Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] So another thing I want to talk about is just sort of mindset and growing a firm. It has been my experience. Others I’ve talked to, you have to grow as a person. If you can’t grow, then your firm’s not gonna grow.

What’s been your experience and how have you forced or created the personal growth that has allowed the business and other growth that you’ve experienced?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, you gotta face a lot of your internal demons depending on, you know, how much you wanna grow your firm cause you really are the ceiling of everything in your life. John Maxwell talks about the law, the lid, and that your belief in yourself and your worthiness of success, whatever success looks like to you.

All of those things are oftentimes the lid in your law firm. ’cause your law firm is just an extension of your beliefs about yourself and what you can achieve. So, I worked with David Nagle I’ve worked a lot with Steph Tess. Those are two people who [00:01:00] I think really have helped me work on mindset and stay really solid there.

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 hear about the cool stuff they’re doing and learn from the things that they’ve done along the way. So today we’re talking to Hillary Walsh. She is the founder of New Frontier Immigration Law out in Arizona.

And she’s had a pretty interesting journey. We’re gonna dive into all of [00:02:00] that. But Hilary, welcome to the show. Why don’t you tell us about your firm, what you guys do, and really, I’m also interested in, in sort of the structure, you know, how many people, how many offices, all that kind of stuff.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s a I’m, I’m excited to be here. Very honored. So in terms of where we’re at and structure and that sort of thing, we just opened our third office in LA so that’s exciting. It’s in a suburb of LA about 15 minutes from downtown. So I was eyeing how far away I was from the, from the Lakers stadium essentially, so that I could go check that out while I’m there.

But we have an office in downtown Phoenix, our kind of original office building and then we opened an office in Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And now we have our office in LA. So it’s exciting stuff and I was on our team meeting today and we had 152 people on our standup meeting today.

And we have a ton of people out for PTO for the holiday. So I think we’re closer to 200 [00:03:00] people than I realized. And that was kind of eye-opening ’cause I don’t know when that happened.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. That’s all I’ll say. So,

Attorney Hillary Walsh: wild deal.

Jonathan Hawkins: Lot to talk about. But before I, I want to just jump into this new LA office that, that’s new to me. I didn’t see that. So, talk about what led you to open an office there.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: A lot of data, so we want. Like our vision, my vision for this is to be able to help a million immigrants. And that’s a really aggressive goal, and I wanna do it in my lifetime. So this isn’t necessarily like, oh, the generations and generations of people to come. Like I really wanna be able to say, within my lifetime, we helped a million people get their papers. And it’s very specific to be able to help the undocumented community who’s here in the US right now. So that’s only a small fraction when we really get down to numbers of the undocumented community here.

So it was like, we wanna go where the people are. I feel like the Little Mermaid I wanna go where the people are and I wanted to also be a place [00:04:00] where I could get to easily, I love being able to be part of each area’s community. And LA is, it has the most undocumented people in a concentrated area than really anywhere else in the us, New York has a lot of folks who are undocumented in terms of population.

But LA was a clear easy choice for us because it’s only an hour flight away. Who doesn’t like LA and then also the community for immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, is so supportive in LA, I really wanna be part of that legacy.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so let, let’s talk about opening the logistics of opening an off another office not just another office, but another office in another

Attorney Hillary Walsh: in California, outta state

Jonathan Hawkins: In another state. Yes, you’re right in California, which all sorts of little things you gotta maneuver there. So, maybe we take a step back and let’s talk about opening your second office, which is fairly close, which probably was there a challenge there to all of a sudden have to [00:05:00] manage two offices.

And I imagine these are real offices that people are in every day, not these sort of office locations. Okay.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: No, we’re, we’re in here and it was funny, we had our first like event and it was not here in our second office and it wasn’t like a big event. I think we had like 15 people here. It was around Halloween and we did like a little client get together. We had a dj and it was, looking back, it was quite hokey, but you know, you, you build it, they will come and all the toilets got backed up and so there was backed up toilet water and.

We didn’t have enough paper. I mean, it was a mess. And it was, I thank God we only had 15 people. ’cause if we’d had a real event and had like 150 people, 200 people, that’s a lot more p that would’ve been coming back up. So, yeah, logistics of even just getting into our second building we’re challenging because. We, we were not over in this [00:06:00] neck of the woods every day like I am now. I drive over here every day, almost seven days a week. I rarely go to my downtown office anymore because I just have really rehomed over in Glendale. But initially we weren’t over here a whole lot, and thank goodness I had decided to be a, a good person because I allowed, there were a lot of homeless or people experiencing homelessness. Kind of squatting at our building and sometimes breaking in and sometimes pooping and peeing inside, and sometimes doing some of the drugs that you gotta leave behind needles for and that sort of thing. So my husband had cleaned a lot of that out. He’d sent over an employee to do it, and that guy quit.

Then we came over and went to do it ourselves and realized, oh, I see why he quit. No one wants to do this. So my husband kept the kids in the car and he went inside. He has a really bad gag reflex, so I’m just imagining, I, I thank God I wasn’t here for it. He’s like just making [00:07:00] it happen. So these are the things that when you’re like, oh yeah, we have 150 some employees, you’re still like literally shoveling.

You know what? Sometimes. So that was an issue that we couldn’t. Seemed to get to go away. We just kept getting graffitied and all this other stuff, and we weren’t in the building yet. So I told this, this gentleman who run a, who runs a nonprofit, that he could use my parking lot and my water to pull his pickup truck in, and it has a hookup so that folks experiencing homelessness can wash their clothes, take a shower, and get a haircut.

