Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] Okay, so take me through. That’s the other thing I hear a lot about lawyers, especially when they’re early in their journey of starting their firm, that they’re scared to spend any money, they’re scared to hire anybody. They think it’s just money out the door. I’m not gonna make any money.

Why would I do this? What led you to say, I’m willing to take the risk, the investment to do this?

Andrew Lacy: Being a little bit on the younger side, honestly, my view of it was, I did this at a good time. I just turned 31. I don’t have a kid yet. I’m gonna give this everything I got for three, four years. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I got a lifetime and money, I made money before my wife’s doing okay is what is right.

So that was kind of my view of it and that’s why I think there is a sweet spot to starting your firm. And I think it is a little bit on the younger side before you have all the obligations. I could be wrong though. I know there’ve been many, there’s many different ways to do it. A lot of PI attorneys do it when they’re 40 and they got a huge case coming in and they can cash out on that and some other people might do it when they have a huge client that’s ready to leave big law with ’em.

It’s a great time to do it, but I think if you’re building it from scratch, you gotta do it early, it’s gonna take time.

Jonathan Hawkins: And it sounds like you’re [00:01:00] pretty tech forward you invest in systems.

Andrew Lacy: Extremely.

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 interesting law firm founders and leaders find out about their journeys and lessons they’ve learned along the way. And today my guest is Andrew Lacy. He is the founder of the Lacy Employment Law Firm in Pennsylvania. I have been following him on LinkedIn for quite a while now, and I said, man, I gotta get this guy on here ’cause he posts some good stuff. [00:02:00] So, Andrew, thanks for coming on man. Welcome to the show.

Andrew Lacy: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, tell us just a little bit about your firm so, we’ll get into the backstory and all that, but, you know, what’s it like now? Where are you, what do you do Exactly? How many attorneys, all that kind of stuff.

Andrew Lacy: So we’re a, a plaintiff’s employee rights firm. That’s all we do. We only represent workers. We only operate on a contingency fee. So. Some firms in the market do hybrid, some build employees. We are only contingency fee. We do discrimination, retaliation type cases, mostly in federal courts, some state court stuff like that.

No wage in our cases, no class actions. That’s our laser focus right now. Currently I have three attorneys under me and we’re looking at our fourth to extend the offer very soon. So yeah, I mean we’re located in New Jersey and Pennsylvania right now. Mainly in Pennsylvania with an expanding New Jersey practice.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, we’re gonna talk all about that. So I know you got more than one location. I wanna hear how that goes, but, you know, just let’s step back. I mean, you, you know, growing a firm is [00:03:00] not easy and when you, every time you add a person, it’s like a new personality comes in. More people you have to manage. How’s that been for you learning how to do that and just the, I call it, you know, three steps forward, two steps back approach to, you know, the way the law firm gets built. So how’s that been for you?

Andrew Lacy: I think that’s actually been the, and it’s, it’s early and maybe I’ll knock on some wood here and I’ll regret saying this, but I actually think that’s been the easier and better part because we spent a long time operating with good profit margins just for refining systems, anticipating what it would look like to scale with multiple attorney.

So we’re now seeing that when attorneys are coming in and they’re learning my system, my way of doing things, my training program the learning curve isn’t as steep and the questions I’m getting aren’t as many. ’cause I like working with new attorneys. I don’t like bringing in more senior attorneys to, to train and undo some bad habits and figure out what they know and don’t know. I like a clean slate.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s right. They built [00:04:00] the older folks bring a lot of baggage. That’s the way I’ve always done it.

Andrew Lacy: I never say older. I would say more experienced folks may come in

Jonathan Hawkins: that’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. You got me there. Yeah. have been around for a while. Yeah. So, how do you, have you found it hard to find lawyers to bring on?

Andrew Lacy: not at all.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. Where, where do you usually find your folks and how do you go about it? I’m curious.

Andrew Lacy: The LinkedIn presence helps a lot because by the time I post a job opening, I have dozens of people applying. They usually say, I saw you on LinkedIn. I see what you’re about. I like what you’re doing. I think this is a place where I could see myself based on the personality you put online. So that’s probably the most beneficial thing, and I think too.

I was actually talking to a, a law firm owner before we got on about this. I think some people, and again, knock on some huge wood here, I think they try to hire the unicorn. That person who can do everything from start to finish, someone that can for my, in my case, talk to [00:05:00] the client, draft the complaint, and then take the case all the way through trial and be siloed.

But my approach is a little bit different. I only hire people who have mock trial experience and who are comfortable being in court. Because from my view, the other stuff can be commoditized, like the writing, the research and all those things. A lot more supply than demand there. But the supply of really good trial lawyers is small.

So my view is to try to get them early before they get down the big law path and can’t get out of those shackles.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like that approach. I like it. So you got at least two offices in, in like physical offices in Pennsylvania. Do you have a physical office in New Jersey?

Andrew Lacy: We have very small physical offices in both locations.

Jonathan Hawkins: so your,

Andrew Lacy: Yes,

Jonathan Hawkins: and so your team, is it, is it in person? Virtual, hybrid?

Andrew Lacy: it’s virtual. There’s no come into the office policy. The offices exist for two reasons, marketing and in case the attorney so chooses to because they want to

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, you gotta have that location for the go, the Google Juice. Right.

Andrew Lacy: Google just, yeah. [00:06:00] Yeah, sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well cool. So let’s go back. So I guess, you know, first of all why be a lawyer? I’m always curious.

Andrew Lacy: I always wanted to be. I thought being in court and trying cases was cool. I’m kind of a nineties kid, so you know, I thought Johnny Cochran, man, just. Everyone fearing that guy. You know, you used to one’s like 12 or 13 to say like, oh, you were guilty. Call Johnny. You know, he’s so good that he’s so persuasive that he can get someone off of murder.

I’m like, that’s, that’s a really interesting power to have. I always wanted to help people as well. So those are two big reasons. And then the third I thought my skillset would, would mesh well with law. Just how I am as a person and the way I think those types of things.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so you, when you went to law school, you knew you wanted to try cases.

Andrew Lacy: From day one,

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s, that’s awesome. But then you decided to go to big law outta law school, which you know, and I know some people don’t, big law that actually tried a ton of cases, but a lot of people that go, go to big law don’t really get that experience. What about you?

