Kellam Parks: [00:00:00] again, that’s why I’m so passionate about trying to share my information because I think, almost what’s more important than what I can tell you what to do is what not to do. Right. So get rid of shiny object syndrome. Don’t try to do it all.
One of the things that I always preach is when you start, there’s two main questions you have.
Well, Three, one is what’s your, why, like, why are you doing this? But from a professional level is, do you enjoy practicing law? Do you enjoy running your law firm? Or do you enjoy both? There’s no wrong answer, figure out what you like to do. And then you want to be a solo? Do you want to have other lawyers? Do you want to build an empire? What’s your current goal? And if you can figure those three things out, let’s start with that and then build up. Instead of just going and doing the work, because we’re all grinders.
[00:01:00]
Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is going to be a great episode today. We’ve got Kellam Parks, who is an attorney, founded a firm up in Virginia. He’s got three offices. We’re going to talk all about the founding and the growth of the firm. But we’re also going to dive into technology and, the use or non use of it in law firms. And also, I was lucky to see a presentation that Kellam gave on AI and the way he uses it and all things AI, and I thought it was just blew me away. I know AI is the rage but you know, it’s, sort of intimidating, I got to say. There’s so many options out there and you know, everybody knows ChatGPT, but you don’t really know where to start.
Kellam knows where to start, so we’re going to talk a little bit about that as well. So, Kellam, why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell us where you are, tell us about your firm, what kind of practice area is and how big it is, that kind of thing.
Kellam Parks: Sure, absolutely. Thanks again for inviting me. that I’m [00:02:00] happy to talk about all this stuff. It really jazzes me up as you and I talked about before you got on. You know, This is what I love doing. So My name is Kellam Parks. as Jonathan said I So I’ve been practicing law for almost 25 years.
We have a firm parks Ziegler, which is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. We’ve got three offices, two across Virginia, one down in Eastern North Carolina. We’ve got 14 lawyers, about 38 people. We do most practice areas. We do the standard trust in estates, criminal family. I happen to do cyber security and data privacy work.
I consult with companies across the United States. If they’re within my two areas, I’ll do law, if they’re not, I just consult. But we really do a lot of different kinds of law. I worked for a bunch of different law firms and then came and founded this as a solo back in 2012. And then about three years into my practice, a good friend of mine who worked at two other law firms I was at, Brandon Ziegler, approached me about starting his own firm, and that led to a conversation about him buying in, and now we’re equal partners.
And between the two of us, we’ve grown this pretty significantly figured it out along the way. I like to say, we were successful for a long time despite [00:03:00] ourselves, because you know, most lawyers don’t get trained on business of law, and you sort of figure it out the hard way. But yeah, one of the reasons I started my own firm was I really wanted to integrate modern technologies.
I was paperless and cloud based back in 2012, which was pretty radical. And then since all, we’re always looking for smart implementation of technology, which nowadays is AI. I know we’re going to talk a little bit about that as well. but yeah, So we’ve grown it and, we slowly but surely figured out marketing and intake and business principles.
We adopted an EOS traction type model, which some of your listeners might be familiar with is Gina Wickman wrote a book called Traction. He created what’s called the Entrepreneurial Organization System, which is just a very streamlined way of running a business and uh, it’s a great way. And so we got an individual business coach to help us implement something very similar to that.
It’s franchised, so it’s not the actual model, but it’s close. And then we hired a COO to help run it, and we have management and C level executives. And so I’m happy to dive into all of that as sort of our journey and [00:04:00] what we found worked, probably more importantly what didn’t work.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, there’s so much to unpack there. we’re gonna go all the way back. But before we do, one thing I’ll just know, you know, it’s interesting, it sounds like, you know, your firm does all sorts of different practice areas that is becoming more and more rare nowadays, it seems like, where you’ve got, I assume, you’ve got, some family law, some business law, some trust in states. Nowadays, most people one or two, and that’s it. So That’s interesting. I want to hear about how that evolved as well.
But let’s go way back. So You mentioned some tech and AI. I know that you’ve always been interested in tech even before uh, you got into law. I guess a couple questions. I guess why, or how did you get into the law, tech’s really more of an interest for you?
Kellam Parks: Sure! Yeah, so, you know, It’s one of those things as a kid, I always said I wanted to be a lawyer. I don’t know why. I’m the first one to go to college in my immediate family, and I think I like to argue. You know, I was a debater. I liked all that stuff. I went to college. I thought I was going to do maybe business, and then I didn’t like business, and then I found philosophy, which I ended up graduating a philosophy degree, which unless you want to teach, [00:05:00] it’s not a career. But it was sort of a perfect fit.
And when I decided that I didn’t want to do business, I looked in again in law school, and I thought I was going to be a prosecutor. Did internships with prosecution offices while I was in law school and then figured out I can’t afford to be a prosecutor. I had a lot of loans and so I sort of slid into civil litigation and worked my way around a couple of firms while I figured out what I really enjoyed. And I was always a litigator, and I enjoyed litigation for a very long time. And once I founded my own firm in 2012, I found I really enjoyed the business of law.
So my dad had always run a business. He was a used car. He owned a used car lot. He owned an automotive repair shop. He did some other stuff. And I never knew I was an entrepreneur until I started my own law firm and, found that I really enjoyed the business of law more than the practice.
I still practice, but I’ve found that I enjoy the non litigation part of it more now, having tried a million cases, that kind of stuff. So I was just a tech geek. My daughter who turns 27 next week, I always make a joke with Avery and I say, "Hey, you have no idea how uncool I was in the 80s and how cool I would be now if I was 12 and 13 because [00:06:00] I got into computers early." I was into all that stuff when it was so not cool.
So I’ve always just enjoyed computer stuff and I saw the potential of the technology in the firm that I was at before I started my own firm. We had 30 lawyers, about 100 people. And they were pretty good for that size of a firm but you could only be so nimble and so tech heavy at a 30 person.
You know, If you’re a really large firm, you have a lot of tech because they have all the money. And when you’re in a really small firm, you can be agile. But when you’re in that sort of mid sized, You know, we were still using older programs and people didn’t want to adopt. And I just really saw the future was more automation.
and, you know, I couldn’t have anticipated AI at that point being where it is, but that’s really the ability to leverage technology and you can compete and punch so much higher above your weight when you smartly integrate technology.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s, interesting. My dad is retired, but he was a lawyer and he was an engineer too. And I remember as a kid, he got personal computers very, very early. We had them all over the house. And then he got into [00:07:00] this phase where he basically started a company, and he created basically practice management software for his law practice.
This is before Windows. This was back in DOS type days. I mean, It was crazy stuff. And I, I got into computers a little bit and then I just completely upset. So I got into it for a little while and then I’ve lost all my tech uh, skills. So you said, you know, you grew up with your dad was an entrepreneur.