So I told him I’m not in there yet. Use my parking lot. There’s clearly a large demographic of folks who are. Homing that property up. So he did that and one day he was over here and he is like, Hillary, you have a huge flood going on inside your building and I’m talking knee, deep water that you could see from outside in the windows, like the Titanic scenes, you know, Rose and Jack are running through.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: apparently someone had come in and stolen some [00:08:00] copper off of the pipes. I guess that’s like a valuable thing. They came in and just let the water run. So anyway, any, any of these endeavors are an experience for sure. So I’m just thankful that that guy let us know because. If not, I really don’t know what would’ve happened.

The windows would’ve broken, the water would’ve spilled out. Like, oh my gosh. So that’s Glendale. And we had lots of trouble getting the fire department to sign off and let us in here. And I mean, any, city that you deal with you have to follow a lot of odd rules and they are gonna tell you one problem at a time, not all of them.

And then they’re gonna come back out and find new ones. So anyhow, it’s been a similar rinse and repeat in California, but less so with with folks breaking in and that sort of thing. So it’s just getting permits from the city and figuring out where to place the signage. And I walked, we bought the building in July, in LA, and I [00:09:00] did a walkthrough last week for the first time, and it was, I had seen the building from the outside and I said, this is the one. Let’s do it. And then I went back obviously last week and we’re in December and I was just high from walking through that building ’cause it is exactly what we need exactly in the right place.

Like the universe called to me and I answered and it’s gonna be so awesome. So, all of the crap that you go through, like it, it will subside and you’ll do it again and you’ll just build a higher tolerance. Your gag reflex gets stronger, I guess.

Jonathan Hawkins: So the first thing I’ll say that you, you mentioned is that the universe talked to you, so that’s good. It talks to me too, so that’s, that’s good to know. But so you bought the buildings July in LA and you’ve, you’re already open.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: We are open, but not in the normal sense. So we rented a Regis. We’ve been dealing with city permitting

Jonathan Hawkins: I was gonna say that’s lightning speed from July to now.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, [00:10:00] no, we have a whole renovation that we’re going to do and. I, I hadn’t done a walkthrough to see what it was really like on the inside. Previously, it had been a sneaker store.

The building that we’re in, in Glendale that I’m recording right now. It used to be a pawn shop, and so it was just a big open area that had a front, and then they had had a whole bunch of shelves that we got rid of, and then it was just a big open building and we had to put walls up and everything else.

Well, it’s a tennis shoe store that they outgrew the tennis shoe store and moved down the road, and now it’s just a big open vacant. Broom, essentially, it reminds me almost like of a gymnasium, an indoor gymnasium. It’s that big and hollow and everything else. So like all the dreams can come true in a space like that. We had initially planned to do a full renovation, put up walls, redo the floors, everything else. And I was like, why? If our goal is to help a million people, yes, I wanna give them a high-end experience so that they’re in a beautiful space. I, I wanna work in, in an [00:11:00] invite my clients to a beautiful environment.

But like they don’t care. They need help right now. And so we’re just gonna set up tables and chairs. I had to, you know, we gotta do some stuff. It smelled really bad, like must and like to the point where I got a headache from being in there for like 10 minutes. So we have to suck all the air out and give it new air, which I guess is a thing you can do. But other than that, we’re gonna be open for business and we’re closing down that Regis, December 31st is when our lease expires in January 2nd. We’re open for business in this, this other spot. The toilets work, the water runs we’re going in.

Jonathan Hawkins: good. So I want to, I want to talk a little bit about the strategy and, and the decision making. So obviously you, you found, okay, I want to go where, where the clients are, so that’s, that’s huge.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, you’re gonna have to sing it. I wanna be where the clients are.

Jonathan Hawkins: Why you don’t want me singing, that’s for sure. So, so you know, take me through sort of the process of, you know, as you’re thinking about [00:12:00] expanding, where are we gonna go?

What, what did you look at? Did you just always know it was gonna be LA And then timing wise, when you’re like, Hey, we’re gonna, we gonna want it to be this date, so then we have to buy a building by this time. And then, you know, so take me through sort of the process of, from thought to where you are now.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Sure we worked, we knew that that’s what we wanted to do, but I was very afraid that it was the wrong decision ’cause I’ve never done any of this before and I didn’t know if the next best thing would be to go to Vegas. That’s where I went to law school. I feel very still feel very connected to that community and all my buddies are still mostly practicing there, so it would be an easy step in for to, for re referral marketing. But it’s not a big it wasn’t a big splash. Like Vegas is a smaller market than Phoenix. Anyway, we ended up hiring a coaching company. I would not hire them again in, in retrospect.

But we, we spent a lot of money working with them on creating a 10 year plan [00:13:00] and oh it was good to do the exercise and I still got a lot of value out of it. I just don’t know that I got enough value out of it to justify the price tag. Nevertheless, working through that, it was so clear that this is where we need to go.

In hindsight, what I recommend people do if they’re wanting to expand this is stuff that Louis Scott teaches an eight figure firm. So it’s not my, my original thought process, but it really is like when you reach a certain threshold on how much it costs to get a client. Then, you know, you need to expand to a new market if, because you may be maxing out on the number of clients that you can reach in that specific area.

So that’s his analysis. And I just knew I wanted to be aggressive and these are my, these are my young years and I wanted to get going while I have the energy for it and all of that. So I used heat maps when we looked at LA though, those billboard companies have an incredible amount of data, and so you can just email any billboard company in any city you’re [00:14:00] thinking about expanding to.