Andrew Lacy: I tried two cases in five years, so I raised my hand for a couple of pro bono federal [00:07:00] cases and got into trial twice. Got into court twice on those, so. You know, it’s probably better than about 95, 90 8% of people get to do in the first five years of practice. And other than that, like I, I picked a practice area where I can do a ton of depositions at, at an early age, and it was, it was just kind of luck.

Those things happen to exist at my firm. I think at a lot of firms, those opportunities don’t exist.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve seen it both ways, but at the big law, like largely they’re hard to find for, for the younger lawyers, I’ve seen some, I, so I went to more of a small boutique litigation type firm to start. So we got thrown to the wolves real quick. But I remember I’d been out, I don’t know, eight or nine years. To hundreds of depositions at that point. And we were on a case with a big law firm and there was an eighth year, my year, whatever it was, eight or nine. And that was their first deposition. And I was like, wow.

Andrew Lacy: Very positive.

Jonathan Hawkins: was tough. Yeah, it was tough for ’em. But we’ll see. Okay, so then, so you started out big law, you did that for a while, and then you sort of stepped out [00:08:00] and then you did a federal clerkship.

Andrew Lacy: Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: what, what led you to that? Why did you decide to sort of jump off and do that?

Andrew Lacy: dumb luck. Someone was leaving their clerkship six months early. Judge needed to fill that quick. I barely had to apply. And from my view, well, you know, everyone in law school told me that this is a great experience, so. Why not? And then also I thought I would get to see a huge docket of cases at various stages which has been extremely helpful to my practice over the years probably the most single helpful thing I think I’ve done other than trial add

Jonathan Hawkins: In your, I imagine your employment practice is heavy, heavy federal court, or is it exclusive Federal court.

Andrew Lacy: just about, we’re trying to sneak away in a sneak state court on a few cases, but it’s mainly federal out here in PA.

Jonathan Hawkins: So tell me, so I, I was able, I feel like I lucked into a clerkship too. I sort of have similar story. And it was cool, man. I loved it. Although I, I did it straight outta law school and for me it was sort of like the, the right, it was like a in-between. So you’re still reading cases and doing that and you’re [00:09:00] not, you know, it’s sort of a good in-between of the, the theory from law school and then actually getting into practicality.

So what, what about you, what was your experience like?

Andrew Lacy: It was the same. I mean, especially having done it for a couple years, I’ve taken a few deaths. I tried the case at that point. And then just seeing. It was more reassuring because you gotta see a wide range of things that were crap coming from big law, small law, medium law, and then some really great things coming from big law, small law, medium law, whatever you might have, right?

So I thought that was like a confidence boost because I can do better than that. A lot of these things. And then also just seeing the different ways lawyers came in, the judges’ commentary on lawyer styles, sort of the, the courtroom rumors around the, the chambers on who’s good, who’s not good. You know, the person everyone comes to see when they step into the courtroom, you know, that has a full courtroom because all the clerks know that person’s coming through and that’s a great, a great watch if they’re doing a trial, that type of thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I did like the inside baseball aspect of it.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: that was [00:10:00] interesting. I’ll tell you the other weird thing for me. I, I don’t know, do you ever practice in the court courthouse where you clerked?

Andrew Lacy: I do all the time.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. What was your experience going back when you were on the other side? Did they treat you differently?

You’re now the outsider or was it

Andrew Lacy: yeah, I mean, you know, you gotta treat everyone like everyone else. You know, I’m, I’m still recused off of my judges’ cases ’cause we’re, you know, pretty close and that’s not fair. And it’s, it’s nice, you know, I know the judges, I know what they’re like. I know when I’m gonna get summary judgment granted against me, you know, basic down those signs at this point, because I know all the individual judges so well just from reputation or experience or you know, what, whatever it is.

And then sometimes, you know, I had a judge comment, Mr. Lace, you, you know better. You are a former clerk in this courthouse and you know, you, you notify this. Local civil rule thing that most people don’t notify. There’s some expectations there.

Jonathan Hawkins: I will tell you the other thing too. It’s there’s this allure with the [00:11:00] federal judges are sort of scary and some of ’em can be, but sort of when you’re, when you’ve been on the inside, it’s not quite as scary. I don’t know. I dunno if you had that experience or not, but

Andrew Lacy: Same experience. I was terrified of my judge before I. Clerk for her. I thought she was like, which I still do. I think she’s one of those brilliant people I’ve ever met. But then clerk for her, you see your softer side or warmer side. She’s an amazing boss. You know, they’re people too,

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.

Andrew Lacy: You’re people

Jonathan Hawkins: So tell me about so big law, reputation, you’re just churning and billing and working your ass off. What was it like going from that environment to the clerkship? I imagine you gotta step back a little bit.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, I beat a couple video games. You know, know the last of us that TV show. I beat that game, that eight months stretch, you know, that’s kind of my hobby. It’s like, this is awesome. I’m working nine to five playing video games with easy weekends off. I’m like, what do I do with all this time?

Jonathan Hawkins: You forgot. You forgot you had all that time. Yeah.

Andrew Lacy: I forgot I had it. You know, like, oh, this is how [00:12:00] the other. 80% of the country lives working nine to five coming home.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So then, okay, your clerkship ended and then you jumped back into the, into the fire. You went back to big law. Right.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, that’s right.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so did you know you’re always gonna go back, or did you think about maybe doing something else before you went back there? What, what was your thought process there?

Andrew Lacy: I applied to a few plaintiff’s firms and I’m from Pittsburgh, so my move was Pittsburgh. Federal clerkship in Pittsburgh, and then my wife and I decided, you know, maybe could go to a bigger city, try that out. So we moved to Philadelphia without any connections. So during that time, you know, I’m marketable as a federal clerk.

I started applying to the big plaintiff PI firms. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, like client Specter and Salts Mar the, the people get these national MDLs. And I had a defense background on the product side too. So. Thought it’ll be a good fit. And then I bombed all the interviews. I was like, okay, time will go back to big law. Seriously.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. [00:13:00] You know, well, I tell this story, people have listened to me. They hear it over and over, but you know, I went to law school wanting to be a plaintiff’s trial lawyer. That’s what I want. I’ve never done it, but I, that’s what I wanted to do and I could not get a job. It’s like they did not hire straight outta law school.