As you look back, are there any threads that you at an early age maybe showed some of that entrepreneurial streak, or is this something that just sort of came out later in life?
Kellam Parks: Yeah. You know, I think I’ve never been afraid of taking risks. I’m hardwired. I’m not a high anxiety person. I’m very logical, very calm, very reasonable, logical basis. Law school came pretty easy to me that way in that I I always thought like a lawyer and I read incredibly quickly, so it wasn’t, that part of it wasn’t very difficult for me.
And so growing up those traits, you know, especially the, I’m not risk averse, which if you’re risk averse, you certainly can’t be an [00:08:00] entrepreneur, if you don’t want an ulcer. And my dad was like that. He always was willing to take chances and do stuff. And I never really considered myself an entrepreneur until I did it.
So looking back, that was an interesting question, cause looking back, I think I had those traits. I never put them together and figured out that I really would have enjoyed it. I didn’t really do sales as a kid. You know, I, I did wait, I mean, I was a waiter at a lot of high end restaurants and that’s certainly a sales type deal.
but yeah, once I started my firm, I just I got the bug and I really, I love figuring out systems, procedures, marketing and take sales. You know, A lot of lawyers hate the word sales, but that’s what it is. You’re selling your services, you’re selling yourself. So, but yeah, My dad’s always been in. So he was always in sales.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, You went to one or two firms and eventually went out of your own. So Take me back to that time. So, You mentioned that the firm you were at maybe did not want to lead with the technology like you did, what was it that pushed you over? That you said, all right, I’m gone.
And you said, I’m gone, whatever next week, what was the thing? What was the final straw that pushed you out the door?
Kellam Parks: I’ve [00:09:00] always been lucky. in that, I’ve been at five firms, before I started practice. And every firm I left, it was amicable and there were reasons. And the last firm was that I was at the point where I needed to be partner or not. At the time, they had 20 I was the 30th attorney and they had I think 27 equity partners or 26 equity partners. I didn’t want to work at a firm where any decision I wanted to make had to be by committee. I really enjoyed most of the people that I worked with there. I got along really well with the leadership.
But I wanted, at the time, I thought I wanted to do, I was doing credit, I wanted to do fair credit reporting at plaintiff work. So I was doing credit reporting errors and we were conflicted out of most of that because we represented a lot of businesses and, and banks and big credit companies.
So it was a practice area issue. It was, I really wanted to implement marketing. I wanted to implement, which is a large firm, you know, they were very traditional in that sense. I wanted to use technologies, and I just kind of wanted to do it my own way. And I, figured out, how much money am I bringing in my own, how much am I making on my own.
And you know, I, again, it was time for me to either move up or out. And I took about a year to figure it out. And you know, we mentioned, the [00:10:00] conference we went to, Great Legal Marketing, Ben Glass and his son Brian Glass now run it. And I found him online. And I always joke with Ben. I said, you convinced me to start my own law firm and we never met. Because it was his videos and words. So I spent about a year, on my own time weekends figuring out how does this work? How does a trust account work? How do you start a business? And I just you know, I told them, I said, look, this is what I want to do. And, I will tell you, I’m a big believer, business is business, and you keep the relationships, and so I went to the managing partner and said "Hey, here are all the reasons I want to go out on my own."
And he was very generous. He said, look, I, know, "I hope it’s successful. I obviously am just one voice, but if it doesn’t work out, you can always come you know, to me, you can come back. I wish you the best. You can have all your clients. We don’t want them." And it was, fine. And we still you know, I have drinks with those guys and gals, and we still have a really good relationship. And You know, it was a good experience, for sure.
Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. So That was gonna be my next question was, when you went out, did you have clients? So it sounds like you did.
Kellam Parks: I did, yeah, because most, I was doing a lot of family law back then. I still do high asset divorces now, but I was doing a lot of family law, and I had some general civil litigation, and they basically said, you [00:11:00] know, I had about 2, $300,000 worth of clients in the pipeline which was plenty for my first year, and, it was good.
And family law is one of those practice areas that, if you do it well, it’s an endless source of referrals because you have repeat business. I’m at the point now where I think I’ve divorced one client three times, and I’ve gotten one of their children divorced as they get older. But you get a lot of referrals and repeat business.
And so It wasn’t difficult. Let me put it that way.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, When you calculate the lifetime value of that client, right?
Kellam Parks: No, it’s true. And that’s, you know, you, that’s what you talk about marketing, you know, you got to keep that list and keep top of mind on these people.
Jonathan Hawkins: So that’s good. So, You started, you had clients that, you know, that some people start with no clients. So, that, That was good. So, you get out there and Then how did you start to figure out, you said you spent a year before. But how did you get out there? I mean, it’s different, Theory is different than practice.
You get out there. and you’re like, oh yeah, Now I got to start figuring it out. So, What did you do?
Kellam Parks: So, I’d like to gather information. I’m an information hoarder, as I like to say. So I went online. This is really before the days YouTube were really big, but I found a bunch of resources. And, just sort of like, all right, well, what are the parts of a [00:12:00] law firm you got to figure out?
Well, I got to figure out marketing. I’ve never had to market before. You know, My market, I just I got business, how I got business. So I figured out SEO, website, SEO work. Okay, I have to have a website and I got to figure out how to grab those clients. Oh, I need intake. I need, somebody’s going to answer the phones.
So you got to figure out sort of that out. And then it’s the day to day tech part. Well, How do the phones work? And I was lucky at the time. My older sister I convinced moved back to the area and she was my right hand person and she was with us for almost a decade. And she started out as sort of my right hand office manager. And then as we grew, she took other roles, and so I had that support system. I wasn’t alone.
But yeah, You just kind of figure it out. And back then, it I was sort of figuring it out on my own which is difficult. And now, you know, there’s a lot of coaches and there’s a lot of resources, and a lot of much easier to have a small or solo practice than it used to be because you could do a lot of this virtually and there’s a lot of other ways to do it.
You know, One of the things I want to circle back on is you said, Hey, you know, it’s really interesting that you have all these practice areas. And nowadays, it’s more focused. I would tell you doing it over again, I probably would focus on [00:13:00] one or two because it’s just so much easier to market and to be known as a leader and one or two practice areas.
We used to do personal injury at one point. And I had a divorce client that loved us and we did a great job. And she fell off our radar right at the end. And then a month later, we get ahold of her and she was in this terrible accident.
And we were like, oh my gosh, that’s so sad. And my paralegal was talking to her. and, she’s like, well, you know, I need to ask, you know, did you talk to a lawyer? And she says, oh yeah, I’ve already hired one. I know you guys don’t do personal injury work.
Jonathan Hawkins: Oh man, you’re like, no!