I’m fortunate because immigration law, I can go any state I want to in practice, but if you’re thinking about expanding to other cities, they can tell you how many people drive by. Almost every bill, I mean literally every billboard that they have, and they can tell you. Essentially who, if, if it’s a, a Latino person or if it’s everybody, and I’m sure there are other ways they can break the data down, but that is the best way to make decisions if you’re wanting to know who is where and where you wanna position yourself.

So that’s why we chose the place in LA that we chose. In terms of general zip codes and things like that, it was heat maps from billboard companies initially, and then also from independent research from this coaching company.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that’s really cool and exciting and congrats, and hopefully that office just starts humming immediately. So.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, I went out last week for my first day of consultations and had both people hire, so like they, both [00:15:00] of them said they talked to over 20 attorneys over the course of their 30 plus years, and these were separate, totally separate conversations. One woman was from the Philippines, one man was from Mexico, so totally separate but very parallel lives that they were living. Talked to over 30 lawyers and everyone had told ’em they couldn’t do it, and I was just like, how many times do I have to hear this conversation? And like, that breaks my heart. So that’s why marketing is so important to me.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. So we’re gonna go way back. We’re gonna, we’re going origin story time now. So let’s,

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Oh, okay.

Jonathan Hawkins: so we, we we’re sort of present day. Let’s go back. So, I guess the first thing is, you know, why law? Why, why did you choose law versus something else?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I really think the law chose me. I was so drawn to the law as a kid, even reading John Grisham books, just burning through those and it was so fascinating. I was never interested in medicine and that sort of thing, like. Some children might be like they aspire to be a doctor or a lawyer. I never really wanted to be a doctor, but where this really came into play [00:16:00] was.

I had toyed with the idea of law school, like you get a political science degree, which is what I accidentally got. I wanted to be a country music superstar and that was my plan or a jazz singer in New Orleans, and I was just gonna love life living in a nightclub, but I ended up marrying. My, still my husband.

But 20 something years ago we met when I was 19 and he was leaving Kansas and I also wanted to leave Kansas and he was gainfully employed and I was like, we should get married. And we did. And it’s been awesome. But during that time. I went to lots of different colleges trying to get some type of degree, and at first it was like a performance degree.

And then the next school it made more sense to do music education because each school has its own little requirements. And then by the end, I had been in school for five years in undergrad for five years, and I had been in school in high school and I had done college [00:17:00] classes, like night classes for so long, and I had really nothing but student debt to show for it.

So. I went into the college like recruiter office on base in Northern Japan and said, what is the degree from any university that you can find in? What’s the least amount of credits I need to do? And this was in 2005, 2006. So online schools were not super common like they are today. Troy University outta Troy, Alabama was so progressive and they had a whole bunch of online schools, A political science degree from Troy University is what I ended up getting because it was the least amount of credits and they obviously offered online.

And while I was doing that degree, I I, you know, you take these law classes, but I spent some time in Uganda because my husband was deployed. I had an aunt who had previously been a missionary in Uganda. I wanted to go do [00:18:00] volunteer work and kind of do that and scratch the itch of my soul’s yearnings in that way.

And you get there and you see human rights on a whole other level. That’s where I was like, I’m gonna be a lawyer. I’m gonna be a lawyer. And I had thought about the LSAT and like mostly like from an ego place was telling people like, oh, I’m studying for the LSAT, carrying around the big Kaplan book, thinking I was cool.

And I got serious about it while I was there. And I was like, no, I really wanna do this. So that was kind of like the, the beginning.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so you go to law school and you get out and you start out as a commercial litigator, which probably did not scratch this itch that you just described. So tell me about that. You started out at commercial litigator. That didn’t last all that long, I don’t think. And eventually you left to maybe start this path.

So maybe take me through that.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, my, I was graduating law school in Las Vegas in 2012, [00:19:00] so the housing crisis of 2008 had ripple effects and a lot of people were graduating law school and there were no jobs to be had because three years later, especially in Vegas. This was a really tough market. I had a, I don’t know if she was in my year group, and some of it might be legend at this point, but we’re gonna say that it’s true.

But I believe that I had a classmate graduate pass the bar, and she was a barista at Starbucks for a while before starting her own firm. So this may just be legend, but we’re gonna go with it. It was like that I had applied at the legal aid center to see if they would allow me to work for them. That had not worked out.

And I didn’t really know where else I wanted to work. I had not, I had not really thought about being an immigration lawyer. I had my eye on someday I wanna be a law professor, so I need to clerk. am I gonna get a clerkship? And I hod myself out trying to get a job so bad for any [00:20:00] judge, you know, like it was all above, above the table hoeing out.

I tried so hard. I interviewed with every judge I had. I had, every judge was so nice and they wanted to hire me, but I wasn’t particularly a great student. I didn’t have the polish of some of my peers. ‘Cause I just couldn’t fake it. I don’t have the, I’m not, I’m not that person. And I hadn’t done law review, so I just couldn’t get a job for any of these federal judges that I really wanted to work for.

And by chance I did on-campus interviews with this. With this commercial litigation firm and hit it off like peas and carrots with the guy I was interviewing with. I had a great time interviewing with all the associates they had me interview with and little did I know it was like at a legend for a legendary lawyer in Nevada, like he’s the bee’s knees.

His wife is now a Supreme Court justice in Nevada like. I really hit it off. They later told me that they didn’t realize I wasn’t on law review. [00:21:00] ’cause one of their non-negotiables is everybody has to have done law review. ’cause they were giving me all these edits on my citations. I was like, ah, you know, whatever.

And they’re like, how did you get through law review and you don’t know how to do this? I was like, I didn’t do law review. So anyway, I did that for about 14 months and had my writing completely. Brutally crucified regularly because it was a firm that is really, really well known for excellence, and that set me up so much for success for later on.