And then I ended up sort of. Going down a path and never got off. But it, it’s, it can be hard to get those plaintiff jobs if, if you don’t just create it yourself,

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, I was, I was actually talking to fellow law firm owner about that today. I, you know, we’re talking about hiring and you know, he’s looking at people with four to six years of experience. And I said, look, you didn’t catch people year one. They still really want to do this, and they’re gonna savor every court opportunity, every deposition, every mediation, they’re gonna be asking their friends, what are they doing right now?

They’re gonna be telling ’em, oh, I’m sitting behind the desk, and suddenly your job looks a lot better than other people’s jobs. Right? And then they’re gonna expect a lot less pay because they’re trading that for experience right now, and they know it and they love it. So. That the whole point about getting down that path, you know, they don’t have the families yet.

The, the [00:14:00] handcuffs, the obligations, you know, they can give you a couple years before they expect, you know, mid six figures or whatever much they wanna get paid.

Jonathan Hawkins: I tell you, I mean, you’ve seen it. I mean, it’s, it’s hard coming from a big law, particularly where you’re getting. A fat salary to then say, all right, I’m gonna give up a huge chunk of that for the risk of maybe a contingency upside. I think if you do it and you stick with it long term, you’re gonna do better.

But in the short term, you’re gonna take a take a hit, and a lot of people just won’t do it.

Andrew Lacy: I say most people won’t do it unless you start out and that’s what you know. And then you also have to figure, right, like if I had a first, I have a first year right now, his big hit’s not gonna be until year three you know, when he’s basically. Getting ready to start trying cases because it takes a two year, three year lifecycle, right? So he’s gotta wait it out, but he can wait it out. Now. That sounds a lot better than being 32 and waiting until you’re 36 for that big

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, that’s right. And you’ve got some kids and lots of

Andrew Lacy: Kids in there. [00:15:00] I, I mean, I don’t, how do you do that?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so you, you went back to big law and then eventually you left there, and then I think you left there to start your firm. Is that right?

Andrew Lacy: That’s right. It’s a big law to my own firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. What pushed you to do it? What was the thing that pushed you to do it?

Andrew Lacy: Year five. Do you wanna make partner in big law? I think you gotta answer that question for yourself. I think everyone at the firm does, right? The answer is yes. You need to, you know, really dig in and start doing those things to prepare for that getting business. Figuring out firm dynamics, politic politics on top of your 2000, you know, hour billable requirement.

The answer is no. For me, I was a good associate, I think well regarded, but the answer was still no, it’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want to be an equity partner in 10 years at a big law firm. So I was like, all right, maybe like a federal prosecutor or state prosecutor, I’m like, oh, I gotta put people in jail.

And I don’t know if that really vibes with my personality public defender. It’s a huge pay cut and all my clients are gonna jail that that seems really too emotional for me. And I was all right [00:16:00] in-house. That looks good. I was like, well, now I gotta manage a portfolio of cases and I can’t litigate and did that interview.

I was like, all right, that sucks. I was like, all right, plaintiff’s firms, well, I just got rejected from all the good ones in Philadelphia, so I don’t think they’re gonna hire me. So I was like, all right, well what’s next? All right. Employ plaintiff’s employment firms. I’m like interview of one. You know, the deal was like you could make 33% of your revenue with no salary.

I’m like, that doesn’t sound great. I bet you I can get my own employment cases and I could keep a hundred percent of that my server head, and that was the bet I made.

Jonathan Hawkins: I really like how you took, took me through that, that thought process and it, I mean, it’s spot on. So why employment versus personal injury? Why? I mean, had you done employment work before or is it something you just said, all right, I’m gonna do it, and why?

Andrew Lacy: Two reasons. One was a big advantage of my wife as a defense employment lawyer, so I figured I could bounce early questions off of her. And then two, [00:17:00] the market. So I’m from Pittsburgh at the time I saw no one in Pittsburgh was optimizing their website for search engine optimization.

So I’m sure you’ve had people on podcast. I’ve talked through that and telling poor people. But I’m like, okay, I bet you if I learn this myself, I can rank a website in Pittsburgh while living in Philadelphia during the pandemic and start getting cases. I proved that theory right in like two months. I’m like number one on Google in Pittsburgh, so now I’m getting flooded with like 30 to 50 cases, you know, a month for just me.

So yeah, that was basically the thought process. I was like, why go personal injury five years out? Even it was there for me even a little bit, I’m like, do I really wanna start being the guy grinding for referrals with, you know, doc, you know, with, I don’t know if they do like nurses or whatever, the chiros and getting the terrible cases from the big firms and paying off a third referral fee.

And that’s gonna be my start because I can’t put up a billboard on money. I can’t do paperclip, I don’t have money. So, yeah, that’s basically.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk, let’s talk about your [00:18:00] Pittsburgh office. So you, you, there’s no Google or very little Google presence. You get there and you become number one and you start flooded with the calls. I imagine, tell me if I’m wrong. Just dealing with the incoming calls could be a full-time job, probably for a while.

You had to figure that out. How do you screen the clients you’re dealing with that all day. You can’t do the. Do the actual work. So how did you handle that?

Andrew Lacy: Not well at first. That was the worst thing that ever happened to me was getting be always having calls from day one was actually the worst thing that happened to me as a law firm owner. Because I thought I was doing everything right because all the PI lawyers told me, just go out there and get cases.

That’s all you gotta do. You know? And how are you getting cases? How are you getting cases? How are you getting cases? Well. If that works in personal injury, it doesn’t work so well in employment law because you gotta vet these cases. You can’t just take on everything. And then on top of that, every case you do take is an emotional rollercoaster with the client.

So you had to take the right cases and then you had the right, have the right system to take these cases. [00:19:00] Right. So it was bad, like it was a bad thing that happened to me early on. I wasn’t, I didn’t have any money coming in the door. Everything was a contingency fee. I didn’t know how to charge people.

I didn’t know how to set up a trust account. It was, yeah, it was a train wreck first.

Jonathan Hawkins: And I imagine, I mean, anybody that gets fired. Is pissed off and they think there’s a bad reason for it. Maybe it’s just you’re just not a good employee. So, ha. You probably had to sort through a lot of that, I imagine,

Andrew Lacy: A lot of that, a lot of people who you know feel that they were, eh. A lot. There’s a lot of reasonable people, a lot of people not so reasonable, a lot of pissed off people, lot of respectful people. It’s a, it’s a huge bag. And you have to have good systems for figuring out how to get to the right people.