Kellam Parks: And even though we do a newsletter and we talk about it, but she just she knew me as her divorce lawyer, even though we were a larger firm.
think it was a multi million dollar case that we lost out on because she just didn’t know me as that lawyer. right? So doing it over again, I probably would have focused a little more, and that’s something I learned over time. And again, that’s the sort of successful despite yourself.
But now that we’re larger, it’s great because we can cross market. So our divorce clients, we move over to trust in estates, business clients, talk to me about cybersecurity, it worked out. But if I were to start over, I certainly would do a more focused [00:14:00] practice.
Jonathan Hawkins: You start on your own, you, at some point, you add your partner, take me through sort of the evolution of the growth. Was it you and then the partner or had you added other attorneys before your partner joined?
Kellam Parks: Sure. Yeah. So in 2012, it was just me, and then my sister is a staff person. I think the first hire was a receptionist admin person. Then I hired a paralegal who’s still with me, 13 years later. She’s amazing. And then I hired my one associate, and that was about three years in is within when Brandon came to me and said, Hey, I want to start my own firm.
And then he and I talked about him buying in and us being partners. And he’s always been a big rainmaker and a big generator of business. And he brought a paralegal. It’s really interesting. So We’ve developed now a three, what I call a three legged stool approach to growth. And two of these were organically, and one of these is purposeful.
So we started to get people that knew, cause both Brandon and I have practiced, we’re both from this area. And we would encounter other lawyers that were unhappy where they were for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s lack of tech, sometimes it’s lack of respect, sometimes it’s just whatever it is.
We started to have [00:15:00] conversations with these people, and we found that we could bolt them on sort of as lateral hires, give them support staff, whether it be a other lawyers, you know, younger attorneys or staff people. And then we had a lawyer who was fortunate enough to be on a short list of maybe being a judge.
So in Virginia, they’re appointed by the legislators. And she was tapped, and she had her own solo, and she said, Look, I don’t really want to close my practice down in a month if I get tapped. So She rolled her firm into our firm, and that led to our second lawyer. geographic office. The second leg of approach is we try to find an area that we could expand into then we can find a an experienced attorney to run that office, which is what we did in North Carolina.
And then the third leg is we’re trying to find older attorneys that are want to slow down or retire. And as you know, Probably, most solos don’t have anything to sell because it’s so branded to them and they haven’t created systems and procedures to sell anything. And our pitch is, hey, instead of just shutting off the valve, come work for us, we’ll pay you benefits. You know, We’ll give you a percentage of irradiation if you want to work. Well, you know, If you want to practice, we’ll give you a [00:16:00] percentage of generation. And your job is to mentor our younger attorneys in Rainmake. And that way, they have an off ramp and they can work as little as they want, within reason, makes sense financially.
We haven’t found one of those yet, but I think that’s a great way for a win win scenario. And so we’ve been trying to be systematic about that, and that’s how we’ve grown. And now that we’re bigger, we now have summer associates, summer interns we’ll hire.
We just hired two brand new attorneys that started, they’re both just past the bar. We’re doing a little more traditional that way. But traditionally, we’ve just lateraled in, found attorneys and expanded our offices and just sort of went along that way. And now we’re fortunate. They come to us. We don’t have to look very hard for laterals that a lot of times, they know that we have an open hiring policy that, hey, if you come with a book of business, We can, especially because we’re paperless, we can bolt you on. And as long as you’re a good attorney and have a good reputation and make money, we’re happy for you to be part of us.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, I want to go through your expansion approach a little bit, but the last prong or the last leg, absolutely. I’ve seen that done successfully. I think that is absolutely [00:17:00] a, great way to do it. There’s a lot of these older attorneys that they just think they have to fold up shop, right?
And so really the key or one of the challenges is finding it, which I’m sure you’ve seen and how do you get the word out there? But again, just keep getting out there. I’ve seen a lot of practices that have grown that way successfully. So, Big believer in that. I want to go back to the geographic expansion. so You were in Virginia, you crossed over into North Carolina, what was that like?
Adding a new office is probably complex enough, maybe not with your virtual. But then you cross into a different jurisdiction. You’ve got different regulations, you got to deal with, etc. How do you integrate that into your existing platform? I’m curious how you went through that.
Kellam Parks: We went into Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which is it’s a really small community. And if you’re not there two generations, then you’re a carpetbagger. sss So we had an attorney that we knew that had been in North Carolina. He’s been practicing in Virginia for over 30 years, and he’s been in North Carolina for 20 years, practices in both states. And he always wanted to create a North [00:18:00] Carolina Office, and the firm that he was with at the time didn’t want to expand down there. And he really thought that he could do it. And so we, bet on him and said, look, your job is to create this office because you’re known down there. He knows all the judges, he knows everybody.
And so from a technology and procedures perspective, it’s easy. We have a practice manager system. We have all our tech stacks, that’s not difficult. The difficult part is, especially in a small community is finding the right attorneys down there to do the work and to come up with the right marketing messages because what works for us here in Virginia Beach is not going to work down there at all.
It’s more people oriented than it is service oriented. really. And so That’s been sort of the challenge is figure out the marketplace, and figure out the nuts and bolts of the individual practice. But as far as integrating, it really isn’t that difficult. Our, office manager goes down our COO, COO she rotates between our offices.
So we have one in Chesapeake, which is only about 20 minutes away from our office here in Virginia Beach. Then Elizabeth City’s I think about an hour and a half away, hour [00:19:00] and 15 minutes away. She goes down there once a week. And then that way, you know, we keep in touch and we try to make sure the person, cause we have one attorney down there full time, the guy that runs our North Carolina office goes down there frequently, but he’s not always in the office.
And then we’ve got a couple of staff people right now.
Jonathan Hawkins: That’s really interesting to me, the crossing state lines because the more you do it, the better you get. Some of the other attorneys I’ve talked to that have done it lots of times.
but, uh, so I want to shift, You mentioned your tech stack, so I want to shift to, tech discussion for a minute. And part of this is selfish because I’ve got some personal questions on it. Cause that’s a question that I, ask every lawyer that I talk to a lot. You know, What do you use? And you know, what works for one doesn’t work for another. What works for one practice area won’t work for another. What works now may not work five years from now. And you know, I’ve been through a couple of practice management systems at my prior firms. I’ve had different ones there.
So, When you’re, whether it’s practice management, document management, CRM, whatever it is, what is your approach if you’re going to look for, [00:20:00] maybe we’re going to switch our tech for a certain function of the firm, how would you go about sort of approaching the problem?
Kellam Parks: Sure. So, and We’ve done this. right? So I started in 2012, there weren’t that many practice management assistants out there. And I started with Clio. It’s now one of the you know, remains, one of the biggest, but it was one of the only back then. and We sort of outgrew Clio because we had so many to practice areas.
