Unlocking Business Success in Law Firms: Troy Werner's Key Strategies for Estate Planning and Probate

Are you ready to unlock the secrets to transforming a general practice into a thriving business with a focus on estate planning and probate? Buckle up for an enlightening conversation with Troy Werner, owner of the Werner Law Firm, as he shares his inspiring journey and the strategies that doubled their revenue. From being thrown into court the day after he was sworn in to realizing his passion for estate planning, Troy's story is a goldmine of insights for anyone keen on understanding the true business side of running a law firm.

Ever wondered how relocation can give your business a new lease of life? Hear from a lawyer who recently moved to Texas with his family, and how this move became a game-changer for his estate planning firm. Gain some serious marketing knowledge as he reveals his key focus on organic Google search results, the power of Google reviews, and the art of gracefully handling negative reviews. With discussions highlighting the benefits of a hybrid business model and the role of top-notch customer service in generating positive reviews, this episode promises a wealth of information for both law practitioners and business enthusiasts alike.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome back to the Marketing Lawcast. I'm your host, jennifer Goddard, with my guest today, troy Werner of the Werner Law firm. Welcome, troy. Thanks, jennifer, it's so great to see you and see you in your new Texas office. Yes, how long have you been open there in Texas?

Speaker 2: 0:26

So we've been open for about a year. We're in Frisco, Texas, so we're about a half hour north of Dallas.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Awesome. Well, just to give our listeners a little bit of background about who you are and your law firm, why don't you tell us a little bit about your practice? And I know you took over your dad's law firm, so just kind of give us a little bit of history to bring everybody up to speed.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Before we dive into today's episode, a special shout out to our sponsor, quidproquo. Are you a law firm looking to scale or sell your practice? Qpq's expert team can help you unlock your firm's full potential. Stay tuned for valuable insights brought to you by QPQ.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Sure, sure. So I'm from Santa Fe, california. My father started our firm there in 1975. It's about 45 minutes north of Los Angeles, a nice suburb there. He started it as a general practice. It was a small town at the time so he did a little bit of everything. There was a hitching post outside of the office when he started, so he would have a bunch of random clients. Some of them would hire him through just bartering, offering him random stuff. But it was much different for him than when I started back and joined the firm in 2009. So it had been a general practice all that time.

Speaker 2: 1:54

When I passed the bar and got sworn in, I was thrown into court the next day doing criminal defense, family law, civil litigation, evictions all of that. But over the course of my career I realized I really loved estate planning. I was more suited towards my talents, what I enjoyed doing talking to clients. So since then I've really shifted the practice to estate planning and probate. My dad retired in 2013,. So I've been running the firm the last 10 years, so I've been blessed to be able to really guide it into those areas that I like.

Speaker 1: 2:39

So one of my first questions, troy, is I know some of our listeners are kind of in the position where your dad was. They've got a law firm and they're hoping that their son or daughter will come into that law firm. But then sometimes that sort of backfires and the child says, oh, I'm never going to be a lawyer. So what was it that kind of drew you into that?

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yeah, I got this question a lot. I really can't pinpoint it. I wish I knew exactly everything my dad did, because my wife and I have a four-year-old son that I'm hoping might take over our firm someday but he really didn't push me into it or pressure to do it. He let me know that it was available, that he was going to retire at some point soon and that if I was interested in taking it over, that it was available to me. I had a great childhood. We were really lucky to have just the success that he had and I benefited from it and I wanted to be successful like him and provide that to my family. So as I was going through undergrad and all undergrads they just really don't know what they're going to do with the rest of their lives it seemed like a really good opportunity to take it over and also he was going to retire soon. So it was going to be a missed opportunity if I didn't actually take advantage of it at that time.

Speaker 1: 4:17

So as you were growing up, did you work in the law office at all?

Speaker 2: 4:23

I worked there briefly in high school just with random file clerk stuff. I was a cross-country and track runner and our route would run past my dad's office. My siblings and I I have a brother and sister we were always in the office. I remember, probably when I was six, sitting on the couch in my dad's office watching him work. So it was very cool ultimately, and years and years later, to be in that office, that being my office and the same couch being there. So, yeah, it was a good experience.

Speaker 1: 5:04

That's a very it's a very cool and very inspiring story. I'm sure your dad's really super proud of you and what you've accomplished. Speaking of which, we talked a little bit about how your firm has grown just over the past few years. Can you tell us a little bit about how many people you have and the area that you serve and how your firm has grown so well? I mean, you're really a business person as well as a lawyer.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Yes, yes, that's really what I've focused on the business part of it for the past seven, eight years. The first five, six years of my career really felt like I was just learning how to practice law. I was just in the business, I was helping clients, which was great, but looking at the business ends of things, we were just sort of starting. We were studying. We had six or seven employees. Since then there's a couple of books that I read that really helped me the E-Mith, revisited, I read a while ago. Traction I recently read. It really helped me learn and focus a lot more on the business and setting goals and setting up policies and procedures to make things flow more smoothly and to be able to focus on marketing and what our goals were and really all of that Just a bunch of little things over the years has helped us grow to where we are right now.

