[00:00:00] Sarah Jacobs: I got called for I haven’t been I’ve been called for jury duty in quite a number of times, but the last couple of times being grand jury and my number hasn’t gotten called to sort of show up. But the last time I was actually called. I was still living in Queens at the time. And I went down to Queens County Superior Court and I’m.
[00:00:17] Sarah Jacobs: Sitting there in the giant jury room and they pull me up. My number gets called and I go upstairs and it was a civil trial. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t sexy. Let’s call it that. And the second they say you know, ma’am, like what’s your current occupation? I was like, I’m an unemployed, but I’m in law school.
[00:00:33] Sarah Jacobs: Both attorneys were like, Nope, we’re good. Thanks. You can, I think it’s attractive sometimes, but sometimes not And the only thing
[00:00:41] [00:01:00]
[00:01:10] Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. And today we have with us, Sarah Jacobs. She’s a family lawyer up in New Jersey. She’s going to tell us more about her firm, but it’s her and a partner, maybe another name partner maybe more. So, really excited to have you here, Sarah.
[00:01:30] Jonathan Hawkins: Why don’t you tell us about your firm and sort of the setup, how many lawyers, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:36] Sarah Jacobs: Well, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for hosting me today. I really appreciate you having me on. I’m looking forward to our conversation. You’re right. We’re based in New Jersey. We’re in Northern New Jersey in Morristown. And it is one me and another named partner, my partner, Jamie, but we also have three other attorneys who work with us.
[00:01:54] Sarah Jacobs: We have a non equity partner. We have a senior associate and we have a junior associate, and we’re blessed [00:02:00] to have five robust full time support staff helping us do what we do every single
[00:02:04] Jonathan Hawkins: So you’ve got a good sized operation going there. We’re going to dive into all of that. But first thing I want to know is why family law is that something you always knew you’re going to do or did you fall into it? Tell us how you got there.
[00:02:17] Sarah Jacobs: I definitely fell into it and know it wasn’t something that I always knew that I was going to do. I think secretly, maybe, you know, when they go through your why, I think that might have come out that it was sort of a subconscious decision that I made. But most of all, when I was in law school, I was in a trial advocacy clinic.
[00:02:35] Sarah Jacobs: I went to law school in Hofstra on Long Island. And at that point, they didn’t actually have the family law clinic. So the closest thing we had to it was the child abuse. And I was able to participate in that and man, did I fall in love with being a trial attorney? I did not want to push paper. I did not want to do transactional work.
[00:02:54] Sarah Jacobs: I wanted to be in that courtroom. So I sort of narrowed it down to say. Civil [00:03:00] litigation, criminal litigation, or basically family law. And at that point, I said that I didn’t want to be working with potential criminals, nor did I want to be doing litigation about, you know, car accidents or any sort of like high volume.
[00:03:16] Sarah Jacobs: Corporate work and I wanted to work with people. I wanted to help people. So that kind of narrowed it down to the field that I’m in every day. Now I laugh because I work with a cross section of pretty much everything I said that I didn’t want to do in my life. And I wind up doing that plus more in my daily to go.
[00:03:33] Jonathan Hawkins: So I’ve got a question. So down here in Georgia, um, which my, I don’t do family law, but my understanding is this is somewhat unique. Unusual compared to many states. We have jury trials for divorce cases. Do you guys have that up there?
[00:03:48] Sarah Jacobs: No, we don’t. We have bench trials only. We do have jury trials if you proceed on an adultery claim. You do have a jury [00:04:00] trial for the cause of the action on adultery only, and then a bench trial on the remaining issues. But that is really an interesting development, and I would kind of pay to be a fly on the wall of that.
[00:04:16] Sarah Jacobs: Jury listening to a family law trial. It’s kind of like watching Dateline.
[00:04:21] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, now you have to request it. I think it’s it’s not every you have the opportunity to do it but yeah, I think most people avoid that. But yeah, I think occasionally it happens and I imagine that would be a very interesting, could be a very interesting trial. I mean, if two people have gone far enough and they’re mad enough and they say, we want a jury, that’s going to be an interesting trial, I would think.
[00:04:45] Jonathan Hawkins: It was
[00:04:46] Sarah Jacobs: I’d like to see what the jury selection process would look like for that and where you got your preemptive strikes and all of that would be very, I kind of want to come down there now and watch one.
[00:04:56] Jonathan Hawkins: I got called for a jury duty. I don’t know, I don’t know, eight years [00:05:00] ago. And it was a DUI trial. And for those, it was a six person journey jury with one alternate. And as they’re pulling the jury pool, which I was on, I think five of the people had been convicted of DUIs. It says, and then this person beside me is like, who do you think is going to be on this?
[00:05:18] Jonathan Hawkins: And I was like, those five are definitely not on it. I was like, you’re definitely on it. I might be, I may not be. And I ended up being on the jury. It was interesting.
[00:05:28] Sarah Jacobs: I got called for I haven’t been I’ve been called for jury duty in quite a number of times, but the last couple of times being grand jury and my number hasn’t gotten called to sort of show up. But the last time I was actually called. I was still living in Queens at the time. And I went down to Queens County Superior Court and I’m.
[00:05:45] Sarah Jacobs: Sitting there in the giant jury room and they pull me up. My number gets called and I go upstairs and it was a civil trial. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t sexy. Let’s call it that. And the second they say you know, ma’am, like what’s your current occupation? I was like, I’m an [00:06:00] unemployed, but I’m in law school.
[00:06:01] Sarah Jacobs: Both attorneys were like, Nope, we’re good. Thanks. You can, I think it’s attractive sometimes, but sometimes not And the only thing worse than a lawyer on the jury is a law student on the jury.
[00:06:14] Sarah Jacobs: Because we’re hungry, right? At that point. And we think we know everything and we know nothing.
[00:06:18] Jonathan Hawkins: Exactly. Well, cool. So, all right. So you came out of law school, you want to do trial work. Did you go straight to a firm doing family law or what was next?
[00:06:27] Sarah Jacobs: I did. I did. Right, right up. I mean, there was a small gap. I graduated in I’m going to tell the world now my secrets. I graduated in 2002 and I started working full time in 2000. Three. So for the six months between, or eight months between my graduation and when I started working full time, I had been working during law school at a legal publishing company in New York.
[00:06:49] Sarah Jacobs: And I continued that work while I was interviewing so that I had the opportunity to be somewhat selective because I was blessed and employed tangentially in the industry at that point. But my first, [00:07:00] you know, work as a barred attorney and doing real Like litigation work was essentially straight out of law school to a firm.