I haven’t kept up with them, but they didn’t have integrated accounting. They didn’t have really good reporting. And so we really needed that. And so we, Then we switched to Litify, which is a Salesforce based product. That was extraordinarily overly complicated. And unfortunately, we had a third party implementation company that was horrific.
That’s a six figure mistake. I mean, It literally cost us six figures to get in and get out of that. We ended up with something called CARET Legal, which used to be called Zola Suites. It has integrated accounting and it has integrated document management system. It’s got some CRM capabilities, though we use a different solution, which I’ll talk about.
And I mentioned that to say, each time that we looked at something leaving Clio, I’m [00:21:00] a big believer in finding the right person that’s a specialist. So Even though I do a lot of this, and even though I, pride myself on being a tech guy, I don’t live in this space day to day. So We hired a third party company, it’s a national company called Affinity Consulting.
They’re a really good group of people. Yeah, But half are lawyers and half are tech people. approach is what I always recommend you do, whether you do it yourself or hire them or somebody else, is they basically said, okay, they did a survey of all our people to say, and they came up with a questionnaire to say, in the current system, what do you like, what do you don’t like? And in a perfect world, what would you love to have?
We then took those answers and, called it down to what was important and, what was needed. They created a functional requirement spreadsheet for every type of thing, accounting, document management, intake, and they came up with all these different features, and then they have columns, basically said, this is included, it’s not included, it’s on the road map. and Their expertise new out of all the 100 different practice management solutions out there, the ones that you think you need or want, they would send it out to maybe 15. And [00:22:00] then they called that down to three or four, and we demoed three or four, and then they helped us choose out of those three or four, what was best for us based on price features, implementation, customer service. And that very systematic process really helped us determine find CARET, for instance, that had everything that we needed.
There’s no unicorn, is my first answer. is there’s no, You’re never going to find the perfect practice management solution. But it had everything that we absolutely needed. It had some things that we were looking for that was on the road map. It lacked a few things that we kind of wanted, but wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker.
Customer service was high, which is super important. One of the reasons we went with them is they’re the same company that owns hot talks, Which is the form generation solution. So their form generation solution integrates entirely with the practice management, which allows us for tremendous amount of automation and form generation. So that’s sort of the processes.
And what I would say is, when you’re looking at this, understand, you’re never going to find the perfect one. It doesn’t exist. You have to find something that, does the [00:23:00] core things you need it to do, but also can expand. They’ve been around for a while, they have good leadership, they have the capital to expand, we’ve been really pleased with CARET.
We went live with them in September of 23. We were so confident we signed a five year contract with them. I mean, we really When all in and we’ve been very happy with them, but like you said, it’s not the right solution for everybody. If I was personal injury, I’d probably be Neos or practice banter or something else.
But just that functional, be just very systematic about it. And I would absolutely hire a third party consulting company to help you with it because they’re going to save you so much time and energy and money, for sure.
Jonathan Hawkins: I love that. I got to tell you, most people just say, Hey, what do you use? Okay. I’ll try it. you know,
Kellam Parks: Oh, I know.
Jonathan Hawkins: And then, with Litify, the switching costs, even if you stay with it, the switching costs is just a pain, I mean, the time, energy, all of it, the moving of data, training, all of it’s just a pain.
So it’s sort of like, For at least the way I’m approaching it, I don’t want to move twice, I want to move once, if I can handle it. And as I’m [00:24:00] thinking about it, a solution for a sole practitioner that has one practice area is going to be different than a firm like yours that has many or a firm that says, hey, we’re going to have 10 offices within the next five years.
We need something that can grow with us. And not every solution can. And I think, really good point that not many people think about is the viability of the company behind the solution. Are they going to run out of money and get bought out, get shut down or whatever in a few years? Do they have enough to go with you down the road?
I don’t know how you answer that question. Maybe the consultant can answer that question.
Kellam Parks: Well, That was. When I was talking to Britt Lorish, she’s one of the owners and she’s actually at a Roanoke, Virginia across the state, but she’s our person. She was part of the conversation she had with us is, hey, two comp. One is, here’s the health of these companies, meaning, how much money they have behind them. you know, Are they going to be sold? Did they get bought by equity? What’s going on?
And then, I know the owners. These people are not necessarily as good with customer service as these [00:25:00] people and these people. you know, We have hundreds of clients or thousands of clients, however many they have and they said, we get a lot of complaints about these people. We don’t get complaints. You’re not going to know that. And that’s, and CARET really was it. I mean, It was just such a great, I’m not trying to sell them, but it was just that good of a relationship. That’s what I try to do as well.
So One of the things is in CARET does have a CRM, Content Relation Management, that’s the marketing intake part. We went with Lawmatics, which is another well known product. And the owner of Lawmatics is the guy that created my case, and he sold that and developed Lawmatics. And Lawmatics is based on primarily intake in a CRM, and it’s super robust, very powerful, I think they’re doing more practice management and sort of integrations as they build, but it’s been such a great solution for us, and the two of those together are fantastic.
One of the downsides of CARET is they don’t have an open API yet. you know, We have to do a little bit of manual duplication. but again, It’s not perfect, but those two companies are talking about integrating. That’s what we try to do is, I’ve tried to get one solution for as much as possible because A, [00:26:00] costs, B, training. And you don’t want too many people pointing fingers.
When we were having issues with our data in Litify, the implementation company was pointing fingers at Litify. Litify was pointing fingers at us, we were pointing fingers at some, so there’s like five people, but if you just have one company that does one thing, you’ve got one cook in the kitchen, so to speak.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so That’s the other series of questions or the topic I want to discuss on the technology is, there’s no one solution that can do everything. We all know that. You got to make sure you pick something that allows the platforms to talk.
So You’ve got the CRM, you might have a document management, practice management, the document automation. Hopefully, you’ve got solutions that do a lot of those things, but let’s say, you’ve got, you have to go with four different solutions. Any advice on deciding what to get terms of how they connect and talk to each other.
And let me give you a perfect example too. If I’m using a CRM system, and I enter the data of a lead, and they decide to hire us, I don’t want to have to re enter that data in the practice management system. [00:27:00] I want it to just immediately shoot into that. I know that you’ve got Zapier and other things there. From your perspective, a tech guy, what, strategies or approaches would you take when making these decisions?
Kellam Parks: Where I think, for instance, give me the example I’m using, Lawmatics and CARET. Right now, they don’t speak to each other. So right now We have Lawmatics handles all our intakes. When somebody books a consult, we have created a custom form, a custom output from Lawmatics that will give the 12 pieces of information we need to open and essentially an intake and CARET, because we’re not using CARET for CRM, but we use CARET once a consult.