It was, and I, I left only because we got stationed in Korea in 2013, 2014, before remote work was a common thing. So, I’m thankful that I left because I was making great money and doing, you know, work. But I finally got to be the immigration lawyer I wanted to be when my job was taken away from me and I was working in living in Korea,

Jonathan Hawkins: So you started your firm from Korea.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I did.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh, [00:22:00] that’s cool. So how did, how did you do it and did you do, did you immediately pivot to immigration or did it take some time to sort of found that practice area?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: No, I knew I wanted to do immigration and they, the firm I was at, they had had to create a company policy on pro bono work. Being applied to your annual billable hour requirement because I had been doing so much pro bono work for immigrants immigrants who were victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking and all sorts of stuff that was going on in Vegas.

So they were like, look, we’re happy for you to do this, but you also have to, to bill and pay for your salary. So I was obviously very called to immigration law, and then when I. When we knew we were moving to Korea, I reached out to several major immigrant nonprofits and said, I will work for you for free.

I will need mentoring. I will work for you for free. You will never regret this. I’m an excellent writer, but I [00:23:00] wanna sign the briefs. I do not wanna be a ghost. I want this to have my name on it because I’m very proud of the work that I do. And everybody told me no, but one nonprofit and that nonprofit was the Florence Project here in Arizona. And they gave me, I worked for them pro bono, you know, taking cases pro bono for about five years. And they taught, they mentored. It was amazing. And I got to sign my name on those briefs and some of those clients, sadly.

Jonathan Hawkins: go ahead.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Sadly are still, are still my client because the immigration process goes on

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh my gosh. But so you were working for this nonprofit, but you were in Korea doing this, or this is

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah. I was just taking cases like they would refer cases over to me as pro bono counsel. Like I, I wasn’t on their payroll or anything like that but they would just refer me cases and that’s how I learned immigration law was taking appeals. And I would figure out and research and I, it was a wonderful way to learn immigration law and have a really big [00:24:00] impact.

’cause I was knocking ’em outta the park. It was so fun.

Jonathan Hawkins: But this was really before, I mean, remote work, right? I mean, how did, how did you make that work?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: It really was.

Jonathan Hawkins: How did you figure that out?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I figured out that I could have FedEx print and ship my briefs to the Board of Immigration Appeals. So. Because this was, I mean, like you’re describing 2014, we were not doing the things that we are today. And I remember like it took so long for a document to upload on the FedEx website for you to print it, and you wanted to be stapled in this certain place and whole punched in this certain place.

And then you just kind of had to hope that it all worked out, especially by your deadline. And I would call in the talk to people and get up in the night because it was. East coast, and so we’re very different time zones. Get up in the night and call the FedEx people, explain to them where I needed everything, and then they would FedEx it for me.

They would then put it in the envelope and FedEx it over to the [00:25:00] courthouse. So, it was, it was a huge learning experience for sure.

Real quick, if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, please check out my book, the Law Firm Lifecycle. It’s written for law firm owners and those who plan to be owners. In the book, I discuss various issues that come up as a law firm progresses through the stages of its growth from just before starting a firm to when it comes to an end.

The law firm lifecycle is available on Amazon. Now, back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So the early days, well, let’s back up. So you started your firm with no clients and you’re like, all right, I want to do stuff. So you reached out to all these nonprofits and only one said, all right, let’s do it. And so that’s, I guess that’s how you got your first clients, was through this.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, that’s how I got my first clients.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, let’s take, how did you grow from there?

How did you start to get your own clients, especially if you are in Korea, I guess at some point, obviously you came back, but take me through that.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: the plan while I was overseas was [00:26:00] never to have a law firm. It was always, I am going to be a law professor someday, and so all the work that I was doing was to. I wanted to be an immigration law professor and teach a clinic. That was like the goal. ’cause you can do real world stuff, but you’re teaching young people.

I was deeply influenced in law school by my cl my, my clinic professor. Like she is, I still, I regularly text her and ask for help on stuff because she’s still like the smartest person I’ve ever met. So that was my goal. I was like, I wanna be you when I grow up. I was writing law review here. I was like making fun of law review in law school.

And now I was writing doc, like writing law review publications and getting them in law review journals because the professor track, they wanna see that you are a published academic. So I would go to the base library and write. Mind you, I had three kids under two at this time. So it was, I’m like pumping out babies.

I was breastfeeding all [00:27:00] this crazy stuff. And then when my husband would come home from work and we’re living in South Korea, the whole reason we’re in South Korea is because we need to be defensively and offensively placed in case North Korea does squirrely shit. So there is all of that stuff going on regularly and I look back and don’t really know how it all worked out, but the plan was never to open a law firm. It, so the plan was never to get clients or to make money. Like definitely had a lot of, I won’t call them arguments, but I would call it stress around money because. Paying for FedEx to FedEx, something when you’re living on one income and also having to pay for the babysitter so that you can go to the library to write something that you’re like, you’re literally just doing this.

It’s like a hobby. it caused financial stress on us, but it was like there was no stopping it. So anyway I didn’t really think about getting clients and opening a firm until I moved back [00:28:00] stateside and we didn’t have money for good childcare. And I can tell a very, very, very sad story that I, but the gist of it is I, one day after being pro bono attorney, Hillary in Eloy Detention Center here in Arizona, after we finally got stationed back in Arizona, I had been in court all day and I had my fourth kid by then.

And so I had all four kids in daycare. Daycare in America is very expensive, and one of them was an infant that was about a year old. Maybe he was 10 months old. Anyway, he was rolling around on the floor screaming when I went into the daycare and it was like a VCT tile lunchroom floor, and he was covered when I picked him up.