[00:07:07] Sarah Jacobs: Yes.
[00:07:07] Jonathan Hawkins: And so how long were you there and how long till you eventually went out? On to start your firm or,
[00:07:15] Sarah Jacobs: I was there for 8 years at which point I started a prior iteration of the firm that I’m at now.
[00:07:21] Jonathan Hawkins: and so, you know, some people always sort of knew they were gonna start a firm at some point. What about you? Is that something you always knew you wanted to do or was it sort of an
[00:07:31] Sarah Jacobs: No, it was sort of an accident. I never wanted to be. A billable hour attorney in like law school. I had big dreams. I was going to, you know, be a constitutional lawyer. I was going to work for the government. I was going to do like big things. And then I started interviewing and realized how poor and hungry I would be doing all of those things.
[00:07:55] Sarah Jacobs: And I had law school loans. So like most people, I was like, Ooh, capitalism. [00:08:00] See if I could pay that off for a little while. And. At least at that point I knew, okay, I’m going to work at a firm and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the firm I worked at. I enjoyed, like I learned a ton, but I had a family. I, you know, during the time that I was working there, I got married.
[00:08:17] Sarah Jacobs: I had a child and I was commuting 45 minutes in each direction to go to the firm, absent any traffic. And I wanted to spend more time with my son. And so it became, and it was, you know, pre COVID error. So there wasn’t all this hybrid work environment and FaceTime was very important at that point and putting in the hours in the office.
[00:08:37] Sarah Jacobs: And so it became, I needed more flexibility. I needed more, you know, opportunities to be closer to home and that helped. Propel my decision to open a business
[00:08:51] Jonathan Hawkins: So what was that? Around 2009, 2010? Somewhere around there.
[00:08:55] Sarah Jacobs: 2010.
[00:08:56] Jonathan Hawkins: So I remember those days. So that was the wake [00:09:00] of the financial crisis, all the fallout and you know, talking to somebody recently, I think 2010 I think is the year. The worst year ever to graduate law school. Probably the jobs were just not there.
[00:09:12] Jonathan Hawkins: The people were pulling back their offers and deferring and all these things. So you decide to go out and start a firm in the middle of this mess. What was going through your mind? And were you scared?
[00:09:25] Sarah Jacobs: I was scared. I was very scared. At that point, my, I opened my prior partner and I had decided that we were both leaving our respective firms. We knew that we had a. Decent amount of clients who would come with us. And I think like, that’s what we were counting on at the moment. We were young and naive, the words pipeline, you know, future revenue weren’t something that we really understood.
[00:09:48] Sarah Jacobs: We were lawyers and we were opening a law firm or a law practice. We weren’t really thinking about a business or how to do that. We did understand networking. We understood business development because we [00:10:00] had during our respective, you know, 10 years at our firms grown a small. You know, a colleague of mine used the word pamphlet instead of a book of business, right?
[00:10:10] Sarah Jacobs: We each had a pamphlet of business and we knew that somebody would come with us from our partner’s generations. And we, you know, we counted our chickens. We were like, Oh yeah, we have like 10 clients, 12 clients. Like, here’s what it looks like. We can open a firm with that. And we did. That felt really good until we were like, Oh, what are we going to do when these cases are over?
[00:10:31] Sarah Jacobs: And how are we going to feed ourselves? And the panic set in maybe a year later. And 2012 was a rough go.
[00:10:40] Jonathan Hawkins: I’ll tell you that panic and that fear will really get you doing stuff that maybe you wouldn’t have done otherwise. So I imagine you, you just started really pushing it to get the You know, it’s, you know,
[00:10:51] Sarah Jacobs: It was interesting because I think a lot of, you know, we knew how to practice law. So, you know, the latter half of 2000, cause we, we opened our firm officially. We [00:11:00] pushed the button, let’s call it in July, but we opened the doors in August of 2010. So the rest of 2010 was kind of okay. 2011 was kind of okay.
[00:11:09] Sarah Jacobs: You know, you’re young attorneys, entrepreneurs starting your practice. A lot of people are like, Oh, let’s throw you some cases, you know? Cause we’re like happy to see you on your own with your wings. So like you’re all powered up with woohoo. I’m getting business. And then. You getting your hands around, you know, opening bank accounts and trust accounts and having to do invoicing.
[00:11:28] Sarah Jacobs: And maybe all the things that you kind of knew existed when you were pounding the pavement for somebody else, but you didn’t, you weren’t in control of. And then, you know, kind of, you start to figure out those things and then you look at the client pipeline and you’re like, Oh boy, I really need to do something to keep this afloat.
[00:11:45] Sarah Jacobs: And yeah, you start networking your little tush off at that point.
[00:11:50] Jonathan Hawkins: before I started my firm. You know, I’d always been at sort of established, long established platforms and they weren’t necessarily huge, but they were decent size. And [00:12:00] everything just sort of happened is magic. It just sort of, everything was there that you needed, but then when you start your own, you know, you gotta go. You gotta go buy the computer, you gotta set up the email, you gotta get the scissors, you gotta go get the copier, you gotta get the paper. It’s like all these little things that you just don’t think about that just take time. And it’s just, you fill up your day with that and you’re like, wait a second, I didn’t, I couldn’t practice any law today because I was doing all this other crap. Good thing is once you do it, usually it’s sort of done, but it’s just those early days take a lot of time, right?
[00:12:32] Sarah Jacobs: Not only does it take a lot of time, but I think, you know, like most people, you don’t think about the small detail in the sense that, you know, to your point out of a larger established, you go to the supply closet. You pull out the scissors that you said, or you pull out the legal pattern. You pull out the press board or the exhibit tabs and then.
[00:12:51] Sarah Jacobs: You start pricing all that stuff and you’re like, man, this is expensive. Like how did press boards cost, you know, 4 a piece. And you’re like, I don’t [00:13:00] need those. I can find a better way to do it than use these. And you really start thinking about some of this stuff that just like, it’s always the way it’s been.
[00:13:07] Sarah Jacobs: And you need to find a creative solution to create another way, because you’re not paying for the way that it’s always been.
[00:13:14] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so you were lucky. You did have at least some clients. That’s always good to get started with clients paying clients coming in. So let me ask, how do you charge? I know most family lawyers charge by the hour, but there are some out there that do sort of flat fees or some sort of staged fee type stuff.
