who should I get as a partner? What are some of the things maybe they should be looking out for?

Meghan Freed: I think that neither Kristen nor I knew what we were actually interested in practicing when we started, because we didn’t have the requisite experience to know what was going to ring our bells. So in that way, there’s kind of with Freed McKean our firm with Ryan people gravitating towards different practice areas wasn’t necessarily foreseeable. So it’s just sort of like that’s, you know, that’s one of the things that happens. But I think that if you are in a position where you do know what practice areas you’re interested in, you’ve kind of cleared one of the hurdles that we didn’t clear.

And then I think it becomes about what do you want this to look like? What do you want your life to look like? [00:17:00] Right? What, how often do you wanna be on vacation? Do you plan on working remotely or is this going to be an in the office thing? If there’s a decision, and I’m like, I’m much more interested in what you have to say about this, what I have to say about this.

But the decision between having let’s take the, a classic structure and it’s just like two partners starting a firm. What does 50 50 mean? Would 51 49 be better? How are we gonna, how are we gonna resolve things like this? How much money are we willing to invest? And in what, especially in the really early stages, like how much do we need to get out versus what we put in?

How can we all feel good about everyone’s contributions in terms of hours billed or work generated? And I think that there are a lot of law firms that I am generally knowledgeable [00:18:00] about generally passingly knowledgeable about where they’re not really a firm, it’s just a sharing of expenses and things like that.

And I think if you wanna do that, that’s fine. It will limit your growth. But if you wanna start that way I get it. Pre decide who gets stuck with the beeping copier release. But, you know, but that’s a fine way to start. But it’s if you’re going into a more collaborative model where one person may be more responsible for generating work and another person may be more responsible for doing it, you have to make sure that you, everyone is making a profit on how they value their own in each other’s efforts.

And how everyone knows that they’re doing a good job. I think it’s those kind of questions and discussions that can really be important to figure out if it’s the right fit. Because, you know, [00:19:00] in retrospect, Ryan and I are now close friends. We weren’t always right. It was not like. You know, I’m a divorce lawyer.

It wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had to go through a partnership breakup. I’m not proud of everything I did in it. I’m proud of how we are now and I’m not sure anyone is rooting for him more than I am. Right? So like, isn’t that a wonderful outcome? That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to learn about how we did it, how we could have done it better.

Don’t make the same mistakes that I made. Take them for what they’re worth and make your own mistakes that are similar.

Jonathan Hawkins: A lot of wisdom in all of that. A lot of wisdom there, you know, and I have found, you know, I do a lot of law firm breakups too. And it’s even the cases that objectively from the outside, there’s like nothing to fight about. There’s

Meghan Freed: Nope.

Jonathan Hawkins: there’s [00:20:00] nothing fight about, it’s still hard, still emotional. And it’s something that you wouldn’t even expect. Like I’ve had some where the person is retiring from the practicing law to do something completely d they’re not even competing, they’re doing

Meghan Freed: Yes. We’re

Jonathan Hawkins: other person just feels abandoned. You know? It’s just it’s,

Meghan Freed: were doing this together. Right. And I wouldn’t have gone in with someone, this wasn’t my experience, but I can think I, I can see someone feeling like, but we just talked about this five years ago. Where are you going right now? All of a sudden, you wanna be a yoga instructor, right?

Jonathan Hawkins: It is not you. It’s me.

Meghan Freed: Right. I mean, right. Relationships are relationships. Or relationships, whether it’s a marriage or a partnership or, you know, my intense relationship with my Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, they’re all give and take.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, dogs are special. They’re all they’re, They’re completely special. But, okay, so let’s go back to sort of the niche. So, you know, you’re family law now and we, you’ve sort of got a niche within the niche, [00:21:00] but or niche within the niche is, I’m from the south. I can call it a niche, but

Meghan Freed: Yeah. You can call it whatever you want with your great accent.

Jonathan Hawkins: so I, what led you, you know, why family law, I mean, you had no, no experience in it. What led you to that and what drew you to that?