He was rubbing his eyes covered in this bleach water. They had mopped the floor and then laid my kid back in it and he got bleach water in his eyes. And the reason I had to pick this crappy daycare where they would do something like [00:29:00] that was because I had chosen to be a hero and do all this work for free. And the real person who was paying for the cost of the service I was providing was my children because they were in a crappy daycare. And that night I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. I still do a ton of pro bono work, but that was after I had a business and that changed everything for me that that experience with my kid.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I, I came across an interview you gave, talking about, I think it was your early days sort of asking for money from the clients, and you had to create this alter ego because you maybe, maybe tell us that story that really hit hard and maybe

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: maybe it would resonate with some folks out there.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, I didn’t feel comfortable being the lawyer who answered the phone and asking for them to pay to book a consultation with me. ’cause clearly they could just pick up call and I would pick up the phone. Why [00:30:00] do I need to pay to talk to you? And so I would pretend to be someone named Sarah. And my aunt is named Sarah, one of my buddies from law school.

She’s named Sarah. One of my really, really good friends who passed away from breast cancer, her name’s Sarah. So I ended up just being Sarah and I would have a different voice. I would like have the receptionist voice kind of, you know, cracking gum sound. And then I would collect payment and then I would transfer them to attorney Hillary and I, it was my own cell phone.

Like I would just put them on hold by pushing mute and waiting a few seconds and then transferring, and then I would have to like change my voice. I haven’t thought about that in a long time, but I mean, I was, that phone was my hotspot. Thank you, Jesus, for T-Mobile because it was my hotspot for my internet research before I could have internet in my, in an office.

It was my main line phone number. it was everything. It was, it’s really the only thing you need to start a law firm is a, is a cell phone, and [00:31:00] you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t be a dentist and say that. So we’re really fortunate that there’s such little overhead.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you’ve come a really, really long way from those early days. We talked about it at the beginning. How did you get there? Take, take me sort of through the progression, you know, early days you were doing lots of pro bono work, you weren’t getting paid what you should stressing all these sorts of things. How do you get past that and begin to grow the firm?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I really had a great experience working with how to manage a small law firm. I’m not connected to the organization at all anymore and haven’t been for many years, but I called the way. I mean, you look back on in your life and you can connect the dots. There’s a really cool Steve Jobs speech that he talks about, like connecting the dots in, in reverse.

And it’s so true when you look back and you’re like, that, that was so perfect. Of course, that that’s how that happened. It’s really hard to think about that when you’re in the thick of things. But when we moved back from we were living in Korea, like I [00:32:00] mentioned, and we lived in England for a year, then we moved back stateside. And we, we lobbied hard for Arizona ’cause I wanted to work at this nonprofit. I was still not planning to have a law firm. Well, I was doing a case for a guy who I needed to get an attorney to Pro Hawk Viche me in, in Alabama, another Alabama connection because that’s where he was detained. I didn’t know anybody in Alabama.

And this was in 26, 20 18, 20 17. 2018. This was before there were a lot of, or at least I knew of Facebook groups ’cause I was not active on Facebook at the time. So I went on a listserv that I was on for a pro bono case that I was doing and just did a control find for AL for the Alabama like the abbreviation for the state. Found one lady in this whole thing and I called that firm, ended up being a woman named Zara Solano. Her law firm in Alabama, I talked to her associate who was listed on this. Her signature block [00:33:00] had al in it. She said, absolutely, I will for sure, pro hoc you in, but you’re gonna need to talk to Zara for her to talk to you about what all this will entail. I was like, wow, this is like such a serious deal. And I got on a call with Zara and I was so nervous. I don’t know why, but this the whole, like, you had to schedule a call and then you had to explain. And she had all these very thoughtful questions about like, well, how long is this anticipated to take?

Anyway, I explained everything to her and she ends up just saying, dude, you just need to start your own firm. Why are you doing all this work pro bono? You should come to how to manage a small law firm and it’s gonna change your life. And did. And it did. Coaching helped me a lot.

Jonathan Hawkins: I’ve

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Helps me a lot.

Jonathan Hawkins: you know, I, I talk to a lot of lawyers, a lot of successful lawyers, and all of them have coaches, or I’ve had coaches. I mean, they, they never stop coaches, consultants, groups, all the things. And, [00:34:00] you know, different people at different times. ’cause you, you outgrow and you need bigger things at some point.

But, but very common story. So puts you, that puts you on the path. You start growing, you’re now three offices, 200 employees. You’re, you’re rocking and rolling. So how has your role in the firm changed over the years? You mentioned the LA office and doing the consults. Is that just because you’re getting the office off the ground?

You know, what, what’s your day to day like nowadays?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: My day to day is really hectic right now, and I’m working more now than I think I did even when I first started, which is not ideal, but it is the truth ’cause I could tell you like a whole story that maybe would make me seem cooler than I am, but is not cool. I’m onboarding a new sales director. We had a marketing and sales director combo role.

It was not a good dis, it was a year of someone in that position and it was an unsuccessful placement and I did not know that for quite a while. So I just got a really he’s maybe a month on the job sales [00:35:00] director. I am the marketing director in the market, the CMO also right now, and also marketing assistant.

And I’m also the talent and a lot of copywriting thanks to ChatGPT. So doing a lot in, in marketing right now that we have, we spend a lot of money on marketing, so it’s a really you gotta be very thoughtful with how, what you’re putting out there so that you can promote it correctly. I don’t do a lot of legal work anymore.

