Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: [00:00:00] I remember sitting in my office and like looking at the ceiling and being like, is this it, this is what I wanted and just not thinking there was another way then what I realized along the way though, is alignment with our clients. Alignment internally is huge to success and running in the right direction and moving everything forward.

 

I practiced my whole time in big law. I think it was. A total of 11 plus almost 12 years with the same kind of group of people servicing many similar clients. They feel really blessed. We have a wonderful team and they want to be here and view this as something like that they were looking for. 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: So how do you deal with those thoughts that creep in?

 

What the hell? How am I going to do this?

 

[00:01:00] 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to founding partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. Excited to have today’s guest with me. We’ve got my friend, Laurice Rutledge Lambert with us. She is a, I’ll let her describe it better when it’s her turn, but I call her a healthcare here in Atlanta. She is a founder and CEO or I’m not sure, founder or founding partner of her new firm, pretty new firm.

 

And I’ll let her introduce herself, tell us about her firm, the name and all that.

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. It’s great to be here. Appreciate you inviting me on. So yeah, Laurice Rutledge Lambert here in Atlanta. Been down here, gosh almost 20 years now. And most of my, my entire legal career has been here. Recently just started a law firm called Aligned Health Law. We are a value space mission driven business.

 

We were a healthcare regulatory merger and acquisition transactional council. [00:02:00] Our clients are, you know, national. We practice all over the country. We have a team of 15 as of today between staff and attorneys. We’re barred in about six States and our clients range from entrepreneurs, individuals, series C backed companies all the way up to, you know, fortune five publicly traded companies as well as nonprofit healthcare. I’m honored to be here and look forward to sharing a little bit more about what we’re building.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: So yeah, we’re going to dig into all that. But first the name, I love the name. It’s a great name. 

 

I love a trade name. So people who listen to me and who’ve talked to me now, I love those things. So tell me, how did you come up with the name?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: You know, that’s a good question. Guess going back a little bit. My trajectory is we’ll get into that. I think, but ultimately found myself deciding to be an entrepreneur a little over 2 years ago, 2 and a half years ago or so. I would say that five years ago, Larisse would never have thought about starting a business level and running a law firm.

 

I would have been like, that’s a crazy thing to do. And then about two years ago, I decided to build what I needed when I was [00:03:00] a general counsel for a brief period of time for a company technology company and did a first iteration of this business with you know, some other folks here in town and, you know, parted ways as of the new year, just decided it was better to go, go different ways.

 

And what I realized along the way though, is. Alignment with our clients, alignment internally that is, is huge to success and running in the right direction and moving everything forward. So just the word aligned kept resonating. It was something that I was, you know, I guess it’s a, I guess, I think it’s just an adjective, but I guess it could arguably be a verb maybe, or I think I’m losing, I’m not, I got to go back to English class, but Language arts.

 

But I think it can 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: I was an engineering major. So don’t, don’t look to me, yeah. 

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: You’re not gonna be able to help me. And so I think it can be used in a lot of different ways. And so I think it just means a lot to have them all rowing in the same direction, not just internally as a team, but with our clients. And so on. And also, we are a healthcare boutique.

 

You know, we are not going to provide a full range of services in the [00:04:00] space for the clients. We have. We are not going to provide services for Motorola unless they decide to launch a telehealth company. And so having health in the name was important to us to kind of show that we are dedicated to this space.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: So yeah, I want to dive into your entrepreneurial journey. Maybe we’ll save that for later because I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I do want to go back. So You know, you don’t have to take me to why you went to law school You can if you want, but so you went to law school you got out of law school Let me back up first before law school Did you work in health care at all or is this something that you got into after law school?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. That’s a good question. I have been in healthcare for about 20 years. So I did some consulting in the DC market for a couple of years in the healthcare space. It was a different side of it. It was more so expert, like the expert witness side. But of course, back then I was just a young, very young consultant.

 

So doing a lot of like back analytics there was a day when I, you know, knew how to use SQL, do SQL programming, but being able to use Excel has served me well over the years. So yeah, I did some consulting work and then came to Atlanta for law school after DC. So [00:05:00] that’s kind of where it started.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so you had a background in health care, however, whatever side of the health care industry that we’ll call it, so then you went to law school, came out of law school, did you go straight to big law?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. So it’s the three year, so oh, four undergrad, 10 law schools. So it had about three years in the between. And then, yeah, I started at McKenna, Long and Aldridge, a big, you know, great kind of historical Atlanta name. And then transitioned with a team of about 30 to 40. I don’t actually remember the exact number when Denton’s acquired McKenna Long and Aldridge, a group of us here in the Atlanta market went to Baker Hosteller and really helped Baker’s Atlanta office get off the ground.

 

They had a small presence in connection with an IP merger that they’d done. And so we got to really, it was really incredible to be a part of forming an office of a big law firm in this market. I was, I was still pretty junior then about a fifth, sixth year associate, but yeah, I practiced my whole time in big law.

 

I think it was. a total of 11 plus, almost 12 years with the same kind of group of people [00:06:00] servicing many similar clients of a variety of sizes. And they were national, but a lot of the work was here in the Atlanta market.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: And that was health care stuff? 

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Boys health care. Yeah, I grew up, like started out with like straight regulatory, you know, for anybody listening that cares about health care Medicare and Medicaid billing Stark law, the anti kickback statute, a lot of the stuff that people get in big trouble for if you don’t do it the right way.

 

But really, you know, health care business law, like helping hospitals, helping doctors, labs, pharmacies, all types of providers align. and In different ways to partner, you know, I always say in healthcare, it’s about follow the money anytime I get a new client. It’s like, tell me how you’re being paid. Tell me how the funds are flowing because that’s where we’re going to figure out where the issues are.

 

And then, you know, around 20, I graduated law school in the affordable care act to pass, and that’s spurred a ton of M& A. So I started my career straight regulatory. And then a couple of years in, there was just transaction after transaction. In all markets of the country, but there was a lot going on in the Atlanta and in the greater Greater metropolitan area.

 

So it did a lot of [00:07:00] them a day. And then I’d say 2015 is when you started to see kind of an influx of private equity and venture capital money into the healthcare world Started to see, you know methadone clinics rei clinics so many other types of specialties that might have more of a cash pay or a different connotation.

 

All of a sudden, there’s big money involved in either rolling them up, consolidating them. And so we started to see a lot of those opportunities as well. So, always healthcare the whole way through, love the industry not to go back too far, but had a personal interest in it, like wanted to go to medical school at some point, decided along the way that that wasn’t the right path for me, I think.

 

I think now for the best, you know, it’s tough, tough to be a doctor right now out there with the way reimbursement works and, you know, I was talking to a doctor today who was saying how she’s a gastroenterologist and she was saying, you know, so frustrating, I have no time in the day. People come in with this one thing.