Meghan Freed: So one of the, Ryan had done divorce. So we had bandwidth in Freed McKeen. My first client that got referred to me was, my first divorce client that got referred to me was from a wonderful, very senior lawyer at a big firm in Connecticut. And it was a connection from his work for a corporation, and she was getting divorced.

It was a, I now know, like extremely straightforward divorce. Well, I didn’t treat it like a straightforward divorce. I was very thorough. But I loved it. I loved [00:22:00] helping her or choose to move from a, from an unhappy situation to a happy situation. And I think part of what resonated with me is, and I don’t like to, like a big law is great for a lot of people.

There’s nothing wrong with it. But one of the reasons that I think ultimately I wasn’t a fit, although I wouldn’t have said it when I was there, is I really love the nuts and bolts of the legal practice of law. That rings my bells. It had never occurred to me that I was actually, and I am about to say this, right, I was not actually interested in emotions associated with clients. I thought, well, it turns out that I was so used to huge dollar amounts with a balance sheet, p and l [00:23:00] impact, that I didn’t realize what it was like when you like, truly helped a individual impact their life. And it was like, oh my God, like I am helping this person lead the life that they wanna lead.

I’m not doing it for them, they’re doing it for themselves, but it’s better with me there. Let’s do that all day every day.

Jonathan Hawkins: Now that reminds me I saw one of your LinkedIn posts, it was about being a counselor versus being an advocate, and

Meghan Freed: one had a pretty hot bench.

Jonathan Hawkins: that was, I mean, but that sort of fits in, I think to what you’re talking about here, but maybe elaborate on that. What did you mean by that?

Meghan Freed: Yeah. So the, I remember an, you know, an old shingle for a law firm used to say, attorney at counsel and counselor law. That’s what, you know, that’s what you would put on your sign in the center of your quaint little town. And I [00:24:00] think people, especially newer lawyers, in trying to do a really great job, really get focused on a narrow definition of zealous advocacy and forget.

The counselor component. And I’m not talking about like get on the couch, right? Tell me your problems. I’m not talking about stepping into the role of an actual mental health professional. I’m talking about counseling people on their legal options, counseling people on the what’s realizable legally.

And I think that piece for me is really tricky to master still working on it over here. But how do we give our individual clients or our business clients the information they need to make the best possible decisions for their [00:25:00] goals rooted in what we, what is possible? And the more you let that be the lead.

Then the zealous advocacy that you think of, like, you know, in court, in the, at the negotiation table, that comes second. That’s the second part of your job. But I also think that doing the counseling, being a counselor to your client is part of being a zealous advocate. And I know it’s hard to teach to newer lawyers because they haven’t had a lot of clients yet.

Right. And they have some understandable and appropriate nervousness around their hard skills. Right? But the faster we can get to the soft skills, the hard skills are the easy stuff.

Jonathan Hawkins: It so true. I remember as a young lawyer you get so bogged down in fighting [00:26:00] every little fight, and maybe you’re like, I’m gonna win this one. Maybe you will, maybe you’re a hundred percent right. But then you’re sort of like, why do we spend all this time? It didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter. to the bigger.

Meghan Freed: Like what’s our, if we have, I love page limits and litigation, right? Page limits, I think are such a gift to the, especially to the newer lawyer because it’s like you have five arguments, which are the best ones and let’s, let’s allocate time that way. Let’s allocate words that way.

Let’s allocate time that way. And I think that’s it’s a, I think back on, on being at big law firms earlier in my career, so like you’re a very, very new lawyer in a very big environment. And the number of hours I spent looking for a case that didn’t exist on what I now know was like for a footnote.