Jonathan Hawkins: and I don’t know what’s, what’s it like up there? The just an employment, a plaintiff employment case. I, I know, you know, in Georgia it’s, it’s an uphill battle. I’ll say that. is it that way up there or is it pretty, even if, I mean, what’s the general sort of view of in the federal bench of a, a plaintiff type employment case?

Andrew Lacy: I had say about the exact same [00:20:00] as the Northern District of Georgia. I’ve, I have some friends down there who do pretty well, and I think we’re, we’re, we’re trading notes and we’re seeing about the same things.

Jonathan Hawkins: We probably, well, when we go offline, we’ll trade names. I bet. I bet I know ’em. I So, okay, so you, you’re in Philly. You, you start sort of the Pittsburgh office. Did you also start the Philly office at the same time or did you say, I’m just gonna do the Pittsburgh office?

Andrew Lacy: I did the Pittsburgh office for a whole year, maybe a year, and some change

Jonathan Hawkins: And that’s how you sort of learned how to screen and develop cases and all that. When did you decide to open the Philadelphia office?

Andrew Lacy: about a year, I think, and then some change into it. The plan was. Like to plant the seed early. ’cause Philly’s not the same as Pittsburgh. There’s some, there’s some sophisticated marketers in Philadelphia. So I thought, and I think I was correct, this is gonna take me two or three years to really, you know, start carving out the market for myself.

So I was like, I need to start this now. So by the time I’m ready to take on all these extra cases in two or three [00:21:00] years, the pipeline’s gonna be there in Philly. I think I was right about that one actually. It took about two or three years. I mean, it was a steady increase up and then this year’s been just, you know,

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so you got tons of tons of clients. Your, when did you hire your first attorney in this timeline?

Andrew Lacy: oh, right around year one.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, because that’s a whole new dynamic, you know, hiring, recruiting, all that, and then onboarding, managing, delegating. How did you learn all that?

Andrew Lacy: Not well at first. So she didn’t last very long. You know, I don’t, I don’t think there’s, she’s a wonderful person and there were reasons for the departure you know, nothing to do with either me or her. And then I was left. This was the one of the hardest points in my career I was left with. 15 cases in litigations, a portfolio of 60 to 65 cases, which doesn’t sound a lot for a personal injury attorney, but for an employment attorney that’s like 10 hour, 12 hour days, just litigating the things.

And then I was covering all of it. So then I had to hire [00:22:00] again immediately after that about four months later. And luckily he’s worked out pretty well for me. He’s been with me about two and a half years. But I didn’t hire another attorney for a while after him ’cause I was so traumatized from that experience.

I’m like, I’m never doing this again. Where I don’t have the systems in place. I don’t have the pieces in place to support a new attorney. I don’t know. Cash flow. I don’t know my revenue, I don’t know my profit margin. I don’t know how I’m gonna make money on these cases. I know I got the cases, but how are they valuable?

Those are all different things I learned over the last two and a half years.

Jonathan Hawkins: So for people out there that may be in big law, thinking about starting a firm, what kind of advice would you give them to set it up for success?

Andrew Lacy: Bill by the hour and like nine outta 10 cases, you’d be better off billing by the hour at first.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s good. You’re, you’re, you’re dissuading all your competition from coming in on the plaintiff employment side there.

Andrew Lacy: [00:23:00] Maybe, maybe I don’t, I want more. I think there needs to be more good lawyers. I, I feel strongly that this bar needs to be stronger. There’s a lot of barriers or to entry to do what I do.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, you’re right. I mean. So you, you said your wife is a defense attorney, so you at least had her, she was working, I assume, so you had some, some runway where you, you didn’t have to be making money. I immediately, I assume.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, about two or three years.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. That’s, that’s helpful. That’s helpful.

Andrew Lacy: And then I had big loss savings, so, you know, I had a, I had a little mini, mini mini war chest. As in, I didn’t need to like downsize my house and sell all my stuff

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. So, okay, so you, you, you were in Philly, you started the Pittsburgh. You’re like, this is going pretty well. You sort of figured it out. Then you’ve created the Philly. So when did you move to New Jersey? How did that come about?

Andrew Lacy: about a year and a half ago. Values are much higher. My other associate, he’s, he’s barred in New Jersey, so. He was provocating into some of the Penn, you know, Pennsylvania stuff. And [00:24:00] you know, it just made sense to expand there to, because then you can be, actually be in state court in New Jersey.

It’s one of the better jurisdictions in the country. So the, the hope and starting, starting to materialize a bit was that okay, these cases are more competitive than even Philadelphia. But if I plant the seed now, by the time I’m ready to harvest it, same type of deal. I’m gonna be ready to, to handle the cases that are coming in.

Jonathan Hawkins: So every time you add a jurisdiction and add another attorney, you just add complexity. So how do you, how do you manage it?

Andrew Lacy: This is the one thing I think that sets us apart. I have a brilliant COO, so she’s created almost a proprietary system within Airtable. Where we have like six different calendar views. We have a whole task management system. We have all these different sta like automatic script formulas for the statute limitations.

Because of employment law, you have three on every case and they’re all shorter than two years. So you know, if you miss one, you may miss the [00:25:00] other. It may be, you know, it is very evaluative at the intake stage of which statute of limitation even applies. So that that in of itself was like a two year proprietary process in my view.

And she just has a background in in that and she loves it and she’s very good at that type of thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. How did you find her? I need somebody like that. How’d you find her? We all need somebody like that.

Andrew Lacy: I don’t wanna put too much of her, her personal information out there, but I’ll just say this was an Orthodox we were working a, a case together. Yeah, she was actually a client and I called the bar and I said, look, this person would be perfect for what I’m trying to do here. And the bar said there’s no, there’s no issue with you hiring your client so long as you get informed consent waivers.

And if there ever was a conflict between you and her, you immediately withdraw. Case ended, you’ve never had any problems with it. She’s been with me for four years.