[00:13:30] Jonathan Hawkins: How about you guys? How do you guys do it?
[00:13:32] Sarah Jacobs: We are billable in the classic sense. We do bill by the hour. We take retainers up front. We’ve gotten smarter over the years and we’ve taken an upfront retainer also for expenses because, you know, that’s when the client is not a hundred percent paying their bill and you’re still handing out money for the supplies and the filing fees and the like, it cuts into your profit and.
[00:13:54] Sarah Jacobs: You know, you learn over the course of the year. So yeah, standard classic billable [00:14:00] by the hour retainer.
[00:14:02] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, that is so important. I tell people I’ve done a lot of pro bono work over my career and it wasn’t on purpose, you know, so
[00:14:10] Sarah Jacobs: No. And sometimes you’re surprised when you are at who wants you to do pro bono work and who leaves you with the pro bono work that you’re done and who will actually satisfy your bill that you didn’t think was going to. It’s a lesson in learning how to read people and read the situation as well, so true. I’ve had, you know, I represent a lot of lawyers now. This is before I represented lawyers. These are non lawyers. My lawyer clients are good, but my I had some that were like, you know, extremely wealthy. I mean, it would have been nothing to pay their bill, but they just didn’t like paying it.
[00:14:42] Jonathan Hawkins: And they were always trying to nickel and dime and negotiate down. And it’s just like, yeah, just pay the bill. I’m working my tail
[00:14:49] Jonathan Hawkins: off for you. Pay
[00:14:50] Jonathan Hawkins: right?
[00:14:52] Sarah Jacobs: The legal industry is stunning to me, even though I’ve been practicing in it for, you know, 22 years now. [00:15:00] And I also think that my husband is like one of these days, he’s like, I don’t understand. You cannot go to a car mechanic and tell them that you’re not going to pay their bill and expect to get your car back.
[00:15:10] Sarah Jacobs: You don’t go to the doctor and not pay your bill. And I was like, It’s not the way things work in our industry. And because it’s a litigious society, we’re also the first people who could have our bills challenged. I mean, who doesn’t love a good fee arbitration process? So, I mean, there’s so many different things that you learn in our industry that you would not have thought of when you were sitting in those massive lecture halls in law school.
[00:15:34] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, speaking of litigious, I don’t have the numbers. I’ve never really studied the numbers, but I’ve been told. And my understanding is that in the family law setting I guess family lawyers are some of the highest recipients of bar complaints. And it’s usually from the opposing party. I don’t know.
[00:15:49] Jonathan Hawkins: Have you encountered that at all? Is that something that. You’ve had to deal with.
[00:15:53] Sarah Jacobs: think I think family lawyers do see a. [00:16:00] Disproportionately higher series of bar complaints, fee arbitration, Google reviews that are not flattering. And I, you know, you’re dealing with people in 1 of the worst experiences in their lives and people have expectations of how certain things are going to go.
[00:16:16] Sarah Jacobs: And. The court system doesn’t always make it easy to even provide a reasonable bar for those expectations. And I think it, it evokes a lot of heavy feelings and it creates difficulty for those of us who practice in that
[00:16:32] Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk Google reviews real quick. So, you know, as an ethics lawyer, I get this question a lot. Um, you know, you’ve got people that are not your client that are leaving you one star and they’re dogging you. And maybe the worst case, they go on Facebook and get all their friends to start doing it too.
[00:16:50] Jonathan Hawkins: I’ve seen that. And it’s like, how do you deal with that? As a business owner, period, but a law firm owner and Google not the easiest to deal with to get those things taken down on if [00:17:00] you’ve ever had to deal with any of that kind of stuff, if you have any tips for anybody out there.
[00:17:06] Sarah Jacobs: I mean, we tend to tread very lightly when it comes to responses to negative reviews on Google because If they are our client, we’re bound by privilege. And if they’re not our client, you know, we try to just say that we’ve searched our records and that we don’t have a record of them being a client of the firm.
[00:17:26] Sarah Jacobs: But, you know, and then we try to address whatever issues. I had an experience where a client who clearly engaged the services of a law firm on Long Island with a close name, but a different name. for a different type of service, not a family lawyer who left a review. He was clearly speaking about someone that doesn’t work at our firm and continued to create a one star review.
[00:17:55] Sarah Jacobs: I disputed this with Google. Our team disputed this with Google. We elevated it [00:18:00] through Google. I mean, this was like a once a month, like three or four different ways to dispute the claim. But at some point we just, You know, we answered the review, like, we’re so sorry you had this experience with another law firm.
[00:18:11] Sarah Jacobs: Like, law firms should provide excellent service. If you didn’t, you know, receive that excellent service, of course you should be, you know, entitled to complain. However, that service was not provided by us, nor do we do the type of law that you left a review for. Therefore, we wish you the best of luck. I mean, the best you can do is kind of show a consumer that this doesn’t relate to you and doesn’t relate to your law firm, but also what value proposition you do stand for with the clients that you are going to have.
[00:18:39] Jonathan Hawkins: that’s a good, that’s a good response. I like that. That was good. So let’s get back to your firm. So you go out with the partner and you start your firm and you do have some clients you know, the whole thing is sort of brand new. You’re figuring out how to run a business and refill the pipeline with new clients. You said that was the initial firm and it’s changed since then. So tell us about how [00:19:00] it changed.
[00:19:02] Sarah Jacobs: Well, I had the distinct pleasure with my part, my named partner. Now I had the distinct pleasure when we were associates at our first law firms of having the, our partners had a case who they, which they delegated to my partner and I, to Jamie and I. And we had the opportunity to work together as adversaries on a very heated, contested, acrimonious, you know, custody and matrimonial case.
[00:19:26] Sarah Jacobs: And so we saw how we did business and we liked the way that we respectively handled the case. We liked the way that we handled the clients and the opposing clients and the mediator. And at one point while I opened my firm with my prior partner, and She had gone out, my current partner had gone out on maternity leave and was looking to make a change from, you know, a larger law firm to something more family oriented because she too had just had her daughter and, you know, really wanted to sort of shift from the rat race, I’ll call it to something more flexible, just as I had done two years [00:20:00] before.
[00:20:00] Sarah Jacobs: So, my prior partner and I had offered her the opportunity to come on of counsel and to be part of that. Of our firm and do work, you know, in, in a different capacity. And so she did. And in 2015, she wound up becoming a partner with us. And shortly thereafter, my initial partner decided that she wanted to niche her practice and something more, you know, con Contiguous to what we did, but really be able to service a different segment of the population in a sort of more targeted way.