Jonathan Hawkins: it was, It was that case that the partner was sure existed. I

Meghan Freed: Or was afraid was right, [00:27:00] like,

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: But remember that we were like, how long do I go to prove the negative, right? I don’t miss that. I don’t, that’s hard. Newer lawyers, that’s just hard. Your job is hard.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So it we sort of figured out how you got into your niche but then within that you’ve sort of got, I call it a sub niche or maybe a super niche, however you wanna call it. So, I don’t know if it’s a primary focus, but you have a big focus on the LGBT community. How did you sort of get down into that

Meghan Freed: Yeah. Um, It isn’t anymore actually. It started out as a big niche when we were starting our firm and when we were starting in family law. It was right around the time where the marriage equality decisions in Connecticut and nationally were happening, and there wasn’t anyone that I knew of. In [00:28:00] the lead from the family law perspective on helping individual clients, it was most, it was more of like, there were tons of people doing tons of advocacy work, tons of legal advocacy work to pass those to get those laws passed, to do the work, to get the right cases up and to argue those cases.

But I’m talking about like the boots on the ground, like ha helping at individual clients. And at the time one of the things we were trying to figure out was how are we going to now that people in same sex relationships are able to get married, but have been long-term partners for 20 years.

How are we going to make those two things work together and yeah, I’m a dors sl, right? So that’s kind of the prenup side that I talked about a minute ago. On the divorce side, we didn’t have a [00:29:00] concept in Connecticut of the length of the marriage extending to something beyond the literal, literal marriage.

So if you have a 20 year relationship and a one year marriage, it’s like, but that’s a one year marriage, right? So how do we help clients? The reality of their lives match what we’re kind of dealing with in terms of an evolving section of the law. So, I’m married to my partner Kristen, my law partner, Kristen.

And so it was a natural fit for us and it was a natural interest for us happily. And hopefully this will continue to be true. It will continue to be the case that more and more the way our laws and courts, at least in Connecticut treat folks married folks or parents is not skewed by whether or not they’re part of the [00:30:00] L-G-B-T-Q community.

So happily, my initial niche has become less relevant and you know how sometimes you are happy to be out of business on things. I would be very happy to stay out of business on that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, there. There you go. So let, let’s go back to the firm. So you’ve got the two of you. Who else is with you? Do you, how many lawyers, how many staff? How, how have you sort of

Meghan Freed: There are about 25 of us total, and I think 12 of us are attorneys. So that’s kind of the mix. Push in half and half

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a good size firm for a family law firm.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. We’re big.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.

Meghan Freed: Big for family law.

Jonathan Hawkins: in Connecticut. I mean, you’re not a huge state, are you?

Meghan Freed: No, but mighty,

Jonathan Hawkins: guys go outside of, do do you, do you go

Meghan Freed: no, we don’t. We are Connecticut only. And COVID was a helpful catapult in the in really becoming a statewide practice. We had Connecticut’s very provincial, 169 cities and towns, and I’m [00:31:00] not gonna even talk about the villages with their own identities in those cities and towns.

But we had two offices, I think when COVID started and were sort of, functioning in what I would call like the middle of Connecticut. And with COVID everything changed and we started doing a lot of mediation. When courts shut down to try and help people, we’d always done it, but we ramped it up to try and help people who were a little bit stuck.

And we went statewide very quickly, and that has continued since COVID we, we never went back. So truly a statewide practice in Connecticut. I think that on a couple of metrics, it’s safe to say we’re the largest family law firm in Connecticut. And that’s, yes. So we’ve been growing rapidly since 2014 when we niched down to family law.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s awesome. So you said you went [00:32:00] statewide. So how do you do that? Like, you know, you go from, you’re in one or two offices and all of a sudden you gotta get the word out there. You know, state and they need to know you. So how did you do that?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, it was COVID. So the internet it was the marketing, first of all, everyone. We had been a firm with remote capabilities. I’m going to toot Ryan McKeen horn, right? So when we started Freed McKean, the tech stack he set us up with at the beginning had always enabled work from home flexibility. So we had other than a few people, I think pretty much everyone was working a combination of remotely and in the office.