Jonathan Hawkins: So the answer is you got lucky.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah. Again, again. Yes. Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: I tell you [00:26:00] that. That’s, that’s awesome. I mean, you know, sort of the lesson there and the lesson I’ve, I’ve sort of over the years just hit, hits home every time. It’s, when you find the talent, you gotta jump on it because It is rare. The unicorns are out there, but they’re hard to find. But when you see one, you gotta create a space and you gotta go for ’em.

So it sounds sort of like you recognized that and jumped on it.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, I mean, really if I didn’t have her for your sue and through, I would’ve made money. Like I, I was not profit for two years. I’m very open about that on LinkedIn and things like that. If I didn’t have her, I probably would’ve made money. But where I’m seeing today, the infrastructure she built. I’m just amazed, like I am floored because she’s like showing me these things and she goes, yeah, I thought of this two years ago, Andrew, you’re just realizing now how important they are.

And I’m like, oh. And she said, yeah, I wasn’t just, you know, creating these things for the fun of it. I was doing it because I saw the vision that you didn’t even see. And I, I anticipated these points when you were trying to scale and now I’ve made [00:27:00] everything a lot easier for you to do so.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. So she really is a unicorn. I mean.

Andrew Lacy: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. She, she’s brilliant. She’s brilliant.

Jonathan Hawkins: And okay, so take me through. That’s the other thing I hear a lot about lawyers, especially when they’re early in their journey of starting their firm, that they’re scared to spend any money, they’re scared to hire anybody. They think it’s just money out the door. I’m not gonna make any money.

Why would I do this? What led you to say, I’m willing to take the risk, the investment to do this?

Andrew Lacy: Being a little bit on the younger side, honestly, my view of it was, did this at a good time. I just turned 31. I don’t have a kid yet. I’m gonna give this everything I got for three, four years. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I got a lifetime and money, I made money before my wife’s doing okay is what is right.

So that was kind of my view of it and that’s why I think there is a sweet spot to starting your firm. And I think it is a little bit on the younger side before you have all the obligations. I could be wrong though. I know there’ve been many, there’s many different ways to do it. A lot of PI attorneys do it when they’re 40 and they got a huge case coming in and they can cash out on that and some other people might do [00:28:00] it when they have a huge client that’s ready to leave big law with ’em.

It’s a great time to do it, but I think if you’re building it from scratch, you gotta do it early, it’s gonna take time.

Jonathan Hawkins: And it sounds like you’re pretty tech forward You invest systems.

Andrew Lacy: Extremely.

Jonathan Hawkins: so you use Airtable. What, what other sorts of things are in your tech stack?

Andrew Lacy: Actually, my number one tool this year has been Loom. I’ve recorded myself doing every single piece of litigation process. In a lifecycle of employment, we have tasks for every single piece of the lifecycle of an employment case. I assign a task to every new associate who can see the video and then also see the writeup, which I use like Claude and ChatGPT for it, which I’ve already gone through and revised step by step on how they should do this task, so then I can just swap people in and out. So I, I have lot students do some stuff, you know, some discovery requests just for them. The task, they see it, they know where things are in the system. I have my whole training system and Airtable systematized because it’s all through Loom video walkthroughs [00:29:00] probably have like 150 of them. Honestly, that’s, that’s where I spent my time this year.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so the, the Loom videos and the tasks, those are housed within Airtable.

Andrew Lacy: The loom, just house within Loom. And then I have a, a link to the video within Airtable and then short SOPs in Airtable for every task once they see the task and they get directed to the longer training manual than the refresher I’ve done it before. Those types of things. And then I used to test them out on like overseas talent to make sure that like it came back right, and I figured they could do it.

Someone in the Philippines could do it for $10 an hour. That means that my first year attorney should be able to follow directions and do it right.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so let’s talk about Airtable for a minute. I, I played around with it. It’s confusing to me. I mean, it’s overwhelming. What was it the COO that said, let’s use Airtable, or was it your idea? And then she just happened to know how to do it or figure it out.

Andrew Lacy: I was so anti it for like three years. Every single, almost every month, I’d be like, let’s just get rid of this [00:30:00] and get law addicts. Let’s get rid of this and get foul V. Why are we spending all this time, all this effort building out an Airtable? And she’s like, no, no, Andrew, just, just trust the process. But yeah, you’re right.

It’s confusing. I think you need a, a builder to help you out. She’s a certified builder now. She knows how to put everything to interfaces so it looks great to the team. And in the end, I guess it’s kind of saving me money ’cause it’s cheaper than having foul by and lead docket combined.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. And then the employment cases, there’s a fee component typically as part of the damages, so you have to track your time. What do you use to track your time? That’s, is that a near table too? Is it something else?

Andrew Lacy: We just use the task system, so we have standardization for the tasks, and then we have a fee petition. We add up all the tasks and then add up all the you know, emails and calls and, you know, but I’m not, I don’t really want my at attorneys to be tracking every single decimal point, like they’re in big. one of the attractiveness is of being a plaintiff’s lawyer. Right. I’m gonna put that back on them.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so that’s pretty cool. So, so let’s say certain type of pleading. [00:31:00] You have sort of pre-assigned what, what you say is an appropriate amount of time for that, and then at the end of the case when you need to run the thing, it just assigns that value to it with a, with a rate.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah. Exactly. And the beauty is more for KPIs. You know, I’m gonna try a case two or three a year, but I need to figure out how, where time went, you know, over the course of every case who did what he was actually productive on the case. You know, it’s one thing if an attorney pulls in like 450 in revenue, but were they actually doing the work to get there or to get lucky on a good break? You’d have that data. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. So how did you learn how to track and deal with data? I as, as you’ve grown as the leader of the firm, or did you have a background in it?

Andrew Lacy: no, I’ve just become obsessive about it. Over the last like year and some change, we started really becoming profitable. Then the question became how can we optimize and downside the risk of a bad year? Because before I was just fighting for a good year. Then I got a really good settlement and my thought [00:32:00] process immediately wasn’t happiness.

It was was his luck because I had a, I had a home run to get a great year. Home runs only come around every so often. How do I hit the singles and doubles and make sure that we’re hitting the same marks, which did last year? No home runs.

Jonathan Hawkins: And I imagine really understanding that data of the cases helps you screen cases and determine which ones to accept and reject, I imagine.