 

I can’t treat the whole person. I can only treat the symptoms. I scoped them. I see them, they’re out and I never talked to them again. I can’t actually get it there. I can’t actually really help them. [00:08:00] And she’s trying to think of a new model because she’s like, this is so frustrating. So, you know, I do, you know, ultimately I think I probably made the right call for myself, but we have always been interested in health and wellness and medicine and all that,

 

Jonathan Hawkins: So I, I never did big law but, and maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like my understanding is you, you go there, you might try out different practice areas, and then when they offer you a job, it’s sort of, they may ask you, do you want to do litigation or bankruptcy or this, that, the other, but at the end of the day, it’s sort of like, we have a slot here.

 

You either go in here or not. So how were you able to say, Hey, I’ve always liked healthcare. That’s my interest. Put me there. How did that

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: you know? Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I graduated law school in 2010. I was supposed to 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: was the worst year ever in the history ever Yeah. Yeah.

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: There you go. You finished the sentence there. So it was a terrible time to graduate law school and I had left a consulting job. Making pretty decent money. Like it wasn’t a ton of money, but like for someone [00:09:00] a couple of years out of school, like making decent money and then went and took, got a bunch of debt.

 

And I kind of just was like, if I don’t go to big law, like what have I done? I was like, cause I gotta pay these loans. And I even though I went to Georgia state, which is an awesome school, it was still out of state. It wasn’t the same as the NC tuition. So I still had a hefty hefty bill. And so I was supposed to intern at another law firm.

 

I was always dead set on healthcare and Georgia state had a great healthcare program. So I was supposed to intern at another firm the summer of 2009, and I found out in March of that year, that was my second No2L summer, supposed to be a big year. To go and turn at a big firm and they canceled the summer program in March of 2009.

 

And I thought that this guy had fallen. I was like, I am over. It is done for me. and I just was devastated. And so I, I think kind of, I think my nature, this will probably come across in this podcast is like, I just hustled. You know, I got upset, but then I just kind of hustled. It was like, okay, I’m going to go do the study abroad program because I played lacrosse in undergrad.

 

So I never got to go on like a spring break trip. So I was like, I’m going to go to the study abroad program. And I got to do study abroad. And then I’m going to [00:10:00] go, I got it. I got to enter at the time. It was Justice Carol Hunstein, who was like, she’s the chief justice of the Supreme court. So I got to, I entered for her.

 

And then I like, I coached lacrosse. So I was like, cause the internship was free. I coached lacrosse on the side and I made it through that 2L summer. I knew I didn’t want to be a clerk or a litigator, but at least I did some stuff. And I kind of re kind of like launched in on like the fact that I was like doubled down on healthcare.

 

I was like, this is what I want to do. And in this. The fall of my three L year, an opportunity to work for McKenna for the healthcare team just came about. And I had met a woman named Charlotte Combray from Georgia state, who’s still with the McKenna Baker team. And Charlotte remembered me and reached out.

 

And this is a good story. I think it’s worth sharing. So at the time, the healthcare group was led by Jim Rawls. Jim Rawls is still somebody that I you know, I saw him a couple of weeks ago for coffee. And Jim had had an amazing career, started at Pogo as like a first amendment media law lawyer. And then.

 

Through a lot of like, you know, just being an expert litigator, excellent litigator, [00:11:00] got opportunities to serve health systems and just being a very strategic winning litigator. He became kind of outside general counsel to the cab hospital, which eventually became part of Emory and then ultimately Northside hospital.

 

And so, you know, there’s team led by Jim was a really, you know, preeminent team in town. Charlotte remembered me and said, let’s bring you into interview for this position. And I remember going in. And it was like, this is the job. I’ve got to get this job. And I was so anxious and nervous. And when I first got there, the first thing that somebody said to me was like, Hey, we might need to fill this position sooner than when you graduate.

 

But like, just FYI. And I’m like, already, like, now I’m like, devastated. They haven’t even started. You know, it’s the full half day. You’re in the suit. You’re going around the office the whole day. You’re talking to everybody, telling them your story. So, I get through that day and I send everybody thank you emails whenever that day or the next day And when I reached out to jim, I told him I said I basically really want this And I know you might have a need sooner.

 

And if you do, please call me because I think that I can work [00:12:00] during school because I don’t basically want this job to be gone to somebody else. I probably said it a lot softer than that. And, you know, everybody thanks me. And then I remember it was right before Thanksgiving of 2009 and I got an email from Jim Rawls.

 

It’s like two months later. He’s like, I need some help. Can you do some research for me? And I was like, yes. He’s like. Okay, well I need to be able to pay you. I was like 20 an hour is great. He’s like, let’s, that’s, we should be a little bored. He’s like, I’m going to give you 40. I was like, 40 it is, sign me up.

 

So I did a couple hours worth of work for Jim. Maybe a week or so later, he called me to tell me that The civil procedure research I did helped him win some case in whatever superior court and thanked me and said, Hey, will you come back? and meet a few more people. And I said, sure. And a couple of months later, a couple of weeks later, you know, got the job.

 

And I’ve always been really proud of that because I do think that that showed like my hustle. Like, I think that that telling him that, that I really wanted the job and like, give me a chance no matter what, like really made a difference. And I will never change, you know, [00:13:00] although there was a lot of things you could say about big law.

 

I wouldn’t trade the time, but in the end, when my time came to an end, it came to an end for a reason and it was time to go. And I’m glad that I didn’t listen to kind of the voice of fear that I had at the time and stayed because leaving was the best thing I ever did.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great story by the way. I really liked that. But before that, so I did not know you played lacrosse in college. So yeah. Tell me about that. Where, tell me about that. So,

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. Yeah. I played at William and Mary. Division one, you know, typical Reese captain of every team I’ve ever played on. It wasn’t the best, you know, thinking back, you know, it was a really good high school player. It was like an average college lacrosse player, but it was amazing. I mean, great to play.

 

Like I’m actually like, you know, my kids are getting of age where they’re getting into sports, you know, we’re at, we’re at baseball, we’re at basketball. My daughter’s actually starting to play lacrosse now I’m going to coach this spring with her again. And then When I first moved to Atlanta, lacrosse, there was no lacrosse community down here.

 

And now there’s like great leagues and [00:14:00] Westminster’s excellent. And it’s pretty, pretty awesome to see. So yeah, it was awesome. I mean, some of my, my best friends from college. And when I was at my, my son’s basketball game over the weekend and. Like, I just get so into it, like watching, like I just got that athletic, like just being to be part of a team where you’d actually get out there and get your head out of the game and just, you’re only just playing you’re thinking about nothing else.

 

It is just nothing better. It’s not a better feeling. It’s not a better feeling than being out there playing a game with people that you want to be on a team with. And so, it was pretty awesome. And I say that now, like, kind of parallels. I’m like, I think at heart, I’m a coach. And so maybe, you know, one day, you know, that’s where I end up, but

 

Jonathan Hawkins: well, you know, it makes sense now. I mean, You’ve I’ve always sensed your intensity and your drive and now it totally makes sense Yeah,

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: yes, 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: you know lacrosse too. I mean, that’s it. That’s an aggressive sport

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: It’s not for the faint of 

 

Jonathan Hawkins: hitting people the sticks, you know,

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah,

 

Jonathan Hawkins: you ever break anything [00:15:00] 

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: knock on wood. No, a lot of bruised arms. And unfortunately, one of my good friends from college took a ball to the face from, you know, 10, 15 yards away and did a number on her. So yeah, to your point, it wasn’t made us wear goggles, but that was really about it.