But almost all of our client meetings were in the office. So that’s actually, that was the big switch, not our ability. To work remotely, but our client’s interest in meeting with us remotely [00:33:00] totally changed during COVID. I think that the whole world got a lot more comfortable with Zoom and teams, et cetera, platforms like that.

And then when we came back after COVID, we found that our clients really largely preferred to continue to meet with us virtually. Not all the meetings, obviously most of court is in person, not all of it, but largely in person. And so our our practice I think evolved with the world and we were well set up to do it.

How did we get clients? We had a lot of we had a lot of employees back then. Not as many as we have now, but say we’re kind of maybe a 15 person firm. Five or six lawyers, and I think we just needed to be able to survive and keep paying people. And so we got real creative real fast and started [00:34:00] to understand that we could finish cases if we mediated them even though the courts were closed.

And so we, speaking of niching down, like basically all of the marketing went into these virtual mediations that we figured out how to do very quickly. And it’s like, it was necessity was the mother of invention there. We just needed to keep the lights on and didn’t wanna lose our lawyers.

Jonathan Hawkins: So for the marketing, I mean, are you talking about like SEO Google ad stuff or were you, I mean, like what?

Meghan Freed: I was doing webinars. Um, Yeah, the, so we’ve always had a fairly. Well, I shouldn’t say always. We had to grow it right. But like our SEO our native search has always been a big part of our practice and has grown with us. Social media posts, remember no one had anything to do, so people were on social media much more than [00:35:00] they hopefully are now during the day.

And so we were able to reach people. I don’t, this marketing strategy I don’t think would work exactly the same way right now when we were all stuck.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: But, so yeah, it was a largely webinars, Q&A’s, Facebook Lives things like that. And we had a robust presence with all of that previously.

And so it was really about switching the focus from divorce in a general way and other family law issues, obviously, but and redirecting it into a, you know, everyone is seeing on the news that the courts are closed, but there’s a way that you can resolve your divorce right now and you don’t have to stop.

So that was the, that was what happened back then?

Jonathan Hawkins: So there was all that talk that, you know, people stuck in the homes together [00:36:00] that really put strain on the relationships and maybe

Meghan Freed: it did. That’s all true.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you see that

Meghan Freed: Oh yeah. It was terrible. The it was awful. There, there were two parts of it that were awful. And one part that was good, the awful parts were that the houses became a powder keg. There was, that, there was nowhere for that tension to go to. People weren’t leaving to go to work, kids weren’t leaving to go to school.

They were all in the house. It was just a, just, it ramped up the conflict. The second awful part of it was that there weren’t courts there to help resolve it unless there was an emergency situation. So if you think about in family law, there’s a big section of things that are urgent but not emergent and we try to keep them from going there.

Right. We keep try, we try to hang out in urgent and not get to emergency. [00:37:00] And so things, the only way you could get in court was with an emergency. And unfortunately, like, you know, having everyone in the house together was accelerant. That was rough. The good part of it. The good part of it is that it brought things to a head in relationships that would have continued to linger.

And I think a lot of people were able to move a happier situation because things came to a head. They got clarity earlier than they would have in a non COVID time. One of the things we see in divorce is the frog in the pot of boiling water. Right. Doesn’t know. And we have a lot of conversations with people where if I were able to share them with you you would think.

Oh my gosh, that doesn’t make any sense. Why is this person continuing to live like this? And it, they don’t [00:38:00] realize, right? They don’t realize how far it’s drifted. COVID made people realize how far it has drifted quickly. So there was an upside. Not that we ever want to go back there.

Jonathan Hawkins: Those were wild times. Wild times. People just aren’t gonna believe it, you know?

Meghan Freed: It’s none of

Jonathan Hawkins: Spanish flu

Meghan Freed: were doing what you were making, right? We didn’t even, what’s the Spanish flu? None of us had ever heard of it.

Jonathan Hawkins: exactly. They just wanted to forget, you know?