[00:20:33] Sarah Jacobs: And we wish her the best of luck. And so Jamie and I changed the name of our firm and sort of pivoted from that point and from 2015 on, we’ve been Jacobsberger and have been doing this marriage ever since.
[00:20:46] Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I’ve known some other lawyers that, that, you know, Our partners now that met as opposing counsel way back when, and it’s a good lesson for those out there, the younger lawyers, especially, you don’t have to be a raging asshole to your opposing counsel. [00:21:00] And you can be stern, you can be, you know, a strong advocate.
[00:21:04] Jonathan Hawkins: But you know, you don’t have to be a jerk and you never know where that. You know, I’ve had plenty of opposing counsels that some of them are now clients of mine. They’ve referred me work over the years and, you know, there’s all sorts of opportunities. It’s just way better. If you can, sometimes you can’t, sometimes the opposing counsel is so bad.
[00:21:21] Jonathan Hawkins: You just, it’s hard to be nice maybe. But yeah, I mean, you just, you know, way back when you probably had no idea that you guys would be partners and long term partner partners now. Right.
[00:21:33] Sarah Jacobs: No, we had no idea. I mean, we thought maybe, you know, one of us would leave our then firms and go work with the other because it would be more, you know, more the merrier, right? The bigger the party at the place that you’re at. The more enjoyable it is, but life circumstances change for everybody. And I’m, I mean, we laughed today.
[00:21:50] Sarah Jacobs: Like, Thank God that we weren’t that way with each other. And we recognize that our clients were, I mean, fierce advocates. Yes. You know, difficult digging into [00:22:00] their respective positions and trying to advocate for what they needed and what they wanted, but to your point, like we didn’t need to take that on in our relationship with each other.
[00:22:09] Sarah Jacobs: And it served us well because we saw a way to be good at our job without being, as you said, an asshole. And so. That kind of resonated when we had an opportunity to build a business together. It’s sort of an underpinning of the way that we practice and the team that we’ve built around us.
[00:22:28] Jonathan Hawkins: So how do you guys now as partners, well, how long have you two been partners now, how many years?
[00:22:35] Sarah Jacobs: Okay, now you’re going to make me do math. So I’m going to say 2015. I’m going to say that’s nine years. Yeah, nine years just about September 1st. Officially, she was partner in 2015 earlier than that. So let’s say we’ve already hit
[00:22:49] Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So you’re going on, you’re going on a decade. So that’s good. That’s good. You’re making it work. So how do you guys sort of split up the roles and responsibilities between you guys in running the firm and [00:23:00] all of that?
[00:23:00] Sarah Jacobs: So, that’s been a journey as it is with a lot of different partners, right? You have to learn to trust each other. You have to learn to lean into to be sure that the other person is making decisions in a way that fits the vision and the mission of the firm and also like, you know, serves the whole primarily, I would say, from a case perspective we don’t Work a case together.
[00:23:24] Sarah Jacobs: There’s a rare exception that we will work a case together. But with regards to the administrative duties in the firm, like, I handle more of the marketing and the client intake and sort of the, you know, the back office administration in that sense. And she handles more of, like, the financial issues and the banking and things of that nature.
[00:23:43] Sarah Jacobs: It’s our natural proclivity. And our natural inclination, we each know how to do what the other does. And we each share a little bit of those responsibilities so that if someone’s on vacation or on trial, like it doesn’t just fall into the black hole of doom. But we also hired smartly around us. We’ve [00:24:00] hired, you know, a good executive assistant and a good billing coordinator on a good intake coordinator.
[00:24:06] Sarah Jacobs: And. We make sure that we have the right people in the right seats around us. And we really trust them to do their job and to elevate it to us when they need to. And that takes a lot of pressure off.
[00:24:17] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so, you know, a partnership is like a marriage in many
[00:24:22] Jonathan Hawkins: ways. So, you know, Do you have any advice? And you’re a family lawyer, too. So, do you have any advice for lawyers out there that are thinking about going into a partnership or maybe in the early stages advice on how to make it work and really make it thrive?
[00:24:39] Sarah Jacobs: You have to really learn. And it’s so trite when I say it, but it’s really true. You have to learn how to listen and not just think. to speak. We as lawyers were trained to be answering the question before it’s even asked. We’re always having something to say before somebody else is done. We’ve always thought of the next thing because we have to think on our feet, [00:25:00] right?
[00:25:00] Sarah Jacobs: Especially if you’re a trial attorney, you got to be out there. You got to know exactly what you’re going to say when the judge says counsel. And That leaves very little room for listening. And one of the things that Jamie and I have learned over time is that we have to listen. We have to listen to the verbal cues that are coming from each other.
[00:25:16] Sarah Jacobs: We have to listen to the nonverbal cues that are coming from each other. We have to build like a community of respect. And one of the things that we’ve really worked on with each other is radical candor, like finding a way to say something bluntly and with honesty, but with compassion and. Being able to hear it, take some time, not get butthurt by the statement and finding then a path forward from it.
[00:25:41] Sarah Jacobs: And, you know, we’ve come up with certain little community agreements, like I’ll walk in and say, this is a feelings conversation so that she understands like, okay, we don’t have something administrative to talk about. Like, I need to pay attention or she’ll walk in and be like, this is not a feelings conversation.
[00:25:58] Sarah Jacobs: I have a decision [00:26:00] that needs Be done. And I need you to focus on the next step. So, you know, we’ve learned how to preface conversations. We’ve learned how to communicate with each other and we’ve learned that we’re on the same team. Like a lot of people stop bringing your ego to the room. If you want to be a partner with somebody, you’re a partner.
[00:26:17] Sarah Jacobs: How you structure, whether you’re, you know, eat what you kill, whether you’re you know, in it to win it and you’re 50, 50 or 33, 33, whatever it is. You guys are all in the same team. If you’re jointly succeeding, then everybody’s succeeding and so is your staff. And if you have ambient tension or overt tension, you’re ruining the work environment for everybody else and for yourself.
[00:26:39] Sarah Jacobs: So it ultimately, that will crumble if you can’t find a way to bridge a gap and put your ego behind you instead of out in front of you. Which I think a lot of us as lawyers we carry it in front of us. ’cause that’s what we’ve been taught to do.
[00:26:54] Jonathan Hawkins: That team thing is so important. You know, you sometimes you’re just going to have to not [00:27:00] win. If you want the team to win, you as the individual may not win so to speak. But in the end. Everybody wins and you should come out ahead. So that’s so important. You mentioned radical candor. That’s a book, right?