 

You didn’t have a lot of protection.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: wow. Well, that’s cool. You know a lot of I talked to a lot of you know, college athletes and you know the lessons that you learn there Really seem to translate to you know Performing well in business and in a career. So I don’t know if there are any lessons you’ve learned or anything that anything that, you know, the hard, I mean, I think just the intensity of having to be a college athlete with the classes and going to practice. I mean, just that balancing that’s enough. But All right. Any parallels you see nowadays?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: You say that when I am, I know we haven’t gotten to my whole journey yet, but during the time when I was figuring out what to do before I got to the point of starting my last law firm. And now this, which I view is in some ways, many much conceptual continuation in [00:16:00] some ways. I was very lost. It was a period of time I was lost. I was doing a lot of listening to podcasts, listening to other people’s stories and reading. I felt very like, who am I at the age of 40 who have accomplished a lot of good things, but still feel so unclear about the next step in my journey. And I came across this article, I think it was by E&Y cause they do all these like entrepreneurial awards programs.

 

There’s like this. I don’t know what it’s called, but I met somebody who worked for E Y that spearheaded this like entrepreneurial program. And I read some article and it said this exact same thing, like college athletes who started business have like a super high success rate. And I think it’s like, for many of the reasons you just said, like drive, dedication, and also just like, I don’t lose.

 

Like, I try to have my drive be directed for the good, and I think that’s what stressed me out and made me, in the end, why I was so angry when I left my big guac career. And I can’t blame anybody or anything except. Unfortunately, I [00:17:00] think that the structure is fundamentally broken. It is a, every man for themself, me at the expense of you, you at the expense of me mentality, and I don’t think anybody needs to do anybody any harm at the day, but that is just what happens as a result of that structure and I was like, I’m a team player, this is just so, I was just banging my head against the wall.

 

And. It was just, it was time for me to leave. And I feel like I’ve lost my train of thought cause I felt like I had a point in saying this. But I think my point was I, when I was in that setting, I tried not to have my intensity and my desire to be the best. Hurt anybody else. But yeah, I mean I do like to win.

 

I like to be excellent at what I do And so I think those traits have carried through and now I think I can do them wholeheartedly in the right way Because I think rise I truly believe like rising tides float all boats and like sharing credit boosting other people up helping generate business Teaching somebody something new giving somebody interface with a client.

 

I think all that helps the greater good versus Feeling like, oh, they’re going to take [00:18:00] my client. If I introduce them to my client, that know

 

Jonathan Hawkins: I did not play college sports, but you know, I played through high school and, You know, team sports. And one thing that, you know, at least for me, it’s, you know, all the things you said, but also you’re sort of anti fragile. So you’re not gonna win every game. You’re going to lose a game and you got to get back out there, play the next one.

 

And it’s, you know, it can’t be perfect and win everything all the time. And I think in business is much the same in the law too. I mean, hell you’re going, especially if you’re a litigator, you can’t win them all. And you’re just, it’s just, you’re going to lose you got to figure out a way to get back up and keep going at it.

 

So yeah, so real quick, we’ll move on from big law, but you, you know, you had some success there. You made partner which, you know, which is sort of the, ultimate everybody is gunning for that. But, you know, sometimes it’s like the dog chasing the car. You’re not sure it’s really a prize that is worth winning. So what was your perspective on winning that prize?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: it was exactly [00:19:00] that. I was chasing it for so long and then I got it and I would say, couldn’t have been even a couple months after I remember sitting in my office and like looking at the ceiling and being like, is this it, this is what I wanted and just not thinking there was another way.

 

And at the time I was pregnant with our third child and that was just kind of, that was just the facts. And I was like, okay, well this is, this is it, I guess, but it just, it was like a fleeting thought that I. Now has a lot of meaning, but at the time just felt a little deflating. Cause it was like, you make partner, but you’re not an equity partner.

 

And there’s this whole nother hill to climb. With decades more worth of blood, sweat and tears and politicking and looking over your shoulder And I was like what am I gonna like am I gonna is this what I’m is this what I’m doing? Like am I am I doing this and it wasn’t getting easier. It was getting harder and I think it’s hard in big law firms today, not just because of the structure, but because of, I do think there’s a generational shift as well with the people 10 years younger than me.[00:20:00] 

 

They don’t want to work on the weekends. They don’t want to work at night and like more power to them. Like I wish that I could turn whatever gene I have off and be like, it’s five o’clock and I’m not going to respond to anybody. That would be cool. Don’t think it would work for my business. And so in the big law firms, it was like me, it was that, that the people that were born in the late seventies, early eighties that were like, it fell on you.

 

Cause you got the partners pushing down, you got the associates that you’re trying to keep happy. So don’t just quit and leave. because they didn’t care. They’ll just quit and leave. They don’t care. And so you’re just like, so now I’m in the middle and if they’re on, they’re on their four day vacation with their phone off, which they seem entitled to take when I never did, then I’ve got to pick up the slack for them.

 

But then I’ve got four partners from different offices calling me, not sharing any generation credit, not sharing any management credit with me, but still expecting me to draft their ridiculous documents. I was like, this is wild.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So yeah. So eventually you said, all right, this is not for me.

 

So you left big law and then you went in house, right? Is that was sort of your [00:21:00] next stop. So, so, you know, there’s a lot of people you know, that sort of go through this bathroom like, Oh, the in house, that’s, that’s the promised land. I’ve been there too. And so what did you find? Was it, was it the promised land? And, you know, how, what’s the difference? You know, there’s, I mean, I know a lot of it, but I want to hear your perspective. And then how is the transition from being a law firm partner to then all of a sudden going in house?

 

Cause I’ll, I’ll say this before you start depends on where you are, but you know, usually in a, in a, you know, Company, the law department is not a revenue stream. It is an expense and you are not necessarily treated as, you know, it’s sort of a lesser department I’ll say oftentimes. So what was your experience?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah, it’s a little interesting and I think it’s unique which kind of made it, you know It’ll make more sense of why I did it for one year and that was it. So I very much agree with what you said The first part of my journey in house though, I think was very unique like so I went in house for a client of mine I was actively had [00:22:00] decided coming back from maternity leave after having my third child and just being crushed from all angles for the reasons I just described I was like I’ve got to do something different and I thought the answer was another big law firm because that clearly was going to be better So I was like interviewing with these other law firms and then I one of my clients I was lamenting to him over lunch He had like he texted me to congratulate me because we got two deals for him signed that I had helped with and he’s like a very Stoic individual, not like a rah, rah, sis, boom, bah kind of guy.