Meghan Freed: Right. I mean, now I look back on it and I’m like, I mean I, how much bread did I bake? We put it in a wagon, delivered it to neighbors. I mean, it was just, there is no, the living through that time was such a social, cultural, and relationship experiment.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Bizarre. Bizarre.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would [00:39:00] really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you mentioned social media. What, What’s your stack, what’s your social media stack? I, I know you’re on LinkedIn cause I follow you, but is that your main social media outlet or do you have others and, and maybe you individually plus the firm.

Meghan Freed: yeah, my Meghan LinkedIn. Is my I don’t know. I feel like, I don’t know if you feel like this, but I feel like for me right now where we sit in 2025, I feel like LinkedIn is more interesting to me than a lot of other social media outlets that used to be interesting to me. And LinkedIn used to be completely boring, just job updates, and it was brutal.

It was just, oh my gosh. Right. I think people went on there once a year when they changed jobs or something like that, but. I love it now. I find it, I find the there to be some tremendous thought leadership. I learn things on it. I’ve [00:40:00] made fr friendships and relationships through it. So I, that’s my personal favorite for the firm.

The firm is not really, I mean it’s on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn, the algorithm doesn’t love the companies, right? So it’s just too bad ’cause we Freed Marcroft has a lot of value to add to LinkedIn. It’s just that no one sees it. So it has to come out of Meghan Freed on LinkedIn, which I’m cool with ’cause I like it.

But yes, Facebook, yes, Instagram I don’t think we do Twitter or whatever it’s called anymore. But we do have a pretty solid YouTube and even TikTok presence. I’m not, I’m the one in those videos. I record all those videos but I don’t watch them. I am like not a person who enjoys [00:41:00] having the volume on, on my devices.

I listen to podcasts like yours in the car. I, it’s an, or it’s an auditory thing. It’s not, I don’t watch. And so it’s funny to me that we are having some real success over there in those video driven platforms that I don’t naturally watch. And I think that’s something that I evolve on as I mature as a law firm owner, that I am not necessarily a person who has the same habits as many of our target clients. And so bringing in folks who are better at different aspects of your firm than you is a really key component. And one of the things that’s been great about growing Freed Mark Craft is having access to higher and higher caliber of those folks to onboard. Not that we’re not [00:42:00] perfect at it.

We continue to learn. But I have learned a lot. If you had told me five years ago, maybe that’s not good in, in TikTok life, if you had told me three years ago when I had heard of TikTok that Freed Marcroft was going to be on it, I would’ve thought that you were nuts. But I was wrong.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I am still not on TikTok, but it’s interesting, the thing about the video, so I was, you know, everybody, you gotta do video, gotta do video. I was like, I gotta Do video. But my clients are lawyers. So, I went on LinkedIn and I just said, look. Before I spend all this time and money and energy trying to create these videos, do you guys even watch videos? would you watch a long form video? And, and the, from the lawyer folks, overwhelmingly, they’re like, I don’t watch videos. I’d rather just read it. Or

Meghan Freed: So we’re just, it’s just a lawyer thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: I don’t know. But

Meghan Freed: Oh,

Jonathan Hawkins: it definitely, I think it depends on your audience. Now, they did say if it’s a how to video, like how do you change a tire?

Meghan Freed: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: you do whatever? They’re

like, [00:43:00] I’m gonna watch the video to

Meghan Freed: right. Because I need the visual of what thing to twist, right? Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. But they’re like, but if you’re just explaining a concept, like I’d rather just read it. And I was thinking, huh, okay. So then that’s when I said, all right, I’m not gonna spend too much time on videos. At least not now, but

Meghan Freed: Yeah, maybe I’m just, maybe I’m just normal, like maybe I’m normal for a lawyer. I that I like a transcript. Oh, Oh, I’ll, a thing I will do, I will watch a video with a closed cap with the captioning on and the volume off if I must. Right. If there’s no, if there’s nothing to read, I’ll do that, but

Jonathan Hawkins: That, that’s my mode. Yeah. Because it’s like, or if I see a video that they’re like, sound up. I’m like I, I just save it and then hopefully remember to watch it later.