Speaker 2: 6:46

We've over doubled our revenue in the past five years or so. We have a staff of about 15. We serve Santa Fe, our main office, which is about 45 minutes north of LA. We have satellite offices throughout the area, so we serve all of LA. That's been a big part of it too, but we've really set up a great business that I'm proud of. I'm excited about continuing to grow.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Yeah, that's so important because one of the things that is unique about your law firm is you really focus and enjoy having that probate client. It sounds to me like one of the keys to the success. There are all those systems that you've put in place. Tell me a little bit about that because, like I said earlier, a lot of our clients don't want to do probate. That caught my eye, that that's a focus for you.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Yes, I can understand why they don't want to do probate. I've felt the same way in the past. Probate in California especially it's a monster. It can take over a year to complete. There's 500 plus steps to go through. There's a lot that can happen over the course of a year and you're not always in control of everything.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Clients can go sideways, clients can disappear. It's hard to keep those files on track, whereas the state planning most of the time you're done with those files in a month. Clients are motivated, they're happy to get this stuff done. You have happy clients and you're done with it. But that's really why I've started to focus a lot on probate as well, because there are not a lot of good probate firms in the Los Angeles area. A lot of firms do it on the side because it's related to a state planning and they feel like they need to provide that service, but they don't love it. They don't have the system set up. Attorneys in general, to be honest, they do not have the best customer service. We don't have the best rapport and reputation for providing customer service to clients. I really want to change that.

Speaker 2: 9:25

Probate and the clients that we're dealing with. They've just typically lost a loved one. They're dealing with that grief and they're suddenly realizing that they cannot access mom or dad's bank account to pay the mortgage. They're talking to a realtor and they're realizing that they cannot sell the home without going through probate. They're already not in a good mental state to deal with a complicated legal issue. Now they're stuck having to go through what I think is a really intimidating thing of finding a lawyer, hiring a lawyer, going through this process.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Our goal is really to make things simple and straightforward for our clients. We want them to feel like they're understanding the next steps all throughout the process. I want them, when they hear horror stories of people going through probate, I want them to think, hey, I didn't really have that experience. Yeah, it wasn't ideal to have to wait, but it was just a process, so there's just not a lot of firms providing that We've set up systems to really start to finish. We have staff helping them throughout the whole case. So I'm really happy with how we've set that up. We've really done a good job setting up our factory in that.

Speaker 1: 10:56

There's a challenge on two fronts, it sounds like to me. The first one is getting your systems in place so that everything runs smoothly and you don't miss deadlines and you get all those 500 steps done. But the other is you kind of hinted at this the hiring. You've got staff that are dealing with folks who are not in the best place emotionally. How have you approached that hiring challenge?

Speaker 2: 11:23

Yeah, I love traction the book traction because it talks a lot about having the right people in the right roles and really setting the core values for your firm. I think about office space and you see the work posters on the wall like honesty and integrity all that stuff that is somewhat meaningless, but when we hire now, we are really looking for people that number one are empathetic and want to help people. They have a desire to help people. I've been really blessed to be able to find great people to add to our firm and add to our team over the years, and I think that that's really the common theme is that they have that drive to help people and that resonates with our clients.

Speaker 2: 12:22

I think, just generally, as lawyers, we're blessed to be able to be in a career that we get to help people directly every day A state planning attorney specifically. We're not dealing with clients who are giant companies and these are clients people that may need an attorney once or twice in their lives. It's a scary thing, so we get to help them through a very, very scary and intimidating process. So to have staff that have that same mindset has been really valuable.

Speaker 1: 12:57

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Speaker 2: 14:15

We should start using personality tests. I've seen some of my colleagues use them and they say great things about them. We have a really structured application process. We have applicants do a written interview with a lot of questions geared towards sort of getting those insights into their character. We'll conduct Zoom or in-person interviews with both myself and a couple of my staff members, so we try to get a sense for that stuff through that. There's only so much you can do at the end of the day. Having those specific traits in mind really helps us eliminate candidates that may otherwise seem good but may not be the best for that position.