 

And so for him to be like, Hey, I wanted to thank you. And like, give me an exclamation point. I was like, Whoa, this is a big deal. So I was like, I’ve got some leverage. Will you have lunch with me? And he was like, yeah, of course. So we have lunch in a couple of weeks after that and I remember the timing I think was unique because I think by the time I had lunch with him, I had kind of talked to myself into like maybe not like leaving my job and just staying and pushing through.

 

And I said to him, I was like, I was like lamenting about my struggles and he just was like, well, [00:23:00] and he’s a salesman at heart, so he let me tell all my tale. And then he’s like, well. I was going to let you know that I’m hiring a general counsel and that I that’s going to reduce your work stream from us.

 

And I was like, true. He’s like, but I have a stack of resumes, but if you want the job, it’s yours. And I knew in that exact moment, my gut. And that’s been my, I was like, if we’re going to get to like a moral of the story that if this podcast helps anybody. It’s like, when you know, you know, it’s scary to listen to your gut. Because your mind is louder, but if you know, in your gut, this isn’t right. Just, just if you follow it, it’ll be okay. So I knew in that moment it was right, but it was really scary. And so it took me like 60 days from the point of like, I know I need to do this to actually like, you know, getting through the process.

 

Well, maybe 30 days from then to like agree to the job, get it signed. And then I had a 60 day notice. Give to get out to leave the firm because I just I had clients I needed to unwind and I wanted to make sure they were taken care of. And so, but going to that job and that was an Atlanta based company called Charles directs.

 

It’s on my LinkedIn. Was awesome. Like I [00:24:00] traded in the high heels and the jackets and. In my opinion, a little bit of the stuffiness for a backpack and jeans and sneakers and occasionally would walk to work from my office because we had not, I mean, I live in Midtown offices in Midtown and it was like this open floor plan and like me and CFO had like conference rooms that were our offices, but it was like all open door.

 

And snacks. And it was like the 27 year old banker dude that came over from SunTrust that would like shoot the guns around the, the, the, whatever Nerf guns around the office. I was like, where am I? This is pretty cool. And they treated me I was a cost center arguably, but they did treat me as I thought, like a strategic thought partner, and that was great.

 

And you know, we ended up taking that company through a sale. Within a year. And so that was truly an incredible experience. The struggle I had though was after that exit, which was really only 10 months after I started, we sold to another company where legal truly was looked at as a cost. [00:25:00] And I was no longer views a strategic partner.

 

And now I was not the deputy general counsel reporting to somebody who I knew a lot more than. and also the CEO is not somebody who I viewed as a leader versus my CEO at chalice was. And it just fundamentally was, was misaligned. And so ultimately it’s a bit of a story for another day, but I ultimately just exited that company a couple months later.

 

That was the best thing that ever happened to me was to kind of be forced to leave in a way on good terms, you know, with, with financial security, to be able to say, okay, I’ve got a couple months to figure out. What to do next versus staying and being angry because frankly, I had been angry for too long in bay law and I had grown so much as an individual in my one year in house.

 

But yes, I would say I had a very unique experience because we were transacting and I got to have a lot of cool interfaces and do things that were not typical. I will say though, the day to day in house legal work, I didn’t love. I liked interacting with the [00:26:00] people. I liked sitting in the, I liked sitting in the executive leadership team meetings and I liked learning how to run a business.

 

That was valuable to me. But like, I knew that I was in my one year there, the constant theme that came up for me was like, I am more than a lawyer. I’m a CEO. And that’s why I knew I couldn’t go back and be another, a GC somewhere else

 

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, so, I love that experience. So, you know, I’ve been general counsel before, too, for business and similar experience. I was in all the strategy and the meetings and I’ll tell you I learned so much, so

 

much and it, it was sort of a mom and pop and it has grown a lot and I got to see a lot about, you know, business decision strategy Taking risks all these things that you know, you don’t learn in a law firm.

 

I mean, I don’t care Maybe maybe if you run it we’ll get to that in a minute. And so like that it was such a great experience I’m glad you had experience. So is that when you started to have the seeds of an entrepreneurial mindset? Or was it before after that?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah, I think funny, I actually went back to my [00:27:00] journal. I would say, so I, I got over to Trellis in the fall or August of 21. And I found out within like two months that we were going to transact. And that was a bit scary for me because I had, I, despite not being. Super happy. I had, had worked a long time to be partner in a big law firm.

 

And when I was considering the child’s opportunity, I entertained some recruiting, just calls. And I would ask the recruiters, well, what do you think about people that go in house and go back to big law? They’re like, once you leave big law, you can’t go back. Like, and I was like, okay, well, I guess I’m like foreclosing this door.

 

So now I’m in, I’ve moved into this new role thinking I’ll have two to three years. And then, and knowing that, like, my path is now different, I’m never going back to billing by the hour again, that, that it has done, I’ve, I’ve left that behind and then all of a sudden my, my world is kind of rough, like, obviously it was exciting to know we were going to transact, but it was like very overwhelming and nerve wracking.

 

A lot of things could have gone wrong along the way. And so I remember going back to my journal from like December, January 21, 22. And there was like [00:28:00] seeds of this, like a very early ideas had kind of started around that time. And I would say as early as like April timeframe is when I kind of think I started my.

 

You know, I would say I’ve had a we’ll get there, like a lot of success with business development. And I think it’s just because it’s a relationship game for me. And like people is my thing, like people is what I’m good at, but I would say my, my journey for talking with people, we’re going on three full years now, you know, April of 22 is when I think I started first having my conversations with people, whether it was looking for a job or just wanting to hear other people’s stories.

 

And it was maybe the little bit of it, there were seeds that were planted in that, that late 21, early 22. But fast forward through that year, exiting Trellis. I just was like, let me go to lunch with the partner from Baker, who is now the CEO of a really big company here in town. And let you get to be in that CEO role, or like, why am I keep listening to Sarah Blakely founder story?

 

Like, why is this so powerful to me? And then I just started like kind of listening to myself, which is like, cause you want to start something you want to do something different. [00:29:00] And so there was just a series of things. I had all these meetings.

 

And I remember somebody had connecting this woman named Karma Bath. Karma, it’s her name, Karma and I get on the phone and I could tell maybe it was like a Friday afternoon.

 

I could tell she was probably like, I’m just doing this for as a favor. And I said, you know, I don’t really want to talk about like healthcare consulting. She had a healthcare consulting shop. I said, can you just tell me your story? Like, tell me how you started your company. And she like lit up and we had a great discussion and it was like basically that conversation that is what gave me the courage to just be like, I can do, I can do this

 

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s awesome. Okay. So you leave, that’s awesome. So she inspired you or that was the seed or that was the spark or whatever you want to call it. So fill him in. So at some point you just, you go back to private practice. I don’t know if anything happened in between there. You know, you did the, you did the transaction and then you stayed on for a

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. It was about three months in between. It was like, left in August, and then December of 22. [00:30:00] So, left Baker, or a bit bigger Hostel where I was, in August 21. Left Trellis in August 22. Had three months of like, who the hell am I? What am I doing? Dark night of Soul type stuff. A lot of journaling. A lot of podcasts.