[00:27:11] Jonathan Hawkins: Have you read that? Is it worth reading?
[00:27:13] Jonathan Hawkins: All have actually,
[00:27:14] Jonathan Hawkins: I need to read that. So do you recommend it?
[00:27:19] Sarah Jacobs: so. It’s I’m going to admit this out loud and it probably makes me a bad person, but I really do not like business books. I struggle getting through them. I know that this is a whole, like, area of self improvement. I have a list of books from professionals that I should be reading the 4 minute manager, blah, blah, blah.
[00:27:41] Sarah Jacobs: It is for agreements like, it is impossible. I get. I’m reading a science textbook to me. I struggled my way through radical kinder, not because I didn’t think that the. The messaging was important, but I just dial out at some point. If it was a podcast, I think I might do better. But I do.
[00:27:58] Sarah Jacobs: The meaning of it [00:28:00] really is impactful and helpful. And if you can learn to practice it in your four walls, it can. It can be changing.
[00:28:10]
[00:28:23] Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk about the growth of your firm. You went through some of the stats earlier. You got a pretty decent size operation there. You got a lot of staff, you got a lot of attorneys. Take us through sort of the growth. You know, when did you. You know, he started out with you and the other partner. You brought at least Jamie on in some role early on. When did you start adding more attorneys and staff?
[00:28:44] Sarah Jacobs: My prior partner and I added pretty early. Like, we added at least a receptionist or a legal assistant pretty early because you need another body. Like, if you’re in court, if you’re on the phone, if you’re practicing, you can’t be answering the phone. You can’t be taking intakes. You can’t be making copies.
[00:28:59] Sarah Jacobs: You can’t put a [00:29:00] motion together. You need bodies in the office. It was a struggle because, you know, when you’re young and you’re just starting out, everything costs money and, you know, feeding another person and being responsible for their salaries and their families, you know, well being is scary to you.
[00:29:15] Sarah Jacobs: It was scary to me. Maybe it’s not scary to other people, but. It is a necessity. You can only survive if you have good people around you helping you from a day to day perspective. We grew the team, I don’t want to say rapidly, but by 2015, we had two names partners at that point. Jamie was in of council.
[00:29:37] Sarah Jacobs: We had three assistants at that point playing functions between Paralegals, legal assistant, receptionist, like, billing coordinator, like, they were wearing multiple hats, but it was out there. And, you know, my partner and I, at the time, and to some extent, Jamie, we’re also taking some of those administrative roles from, you know, let’s call it the C suite level, if you will.
[00:29:59] Sarah Jacobs: We moved [00:30:00] from a more remote area of Morris County in New Jersey to Morristown, where we are now, which is a more like city area. And we expanded the team at that point to bring on an associate because we knew that we needed somebody, you know, underneath us to be doing more of, let’s say, the case information statements and the discovery and, you know, kind of like the legal brief writing.
[00:30:22] Sarah Jacobs: And while we were continuing to do consults and networking and bringing in business the team kind of rolled from there, like. We’ve added and subtracted probably within a realm over the same 9 years. I would say at that point, maybe we were 6 and now we’re 10. So we’ve expanded to a full time billing coordinator and a full time slash like receptionist slash intake coordinator instead of that being some of our legal assistance.
[00:30:50] Sarah Jacobs: And we’ve added. attorneys to the roster because that’s how we, that’s how we practice.
[00:30:56] Jonathan Hawkins: So I’m curious, how do you go about, [00:31:00] uh, analyzing or making the decision? Okay. It’s time to hire somebody. You know, there’s a question, a lot of attorneys, especially when they first started out, they’re like, Oh my God, I can’t afford it. I it’s too risky. I’m too scared. I’m not going to hire anybody. And then you have various financial advisor types.
[00:31:14] Jonathan Hawkins: It’ll come in and say, all right, we’ll help analyze your cashflow. And this is when you do it. And then. The fear is I don’t have the work yet, but I think I might get it. So do I hire the person before or when I’m underwater? La. How do you go about deciding when it’s time to hire somebody and who?
[00:31:32] Sarah Jacobs: I think that the answer to that question has changed over time, right? Depending on where we’ve been in our, the size of our business, the revenue health of our business, the profit health of our business. I think in the beginning it was out of sheer desperation, like, I could not be five different roles in one and be able to meet my obligations and go to court and service my clients.
[00:31:55] Sarah Jacobs: And I didn’t want malpractice to be something that was alleged [00:32:00] that I committed. So it was fear. I think at that point, right? Like you put the money aside and you do what you need to do in order to make sure that you can continue doing what you’re doing and that you don’t kind of implode on yourself.
[00:32:12] Sarah Jacobs: And then I think there was a period of time where it was. You know, gut intuition, like there were too many cases and they couldn’t be serviced and so somebody else had to be put on the file and so, okay, an associate needs to be put on so I can complete the discovery and the letter writing and the case information statement while I’m sitting and doing the consultations or being a court.
[00:32:33] Sarah Jacobs: Then I think there was a period of time where we were driven by the metrics, by the business numbers. Like how do we increase revenue X amount? How do we You know, best use of our time, highest and best use on who can be sitting in the roles in a more effective situation. And if you follow that, I think you could wind up, you know, with a very large team and very little profit because you [00:33:00] slot everybody into a certain role.
[00:33:02] Sarah Jacobs: And then you’re like, great, how do I pay for all of this? So, and then at least now it’s by quality of life. I don’t want to work all weekend long. I don’t want to work at night. I don’t want to be away from my family. I don’t want to not be able to take vacation. I want my team to experience the same thing that I’m experienced.
[00:33:19] Sarah Jacobs: We want to have a work. I know we, we want the mythical work life balance, though it actually can exist. And we want to keep the team in a space where no one person is overly burdened to the benefit of others and their own detriment. And so when it gets to a point where. You see that your team is starting to become bogged down.
[00:33:39] Sarah Jacobs: You’re starting to become bogged down. The indicators are there. Then double back. Check your metrics. Check your money. Make sure it’s affordable. What does your pipeline look like? How will this, you know, help you? Will it hurt you in the interim? And if so, how do I, you know, correct it after I make that choice for the, you know, Quality of life and you make strategic decisions at that point, you know, [00:34:00] that’s after a lot of lessons learned.