Speaker 1: 15:09

Right, exactly, and having all of that working from your systems and processes to supporting the client, with someone who does listen and is empathetic, that's really the key for the profitability in that probate area.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yes, yes. We've seen so many more five-star reviews since we've been improving these processes and procedures and really focusing our staff on okay, this is our goal, this is what your role is. This is what you're there to help the client with, so clients overall are happier. It's getting us a lot more five-star reviews. That's getting us more clients, so it's great to see this all snowball into really the success of the firms today.

Speaker 1: 15:58

And so we talked at the very beginning that you're sitting in your Texas office. Tell us a little bit about this move to Texas and what your plans are there.

Speaker 2: 16:07

Yeah, yeah. So I grew up in California, lived there my whole life. It's really different when you have a kid. My wife and I have a four-year-old son I mentioned, and we're at the point a couple of years ago where we had to decide okay, do we want to raise him here in our hometown in California, or where do we think the best place to raise him would be? We moved to Texas last year, mid-last year. We love it so far. It's great. With estate planning. It's a good opportunity, I think, to spread into a different market as well. So and that was really the driving force behind it is really deciding where we want to spend our time as a family and also to be able to take advantage of the business opportunity.

Speaker 1: 17:08

As I love that that is a family-driven decision and because of the freedom that you have being a lawyer and having your own firm, you could choose that's really a huge blessing.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yes, and one of the things, I wouldn't have thought that this was possible a few years ago, before COVID, and we were sort of cloud-based but a lot of it was still based in office, but COVID, we were not in the office for eight months, so we were able to see that virtual could work, that this could work. So, yeah, we were able to take what we learned from that and I'll apply. I have two staff members here with me in our Texas office. We have half of our staff in California. We have some staff members that are full virtual, so it's been an interesting thing to basically make that work and productive. It's different, but through Zoom meetings and visiting the offices, it's really worked out great.

Speaker 1: 18:20

It's a real hybrid model, and that seems to be what's working best is not fully one or the other, but that hybrid. So you still have some personal interaction. You saw that personal touch, but you're able to access so many more resources. Yeah, yeah. So there's an aspect of this that I think a lot of people will be interested to learn. Since you've grown so and you're expanding, what are you doing for your marketing? What are some of your secrets for success on the marketing front?

Speaker 2: 19:00

So I joined I hired you all Entity Marketing Solutions just about a year ago. I've loved the marketing part of the law of running the business since I started in the beginning and I've always been focused on organic Google search results, on SEO, on being top three search results when selling looks for Santa Frida probate lawyer. So that's really what my focus has been since the beginning of my career and I was with another marketing firm for a long time for five, six years before I shifted to you. But you all just make it easy. The big thing is just the amount of content good content that we're able to put on our site with SEO and terms built into that. I didn't see that offered anywhere else. I was really happy with our website before we shifted over.

Speaker 2: 20:11

I thought, going into hiring and joining you all, that I was really just doing it for the blog content. But you all did a great job with revamping our site. I love it. I didn't even know we needed to revamp it, but it looks so much better. The content is great. We can see the results already for the Los Angeles area. So that's really what we've been focused on setting up those systems to make it as automated as possible ever right A system helping to just make sure things are running smoothly. But also Google reviews. We are very much focused on Google reviews and getting those from our clients, having a good system to request those, figuring out the most effective ways to get those, and that makes a big difference.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Oh, absolutely. I know that we are constantly working with our clients to help get more Google reviews, and sometimes attorneys can be a little bit nervous about trying to get those reviews because they're afraid they're gonna get a bad review. Have you ever had a bad review?

Speaker 2: 21:34

Yes, of course. I mean we've been around for a long time. I'm lucky in that our five-star reviews just dwarf any made reviews. But there's always going to be people that you cannot please. A lot of them are from people that aren't even our clients and we just have a handful of bad reviews. But it might be a beneficiary in a probate case that we have no connection with at all, but they just feel that the probate process takes too long. So it's just random stuff like that, but you just respond to them with grace. I think that if you're responding to them and like when I'm looking at a business and looking at their reviews, I can sort of tell, okay, this is the ones to review, but it wasn't really a legitimate reason to leave that, and then the business owner responded promptly and gracefully. So I think that could sometimes get a client when you have a 4.9 instead of a 5. And they can see that, okay, then this is sort of a real company psychologically.

Speaker 1: 22:52

They have some bad stuff and you're not wrong. You know, actually, studies support that that 4.7, 4.9 is much more believable to people when they're looking at those reviews, and I always tell people exactly what you just said. How do you respond to this fear of getting a bad review? Be proactive about getting lots of good reviews. Yeah, that's the main thing right there. And, of course, when you're given stellar customer service, like you guys are, you're going to get those great five star reviews.