Meghan Freed: I know. Oh, I can’t do the sound up. I’m not in a place where I can put the sound on.

Jonathan Hawkins: The judge might not like

Meghan Freed: Yeah. I don’t think the judge would like that. I don’t, I don’t think my colleague working next door in our open working space needs to hear [00:44:00] this. And I’m not a I’m not a i’ve never adapted to always having in AirPods or whatever, either.

That’s not my, like when I talk on the phone, it is a speaker phone pacing situation. That’s the how I get my steps in.

Jonathan Hawkins: well, it’s like now my kids, they got the damn earbuds in all the time. I mean, they’re carrying on a conversation with you and there’s like one end, I’m like, are you, listen,

Meghan Freed: I know.

Jonathan Hawkins: what? You

Meghan Freed: But also, I don’t know any of the cues. Like I don’t know how to like mute anything. I really am like I put them in, I take them out. That is my functionality.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So I’m with you about LinkedIn though. I, you know, I tell people this, I always thought it was a joke. And it used to be, I mean, it really used to be, I it was just boring and someone convinced me to sort of get on there and I did. And I really, I get a lot of value outta there, a lot of stuff for a while. I got that from Twitter. And then Twitter, just the algorithm [00:45:00] change. I still, I’m still on there ’cause I still see some things that entertain me but, but the quality posts even for, they just don’t show up in my feed anymore. I like, I was obsessed With real estate and small business and finance, Twitter and there were so many good people on there. And it’s, maybe they still are, but they just don’t post, or I don’t know. They’re just, they seem to be gone. I’ve not been able to recreate that yet.

Meghan Freed: It did really. There was a period there where it was great.

Jonathan Hawkins: So. Good.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. But I do think that like the conversation has gone to LinkedIn and, you know, you are still fighting some boring posts,

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: Where it’s just like, I mean. probably a robot wrote that, but if you wrote it, you could have just had a robot write it because it’s the regurgitation of what everyone’s saying. But, so there’s still, it’s still, you know, social media, there’s still stuff on there that [00:46:00] isn’t worth your time.

But I think that’s where the interesting conversations are happening. And I also like them happening. I like lawyer LinkedIn, but I also like the sort of input of the professionals packed around the lawyers too, right? Like whatever is happening on accountant twi accountant, LinkedIn, when it crosses over with the lawyers is really interesting too.

So that cross pollination I think has been great. And I’ve actually tried video on LinkedIn and it’s so weird. So I know that it might be moving there. I’m interested in how that shakes out further to your point, but I know they’re pushing it, but I don’t think the algorithm likes it yet.

Jonathan Hawkins: We will see. Yeah. We’ll see. That shakes out. I mean, every, every platform has its own little personality and, sure it’s meant to be. They’re gonna try it. We’ll see.

Meghan Freed: Yeah, we’ll see.

Jonathan Hawkins: but speaking of LinkedIn, so there, you know, I stalked your post for a little while before this ’cause I always like to do that. And you have some good stuff on there. So anybody out there, they [00:47:00] should follow you first of all. But you had one, and this feeds back, I think, to building a firm getting clients, keeping them happy, all of that. And you had a post about continually getting client feedback that I thought was pretty interesting. You know, people have heard of the net promoter score. There are other ways to survey your clients, but you know, I think a lot of lawyers are scared to do it, number one. And then maybe if they do it they might just do it once. So maybe tell us your philosophy on client feedback.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. So we do it at stages of the case. So we try to get a pulse of how the client is feeling, and you could do it monthly. That would be a fine, you know, way to do it. We do it at certain key. We have our cases. Structured into phases so that people understand sort of where they are and where they’re going, and our communications to them.

Follow those phases. So there’s a [00:48:00] natural point at which it makes sense for us to ask how things are going. So one, for example, would be after their initial strategy session, their first like big sit down with their lawyer, where we create the first strategy. And then in divorce discovery is now fun for people.