[00:34:02] Jonathan Hawkins: So. Where, how did you learn this stuff? Is it trial and error for you? Did you have coaches, podcasts that you read maybe the first chapter of a few books here and there, but
[00:34:12] Sarah Jacobs: I don’t commit me to a full chapter. That seems ridiculous. Maybe a couple of pages. I read the cliff notes version. And I’m a healthy reader. It’s just business books, man. You can be a fiction. I’m off and running, but A combination of all of the above, like a lot of trial and error in our early years, I think putting the business together, getting it off the ground and like.
[00:34:31] Sarah Jacobs: Figuring out where the implosion point was, and then sort of breaking it and reconstructing it. But then, yes, we had a lot of business coaching. We joined a coaching company in 2016 and we were heavily, let me back up. We were invested kind of in an in and out basis over the last 7 years, we’ve been a little more out this year when we then we’ve been in because coaching itself can be tiring.
[00:34:56] Sarah Jacobs: And sometimes, like, the lesson and the time committed to the [00:35:00] coaching takes away from the rest of the firm and, you know, you need a little bit of break and then you need to recommit or you need to try a different form of coaching. But, yeah, really being open to listening to other people to the options that are, they’ve done watching other people’s lessons, you know, taking what you can from it, applying it to your firm, leaving the rest just learning, always learning
[00:35:22] Jonathan Hawkins: for me, that’s sort of the fun part, I mean, some of the lessons I don’t like learning, but preferred to have not have learned them, but it’s, sometimes it’s funny, you know, you have coaches, you have books, you have podcasts, whatever. And intellectually you know, this. Yeah. You know the answer, but it’s like you have to go through it.
[00:35:38] Jonathan Hawkins: Sometimes you just have to go through it and really learn it through experience sometimes and sort of sucks. And then you’ll never forget it. Um, all right. So hiring, so you sort of now have your system about when to hire. I’m curious, how do you guys. Find the people. So, you know, there’s a question I get a lot.
[00:35:57] Jonathan Hawkins: And I’m curious myself. You know, I want somebody in this [00:36:00] role. So how do you find the right person? So that can be lots of things. I mean, how do you decide what the skill set is or the, personality or culture fit that you want is and then how do you craft, um, you know, job posting, whatever it is to try to attract the right person.
[00:36:21] Jonathan Hawkins: And then you get some people in and then how do you screen them out? Have you figured that out?
[00:36:30] Sarah Jacobs: magic. So you. We really do try to define the role that we’re hiring for. And for most of those roles, we already have job descriptions written with KPIs for the jobs, but we try to refine that. If we think that maybe the description is stale or it will cross over, we give two job descriptions instead of a hybrid descriptions that they know sort of like they’re wearing two different hats.
[00:36:54] Sarah Jacobs: And then we usually try to write the job ad from The job [00:37:00] description so that we extract kind of the culture piece of the firm, but also the key things that the job will require and sort of put that in the ad. We put that out. We’re always recruiting like our website has a careers page and it always has an advertisement for a legal assistant and attorney because very specifically, we’re always looking for that.
[00:37:19] Sarah Jacobs: If we’re hiring for something else of a more, like, Okay. We’ll add it to the website at that time. We’ll pump it out over, you know, we use wise hire, so it’ll pump out over indeed and monster and LinkedIn and, you know, all the things. We, as part of our wise hire profile, we have them take a disc assessment and we don’t, you know, pin all of our hopes and dreams on the disc assessment, but we’ve learned how to read them for Red flags, but also green flags and then also things that require kind of more follow up and investigation during the course of the interview process.
[00:37:54] Sarah Jacobs: We’ll pre screen them. We’ll give them a written quiz. We’ll bring them in for a personal [00:38:00] interview. If we really think that they could be a great fit. We introduce them to a key member of the team that they’re going to work closely with and try to ascertain, you know, whether that’s. What their read on the person is sometimes we’ll have them come back for a 2nd interview.
[00:38:14] Sarah Jacobs: If we think that we really well, it seemed really great, or we weren’t sure about this or that. A lot of it comes down to gut intuition. Cause you know what the culture of your team is. We do have a values and emissions statement, and we try to make sure we bring that up pretty clearly in our interview process so that we’re putting it out there and trying to make sure that they align with the value system of the firm.
[00:38:35] Sarah Jacobs: We are radically candor. In our interviews, like we tell them exactly what they’re, you know, we don’t need to. And I say this with humility, not with hubris. We don’t need to impress you. We need to explain to you the culture and what you’re going to get when you work here. If it’s not a good fit for you, that’s cool.
[00:38:53] Sarah Jacobs: And then it won’t be a good fit for us either. So I’d rather explain that at the beginning instead of kind of sugarcoat it. [00:39:00] And that surprised you when you walk in the door that it’s not exactly what was advertised. We advertise exactly what you’re going to experience.
[00:39:07] Jonathan Hawkins: think that’s so important that you don’t want them to have the misimpression and then you find out both of you find out later and you’re both wasted your time. I like the other thing you said is you’re always recruiting. I’ve sort of come to that conclusion. You just should always be looking. Cause you just never know.
[00:39:23] Jonathan Hawkins: And the timing is it’s never perfect. So it’s like, if you’re always looking and then the timing sort of lines up, boom, you jump on it. So I think that’s huge. So shifting a little bit, you know, you’ve been at this for a while, both as a you know, attorney owner, you’ve gone through partners, you’ve hired a lot of people. What’s a typical week or maybe month like for you in terms of Client work versus firm work versus marketing, that kind of thing.
[00:39:50] Sarah Jacobs: My calendar kind of looks like Tetris. I’m always trying to slot something in somewhere. I’ve gone, we’ve gone through so many different iterations. We’ve blocked our [00:40:00] calendar. We’ve done a day system. We’ve done a, You know, morning this afternoon that it doesn’t work. We work with the court. The court doesn’t care.
[00:40:08] Sarah Jacobs: The court’s like, your plans are out the window. Show up for this. Show up for that. We’re changing our day and time. It’s about currently, I would say it’s unfortunately, it’s like 80 percent client work and 20 percent admin work, you asked me this a year ago, I would have told you the exact opposite, that it was 80%.
[00:40:29] Sarah Jacobs: Business work and 20 percent client work. It’s really hard to say week to week. It kind of depends on what the cadence of the cases that we’re working on, how many we have on our plate at any given time. There’s never enough time for anything. So kind of, I try to. Prioritize based on what’s on fire and what I need not to burn and what are required things.