I am, I still have enough cases and I take really unique, hard, difficult things, but the normal day-to-day cases, I am not I’m not the lawyer working on those. I’ve been able to hire some incredible, I’m so thankful that they’re sticking with me through all the changes that the firm has gone through, attorneys.

But I don’t do a, a lot of that type of legal work right now. So

Jonathan Hawkins: And how was

Attorney Hillary Walsh: hopefully that, hopefully that helps.

Jonathan Hawkins: was that for you? I know some lawyers have trouble giving up the lawyer identity and doing the legal work while others. [00:36:00] Really don’t have that much trouble at all. How was it for you?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: It was not hard. I, once we started doing things that were scalable rather than complex, and every single case was different. Like if you do. I, I would do 2, 3, 4, sometimes five bond hearings in a day. When I was just a solo, I was a beast and it was so stress. It wasn’t even stressful. It was exhausting, but it was a performance.

There’s still this like performer inside me that I, I really go into this performer of, I’m, I’m not any different than I’m with you right now, but in my mind it just switches to this other. I guess it’s like my mamba mode or whatever, but I love those experiences, but I have a lot of stage fright and so leading up to it, I have a lot of stress and anxiety, and that’s not scalable.

So it was like, how can I not be the one who does all this? And that was to do different [00:37:00] types of work. That work is very replicable. And for me, anything that’s really replicable is super boring for me because I mean, it just is. So, handing that over to people who I knew would be so thorough would look at every single fact and fine tooth comb everything because they are passionate about that. Perfect. They are the right person for that job because I don’t wanna be sloppy because I’ve gotten bored or because this is like the 15th, one of these I’ve seen today and start to miss things. So I just don’t get excited by replicable tasks.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I believe it. So you mentioned marketing and obviously you have a big firm, you gotta do a lot of marketing. So let’s talk about what, what’s, what are some of the things you guys do for that? And particularly now that you’re launching a new office, I’m sure you’re really focused on it, at least for that office.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: My view on marketing is. You just wanna stop the scroll. [00:38:00] So, but I’m not gonna do that and be but like, not be a weirdo, you know, you can do a lot of things that I, I’m not gonna fear monger either. So. I started a TikTok account in January. I’d had it and I was posting other stuff. I, at one point, thought that I wanted to do law firm coaching, and I dabbled in that enough to be like, no, this is not for me. So my Tik TikTok initially was just like videos talking about growing a firm, which was very inauthentic to me. I don’t wanna be a boss bitch. I don’t wanna do any of that stuff. That’s not who I am. I started in January when we got a new administration, and that was an outlet for me to be able to say what I wanted to say, and it connected with people, but initially it was a lot of scary stuff.

And so I was constantly like Aaron Parnas style, like breaking news, breaking news, and it was all really negative. And when you give negative to the internet, you will get negative in return. And it was awful the amount of people I had to [00:39:00] block. And my husband was like, Hey, you are baiting these people by engaging with them, you get what you give on social media.

He has a huge social media following. I was like, all right, I’m gonna mix it up because it’s not even who I am. I don’t wanna be combative. I wanna be a source of joy. And so for me, how can I stop the scroll in my marketing by being different? And there’s a lot of negativity out there. I can be a source of joy and, and positivity.

So I talk about good news. All the time, and I’m not sticking my head in the sand about stuff. It’s not a lot of good news in the immigrant community right now. Every day is something worse than the day before sometimes. But my clients are still getting approvals and so we’re still, we’re still here meeting our mission and we’re not gonna give up on that right now.

So from a marketing perspective, that’s what is really fun for me.

Jonathan Hawkins: And how are you the firm navigating? All the stuff that’s going on. I imagine that clients maybe are scared to reach [00:40:00] out, they’re scared to put their stick their neck out, you know, and then who knows things are slowing down. How, how are you as a firm dealing with this? Is it affecting, I mean, how’s it affecting you?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: The the amount of fear that people are experiencing right now. It’s so sad to be a, you know, it’s, it doesn’t impact me directly. I don’t have anyone in my immediate family who’s undocumented, but it impacts every single person in my space. I have a connection to so many, even, in my day to day.

It’s not just, just ’cause it’s not your, your blood doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact you, right? So you have that and you wanna be a source of hope for people and actually be able to solve problems for people. That then you begin to question and lose confidence because you’re not sure you really can help people.

And at first it was difficult to navigate that conversation. Because it used to be, I know if I do this, this, and this, like making chocolate chip [00:41:00] cookies, if I follow this recipe and I put ’em in the oven for three 50 for a couple of minutes, it’s gonna come out gooey and it’s gonna be delicious. I knew how to make a a, a tea visa or vow or whatever kind of case was.

I knew how to follow the recipe because we had nailed it. Nowadays, everything feels different. It’s like the oven’s broken and you’re hoping for the best. Your ingredients are the same, the temperatures are the same, but how can you tell someone I know with, with a significant amount of confidence I can get you this result?

And it just comes down to transparency with people. It really does. So, and and continuing to show up for them.

Jonathan Hawkins: In my experience.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: And now I want chocolate chip cookies.

Jonathan Hawkins: I know, seriously. I’m gonna pivot here. We’re gonna pivot away from food. I’ve been eating too many of the holiday season. Just every day there’s a new batch coming in. So another thing I want to talk about is just sort of mindset and growing a firm. It has been my experience. Others I’ve talked to, you have to grow as a person. If you can’t [00:42:00] grow, then your firm’s not gonna grow.

What’s been your experience and how have you forced or created the personal growth that has allowed the business and other growth that you’ve experienced?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah, you gotta face a lot of your internal demons depending on, you know, how much you wanna grow your firm cause you really are the ceiling of everything in your life. John Maxwell talks about the law, the lid, and that your belief in yourself and your worthiness of success, whatever success looks like to you.