 

A lot of walks. And then it was, yeah, so then it was like late 22, early 23 and I was like, it’s time to start something.

 

Jonathan Hawkins: Cool. 

 

​

 

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So then you’re back private practice. And you went in with a partner. 

 

And so when you started, did you have clients? I mean, you’d come from nowhere. So you had to build from nothing, right? So, it was sort of the predecessor to your current firm, but, and so you knew it was going to be healthcare. What did you do? How did you go start getting clients? You start with nothing. Where do you, where do you, where do you go?

 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: The original clients. So the first was like, [00:31:00] who are the people that liked me when I was at Baker? Let me talk to them. And it was the lawyers I worked with. It was the business people I talked to. And then it was like, I mean, random people on LinkedIn, I joined this network called chief, which is this women’s like, networking group, which for a while didn’t seem fruitful, but at this point I’d say I’ve definitely monetized that multiple times over with connections I’ve made.

 

It was just meetings. It was like meeting with whoever would talk to me. I hung out at went to ATDC downtown or midtown. I went to Atlanta tech village because I was really interested in the startup scene. I had a lot of iterations in my head about what this would look like. Was it going to be fractional GC work?

 

Was it going to be focusing on tech early stage companies? So it was going back to old clients. meetings on the books. But it, it took some time, you know, reconnecting with my former colleagues at Trellis, telling them what I was doing and just hustling and slowly, but [00:32:00] surely, you know, you get that first client.

And then someone’s got a small project here and then friend at another boutique firm’s like, Hey, I’ve got some overflow stuff. I can’t pick up. And then that comes my way. And then it just starts to roll. And then around March of 23, I’d say that the steam started to really roll, like, but up through the, by summer of 23, I had gotten like a couple pretty big clients, like pretty big, like series C private equity backs, like between like one is still a great client.

Now they’re a D series D like the baseball coach for my son, who’s been in healthcare, his whole career is awesome. And they were looking like a lot of my clients were looking, considering whether to bring in a general counsel. But as you know, it’s not easy to find the right general counsel and the wrong internal lawyer actually slows businesses down and frustrates.

So, and there, and a lot of people think that a legal partner bringing in a lawyer is going to lower their outside spend. When you bring in the right legal partner, you’re actually not lowering your overall spend. You’re paying that person a good amount of [00:33:00] money and you’re, they’re identifying other areas that you’ve neglected.

So your spend is going to go up. And so a lot of my clients are like, well, we’re still probably saving money by, you know, using you as my outside GC. And so it just kind of started to snowball. It was like one connection after the next, and then just doing really good work, you know, in the beginning, it was like, I didn’t have anybody to delegate anything to, so it was just me, you know, all the research, all the drafting, everything was, was me. And just that work ethic again, right? Like working really hard, making sure the work product was as what it needed to be. And I think thinking like the businesses, like my client, I think I thrive in these like venture private equity back businesses because they’re a little risk forward. They move fast.

They want someone who’s business oriented and that, that typically works, that that typically my style resonates with them. And I’ve had a lot of those types of businesses. And I would say now fast forward to today, Now I’m just starting to get like, luckily, like it’s inbounds right now I’m actually getting inbounds, you know, we don’t have a website on now and I’ve had tremendous success in the [00:34:00] month of January just with people I haven’t even tried and we don’t have a website right now.

People don’t even ever find me. And I think that’s just because now it’s like doing good work and then enough people know you that now the pie is so big people just aren’t coming in. But yeah, in the beginning it was just straight legitimate straight hustle. Following up. Hey, remember me putting your tail between your legs a little bit and, saying, well, now I’m back.

I did the GC thing, but now I’m a lawyer again. So hire me.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. It is a hustle. It is a hustle. I mean, you know, some people are afraid to hustle. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the wrong word, but they don’t understand a lot of times the amount of work it takes. And sometimes the time, you know, it’s, you know, I was the engineer, so I’m always comparing it to an exponential curve.

It’s like you’re busting your ass, but early The line is barely moving. It’s just, you know, maybe doubling every year, but it doesn’t look like it. 

And then, and then you start going up the curve, and then that’s sort of where you’re going now. And it sounds

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Like a J curve.

You’re cruising along and then somewhere along the way it kicks up and then it just goes.

Jonathan Hawkins: you only have your website up, [00:35:00] so yeah, you better be, you better be ready. Better be getting your sleep. Ha ha ha. So, so you, you went out, and you had a partner for a while, and you know, you guys decided that, you know, to go your separate ways. And so recently you’ve started your new firm, Aligned Health Law. Which we talked about and already you said you had a team of what, 15, 17.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: 15. It’s not all full time. So we’ve got six full time partners a special counsel, one full time associate, two individuals studying for the bar right now that will come back and like independent contractor capacity and then maybe transition to associate. And then three people that work with us on a contractor basis.

So a couple hours a month or depending on the need. And then we have a chief of staff who the goal is to help elevate me. I love the business development. I love getting out there and networking. But I also do a lot of client work, a lot of client management. And so having her help take a lot of the operational responsibility is important for me and then keep me straight calendar and all that jazz.

And then we have an admin as [00:36:00] well. And frankly, I thought that we might not have enough work for those two people, but we 

Jonathan Hawkins: There’s always, there’s always enough. Yeah,

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: something to do.

Jonathan Hawkins: well, you know, it’s been really impressive. You know, you went out, you’ve got this, you know, really vibrant firm already and I, you know, it’s gonna be exciting to see where it goes. But let me ask what, what’s your vision? You know, you’ve, you’ve come out really going hard and going strong. Where, where do you want it to go?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Well, the baby.

Jonathan Hawkins: Tell me, tell me the big, yeah,

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: the, what I say every morning is I am the CEO, the visionary, CEO of a hundred million dollar ar business. That is revolution revolutionizing the legal industry. How, the vision for how is teamwork. I’m working on the words. To me, though, what is different about what we’re creating is we’re doing it as a team.

And it’s not a joke, like being a part of the team is not like something you stay [00:37:00] and not do. It is worrying about it is the other word that I think is. Is resonating with me lately is elevating. And the other day I had to talk with my chief of staff. Cause I was like, brought you here because this is an opportunity.

Like, I want you to be the COO one day of this company. Like, that’s what we’re doing here. I was like, and you’re going to elevate me and I want to elevate you. And that’s. That’s what we’re doing here. It’s like, this is a values led business. And value of being a values led enterprise is not as easy as it seems.

And it, you know, caused me a lot of consternation over the past year, knowing that I wanted to run a values led business and having to figure out what that really meant to me, you know, I had to fire a very big client of mine. At the end of last year, because it did not align with my values, the way they were treating me, the way that I felt interacting with them was not aligning with my values.