[00:40:52] Sarah Jacobs: I mean, there’s always things right that always get done. You’re always going through your, you know, you’re banking. You’re always going [00:41:00] through your billing. You’re making sure those things are always getting done. You’re always making sure that your trust account management is getting done. The other stuff, you know, that’ll happen when it happens.
[00:41:09] Sarah Jacobs: I have a really good EA who hands me A to-do list every single day and then pokes me physically sometimes, you know, two or three times a day. Did you get to this? Did you get to this? I’ll get like pop-up reminders on my calendar with fun little sayings of things that I haven’t done yet that I promised her I would do in the next hour.
[00:41:27] Sarah Jacobs: So I think it’s really about your team and making sure. You have people that can read you and who can help you be supported
[00:41:36] Jonathan Hawkins: That sounds so familiar to me. Just all the time. It’s like, there’s not enough. It’s just fires everywhere. I feel you. And you know, as a litigator it’s when the court is throwing things in your lap and they’re saying, you got to be there. It’s hard to focus on the firm sometimes cause you’ve blocked out some time, you’re like, I’m going to do it on this day and then boom, the day’s gone. So how have you balanced the growing of your [00:42:00] firm and The continued growth that you’ve had and maybe you want to continue having with. You know dealing with clients and the courts and all that. How do you make it work?
[00:42:10] Sarah Jacobs: delicately. I think some days are really good and some days are just not so good. Some days the clients. And some days the business, you know, comes before the clients because it’s just a priority and you have to get something done. Otherwise you can’t service the clients the next day. It’s hard, like, next week, I had a court appearance set for Monday.
[00:42:29] Sarah Jacobs: I structured my entire week around that. And I found out by accident through the child support system that recorded it to my client before we got the notice. It’s like, Hey, that hearing’s off on Friday and now it’s time for. Monday and it’s on for Friday afternoon when you’ve already committed to a mediation with accountants.
[00:42:47] Sarah Jacobs: And I’m just like, I don’t know how I’m going to get that done. So, you know, then it’s firing off this letter and that letter and calling this person and calling that person. And sure, the banking thing I had to do yesterday didn’t get done because I had to [00:43:00] handle that and get my calendar set. So it’s not easy, but you learn your strengths and you learn the strengths of the people around you.
[00:43:08] Sarah Jacobs: And if you’re smart, you delegate. Your stuff to their strengths and you handle what you can handle and you don’t try to own it all or have them own it all you make sure you prioritize what needs to get done, but you also make sure that you give the people who can do it better than you the things that you can’t do and you keep the things that you can and you do that yourself.
[00:43:27] Jonathan Hawkins: so a corollary type question on this you know time is lacking. You’ve got firm commitments client commitments and you’re in an extremely high stress practice area I would imagine you’ve got clients that are upset you got to deal with that and you’ve got your family and all that So how do you? manage Your stress level and just Doing it all. What are some of the things that you do for yourself?
[00:43:53] Sarah Jacobs: I mean, the question I think we should all ask is that is our stress level managed? I would probably say the answer to the question is [00:44:00] no, but at least if I haven’t, you know. killed anyone in the day, it’s probably good for me. Finding joy in the things that actually can provide levity in the day. I mean, our team’s a really tight team. We do really heavy work at a really high level, but we laugh a lot with each other. We thought, you know, that Starbucks run is kind of essential in the middle of the day. I spend a lot of time trying to turn my brain off.
[00:44:27] Sarah Jacobs: I, I exercise, which I think is good for my body and my mind, but I also, you know, I try to find time that I’m not doing something heavy. Like we’re watching a show or where I’m getting my nails done, which I know sounds very, you know, whatever, but it’s. Squeezing in those things and not letting them fall to the bottom of the list, because then the cup is just completely empty.
[00:44:50] Sarah Jacobs: It’s finding little drops to put in the cup so that there’s something left for when, you know, the proverbial shit hits the fan, you have something to draw from.
[00:44:59] Jonathan Hawkins: [00:45:00] So key. So, had some pretty good growth of your firm. What do you see? What’s your longterm vision is, are you where you want to be? Is there more that you want? Is it, is it different?
[00:45:09] Sarah Jacobs: There’s more there’s more in the tank for us. I know that Jamie and I we are considered small and boutique, and we want to stay in that general realm because we do believe that’s. It’s good for the culture. It’s also good for the clients. We do want to expand a little bit more. We, as I told you before we started this podcast, I’m borrowing the office that I’m sitting in right now.
[00:45:31] Sarah Jacobs: It’s part of the suites that we own, but it’s not my particular office because we’re in the middle of a physical lease expansion. And surprise, we walked in this morning to them doing the floors when they thought they were doing it over the weekend. So, I’m currently relocated and not in my normal habitat.
[00:45:45] Sarah Jacobs: So we are. Making room for additional attorneys and legal assistants in the next, you know, span of time TBD, what that means. But the more people we can add to our team, the more people you [00:46:00] can service. And the more people we service, the more families we actually help, more families we help, the better we feel.
[00:46:05] Sarah Jacobs: So it’s kind of a nice circle in that sense, despite the work that we do.
[00:46:10] Jonathan Hawkins: So how do you you don’t have to give us all your secrets, but how do you get your clients? Is it a referral word of mouth? Is it internet is a combination of a lot of different things. What are the sort of marketing approaches you guys take?
[00:46:26] Sarah Jacobs: We do a cross section where family law, we’re always going to get a large base of referrals from. Colleagues, other professionals that we work in, friends, family, former clients, current clients we’re the type of industry where you really want somebody that you trust. You don’t want to open the proverbial yellow pages and just pluck a name out because they’re close.
[00:46:46] Sarah Jacobs: You really want somebody who’s been, had a positive experience and felt like it would be a good personal fit. But you know, this is the age of the internet, as we all know, the age of AI really, if you will. And Online [00:47:00] advertising is a thing. So we, you know, we’re invested in that. We spend a lot of time on social media, managing our branded, you know, content and trying to put out there what is reflective of who we are and what our values are.
[00:47:14] Sarah Jacobs: So it’s kind of a little bit of everything.
[00:47:15] Jonathan Hawkins: So social media what are your best channels? I’m curious.
[00:47:18] Sarah Jacobs: So, I think we get a lot of interaction with both Facebook and Instagram. I think we use YouTube, which a lot of people don’t, and people have found us through there, which surprised me, frankly, because my marketing team was like, this is a way, and I was like, nobody watches that stuff. Like, like, my kid watches it for gaming, but I’m like, who’s looking for a lawyer on YouTube?