Andrew Lacy: Also that too. It’s all about the numbers.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

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 let’s talk a little bit about how you get cases. Obviously. Google, which we sort of talked about, is that your main source? You don’t have to gimme the secrets, but is it referral based? Is it more [00:33:00] digital marketing? Something in between.

Andrew Lacy: Anything, it’s 80%. Google Google. It’s tough to completely break it down. So I have the data over time, which is interesting because I was never a referral marketer. I don’t like giving referral fees. I will, you know, obviously I honor every agreement, diversify my marketing portfolio. But we’ve actually grown in referrals over time from attorneys, so about 20%, which is interesting because I have a huge LinkedIn presence, so I’m assuming.

That LinkedIn’s feeding that part of the engine and then SEO’s feeding the other 80%. But then also, you can’t really track the people who come through Google, but they say that they’re actually referred to by an attorney, but the attorney is just like, oh, here’s a good person to talk to. ’cause a lot of people won’t actually seek a fee on an an employment case like pi.

They won’t know they can seek a referral fee or they don’t really feel like they want to. It’s a little bit different.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I’ve had, you know, I have [00:34:00] employment, employment, colleagues, friends, whatever that have, basically they tell the PI folks just economically, it’s really hard. It’s not the same in terms of the referral fee relationship. I imagine you would agree with that.

Andrew Lacy: 100%. It’s not the same. There’s a lot of tension between our bars on that. ’cause they, they’re, they’re real aggressive about trying to lock me into some type of fee agreement. And I’m like, I don’t know. And I can’t tell you. Right. I don’t have meds, you know, I can’t tell you this case is worth three time meds, you

Jonathan Hawkins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I guess you do have some insurance, but not always.

Andrew Lacy: Not always. Sometimes insurance hurts. You know, like if I have a high deductible plan, that means I gotta push the case through summary judgment, just since they start taking me serious. ’cause it’s still company money and not insurance money.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. All right, so you mentioned LinkedIn. Let’s talk about that. So you, you are, you know, I, you post a lot, a lot of good stuff, a lot of good stuff on there. What, what got you involved in LinkedIn?

Andrew Lacy: I just posted about me opening my own firm. I got like 500 likes, and I was like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Why don’t I just keep doing that? [00:35:00] So I did it sporadically for a year or two, not thinking much of it, and I was, I just kept doing it like, all right. Then eventually I realized, well, maybe I could just do more of this.

And it’s helping me get cases and it’s a good counterweight to my my SEO strategy because I always like to diversify in case I’m always as a SEO guy. My ultimate paranoia changes in the algorithm.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.

Andrew Lacy: So I’m like, anything could change at any time. So I’m always like, what’s the next thing to start investing my marketing dollars in that no one else is doing?

At the time, it was LinkedIn, no one was really doing it back then.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, that’s the thing about LinkedIn and you talk about algorithm. I mean, I started LinkedIn three plus, three and a half, I don’t know, years ago and early. It, it was easy. It was like it was easy back there. I

Andrew Lacy: I started in 21.

Jonathan Hawkins: Easy. And then they started tweaking things and I fell off a cliff. I’m like, what am I doing wrong?

I hadn’t changed anything. And it, it, it, it changed. It’s a lot harder than it used to be. How have you dealt with that? I.

Andrew Lacy: Consistency and just not caring because I got, I don’t have all my eggs in the LinkedIn [00:36:00] basket. I, I wouldn’t be hurt. I’m not gonna lie to you. If Google decided to completely upend things, which is the thing I’m preparing for now, I’m preparing for ai. SEO. But I also view it as, I’m also smiling because I was at the tail end of regular SEO, kind of at the beginning, middle of LinkedIn, but now I get to be at the beginning of ai, SEO.

So this is awesome for me because I’m ready for it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so well, let’s, let’s stay on LinkedIn for a minute, then we’ll get to the AI SEO. So LinkedIn you know, my experience which I’m sure is yours too, you get a national and even in international reach, and so you were known. Internationally, probably now, certainly nationally. But you only practice main, or at least you practice mainly in, you know, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Do you get referrals from other places, like where the case, let’s say the case is in Denver or la, do you get those kind of cases?

Andrew Lacy: Sometimes they filter it out through my form. Usually if it’s something good, I’ll send it to one of my friends out there, and I don’t even [00:37:00] ask for a referral fee half the time. Just like, just take it. Think of me next time.

Jonathan Hawkins: And the other thing I’ve noticed, I’m curious about you. for a while, I posted every day for, for probably two years. Every day. I don’t do that quite as much anymore, but I post a lot. So there are people locally here in Atlanta that never. Like a post. They never comment on a post. There’s no evidence that, that they’ve seen the post.

So I have no, just, there’s no evidence that they’ve seen it. And then I’ll go to a bar event or I’ll see, see them somewhere and they tell me, man, I see your LinkedIn post all the time. It’s great. Blah, blah,

Andrew Lacy: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: Do you have that experience?

Andrew Lacy: same exact experience.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so like I try to tell lawyers to do it. They’re like, well, I’m never gonna get a case out of it.

And it’s, it’s, it’s like in-person networking on steroids at scale. So you should do it.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I don’t think, I don’t.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of people are, they’re nervous, put themselves out there, so I guess you weren’t, you just did it.

Andrew Lacy: The best advice I got was from a big law partner [00:38:00] who’s still a good friend of mine. We’re in the, the shameless self-promotion business. And never forget it told me that as a first year associate, I never forgot it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I like your post and if anybody out there is not following you, they need to go follow you. It’s good stuff. How do you come up with your ideas?

Andrew Lacy: I, I’m, I don’t have a great system, honestly. I just wake up and I’m like, what’s, what am I thinking about today? I just write it down and then I post it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Nice. Nice.

Andrew Lacy: Or like if I have like, oh, like it’s at night, I’m like, that sucked two years ago. I write it down and then I schedule a post. I, there’s no real

Jonathan Hawkins: I, I have a note, a note file that I just add things all the time as I think of them. Sometimes I go back and I’m like, yeah, that was not a good idea, but I still write it down. All right. So, let’s talk about you know, you’ve grown a lot. Sounds like, what’s next? What are you looking at down the future?

Andrew Lacy: My ultimate goal has always been to have healthy profit margin for myself and my family to extract myself. [00:39:00] From all the things I do not like doing about practicing law discovery requests, complaints, reviewing that type of stuff. I like motions for summary judgment. I’m a good writer, so I’ll never probably stop tinkering with that, but eventually I’ll probably give it up.