Like even, I’m not even talking, we aren’t even at a deposition yet. I’m talking about gathering three years of bank statements and tax returns and what the heck I live with them and why? Like, whatever it’s frustrating for folks. I get it that it’s frustrating. So I like to know how they’re doing and what I am, what I am like to know is both a 30,000 foot view of how we’re doing and a micro view of how we’re doing. I wanna know are there things that we could be en mass for all of our clients doing better in a way that gives them a better experience? Can we learn from people’s pain points? [00:49:00] I also wanna make sure, of course, that individual clients are fine.

And there’s two sides to that, right? One is, are we Freed Marcroft living up to our commitments to clients who aren’t going to find what we deliver valuable? And the earlier we identify that. Before someone’s really upset or things are really dissident, the easier it is to either course correct and get back on the same page, explain what they were confused about, et cetera, or help them smoothly transition to a firm that might work in a more traditional way or whatever their concept is of how they want it, their relationship with their lawyer to look.

So it’s a two-way street. It’s one, what can we learn about this individual client and how to help them better, but also one of those ways that we might be able to help them [00:50:00] better is by not being the ones who, who are helping them. And that was hard for our lawyers at the beginning. It’s scary to have people rate you, and it is true that people are more candid with a number.

From a question that feels neutral and not like you’re pointing a finger at your paralegal, right? Then actually telling your lawyer you’re concerned about something or you didn’t understand something or why she said something. So it does get a lot we used to ask, but we get a lot more information.

People seem to be comfortable with the NPS. There is all sorts of follow up discussion depending on how they score us, right? Then they’re interacting with humans about it. But the initial gut take, we are much better at finding out when someone is [00:51:00] concerned, unhappy, thrilled. It’s much easier for us to find that out through a kind of objective rating system.

Jonathan Hawkins: Think it’s a, a great point you brought up too. If you do it early and often, it does give you the ability to course correct or cut ties and hopefully avoid the pissed off review or bark complain or whatever that might come if you don’t do it soon enough and you wait till the end and they’re like, I’ve been pissed this whole time.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. And we really wish we had known. Right. And so yeah I could tilt it windmills and be aggravated that people don’t tell us when there’s something they don’t like, or I can find out a different way to ask and use it to ask them. Right. That’s one of the things I think that it’s understandable for lawyers to be frustrated when clients don’t share that information.

But the truth is that there are people who are intimidated by their lawyers, by any [00:52:00] lawyer. They don’t wanna have an uncomfortable conversation. They don’t feel like going through the pain of changing firms. They like someone I individually and don’t wanna hurt their feelings. There’s all sorts of stuff packed into it.

So fine, let’s let humans be humans and just figure out a way to ask them that people are more comfortable with.

Jonathan Hawkins: So this is really interesting to me. So, some of the logistics, let’s talk about that. So, you sort of touched on it, but how do you roll this out to your team and say that we’re about to do this, guys watch out. I mean, you know, how do you I get them on board, or I mean, or basically tell ’em it’s gonna happen and then the sort of follow up is, you know, what’s the response been from both internally and then from your clients?

Meghan Freed: Yeah. So two things happened. We did a big retreat and re sort of retooled some of our core values. Our purpose is happiness matters. Our core values relate to happiness matters, [00:53:00] and several of them relate to the concept of being a truth teller. And several of them relate to doing whatever it takes to give people the best experience possible.

And so we explained that we, in order for happiness to matter, we need to know if there is happiness. And so we’re gonna start measuring happiness. And we also explained what I shared with you, that this is a three-way thing, right? One is we’re gonna figure out how we can do better to not have clients experience stress, right?

It’s divorce, there’s gonna be stress, but on our end, right? Owning our full 100%, how can we deliver the best smoothest experience possible? But also we are going to identify when there’s likely to be a future problem with a client, hopefully before it [00:54:00] gets to an urgent state, when it’s just a low grade thing and course correct.