The attorneys all go to CARET. They don’t go to Lawmatics. Our intake uses Lawmatics. So What happens is, we have to do that one piece of manual override. All the forms and all the data and when it comes time to convert them to a client, if they hire us, we can do that just with a button.
When they integrate, which I think is going to be this year, the end of this year, beginning of next, we won’t have that manual [00:28:00] anymore. From that point, it’s literally, you hit a button and it will create the intake and carry. Small issue in this particular case because it’s not a lot of work. The more that you can do that, And so when you have this open API, the two programs work directly with each other. So You don’t need a connector like Zapier or make dot com. You have the actual two programs that work together. And a lot of them do and that’s one of Clio’s big strength is basically, they have such a robust API and all these other companies work with them. The difficulty is, you know, and again I’m not completely versed with what Clio does or doesn’t do itself right now. Back in the day, they did these 18 things, you need these other 12 things where you can hire these other 12 companies. Each one is 20 bucks a month per user, it’s going to cost me 19, 000 bucks a month to connect. And That’s the thing, is like, if you don’t, so CARRET CRM is actually pretty good. It’s just that’s all Lawmatics really does. So It does it better because it’s got all its resources based on that. Much like CARRET has a document management system built [00:29:00] in and it’s got versioning and it’s got a client portal and it’s got share ability and it’s, great.
Now, is it as good as NetDocs, which is sort of the biggest guy in town. No, not at all. But NetDocs was more expensive per month than our entire practice management was. Do I need these extra 12 features? or whatever? You know, There are more than that. But do I need these extra features at this cost? And the answer is no. Do we at some point? Maybe. That’s again where you have to figure out what your needs are.
And The other thing that I would advise, having gone through this a number of times is, look at what your current needs are, which is huge, look look ahead a little. Because you really don’t want to grab something that just does what you need and then a year later, you find out you’ve outgrown it. Because then you have to move and that’s a problem.
Jonathan Hawkins: I think that’s huge. That’s what I’m going through now. And I’ve talked to Affinity and I’ll keep talking to him. I haven’t made a decision yet.
But yeah.
[00:30:00]
Jonathan Hawkins: So yeah, so Let’s shift. So You mentioned a minute ago that you have a full time COO. I want to talk about that decision. So first of all, is that an attorney?
Kellam Parks: No, she’s not. She’s a CPA by education and training. She had her own accounting firm and then got roped into helping a couple of medical practices and then she did a medical device public traded company, took them public, and then we hired her away from that. This was her first legal oriented job.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, First of all, 100%, I think that’s great Great decision. You don’t need me to say that, but for the people out there, most lawyers should not be running the firms. It’s good to get a professional, I think, that’s not a lawyer. So, I guess the first thing is when did you make that hire?
Because, you know, A small firm probably can’t justify it. You got to be big enough to be able do it. And then what pushed you to decide to do that?
Kellam Parks: Sure. So I started the firm in 2012, Braden bought it in 2015, and we really started to grow significantly from then on. Basically the firm got away from us. I mean, We were trying to practice law full time. We were trying to run the [00:31:00] firm. We were doing an okay job. Yeah. You know, We’re not idiots, we made plenty of mistakes. And even if we knew exactly what to do, we would find ourselves every week, because we’d have weekly meetings, we’d find ourselves, I hadn’t gotten to it, and then six months go by, because you know how it works, right?
So we hired a COO, gosh, I guess it’s maybe three years now. I think April will be three years, if not four years. And we knew we needed help. And so we found, and it turns out, it’s funny, we did a national search, did all these interviews, and then Jennifer Kopin, who’s our COO, lives in Chesapeake. It was, It was weird. It was great, and so she joined. And then we had planned on her. Obviously, and look, it took so long for her to get us straightened out, because again, we did okay, but we were a mess. And we were also at that point transitioning into Litify and then had to get out of Litify.
She came in, and then what we discovered is she was so busy straightening us out and running the day to day, that we didn’t have as much strategic planning as we needed, plus she didn’t have the [00:32:00] legal law firm experience, and it’s a sort of a different animal, and that’s when we decided we needed a business coach. We were looking at EOS based coaches primarily, I’m the guy on the list.
It’s Bran and I are a great team because we’re so opposite. He’s big picture. I’d say, barely contain chaos in a lovingly and good way because he’s a genius. I’m much more list, procedures, systems. And so I did that search and I have a whole spreadsheet and matrix and all this stuff. We narrowed it down and we ended up going with Stephanie Everett, who you might know, who runs The Lawyerist, which was bought by Affinity Consulting.
And so Stephanie, they’re a small firm coaching group. But she does one on one coaching for firms of the right size and somebody she wants to work with. She’s been our business coach for coming on, going on three years. She came in and really helped us with the nuts and bolts of strategic planning and organizational shifts and figuring out better KPIs and even helping us revamp our entire attorney compensation [00:33:00] plans.
What helps is she’s a lawyer, she ran her own law firm, she consults with law firms, and so that really was why we went with her instead of some more traditional business coach, general business coach. But the two of those are huge. And the last thing I’ll say on it is, you have to be of a certain size to be able to afford a C level executive.
Once you get beyond a couple of people, and you’re growing, and you have enough business, the growth is slowed because it’s just you running things. That’s where fractional COOs and fractional C level executives have really become a thing that I recommend people look into. There’s a bunch of companies that do it, you know, how to manage as a big one that they sell C level executives, but there’s also individuals and whether it’s a You know a Chief Marketing Officer for marketing or CFO for finance or CEO for strategic growth. Those kind of roles you can hire on that fractional basis that can be affordable to really almost anybody.
Jonathan Hawkins: I don’t know if you’re able To describe this for me, but I’m gonna ask you if you can. So I want to sort of get a sense for a [00:34:00] before and after of hiring the COO and and Stephanie is your coach, sort of you know, how was firm run? you know, how was it then versus now afterwards? you know, What’s it like, the people out there that may be thinking about it, how can you describe for them what it’s like on the other side?
Kellam Parks: Before we hired those people at the size we were and the amount of efforts we were doing, I would say that we were an old circus cart going down the mountain, fire on the back that we didn’t realize. And then after, you know, it’s a much more smooth ride. And so in real terms, we were growing, we didn’t have any huge issue.
You know, It’s not like we were losing money or we were, people were flocking, you know, we were losing people because of whatever. but it was, we weren’t growing fast enough. We weren’t growing in the right way. We were making missteps that cost us money. Bran and I were working too hard and losing opportunities.
Basically, we were missing out on opportunities. We were going in the wrong directions. We were wasting [00:35:00] money. We were wasting time. We were stressed out. Hiring the COO helped us organize and now she’s the one that’s stressed out. But you know, We had two floods in two of our offices within nine months this year. End of last year, begin this year. She just handled it all. we have three buildings. We own all three buildings. She manages our three buildings. She works with insurances. She works with benefits. She handles staff issues. All this stuff Brandon and I just sort of did or didn’t do Right. or should have done.