Just be trying cases, settling cases, high level strategy in the business, and then running the business and then just creating the lifestyle I want, you know, I don’t wanna work. 50, 60 hours for the rest of my life. That’s why I started the firm because like in 10 years, what do I want to be doing? And I felt like I could make big law equity, money working half as much.

And that to me seems way better. And if I fall short and make half of big law equity money working half as much fine. that’s, That works too.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk about that, that, so, the experience, especially from a big law perspective, you’re just working your ass off and you say, all right, I’m gonna start my firm. I won’t have to work as much. But then there comes a point, especially as you’re growing it, that you’re probably working more. What was your, what’s been your [00:40:00] experience in that?

Andrew Lacy: I definitely worked more that year, that two, three year mark where I was really figuring things out and I’m always knocking on wood. I’m always thinking it could fall apart still even the day, five years later. And there’s no evidence that it will, but you know, it could. Yeah, I mean, look, don’t, don’t start a firm.

You wanna work, like, work less at first, in my view. You start a firm ’cause you wanna work less in 10 to 15 years. You wanna have something you can sell. You want to have something that you can scale down and still make great money doing, which is not, it’s not an available option. As a big law equity partner, they’ll de equitize you and they’ll throw you out the door if you’re not working hard.

Bringing in cases, bringing in clients, and working 50, 60 hours a week.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great point. the prize for for making equity partners. Congrats. You gotta work twice as much now.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what, what’s, what’s some a typical week like for you now in terms of in the firm, you know, working [00:41:00] on client cases versus on the firm? More leadership type work.

Andrew Lacy: I’d probably say I’m still like 66% in the firm because I have a COO who handles so much of like HR, tech training, operations systems, data. I basically, I paid her to be an extension of me on that part of it. So every day I do the same thing. I wake up, I write my LinkedIn post, walk the dog, write my LinkedIn post.

Now I’m recording my TikTok video every single day. So I’m like, all right, pay myself first in the marketing, knock it out. And then usually we have our 9:00 AM meeting. We do a little team huddle. I’m all virtual, so I’m very strict on everyone puts cameras on 9:00 AM tells you what they did yesterday.

One thing they’re gonna do today and any roadblocks is success today. It takes five minutes. 9 0 5 to like 11:00 AM is deep work on all my cases. 1130, and then pretty much all hell breaks loose in the afternoon with like client consults, you know, [00:42:00] those council calls, vendor calls, marketing stuff, strategy on the firm, like I don’t even know.

Jonathan Hawkins: Let me ask you, strategy on client consulting, calendaring, how do you handle that? Do you have what’s, what’s your system for that in terms of the leads coming in? They get screened, I guess, somehow, and then you get consults scheduled on your calendar somehow, and then you do the consults. Tell, take me through that process.

Andrew Lacy: Okay, so we filter everything through a form. We can’t qualify leave without the form being filled out. It’s not, it’s not pi and we just have to recognize that. I go through and I have an AI sort of agent and Airtable that gives me basic like. No, automatically declined. So then they get automatically declined.

They get kicked an email with their non-engagement letter and put on a nice drip campaign for like 10 weeks with like helpful employment information. If they have you know, they qualify. I take a closer look. Then I started sounding out cases based on priority, so [00:43:00] huge case, high damages. Highly played employee.

They’re not hiring my first year. That’s going to me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna close ’em. I have to sell them, right? Because someone else will. And you know, they’re not gonna hire the, the second or third year. If it’s something I think they could reasonably close themself, then that’s how I assign it out. Click of a button, they get a link.

Being the client, they get follow up emails until they booked through my Calendly. And then once they booked through the Calendly, they get another series of drip and follow up emails all the way up until. The initial consultation. Initial consultation happens. If they are, if they then are qualified again that we think that they’re gonna become a client, we have ’em fill out one more little form that’s automated once we get that back.

Engagement letter’s automated. Once we get that back, they’re now move forward in our case file case is open about folders created all that good stuff. And then our demand letters are signed out.

Jonathan Hawkins: That sounds awesome. That that’s [00:44:00] incredible. I got some, some details here, so. The, the email drip campaign. What do you use for that?

Andrew Lacy: We are using beehive. That’s actually a new thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: What did you use before that? Is that the, the

Andrew Lacy: That’s a new initiative actually. That’s a new marketing. A new marketing stream.

Jonathan Hawkins: And then that talks, obviously talks to Airtable.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah. So Airtable tags it and then it immediately gets kicked into beehive, and then the drip campaign starts.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So who built that out for you? Your COO.

Andrew Lacy: Of course

Jonathan Hawkins: that’s awesome, man.

Andrew Lacy: With my, you know, she, she always gets mad at me too, because I could have done it myself, and then she’s like, Andrew, no. I’m like, because I like it too. I like this stuff too. She’s like, stay out of this. I’m like, all right, fine.

Jonathan Hawkins: so let’s talk about, so the, I really like the ones you turn down, you send ’em the non-engagement letter, which from an ethics standpoint, perfect. Dead on. But then you have this drip campaign. That’s awesome. Is it, do you ask for a Google review somewhere in there too? Or you’re, you’re,

Andrew Lacy: not yet, I might. Right now we’re just [00:45:00] kind of measuring metrics because beehive’s cool because you can see open rates, click through rates. All those types of things, and we’re just basically testing what works. So the first email is a very empathetic email. It basically says like, all right, here’s the real reason why we didn’t take your case.

You know, not so what someone else is gonna tell you. And we just go through it for information purposes only. It comes down to economics. It comes down to, you know, most employment lawyers are overworked, overburdened, you know, just because I said no, doesn’t mean that you don’t have a valuable case. It’s very hard to even predict, but we can’t extend free consults to everyone.

And then I acknowledge, you know, all their, you know, all that they’re going through at that time. It’s a very high rate. Open email’s about 50%. And then the next email they get is understanding their rights for the EEOC, because probably 60% these people are never gonna find a lawyer who call one. So I’m like, okay, here’s the EOC process.