And that was a lot of revenue. But I was like, I could do it now, or I could do it in a year, because I’m going to have to do it. And so, you know, I think in order to show, I remember my [00:38:00] associate when I told her, our junior, she said, just out of law school, she was like, wow, like, I’m really, I was glad to hear you like terminating that client could tell it was taking a toll on you.

I was like, well, if I can’t show the first year lawyer that I can stand up to a client that’s not treating our firm and me with respect. I was like, then I’ve got, I’m not gonna be able to do this. And so, you know, it’s a values led business. I think it’s empowerment. It’s teamwork. It’s elevation. I, you know, we’re literally in the process of marketing and branding, and I’m hopeful my team will help me, but like.

Yeah, I want it to be big, but it’s not a growth for growth sake. This year to me is a stabilization year. We have a great team. Our partners have kind of a collections based model. I want everybody to take home a good, a good living. And so I want to make sure there’s work for everybody to be done. I’m not out here just trying to go grab, grab, grab to bring people in and say, well, I’m now 50 people.

It, I think my, my vision is a, is a minimum of a 10 year vision. And it could very well be one. That’s just that’s what I’m saying every morning.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. We’re, we’re going to talk about [00:39:00] that offline. I want, I want to talk more about that. Yeah, I love a big vision. I’ve got one too. And so yeah, we, we got to talk, talk offline. But the other thing I said, you know, that I think is important is it’s your life. It’s your firm. if your client or whatever is not. We’re aligned with what you want. You got to let them go is, is hard of a decision as that might seem like, especially, I mean, it’s hard to turn away money. But you know, like you said, you’re going to do it then or later. Might as well just. Cut baits, get it, get it done. So yeah, that was, that was commendable decision there. so yeah, so, again, so you just started, you said you’re about to get your website up. It is a ton of work to do all this stuff. And you’ve got clients calling you, you’ve got new clients calling you. How are you managing to, to do it all? 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: You know, it was rough through the holidays. Just getting the other side in general. You know, like for example, you’re just getting my emails all migrated over. It’s like crashed outlook. [00:40:00] And so I had spent multiple hours over the weekend this weekend while my kid, my husband was sick and I had my kids all three kids all by myself.

And I had the babysitter come, had the, they had them like doing something Friday night where they were entertained and then I had a babysitter Saturday and Sunday and during all those hours, probably nine, 10 total. The downtime, only downtime I had, I worked in those hours, in part because I needed to get all my emails under control.

All to realize that they weren’t syncing with webmail and on my app. And so then we just had to basically, like, import a new version of out, like, my inbox. And I lost, like, all the work I’d done to, like, organize it. And I was like, okay, well, that’s awesome. So stuff like that is tough. And we’ve been working on resubmitting what we need to, to get where it’s a woman owned business to get that submitted, to get back into the national association of minority and women owned law firms.

And I, you know, I give a big thanks to like my. You know, one of my partners, Jen Whitten, who’s our managing partner, who’s been like tremendous in the operational side. She’s a staff. Emily are at our administrative executive [00:41:00] assistant, Jessica, who have been tremendous. And like, this has been a collective team effort.

This is not just me. And also our outside vendors, you know, our outsourced it frontline technology, Matt Hoffman has been tremendous. Our accounting team has been tremendous. So we’ve had great support with everybody. But yeah, I mean, it’s the operational side. It’s transitioning from my old firm and dealing with wind down matters there.

And then, yeah, I have a pretty big client load as it is. And then a lot of new business opportunities coming in. And so I’m really finding myself leaning in hard on the team. You know, we have a great team, especially the other partners. And so it’s like. Yeah, no, I don’t need to be on that call. Like you handle it.

Okay. Yeah. Can you call so and so and just figure it out and then just run with it? Like can’t, there’s no, I mean, lately my call schedule has been so demanding and so it’s hard right now. And my, my goal for this year, I’m wearing a bracelet right now. This is balanced. You know, I need to invoke balance and find it again.

I had about 3, 100 hours on the books last year and it’s not, that’s not worth it. [00:42:00] It’s not the life I want to live. It’s not why I did this. My husband has been tremendous and supportive. And and frankly, my kids too, like they’re little, they’re eight, six and four, but there were some times in the past couple of months where I had to sit them down and be like, mommy’s not able to be her best self right now.

Like mommy is dealing with some things that are really upsetting to mommy. And so mommy is going to have to go upstairs and work right now, even though it’s Saturday or mommy didn’t mean to grump at you. Mommy was frustrated about something else and like having to dumb it down and say. And my kids, you know, my oldest tells everybody that he knows I own my own business.

And he’s like, you’re not going to have that same name anymore. You have to change your name. I was like, I’ve changed my name, but that’s going to be okay. And you know, having to explain that to like little kids, you know, that’s, that’s hard in and of itself. But I feel relief and free and I feel excited to be able to like put the vision together in the way that I, you know, have always wanted it to be.

And. I’m not sure that you’re going to catch me next month working less than I’m working today, but I’m hopeful maybe by, by June, by June, maybe it’ll feel a little bit better by December this year, maybe a little bit better. And hopefully that just continues [00:43:00] to increase as we can flush out the team and the team, you know, everybody can kind of fall into their roles.

So it’s hard, but I also have realized I’m, I’m wired a bit of a certain way. I mean, you talked a little about being in house. I didn’t work less in house. I think that is your, people think it’s like the Holy grail. You work less, you know, I didn’t work less. Maybe I worked a little different, but I didn’t, didn’t work.

Jonathan Hawkins: you may not want to hear this, but you’re not going to work less. I mean, you’ll work different, you know, especially if you want to do a hundred million dollar firm which, you know, I love it, but you’re going to be working a lot. You’re gonna be working a lot. It’s funny. I’m reading, I’m reading or listening to the book about NVIDIA. I don’t know if you know much about that company at all, but their CEO is just. That guy works more than anybody ever, period. But anyway I think, you know, my sense is you’re, you, you just, you’re sort of wired that way. so yeah, so, you know, just own it, just own it, you know? 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Kind of what I’m doing the best of my ability.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, well, the other thing I’ll say it, you know, when you’re so busy, you know, a [00:44:00] lot of things that a lot of lawyers have trouble sort of becoming the CEO and stepping back and cause they want to control everything, they’re perfectionists, all that stuff. But I guess one good thing of being so busy is you’re forced.

There’s no way you can do it all. So you’re forced to learn how to delegate, right?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Absolutely. And I would say I want things to be done the right way, but I have a lot of awareness. I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’m a true perfectionist. There’s, have you done the Enneagram? There’s this like personality test thing, kind of tells you where you gravitate to. I’m much more of a, like, Let’s just get it done.

Versus, like, it needs to be done correctly, but, like, doesn’t need you know, my bed isn’t made perfectly every morning, and things are often a little bit skelter, helter skelter, although I like things in order, generally. But yeah, it is hard, and I’ve been actually having to remind myself, if someone doesn’t, like, schedule that meeting within three minutes, it’s okay, you don’t have to do it yourself, it will get done in 30, and that’s fine.