Speaker 2: 23:25

Yeah, I read something to and there are a lot of clients where we're not sure whether they'll leave a five star review or not. So we used to and you have an inclination to want to ask the A plus clients, the ones you know will leave a five star review. You ask them and then there's a lot of clients in that middle ground where you're not really sure. You think and you did a good job for them, but they weren't really vocal about it. But giving them an opportunity to either leave a review or leave feedback, and having the opportunity for them to leave feedback, sibli could avoid a potential one star review if they feel that they have that outlet to actually leave a response and they get that out of the system instead of to you privately, instead of leaving it publicly on Google. So and there's a benefit to sending them out anyways- Absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 24:33

what's next for you and the Werner law firm?

Speaker 2: 24:37

So we're really just building on what we have worked on over the past couple of years. We've I feel like we've set up our factory very well for probate. We've set up our marketing on a great trajectory. We're getting five star reviews in. So we're basically setting goals for 2024 on marketing to be able to get enough leads, to get enough probate and the safe planning cases to be able to have our staff handle those cases. So we've set up all these I call them rocks all these specific benchmarks for all of our different parts of our firm to hit, and the goal is to figure out what's working, whether we're hitting those or, if we're not hitting those, what we need to do to to make that happen.

Speaker 1: 25:39

Will there be more states where you expand to beyond Texas?

Speaker 2: 25:45

I don't think so. I think we're good. I've had the opportunity to do that, but I think I've been off on my plate.

Speaker 1: 25:57

So one more thing, troy. If there's some attorneys listening who are striving, you know they're not to that level where you are right now and they're thinking how do I get from where I am? Maybe I'm a solo practitioner with like one person working in my office. How do I move forward? What would be some of your best pieces of advice for them?

Speaker 2: 26:20

Sure, I mean back 2016, 2017,. I was frustrated as a law firm owner. I felt like I was basically working for my staff, that I was working long hours and I wasn't honestly getting paid enough to deal with all of that stuff. So I really shifted my mindset slowly to figuring out how to run it more effectively as a business, and there's a lot of content out there. I mentioned traction. I mentioned that you have revisited, but it's a lot of baby steps you can take when you have the time to slowly build up your law firm.

Speaker 2: 27:02

You all use lawmatics. I think that that's great. So you're doing a CRM program to track leads, having practice management program just to be able to track the status of your cases. That gives you peace of mind. But all of these are tools to really help build the policies and procedures of your law firm to keep it on course. So you're just slowly working on the parts of your law firm that you know are thriving and you're putting stuff in place to make them more effective. And then you just move on to the next and the next and the next and you slowly build it up and suddenly you have a much different law firm and things are going a lot smoother.

Speaker 1: 27:53

Well, I think that attitude of running it like it's a business and realizing that there's more to a successful law firm than just being a great lawyer. I know a lot of lawyers who are just absolutely great lawyers but they struggle in their business and sometimes they don't really like that idea of having to be a businessman. But what you've kind of proven is that if you get a hold of all those business processes, you have a lot more freedom. It's not a cage, it's actually a gateway.

Speaker 2: 28:33

Yes, absolutely, and part of building that business is identifying the things that you love doing in the business and the things that you just are. Drudgery for you, that you drag, you're not good at it sucks the life out of you. So the goal is to figure out systems to delegate those areas to someone else or minimize the amount of time you have to spend in those areas so you can really focus on the parts of the firm that you are great at and you love. So I've been able to do that personally. It's taken a lot of work, but I've gotten there, so that's really the ultimate goal.

Speaker 1: 29:14

I think that's great advice. It certainly has been a pleasure to have you on the podcast today, Troy, and it's a pleasure to have you as a client in our client family. I always hear great things from your coaches and the folks that are working with you that you know. Troy really does approach this from a business standpoint and he's a go-getter, so just a joy to have you here and have you in our client family.

Speaker 2: 29:39

Yeah, no, I've really appreciated just being a part of this From the get go. You all have made it easy. I'll give a shout out to Amber. She's been great to work with too, so I'm really happy with just how you all have set things up and you all have great content which messes with what we've been doing, so it was just a great show Awesome.

Speaker 1: 30:07

Okay, well, thank you so much, troy. Thank you for being with us and until next time, I'm Jennifer Goddard with the Marketing LawCast. Be sure to subscribe, like and share with your friends, and we'll talk to you next week. Okay, let me stop the recording.

Speaker 3: 30:27

That's a wrap for today's episode and a big thank you to our sponsor, QuidProQuo. Qpq is your partner in law firm success, offering expert guidance on scaling, selling and optimizing your practice. With a team of experienced professionals, they bring real world insights to the table. Are you ready to take your law practice to new heights? Visit their website at wwwquidproquolawcom to learn more and start your journey toward a thriving and sellable law firm.