I give ’em a, a drip email about that. And then the next email is, here’s what could sync your EEOC case, because there’s a lot of confusion on. [00:46:00] Filling out the questionnaire versus filing a charge. Which one’s right, which one’s wrong. And the next thing I send them is some templates on how to fill out their own charge. And then the, the money email from me is actually after that for the people who filled out the charge, didn’t find a lawyer, and now they’re at a mediation. I tell ’em to call me back if the mediation happens, because then we can jump in, do the mediation for them, and then help ’em out then, ’cause usually if there’s a mediation scheduled, so as a case worth evaluating again.

Because all my lawyers gotta do is go in and step into the mediation. So we’re trying to turn our non-engaged people at like 300 people a month into a new marketing referral source.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is really, man, this is high level stuff. So what is the cadence on the drips? Is it, you know, early on it’s probably pretty quick and then obviously the mediation will happen months probably from the initial rejection, we’ll call it. So is that spaced out?

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, I think right now we have up to 12 weeks, so the mediation kind of money ish email comes around week five with a [00:47:00] thought process being that they’re just gonna remember that they opened it or saw the title and then you never know which ones are gonna open. We have an email telling them, Hey, you can call us back, and if you need a PI referral, we have a network of people to do that for you too.

So it’s all about trying to just add value to the, the client in various times in their life. We have an email about unemployment and how they sh you know, the information about the fact that they could still file even if they have an employment case and won’t hurt them. Not a lot of people know that.

Even if they have a lawyer, they may not know that. ’cause I get that question a lot and sometimes I forget to tell people. So that’s, that’s the process basically.

Jonathan Hawkins: You. You just give it a masterclass, really. I mean, this is really good stuff. Other people listening to this, this is really, really high level, good stuff. Do you embed videos? Are you embedding your loom videos or is it all text?

Andrew Lacy: It is all text right now. It’s early, so we’re still, we’re still playing with what works and I’m kind of a million ideas at a, at one type of guy. And then I forget about, so like, we’re [00:48:00] always gonna come back and refine and that’s why I have my COO. She’s the one that holds me down and likes like, all right.

Finish this one, Andrew, before you move out to your next TikTok thing that you’re trying to figure out.

Jonathan Hawkins: I am with you, man. I live that every day. Every damn day I am moving on. I, I say I’m chasing squirrels. I’m, I’m everywhere. So let’s talk about TikTok. You mentioned TikTok. So how long have you been on that and what’s, what’s your, you know, what’s your success or how do you feel about that?

Andrew Lacy: Been on it for a year and up until three weeks ago, I had a hundred, 150 followers. Then I got, I don’t know what I’m allowed to say here. I also was just say, I got mad. I’m like, how are, I’m looking at all these people that are influencers in the employment space with, you know, some of you have 2 million followers.

I’m like, how am I only getting 150? You know? And these people are getting 2 million. So now I was like, maybe I should just learn the app because I, when I put my mind on something, I learn it. I’m usually pretty good at it. And if I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t really work that hard at it. I made some videos sent to an editor, and then that was that.

And I started really [00:49:00] working with them, like, I can just do this myself in 10 minutes per video and people like that a lot more than these, like fancy cut scenes, cut in, cut out. And then I just had one blow up for like 130,000 views last week. So now I’m at like a 1500 followers. So, you know, I’m just gonna keep the gravy train going and I’ve already gotten like 30, 40, 50 people reach out over the last three or four weeks.

So yeah, that’s just my, that’s my, that’s my 2026 strategy. TikTok video, YouTube. That’s where the, that’s the direction people are going.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like it. So I have a similar approach. Every year I try sort of a new, big marketing initiative. That’s gonna be my focus for the year. And then I stack, because I’m with, you know, I have a thousand I ideas, and if I do them all, I’m gonna do none of ’em. Right. And I’ll probably stop all of ’em and never get any of ’em done.

So I always pick one big one. So it sounds like TikTok is yours, I guess, in conjunction with YouTube. Do you have a big YouTube channel now?

Andrew Lacy: That’s, that’s the next frontier. So my thing this year was the [00:50:00] newsletter, LinkedIn mastering that. So mastering the text. Now towards the end of this year, I think I’m gonna be mastering the video. And then towards the next year, that’s, that’s my goal. Start mastering the video.

Jonathan Hawkins: Instead the newsletter, email, newsletter.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah. The drip campaign or whatever I do. That was, that was my brainstorming project of this year.

Jonathan Hawkins: So other than the drip campaign that eventually ends, do you have like. I mean, need my news newsletter that you send out to everybody.

Andrew Lacy: No,

Jonathan Hawkins: You gotta put that on the list too.

Andrew Lacy: Put that list

Jonathan Hawkins: Those, that works. Trust me.

Andrew Lacy: That’s on there.

Jonathan Hawkins: and everybody that’s listening sign up for mine. If you’re not on mine right now. It’s a short and sweet email to lawyers about practice and tips and things like that. So, yeah. With the amount of people that, that are coming through all your lead channels. I mean, your list is probably thousands. I mean, probably a huge list.

You could really do some things with [00:51:00] that, I think

Andrew Lacy: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: give it to your COO give.

Andrew Lacy: Yeah, exactly. She’s, she’s, she’s, this is in her, this is percolating in her brain.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, cool. Well, you know, I, I’ll sort of wrap this up, but, you mentioned video games. Do you have time to do things for fun? And what kind of things do you do?

Andrew Lacy: I like playing video games, hanging out with my wife. She’s got back in the basketball in Philadelphia. There’s no indoor courts. I had to buy this like $200 a month membership, and I fought it forever. Did it. Alright, I’m gonna do this. And it’s been fantastic. That’s basically it, you know, I don’t really, I like working on my firm too.

It’s part of, it’s a hobby for me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So for, for people out there, well, first of all, thanks for coming on Andrew. This has been real

Andrew Lacy: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: And I’ll say again. Uh. If you’re not following him on LinkedIn, please go do it. Really good posts. I want when you get your email newsletter set up, add me to it. I’d like, you know, add me to it, please.

But yeah, for people out there that wanna find you, what’s the best way?

Andrew Lacy: My website, it’s employment [00:52:00] -labor-law.com. That will lead you to our intake form if you have a case. You can also follow me on LinkedIn, Andrew Lacy Jr. Great way. And now on TikTok at Attorney Lacy.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, Andrew. Thanks again man. Thanks for coming off.

Andrew Lacy: Absolutely. Absolute pleasure.

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