[00:47:40] Sarah Jacobs: But I think that, Everything’s connected to everything these days, right? So you see a TikTok video about that leads you to somewhere else, that leads you to a YouTuber, that leads you to an advertisement. And it kind of just spills from there, right? So I think since the world is interconnected, as long as you’re out there and you’re putting your presence in some [00:48:00] place that somebody can find it.
[00:48:02] Sarah Jacobs: We’ve gotten a lot of great. Response from podcasts, just like yours, like being hosted by people who have audiences that care about the things that we want to talk about. And then they just, you know, they find us on our socials or on our website and then they call because, you know, that’s people need a little confidence to call our office because it’s a big 1st step.
[00:48:22] Sarah Jacobs: So I think when they get to know us a little bit in other locations and get to know, like. Who we are and what our voice sounds like both, you know, on paper, but also real time like this. They, I feel like they are more comfortable making that first call.
[00:48:36] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I’m with you. You got to really do all the above, you know, it’s sort of a mix. So for me, you know, I want to do, I want to do it all, but also you can’t do it all at once. So you got to do it one by one, but you do need to sort of add it all. It’s funny. You know, I’ve got a YouTube channel.
[00:48:52] Jonathan Hawkins: There’s not, I mean, I put this podcast on there, some other things on there. It’s not a huge channel or anything. And I remember my kids when they’re like, you have a [00:49:00] YouTube channel? I’m like yeah. I was like, go subscribe. So, you know, two of my subscribers are my kids. So, you know, tell them,
[00:49:07] Sarah Jacobs: You got to get their
[00:49:08] Jonathan Hawkins: I know, I think they did get a
[00:49:09] Sarah Jacobs: you get the rightful effect.
[00:49:12] Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Apparently it’s the funniest thing that my son was telling me that some of his friends. Found some of my videos and they just, they thought it was just the funniest thing that I’m on the internet, whatever, but it’s working. People are finding me somewhere, right?
[00:49:28] Sarah Jacobs: You’re there. People are seeing you. That means it works.
[00:49:32] Jonathan Hawkins: So, what’s the best part in your mind of owning your own firm? What’s your favorite part?
[00:49:36] Sarah Jacobs: Oh, boy, that’s a good question. I don’t think everybody needs to ask me what my favorite part is. I, I have I guess I have two parts that I’m really grateful for. And I’ll say grateful because I don’t know that they would be my favorite. 1 is the sheer flexibility that owning my own business provides. For me, I’m able to be present for my family when I want to be and how I want to be in ways that I don’t know that [00:50:00] I would be able to do that if I wasn’t my own boss.
[00:50:02] Sarah Jacobs: And that’s a huge priority for me. My parents are divorced. They got divorced when I was in law school. I can’t say that they had the. Most fantastic relationship prior to the time that they got divorced. And so, you know, as a kid, it was just a really weird environment, I guess, to grow up in. And I don’t want my son to ever think that a, I chose work over him or be that other people’s breakdown of their families was more important than having an intact one of our own.
[00:50:31] Sarah Jacobs: So I’m really grateful for being able to be there for all his milestones and like barely missing anything important that, you know, is dear and dear to his heart and being able to just be like a champion for him with my husband. So that’s a really big piece of gratitude and a really big motivator for why I did what I did to begin with in the beginning of this journey.
[00:50:51] Sarah Jacobs: But Tube Flight team is kick ass. Like we have built such a great network around us. Like they really put 150% into [00:51:00] everything that they do. They love their job, even when it drives them nuts. They wanna help people and. That’s hard. That’s it’s hard to find great people with good work ethic in this day and age, but it’s also hard to find.
[00:51:13] Sarah Jacobs: Good people with great work ethic who also have a heart and are full of compassion and humanity. And every single person that’s in this office is like filled with that. And it brings me joy every day to make it known that I’m supporting their families and their lives and helping them live a better life.
[00:51:29] Sarah Jacobs: And in turn, they’re helping our clients live a
[00:51:31] Jonathan Hawkins: I tell you. Being part of a strong team, that is, there’s something special about that. So that’s really cool that you’ve got that. Keep that as you grow. That’s good. So just a couple more questions. If I am a young lawyer out there who’s thinking about starting a firm or maybe I’ve just started my firm, um, any pieces of advice that you have for them as they sort of start down this path,
[00:51:57] Sarah Jacobs: new profession. No be open. [00:52:00] To advice, but don’t necessarily feel that you are compelled to absorb every single thing that you think has been successful for somebody else and mimic it identically, because it may not be. Your special sauce, like listen carefully and then be judicious about what you want to try and be open to trying it.
[00:52:25] Sarah Jacobs: But like I said before, check your ego. You’re not necessarily the smartest person in the room. You might be at some point and maybe you are now, but you’re not going to know that until you’re listening and assessing for your own and every single person you meet like them, don’t like them. Think their war stories are good, bad, or indifferent, they will have something to teach you about what to do or what not to do.
[00:52:47] Sarah Jacobs: And a lot of times you can learn what not to do by watching and listening to other people also. And I feel like everybody’s so busy trying to learn what to do, that they forgot what not to do. And sometimes those lessons are equally as valuable, if not more so.
[00:52:59] Jonathan Hawkins: [00:53:00] that’s huge. There’s, I’ve learned a lot of what not to do over the years from people. So yeah that’s great advice. So for people out there that want to find you, get in touch with you what’s the best way? What are your social media handles? What, how can people find you?
[00:53:15] Sarah Jacobs: Our website is www Jacobs Berger. That’s B-E-R-G-E r.com. Our Facebook is at Jacobs. Something. I don’t even know to be honest with you. I know our LinkedIn is at Jacobsberger LLC. You can find us on Facebook though, just by typing in Jacobsberger LLC. We will come up, we have a page. And you can call 973 710 4366 carrier pigeon.
[00:53:42] Sarah Jacobs: We welcome those. Anyway, you want to find us, you’re going to be able to stumble across us on the internet.
[00:53:48] Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Sarah, thanks for joining us. This has been fun. You’ve got a lot of good stuff.
[00:53:52] Sarah Jacobs: I’ve had a great time, Jonathan. Thank you so much for allowing me the platform to talk about my, you know, wise adventures and also my amazing team. Well, I’m [00:54:00] excited to see the continued growth and see where you guys end up.
[00:54:03] Sarah Jacobs: Yeah, thanks. And for you too. I’m watching you carefully.
[00:54:06]