All of those things are oftentimes the lid in your law firm. ’cause your law firm is just an extension of your beliefs about yourself and what you can achieve. So, I worked with David Nagle I’ve worked a lot with Steph Tess. Those are two people who I think really have helped me work on mindset stay really solid there.

And then we even, I, it’s funny you talk to your bank. I had you know, this year’s been a volatile year for. [00:43:00] The stock market and investments and what’s going on, you know, with tariffs and everything else, how’s that gonna impact our retirement and that sort of thing. Like the stuff that we’ve been nesting away. Talked to our bank at where? We’re at the private bank at JP Morgan and one of my friends is the vice president. I told her like, how are all of your we’re in that bank? Because she’s my friend. And she was like, someday you’ll be rich enough to be in here. Let’s get you in before you’re you here there.

And I’m like, thank you so much. I will gladly take your, your somebody. But they have so many cool programs, including, ’cause I was like, how are all your rich people who. Deal with this stuff. How do they keep a, a healthy mindset around money? She’s like, let me connect you with our mindset coach at JP Morgan.

And I got, me and my husband got on a call with them, and so there are these, and he’s a psychologist helps people. His, he said his role was to help people ask better questions. He doesn’t give advice. He helps people ask better questions and it was so [00:44:00] helpful. So there are those types of resources you just kind of gotta ask for help.

They have been very, very helpful to me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow, that’s cool that that.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I also don’t take, I really, really don’t read through a lot of the Facebook groups and when people are talking about they’re having a slow month or whatever, like. It is helpful if you, something is amiss, like Facebook marketing costs are going up, but I get that information from Luis Scott, not from one individual lawyer who is experiencing this, because that could be a vacuum and I’m not gonna buy into that.

But when Luis is coaching, I don’t know, 30, 40 immigration firms consulting with them, he’s gonna know what the cost of acquisition that’s normal for an immigration lawyer is. And so those are also helpful data points.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so you’ve got four kids, you’ve got three offices. You are just busy as hell doing

Attorney Hillary Walsh: And a partridge and a pear tree.

Jonathan Hawkins: How do you manage your day? What kind of routines do you have to, to get you [00:45:00] through and, and get these and, and manage the chaos that is this life?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Nothing magical. I wish that there was something cool. I was at an a figure firm event. Actually, I feel like I’m like plugging them. I do not work for them or anything like that, but I was at one of their events in Hal l and Nro lro, I’m, I’m not sure his last name, but he wrote The Miracle Morning.

And you know, I have never been able to stick to a routine like that, like. Staying writing, journaling and saying affirmations and all this other stuff. I get up, I put on these like eye bag things to try to fix my eye bags and have a cup of coffee and look at my phone on the couch, and that’s like my first 30 minutes of waking up.

So absolutely what every expert says not to do, and I don’t get up at 5:00 AM. But we homeschool our kids. We online school them. And so I get to see my kids every morning. I don’t have meetings before 9:00 AM a lot of times, most of those meetings will start at 10:00 AM ’cause I just don’t wanna be rushed in the morning and I’m gonna be late if you do it before nine [00:46:00] anyway. And I might work until eight o’clock in the evening, but I’ll at least know that I got to see my kids when I was, I, I get to cuddle them when they wake up in the morning on the couch and kind of have a slow start to the day, but. I play tennis. We just started this I play tennis a couple of nights a week at our country club, like in a little clinic with people who are probably all 60 years and older.

So I’m like the young kid in the group. That’s my exercise for the week and it has been so much fun. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of, a lot of work. We have a, a chef who changed our life. She cooks for us, and she’s been with us for almost four years. I could not function without her. So ton. A ton. A ton of support.

Jonathan Hawkins: Let’s talk about the chef. Let’s talk about that.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah. Everyone always is fascinated

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ve heard others talk about this, and they’re like, it is a game changer. And there’s d and I’ve heard different versions of how it can work. So let’s, let’s hear your version and, and how did you find them and how does it work?[00:47:00]

Because this really is on my list and it fascinates me. But, but, but yeah. Tell me.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: chef Kat is legendary. She’s like a, she’s like a, if you watch a, a show. She’s one of the main characters in my life, and she’s like, if you know me, she’s a main character in my life. She’s part of my show, you know? And. She is, she used to be the head chef at the Four Seasons, and then she had kids and wanted to be, you know, you work at the Four Seasons, you’re working every holiday and everything else, and her husband still works at the Four Seasons.

He’s head of hospitality there. And so he is always, every holiday, mother’s Day, father’s Day, et cetera. He’s, he’s got big events he’s running, so she wanted to take a step back from that and took private clients. She’s worked for billionaires who’ve flown her around and they had their own. Like on the Four Seasons property where all of the, the support staff would stay next door to, so she’s, she, she tells [00:48:00] these really fascinating stories, but she has no judgment of me. She doesn’t need me to be fancy. She doesn’t need me to be anything other than me. And that is, I think, the most key. You can really be yourself around her or whoever is going to be in your home. ’cause they’re gonna see you depending on how many days a week they’re working in your home.

They’re gonna see you a lot and you cannot have home staff that you have to be on for. Because then you’re just performing all the time. Like when I come in the firm, I’m not gonna have a crappy attitude. I’m gonna do my very best not to have a crappy attitude, but when I go home and I need, I’ve had a bad day, I need to be able to be, just be me.

I cannot keep performing and pretending to be someone else. And I think her being able to really nurture us from a food perspective is like, it is, it is a, a love language for me. Feed me good food, make me feel good. I feel healthy because of the food that I eat, but I also like have to tell her not to gimme huge portions ’cause I’ll just eat and eat and eat it.