And so having, like, I am reminding myself that, like, You’ve hired this team around you to do things. And like, you just gotta [00:45:00] let them do it. It may take them an hour or two or three, they’ll get it done and having that trust. But I feel really blessed. You know, this is a, we have a wonderful team.

Everybody is, I do really think aligned with what we’re building and they want to be here and they view it most importantly as an opportunity. And like, that’s how I view it. I’m like, I feel so blessed. We’re doing this with such amazing people and they, they want to be here and view this as something like that they were looking for, but didn’t even know they were looking for.

And so it’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible. And you know, this business I do believe will, will grow and if it ever gets to a hundred million dollars. Yeah. I think it’s because we’re good lawyers. I think it’s going to be because we’re a values. We’re a values like this. And I truly believe that. That’s 

Jonathan Hawkins: agree. You know, a good team. That is, that’s where the gold is. It’s, you know, you can have the best technology, the best this, the best that. But if you don’t have a great team in place, it just, it breaks down. And the other thing I’ll say is, you know, for me, and I think for others, and maybe you’d agree is, you know, a big vision, a big [00:46:00] goal, a big. Trajectory. It creates almost the mission and it creates opportunity for these people and excitement. You know, it’s like, does somebody want to come to a place where it’s stagnant, there’s not opportunity. You know, I would, I wouldn’t want to go there. Kind of person I want to work with. Wouldn’t want to go there.

So, you know, that’s the other good thing about a big vision.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: that. It’s true. Thank you. Bye. I view it as like, and you know, I think that I think especially Jen and I’ve been talking about a lot is like, there’s no scarcity here, right? It’s all abundance and like rising tides float all boats. And if we, like even other firms that like, there’s plenty of other people doing healthcare law, but like, doesn’t, you know, people ask me about our competitors and like, I don’t know.

I’m like, I don’t often feel like I’m pitching against other law firms. I really don’t like literally get this call last week from a client we’re current engagement with. And he’s like, Hey, He’s like, Hey Gwen, do you want some more business? I was like, always. He’s like, okay. He starts describing this potential joint venture.

He’s like, I’m dealing with other lawyers. And he’s like, and they’re making it so [00:47:00] bleep, bleep, bleep complicated. And he’s like, it’s so ridiculous. I’m already over it. He’s like, so, I mean, do you think you can do this? And I was like, yeah. And so, and if, and then I go look up the players and I like some pretty sophisticated players out on the West coast in a market that I would love to be in.

And so. Yeah. So. You know, I was just like, it’s like these little breadcrumbs that just kind of pop up, you know, and I got connected to him through a consultant friend that I met in like in chief. I did this presentation and she found me and then talked with her and then she started her own consulting business.

And so it’s just such an interesting trail of breadcrumbs, how these things all lead together. And I feel like there was a reason I mentioned that story now I forget the loop on it, but anyway, hopefully it wasn’t too chandential. 

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, no, it is interesting, you know, how things come about, whether it’s fortune or luck or a combination of just, you know, being prepared when, when the opportunity comes, but you gotta be ready to pounce when it’s there. That’s the other thing.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: That’s right. That’s right. And you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and they’re like, [00:48:00] they just launched and they’re like, Oh, I had, we have, we’re on a wait list. And I was like, wow, a wait list. Like I don’t know what that means. Like I don’t know that I could tell a client that like I have a wait list.

I mean maybe that’s kind of cache, but most of the people I deal with like meet a lawyer and they needed the lawyer and they can’t wait for the lawyer. to go somewhere else. So I was like, well, that’s cool. I can’t even find out what that means, but I don’t know. I don’t know that a wait list is in my DNA.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So, you know, Hustle is just part of your DNA. you got a lot going on. You’re doing all this stuff. You’re on a good path here. So do you have any routines that help you achieve all this stuff? Cause I know like, again, you’ve got three young kids, you’ve got all this stuff going on. How do you make it happen?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. So I would say, I’ve had this amazing executive, kind of more spiritual coach for the past going on three and a half years now who has really, I think, changed my life and helped me get here. Because to me, it’s like leaning into the mindset of it’s anything it’s possible, like, for me to even say out loud that I could run a hundred million dollar business.

I mean, to me, five years ago, I just, [00:49:00] that wouldn’t have been a thing. Like, I just thought I was on this hamster wheel and like, that’s where I was like, that was some people got a good car, good, got a good hand. My hand was okay. And like, that was fine. And now I just feel like this infinite possibility.

Like just, I feel like there’s just so much. And so right now I do every morning I kind of wake up with my set of like, I guess they call them. I am statements these like pause, like these manifestation statements of like what I just said. And, you know, trying to give myself some grace. So, you know, I’m a great mother who spends time with her kids and her family and like other things that are meaningful to me.

And I have like my whole list of them. So I try to do that every morning and I’m really trying to Lean into my meditation practice. It’s not like I don’t meditate for a long time, but like trying to do 10 minutes, five days a week that I get the weekends are harder for kids, but like five days a week, just trying to take 10 minutes in the morning to just calm down, take a minute for myself.

You know, exercise is important to me too. That’s kind of ad hoc. That’s like, what day can I get to the gym at this time? What day can I take a client call on a walk? What, you know, one day a week to meet my trainer exercise is important, but. I would say I’m really [00:50:00] leaning into the meditation, leaning into like the I am statements because I do think there’s a little bit to manifesting your own destiny.

And then otherwise just like, again, with the great team around me, like my chief of staff and helping manage me, keeping me straight. I think those are all things, but yeah, I would say wellbeing wise, it’s the mindfulness and the exercise, the extent I can manage it.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, something you said there, so I didn’t say this, but I have a very similar vision. I want to create a hundred million dollar a year firm. And it’s, you know, why not me, right?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Why not you?

Jonathan Hawkins: as I sit here today, I’m like, how the hell am I going to do this? I don’t even know. I don’t even know, how, but, 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: you gotta trust.

Jonathan Hawkins: it’s, we’re going to figure it out, you know. You know, it’s, there’s, there’s the book. A lot of people say it’s the, the who, not how, and it’s basically, you know, you hire the right people. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself. But yeah, but yeah, there are days where I’m like, am I crazy? And so I’m wondering, are there days that you have where you’re like, am I crazy to think this?

What the hell? How am [00:51:00] I, how am I going to do this? So how do you deal with those thoughts that creep in?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: So I used to think like that. I only don’t think that anymore because of my coach, because I actually have no idea how to make this a hundred million dollar business, literally no idea, but I believe it will happen. And I, fundamentally am bought into the fact that like, if I am aligned with that, with what I’m supposed to be doing and I, and like, to me, this is an empowerment journey.

I have empowered myself and now I’m able to empower others. And if that is what I’m doing, like I am walking in the light, I am doing good things for this world. And if I’m doing good things for this world, then good things will be attracted. It’s like the energy you put out is the energy you attract. And I truly, truly believe that.

I feel like I am now only put, and I do, I don’t think I always put that out in my younger years, in my years in the big law days. It was dark. There was dark days a lot. And I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I wouldn’t say my journey the past three and a half years has been full of light. I mean, it has been a bit of a dark journey and for reasons things I don’t want to share now on in this setting.