So we explained why we were doing it and I think because we took the time in a full day to go through that. That it went well. I will tell you that not everyone is with the firm now. That was with the firm when we launched it. And I think that a sort of, I’m not shocked by that. And I’m sure that there were other reasons involved.

But I think that NPS worked that way too, that

The goal is to have the right people in the right seats at the right time, some folks opted out. And so that was, or we opted them out. It worked both ways. Right. And I think that was a tremendous benefit of it too. And now our team, it’s just part of our [00:55:00] culture.

So it’s like, it’s part of the gig now and people embrace it. One of the things that is an idiosyncrasy, maybe just of our NPS platform is that we can’t sometimes people hit a 0 when they mean a 10 or a 1 when they mean a 10, whatever the lowest is, they hit the lowest when they mean the highest.

And when we ask ’em, you know, oh geez, we’re so sorry that, you know, you’re, we’re not living up to what we had committed to. Often they’re mortified that they hit the wrong number. Right. Well, that conversation is a great conversation too. I love that. And so everyone knows to not get, we have a standard that this is our standard that everyone has to meet or exceed.

Right now we’re exceeding it. And I think that there’s room in the standard for someone to hit the wrong number. There’s room in the standard for someone who’s not a good fit to work with us or we’re not a good fit to work with. So [00:56:00] it’s like. Not as scary once it launches, but I do think you have to be really careful about how you do it so that people know that it’s not just like, it’s not designed to be a tool where an individual is hanging on their own.

It’s designed to be a tool that we all use together to improve.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great point. And you know, change is always scary and something like that where you might feel exposed, can be even scarier.

Meghan Freed: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so, yeah. So, I wanna be respectful of your time. There’s so much more that we could cover. But I wanna make sure I ask this question ’cause I’m very interested in this. So, and maybe I’ll get this characterization wrong, so you tell me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you, you started out as, I’ll call it almost like an accidental law firm owner. It wasn’t something you were thinking about and you’ve grown this to the largest family law firm in Connecticut. So you’ve done a lot. As you [00:57:00] look forward to the future, you know, what, what’s left to do? What, What are you looking, looking to the future? What’s your vision for the future, whether it be firm wise or personal or whatever.

Meghan Freed: yeah. We’re not done over here. So one of the things we were in a we run scaling up in our law firm and we were at a leadership team scaling up meeting our last, for Q3 planning. And I said, I’m sick of this problem. I wanna have a new problem. So I think that’s interesting. At this particular stage of growth, it’s like I see so many things that I want to get the opportunity to really dial in. And in order to do that, I have to let go of some of the things that aren’t a hundred percent dialed in yet. And when I think of the future, it’s like I [00:58:00] want a better, even more pristine version of what we’re doing now that impacts who we’re serving even better and serves more people to that level.

I don’t particularly to do that taking up the problem opportunity of expanding to a different state. I know like a lot of other law firms that are sort of at our general size. That’s kind of one of the things that they’re interested in opening up another practice area, expanding out of their home state or their home county in, larger states in Connecticut.

And that’s just not presently where we sit today. What rings my bells? I think we can do what we’re doing right now for a lot more people. Even better right here where we are. And I’m interested in that. So [00:59:00] that’s what’s ringing my bells right now. Like how do we make this thing great and then maybe when we’re talking in two years, I’m like, we did that and now I’m going to New York, I don’t know.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. I love it. I think that’s a good, a good vision to have. So Meghan, thanks for coming on. This has been great. This is really some good stuff you’ve dropped for us today. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to find you?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, so I mean I really am on LinkedIn constantly, so LinkedIn would be great. But also I’m available. My email address is my first name, Meghan, which my parents snuck an h into @freedmarcroft is my email, and then we are basically everywhere online if you would like to reach out. I am very open and love other lawyers, so I’d love to chat.

Jonathan Hawkins: And again, if you’re not following Meghan on LinkedIn, go do it. She’s got some good posts, so I’ve enjoyed them. So Meghan, again, thank you for coming [01:00:00] on.

Meghan Freed: Thank you, Jonathan.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.