And then where Stephanie comes in or as a business coach comes in, that’s the part where it’s, you need to think about it this way. You need to focus your energies on this. You need to track this metric. She’s asking questions like what’s your average case value.
We operated a firm for 11 years and didn’t have average case values, which is ridiculous, because if you don’t know the average case value, how are you possibly evaluating where to spend your marketing money? Stuff like that. Stuff that I knew, but we just, again, We just never got to it. I didn’t have the data, you know, we transferred from Modify, and we didn’t have the numbers.
Having some sort of operating you know, at a [00:36:00] smaller firm, it might be a office manager or a fractional COO, that person’s going to help you with the day to day operations and make sure that the machine is running smoothly. And then having a business coach or a coach, you know, some sort of law firm coach is going to help you strategically plan and work on for, I mean, even just, tell me about this practice management stuff. What technology should I run? AI is the buzz. Tell me a little bit about that.
Because lawyers, God knows, we’re horrible for the shiny object syndrome, where we’re just ready to spend money at something and then give it no time or attention and just move on. Those two pieces, if you want to grow your firm, you have to have both operations and you have to have some coach.
Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk operations. One more question about a COO that, I hear from other lawyers that have hired or are thinking about hiring a COO that’s not a lawyer. It’s the pushback you get as well. The lawyers aren’t going to listen to them. They’re not going to have the authority to really make change or make decisions because the lawyers are all gonna say you’re not a lawyer. What would you say to that?
Kellam Parks: I think that’s true to an extent. How we’ve organized is we have our leadership team. [00:37:00] The leadership team is Brandon, myself, and Jennifer. And every Monday for an hour and a half, we have a 90 minute meeting. Jennifer sends us an agenda no later than Sunday. We look at the agenda, we meet on Monday night, we go over it, we move forward.
And again, This is like an EOS process on how we run the meeting and what we pay attention to. But then, and they know, and we’ve established, that if it comes from Jennifer, it comes from us. She’s the mouthpiece. When Jennifer says something, people know across the firm, whether it’s staff all the way up to attorneys, up to partner level, that is Brandon and I, the two owners of the firm, that’s you have to set that up to say, Hey, this is our mouthpiece. This is the person. She has authority or he has authority. And then you have to make sure obviously that they don’t abuse that authority and that it’s accurate. And that it just is what it is. And now, we have it though. Sometimes we get pushback. Hey, Jennifer said, so and so. What about it? Well, I just want to make sure that’s yeah, that’s 100%. If she said it, that’s what we’re doing. so It’s just training people.
One of the things that I’ve learned and this is something that comes from EOS as well as the whole concept of [00:38:00] right person for right seat. So You have to have the right people at the firm and those people need to be the right culture, follow your core values. And then they have to be able to do the job and that thing. But the people that you have today might not be the people five years from now. And we’ve had that, you know, at different stages of our growth, the same people, we’ve outgrown their capability or they’ve outgrown, they don’t like what we’re doing as far as growth, or they might not like. You know, we finally established our core values two years ago where we set them out, we figure them out, we put them out, we hire, fire, and evaluate based on these five core principles. It sunk and we have accountability. And we’ve had some employees that did a good job, but they just don’t fit these core values anymore. They never did and we didn’t have any.
Jonathan Hawkins: I want to shift because I we did say, we’re gonna talk about AI a little bit and we’re gonna come back we have time and there’s some other questions I want to ask about your firm, but so AI big question. Is it all hype or did do lawyers need to embrace it?
Kellam Parks: It absolutely is not all hype and absolutely you have to embrace it. So you know, People ask me a lot, you know, is AI going to replace lawyers? And I go, no, but lawyers that use [00:39:00] AI are going to place lawyers. I’m not sure that I can overstate the importance of generative Artificial Intelligence.
People roll their eyes when I say this because they don’t believe me or they think that I’m hyper, you know, I’m just a tech geek and whatever. But AI is more, and already in some aspects, is more transformative than the internet, and I think even more than electricity because the amount of work you can do, an amount of automation that you can have it do is, astronomical.
To give you one quick example how we just recently used it. We recently had a we recently replaced our Marketing Manager. So we were looking for a Marketing Manager and we came up with a job ad and then we have to interview. I created a custom. I happen to use ChatGPT is the one that I mainly use, and you can create what’s called custom GDTs, which is just sort of a customized utility use of it.
And what I did was I uploaded, I attached our job ad to the custom GDT. And the instructions generally were, Hey, what’s attached is what we were looking [00:40:00] for. This is our industry. This is what I’m interested in. When I run you, ask for the applicant’s resume and cover letter, and based on those two documents, and based on our job ad, and based on this other information, produce for me an hour worth of interview questions for each candidate.
And when I did that, it would give me general questions, and it would give me very specific; like, even specific, like, Oh, you said in your resume that you worked at this firm and did this. And so what used to be, you know, now I don’t have to read the customer letter, you know, I don’t have to dive in, it saved me probably an hour for each.
And then once we got to our finalists, we wanted to do, when we have our higher level employees, we do a paid project, where we’ll pay them for a certain number of hours of work, and then they do actual work that we’re looking for so we can evaluate. And I needed to come up with a project, and so I fed everything in, and I said, create a project that does XYZ based on this and based on that, a bit.
And it produced this thing that took me about five minutes to, fix. We do that at every step. We do that in marketing content. We do that in writing. On the legal side of [00:41:00] things, we use it in legal research. We use it for writing. We use it for analysis. I cannot overstate how much time and energy it saves us and creatively iterates much higher quality than straight off our brain.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’m a lawyer out there whose read the horror stories, the New York case, the whatever, I’m scared. I don’t know where to start. Do you have any advice on how would a lawyer who’s not really experimented, how do they get started? What’s a good first, second, third step to go down the path?
Because obviously, you are really deep. You’ve used it, I mean, your presentation blew me away with all the stuff that you do with it. And it’s intimidating. to me, to be honest. So how do you get going down the path?
Kellam Parks: What I recommend is, I always, I hate to say Google it, but basically if like, I’m a YouTube junkie. I pay for YouTube premium, but I’m not saying I don’t watch TV shows or stupid stuff, but I spent a lot of time on business things. So I get a lot of my AI usage and ideas from AI content [00:42:00] creators on YouTube. And you can just say business. And then there’s a couple of thought leaders that you can easily find and again, I can give lists if anybody wants to contact me, but find the thought leaders in this space, understand, pick one. ChatGPT is a good one because it was the one of the first and it’s established. They have free accounts. You could just play with it and then you can again, figure out how to do. And one of the things that I think went over well in my presentation is understand how to prompt engineer. So understand how to ask the right questions.