But there have been things that have been very [00:52:00] challenging. And so for me, I’ve kind of my coach says you got to relinquish the how I do wake up and say, Hey, Sometimes I’m like, do you really want to be working as hard as what you want? And then I put it in perspective, like, do you want to work on somebody else?

And I say, absolutely not. And so then, then I 

Jonathan Hawkins: I like that. I like that reframe. Yeah.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: don’t want to be working for somebody else. Like it’s not easy being the person that’s accountable. You know, I was, I was meeting with somebody yesterday and I was yesterday. It was tough. You know, I’d come off of the whole weekend. You know, my, you know, my husband, who’s a great partner and, you know, always has my back, he’s kind of down for the count, had to take some time.

And it’s like, you know, and not having any downtime over the whole weekend. I mean, came back on Saturday with the kids from running around. I was like, mommy needs a nap. I was like, you guys can watch your iPads. And they’re like, so we’re home alone. It’s not like I’m down, down, down the hall, but just like, don’t burn the house down.

And I crashed for like an hour, fell asleep on like Saturday afternoon. And I was like, you know, I, and so coming into Monday yesterday, I was like, It’s rainy day here in Atlanta yesterday. I was like, I was just, I was off kilter, you know, and yesterday wasn’t great, but today the sun shining, this is a great [00:53:00] conversation, you know, it’s empowering.

And so it feels good. And so I do, I do have to reframe it sometimes. Cause I’m like, and there’s also, then I go meet with other CEOs of businesses that aren’t just trading time for money. And I think about the upside on those businesses. But I’m like, you know what, like, but I’m building something that has a bigger purpose and I just have to follow that and you know, I got down on myself like about a meeting I had, you know, to your point a little bit of what you’re getting at, like, well, how am I ever going to create like all this value and this wealth?

I don’t have any widgets. I don’t have any technology. I don’t have force multiplication. All I have is relationships and people. But I’m not going to worry 

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ve got some ideas and we’ll talk about that offline. 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: okay, okay, 

Jonathan Hawkins: about this quite a bit. So yeah.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: okay, I’d love to. We, oh, you still owe me a drink or I owe you a drink. I’m not sure which one of us owes each other a drink. Maybe we’ll each buy one.

Jonathan Hawkins: thing you mentioned is, you know, you were an athlete. So you, you’ve always had a coach, you know, you know, the value of a good coach. I love coaches. I’ve had [00:54:00] plenty over the years. I have couple now I seem to collect them but you know, it’s, and it’s, you know, the other thing is, you know, the other thing I’ve learned about coaches is, is they come into your life and they teach you, you know, what they’re going to teach you.

And then it’s time to go find another one. So, you know, how, how do you find, or how have you found your coaches and sort of what value do you get from them?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah, I think it’s funny. I think the word coaches could be loose, right? Like I view like the CEO I worked with as like a coach in his own way He it wasn’t like that’s what he set out to do but I learned so much from how he led and other feedback I’ve gotten and From him over time. the coach I work with now is more spiritual.

So it’s more so coming out this from a very different way of these like more so retraining of the of the mindset of like That has and there’s been just a lot of work for me to do there So we’ve been working together for about three and a half years now, and I don’t feel like it’s stale I feel like there’s still more for me to uncover and for me to learn And I’m kind of [00:55:00] I don’t know like I think I could learn a lot from a lot of different people But for right now, I still think that there’s this This work that I’m doing Like I do believe that actually I could actually build this business and not work 60 hours a week every week I do believe that but I do also think there’s something inside of me That’s like holding me back from that right now, and I I don’t understand I don’t know what that is and I’ve got to find it and like she will help me figure that out I hear I see your ear don’t know that you really believe me what i’m saying, but I do believe this is true And I gotta 

Jonathan Hawkins: you want, if you want it, you’ll get there if you want it.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: That’s right. That’s right. So, I think that you’re right. I think you’ve got to resonate with the person and you’ve got to feel like they’re getting you somewhere. And I do, my coach is tremendous and has, I do believe changed, changed my life. And frankly, I give back, like, I invest in her community of women because I believe that like, Like helping then other somebody else, like maybe you will afford to go to the retreat that she does or like have coaching sessions because I believe that like that’s a method of paying it forward.

And I was thinking just [00:56:00] earlier today that I would like to, like, have her do something for my team, because I think that it could really, you know, help help foster what we’re trying to get here with our vision and stuff.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love that So we’ve been going for a little while, but want to be respectful of your time. But before we wrap up, I do want to hear, you know, you’ve, you’ve had a lot of different experiences, big law in house tech consultant, you had the stuff before law school, you’ve, you’ve been a partner, you’ve got this new iteration of your firm for people out there that. Are thinking about starting a firm or maybe in the early, early days of it. Do you have any pieces of advice?

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: I would say, you know, trust your gut, you know, I bet on yourself. It’s not for the faint of heart. I don’t know that everybody is a law firm owner or wants to be a law firm owner, but if it’s something you started, there’s probably a reason you did it. And I would say, just, just trust your gut. And I will say this, I do think you have to spend money to make money.

And I think, you know, investing in whether it’s a good accountant or a good it person or a good paralegal or a good admin, it may seem [00:57:00] like a cost center, but like. You have to, at the end of the day, if you’re going to own it, especially if you’re just one person starting out, you have to be able to elevate yourself and you have to be able, the only way to make money true money is to have a team below you.

And to do that, you have to free yourself up. Like you shouldn’t be running your own bills and you shouldn’t be scheduling your own meetings. And so I truly believe you have to elevate yourself out. Otherwise it’s fine if you just want to do everything yourself, but that will limit what you’re able. So that would be, it’s like trust yourself and then.

It’s scary, especially when you’re, the revenue is not coming in as quickly as you want it to, but trust that a little bit of money investing in the business will be, and it’s also an

Jonathan Hawkins: are scared to do it. I talk about it all the time. You got to do it. And I’ll say, you know, when I was working as general counsel at this business, that was one of the lessons that I saw over and over and over. The investment for a future expected return made over and over and over again, where many lawyers are scared to do [00:58:00] that for whatever reason, probably lots of different reasons.

But yeah, that’s that’s huge. So, so, I know that as of today, your, your website might not be launched yet, but by the time this airs it, it’ll be close if it’s not there already. So if there’s anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you, what’s, what’s the best way? 

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Yeah. I say email LLambert, L L A M B E R T at aligned hl.com A L I G N E D hl.com. That is the best way to get me. I’m also on LinkedIn, Laurice Rutledge Lambert, and you could shoot me a message there too, but for better, for worse, I’m very responsive to email.

Jonathan Hawkins: Laurice, this has been awesome. I’ll learn some new stuff about you, so thanks for coming on.

Laurice (Rutledge) Lambert: Thanks for inviting me. It’s great to talk to you. Thanks, Jonathan. 

​[00:59:00]