So that has [00:49:00] been incredible. But we found her through a placement agency, so like just a, it was like a domestic worker placement agency outta Scottsdale is where we found her. She was our first interview. And when they do an interview, they do a working interview and they cook for you and like you have the experience.

And I was like, you’re telling me that I could live like this? It was the coolest. And I quit. My husband and I quit drinking right when she was starting and a few months later she also quit drinking alcohol. And so our sobriety journeys run parallel to each other, and I think we’re a little bonded over that too.

Jonathan Hawkins: So how does it work? Does she come in and cook for a for a few days or prep for a few days, or is she there every day? How does it work?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: It depends on what you want. So we like we like just having the house to ourselves a couple of evenings a week. Because she does like what she calls dinner service or, and that’s where she’s like. Plating your meal and bringing it to you and cooks and cleans and cleans up and everything. Mops the floor before [00:50:00] she leaves, takes out all the trash like it is, as if she was never there. We do that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays while she’s there on Monday and Wednesday, she cooks a meal for the next day and it’s a heat, heat it back up meal or it’s like grill’s chicken breast and has it all cut up and you just gotta reheat it in the oven and a really yummy salad.

And you’re, she makes a beautiful dressing, like all your, like we had a Asian chicken salad the other day and she even made the little crunchy. Things on top from scratch and had them there for us, and it was just called Crunchies. I was like, I cannot believe how thoughtful she is. She brings fresh flowers for me once a week and puts ’em on a little vase on our kitchen table.

Like she’s just, she is just incredible. Many people have tried to woo her, and she, she, fortunately, feels the same way about us, but. the nights that she’s not there we reheat the meal or warm up the meal that she’s prepped for us. And then on Friday nights, we always do [00:51:00] pizza. So we order pizza from our pizza place on Fridays.

Jonathan Hawkins: Incredible. That’s awesome. So, all right, I wanna wrap this thing up here. Let’s bring us home, but. You’ve been through a lot, you’ve done a lot. You’ve grown, grown it from, I guess, non-profit origins to a big powerhouse firm.

For others out there that are building their firms, any pieces of advice that you’d give them? Anything that they maybe you think they should do or maybe some things maybe they shouldn’t do?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I think that destination thinking is the, your expectations can really ruin your happiness. And I still have a conversation with myself about this regularly. So I’m, taking my own medicine, but I thought that by the time that my firm hit a certain revenue level, I wouldn’t have to worry about payroll.

And I don’t really worry about payroll in the sense that. Oh, I wonder if I’m gonna literally have enough money in the bank because now you have things like a line of credit and you have clients who run a normal payment plan. And as [00:52:00] long as all of ’em are paying their payment plan, you have more than enough to cover your bills.

Those are great things that come with time and sticking in the business for a while if you do a payment plan structure like I did. But what happens is then your firm grows and you wanna scale, which means do the same thing more, but without bringing expenses up to match the more that you are doing. And that has not been something that I have been able to nail.

My expenses have continued to go up. My profitability has not necessarily gone up. So don’t think that you’re just, that everything is gonna be easier when you hit a certain number because then when you get there, you’re just gonna be disappointed rather than like, dude, I’m here. We did it, and now we go back to working again tomorrow, and we do it all over again.

You know? But it’s your problems become easier to solve because you have more access to resources, but you’re still trying to solve problems and still trying to piece it all together. So I think that destination thinking when I get there, when I get to blank, I’ll go do, this [00:53:00] is really just a, it’s a toxic way to treat your journey.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great advice. It’s really hard. Those goalposts always move. They always move. It’s, it’s hard. It’s hard

Attorney Hillary Walsh: really does.

Jonathan Hawkins: just soak it in and say, wow, five years ago I couldn’t believe that I would be here. It’s, it, it, I feel it. I feel it, for sure. That’s great advice.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah. You look at like Tom Brady, man, I bet it was so depressing when he got done and he is like, I’m not gonna win any more Super Bowl rings. Like, that’s it. What do I do with my life now? And some of that is like having so many goals in front of you that then you, I mean, I don’t know Tom Brady, but like I’m just imagining, I don’t know what did, what did Michael Jordan do that’s fulfilling to him?

He, when the bulls just fell apart, what happened next for him? He probably had to spend a lot of time. That’s probably why he cries so much. He, you know, now he has the time to process everything that went down in those years of his life, including losing his dad. But anyway it is fun to be where you’re at right now.

There’s some, some [00:54:00] really fun stuff to it. Even if you’re frustrated, even if you know it’s not quite what you wanted it to be, it’s not quite what you wanted it to be ’cause you had expectations. Rather than like, I’m gonna do my best, and the outcome is unknown. Let’s see what happens. It’s hard to do.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so true. That’s really, really good insightful advice there. Hillary, this has been fun. I appreciate you coming on. I wanna be respectful of your time. I know you got some, some things you gotta do, but for people out there that wanna find you, what’s the best way to find you?

Attorney Hillary Walsh: I’m on social media. I’m on TikTok at attorney Hillary. That’s probably the easiest way to, to find and follow along and learn about immigration law.

Jonathan Hawkins: Next time we, next time you come on, we’ll talk about TikTok. ’cause I know nothing, nothing about it. So.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Yeah. It is so much fun.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Well, cool. Well, Hillary, again, thank you. It’s been real fun

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Goodluck in LA. I know you’ll do well.

Attorney Hillary Walsh: Thank you. Yeah. We’ll keep you posted.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode [00:55:00] 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.