And one of the things, this New York lawyer, which, on the one hand, I hated that story because it scared people away from AI use, but as somebody who wants to be ahead of my competition, I loved it because I know most lawyers are going to say, oh, I can’t use AI. And I’m like, that’s right, you should never use AI, right?
But the reason that guy, for people that don’t know AI, which is a lot of lawyers, and I get it. The bottom line is this; the whole thing about generative AI is, think of it as the most advanced text anticipator as possible. So like If you use your iPhone and you put in a word and it tries to [00:43:00] think about after three letters, what the next word is, that’s all that AI does is, it takes a tremendous amount of data, breaks it up into tokens, and it’s just anticipating what the next thing is to fit what you’re looking for. It just does that on concepts. and You have this idea of hallucination, so it makes up things. That’s all that generative AI does is it’s making up the next thing. It’s just how well is it anticipating the right answer.
What that lawyer in New York did is he used ChatGPT to try to come up with a very specific answer. It’s making things up because it’s going to the whole world and it’s trying to please you. That’s what AI does. And then for his verification to make sure it’s right, he asked the same program. He asked AI, Oh, are you telling me the truth? Basically, is so dumb. So the way you get around that is you, you use systems.
All these, you know, Lexis and Westlaw both have integrated AI now, they don’t hallucinate because they’re using a very confined sub state of data, and they have recursive algorithms that [00:44:00] will check the information to make sure that it’s not making things up. And Then you can have third party companies like the one that I talked about in my presentations called CALLUDUS legal, C A L L U D U S A I.
So Callludus is a specific program that does contract analysis and legal research and writing. And it was created by an M&A attorney and some tech people. And the same thing is they have it built to where they’re only going to the sources, so they guarantee there’s no hallucinations on cases.
As of right now, there’s no hallucinations, even the holding of those cases. Are you going to do the legal research and let AI just do it and you just publish it? Of course not. But what I always say is, we have two brand new attorneys that just started practicing law, like I think I mentioned.
Now, when they go to Lexis AI or Callidus and they use these programs, it saves them probably five hours of figuring out maybe the answer. Then they come up with the answer saving five hours their time. They give it to me and then I can now revise it. Or if I’m doing it probably would save, you know instead of an hour [00:45:00] it might take me 15 minutes. And that amount of time savings across our whole organization is transformative.
Jonathan Hawkins: So, lot of lawyers out there bill by the hour, they hear, they hear efficiency and time savings and they’re like, wait a second, I’m not going to be able you need to make this thing work.
Kellam Parks: gotta, You gotta stop. And look, We do a lot by the hour. It’s dumb, it’s an outdated model. I’m very bullish on, and we do it. So do as I say, don’t do as we do. But we’re looking at doing that. So We do a lot of family law, for instance. We’re trying to get away. We’re trying to do more flat fee pricing, more scaled flat fee pricing. Because hourly work is inherently inefficient. The more efficient we are, the less money we make. That’s bad, but it’s also bad for the client to pay. They hate paying by the hour. They want to understand what the costs are.
And so with AI, we’re able to do a better job of pricing for, they’re happier, we’re happier. Let’s move on.
Jonathan Hawkins: I think that’s right, you know, they’ve been calling for the death of billable hour for decades. I [00:46:00] think you’re finally going to probably see that happen. It won’t be overnight, but it’s coming. So,
Kellam Parks: No, I think so. Look, I think AI is really going to make it a thing. I just rotated off as president of a local bar association and we have a, bench bar conference every year. One of our Supreme Court justices in Virginia did our keynote and he did a hour long presentation on AI.
And one of his points was, you have an ethical obligation to be up on modern technology. You also have an ethical obligation to reasonably price your services. And he said, one day, I think he goes. I don’t know when he goes, but one day I’m the you may encounter where it’s unethical not to use AI because if AI can do the work in an hour and you spend 12 hours doing it, is that ethical? We’re not there now. We’re not there tomorrow. But AI is that, and AI transforms so quickly that it’s just mind blowing. And so get on board. Don’t be afraid, you need to get on board.
Jonathan Hawkins: you know, Another point you mentioned the judge, this is something that I’ve not with AI, but with flat fees or even contingency fees. When you have to [00:47:00] apply for a court for a reimbursement of your fees, whether it’s some sort of frivolous or abusive litigation, or whatever, you know, most courts, if you look at the cases, they all analyze based on hours worked, Lodestar or Quantum Arrowhead. It’s very heavy hourly based. And if you present them with something that does not convert to hours, a lot of the judges don’t know what to do with it. The judges and, the law is going to have, to sort of. You know, in terms of awarding of attorney fees and those sorts of things, they’re gonna have to change as well. but,
Kellam Parks: No, I agree, that’s absolutely, I don’t disagree at all with that’s a challenge for sure.
Jonathan Hawkins: so That’s cool. So definitely anybody out there, if you’re wondering about his AI presentation, definitely reach out to Kellum at DM, we’ll get his information, it’ll be in the show notes too. Great presentation. Do you take that show on the road? Do you give webinars of that?
Kellam Parks: that was the first I’ve done for that. I do a lot of presentations on cyber security and legal ethics and marketing and management for law firms. That was the first one I’d done specifically for AI. Ben and, Brian reached out and said, [00:48:00] Hey they know that I was starting, I’m starting.
you know, I talked about this offline, I enjoy the business a lot more than the practice these days. And I found I enjoy helping others figure it out even more than doing it myself. I founded a coaching company that I’m launching beginning of 2025. And Brian and Ben reached out and said, Hey, have you launched that company?
And I said, no, but I’m happy to do the presentation because you know, I love this stuff and you guys are amazing and help me get where I am. So that’s sort of what I’m doing. So I’m putting it together because that’s what I want to do is, I want to help other law firms and lawyers that maybe want to start their law firm.
Understand all the principles we talked about with an emphasis on tech and AI. Not that’s the only thing, but that’s the extra sauce I bring, other than other coaches probably. Because they don’t teach you that stuff in law school. And the more tech and systems and procedures and integration of this AI type stuff, the faster you’re able to grow, the more money you’ll make and the less stress you’ll have.
So, but I’m happy to share all that information If, people contact me, I’m happy to share the presentation, anything else I can help with.
Jonathan Hawkins: [00:49:00] Awesome. You mentioned you love the business of law, so nowadays, what’s the balance of your time and your work, on the business, so to say, so they say, or client work, service delivery?
Kellam Parks: I would say, probably, 60/40 working on the business and 40% practice and it’s dwindling as much as I can. So I was a litigator my entire career. I’m a trial lawyer. And now I limit my trial work to high asset divorces so I only have a couple of those because they’re time intensive.
I do occasional complicated civil litigation. But most of my practice these days is cyber security data privacy, which is consulting, that my paralegal and associates could do most of the work and I can just have the client interaction so that doesn’t take as much as my time and we flat fee that, by the way. So that’s an easier way to do it.
And then I spend more of my time getting this coaching thing going and rainmaking and that kind of stuff because I I used to, you know, I used to just love trying cases, that’s what juiced me. And now, I’m much more jazzed with the other stuff.
Though when I’m in the middle of it, I got a hearing yesterday and it was fun. I got to do, I got to [00:50:00] you know, do the thing.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’m with you. I started out, I went to law school, wanted to be a trial lawyer, and early on, all that stuff, I loved it, and I just don’t love it so much anymore, although. Like you said, if you get through it, you go to a hearing or whatever, and you’re cross examined a witness, yeah, that felt good.
Kellam Parks: I did exactly, I walked out of court yesterday and I was like, I got a couple of zingers in. That was fun.
Jonathan Hawkins: I still got it, man. still got it.
Kellam Parks: I still got it, baby. Yeah, absolutely. I love it.
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Cool. I know, we’ve been going a while. I want to be respectful of your time. A couple things, So, you know, you’ve been at this for quite a while. And you’ve seen a lot. You’ve got a lot of good experience with the technology and all that. What sort of lessons, are there any lessons that you’ve learned along the way?
Maybe something that you wish you would have done sooner or maybe something you wish you’d never done at all.
Kellam Parks: Yeah. Some quick observations are, I would have hired faster sooner. I was a little too reticent on expansion. You know, I was trying to do too much myself. I wasn’t the expert. I would have specifically, honestly, the implementation. Even as a tech guy, [00:51:00] I still was a little gun shy of certain tech implementation. I kept trying to do stuff and I fell into the fallacy that I thought I knew it all because I’m the cool tech guy. So I would find something, I would try to implement it and I would spend all this time and I’m the one, and you look at what you bill in an hour and you’re like, I’m the most overpaid tech guy in the world.
And had I found Affinity Consulting five years sooner, we would have been so much further. Had we gotten coaching, had I hired operations assistants? Honestly, Brandon came on in 2015, what I would say is if we had hired a COO and done a business coach three years sooner, I honestly believe we would be 50-75% farther along than we are now. And we’re mid seven figures gross revenue. I honestly think we might have been 10 figures by now. It’s that impactful, just to see what we’ve done in the last year and a half has been pretty tremendous.
Because again, one of the best things and I think this was at a GLM two years ago, there was a presenter. He did this picture because I’m totally going to steal it for one of my next presentations. But he did a picture of this mansion, [00:52:00] it was gorgeous. And he goes, Ah, this is what we all picture our firm is. Look at the pool and look at the Vista and look at the rooms. And then he did a picture of one of these big shipping had center favelas, you know, like staggered. And he goes, this is actually what our firms are like. And I’m sitting on the table going, Oh my God, that’s my firm. That’s it.
Cause our foundation was weak. We had good people and we did good work and we had a good reputation and we were making money. but you know, Oh, We didn’t have, you know, this was leaking and this is missing and this is a pro. We didn’t even know there was a fire in this corner.
And again, that’s why I’m so passionate about trying to share my information because I think, almost what’s more important than what I can tell you what to do is what not to do. So don’t get rid of shiny object syndrome. Don’t try to do it all.
One of the things that I always preach is when you start, there’s two main questions you have.
Three, one is what’s your, why, like, why are you doing this? But from a professional level is, do you enjoy practicing law? Do you enjoy running your law firm? Or do you enjoy both? There’s no wrong answer, figure out what you like to do. [00:53:00] And then do you want to be a solo? Do you want to have other lawyers? Do you want to build an empire? What’s your current goal? And if you can figure those three things out, let’s start with that and then build up. Instead of just going and doing the work, because we’re all grinders.
For years, I was just a grinder. I was working 80 hours a week, doing good legal work, making money. You ask me what my plan is, it’s make money, pay my bills, do good work. You gotta have a plan. And most lawyers don’t, because we’re lawyers, we’re not business people.
Jonathan Hawkins: You can’t charge anybody for all that time you spend planning, right?
Kellam Parks: Yeah, right. But that’s what I try to say is look, I’m fortunate, I bill $500 an hour for my time. That’s awesome. I could get a client and I can have somebody in my office bill $300 an hour, and I’m getting $200 of that $300 into my pocket. And I have 10 of those people, I’m making $2,000 an hour instead of $500 an hour and I don’t have to do the work.
But you have to plan, much like building the forms. People go, I don’t have time to build a form. Yeah, but you build it once. And then what used to take you 4 hours now takes you 15 [00:54:00] minutes. As long as you’re not billing hourly.
Jonathan Hawkins: I will say that time spent strategizing and planning is probably worth $2,000 an hour or more, right? I mean, if you really think about.
Kellam Parks: It is. Again, that just doesn’t come natural to us, because we’re doing the work and I get it. I mean, I was there and I still fall back on that sometimes. I could do it better. I could do it faster. Sure, but then you’re doing it.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Kellam Parks: Right now, okay.
Jonathan Hawkins: All right, Kellam, so we’re gonna wrap up here, but I, you’re a tech guy, so I’m gonna ask you a question. It has nothing to do, I don’t think with law firms, but you know, today or yesterday, Bitcoin crossed a hundred thousand a coin. Are you into crypto? Any thoughts on crypto?
Kellam Parks: Oh
Jonathan Hawkins: Is that another, another hour? We got another hour here.
Kellam Parks: now, No, no, no, no. I’m not so, I regretfully am not into crypto in the sense that I have a, buddy of mine who got into crypto early, and let me just say he retired in his 40s.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.
Kellam Parks: Because he got in early, like multi, he’s a 10 figure multimillionaire based on crypto.
But so what I will say [00:55:00] is blockchain technology is amazing, and it’s not going anywhere. And that’s what crypto is based on, right? so the technologies is great. The actual cryptocurrency is a mess because the regulation part, the unregulated part, the ability to create Bitcoins and I just saw today, there’s a really interesting guy named Coffeezilla.
If you follow him, he’s like an online Journalist and he specializes in scams and particularly crypto scams. He’s just a really interesting guy. He’s all over YouTube. He’s got a Patreon. I just saw, And I didn’t get into it, I just saw it today, so I haven’t gotten into the details.
But apparently, the Hawk Tuah girl, you may have seen that big thing online. Apparently, she created some sort of Bitcoin type thing that apparently got hijacked by somebody, and it made a couple of millions, and this guy is saying, I think it’s a scam.
Bitcoin’s very interesting and, I think it’s going to stay around, but as far as investing in it and all that sort of stuff, I just haven’t. Um, I’m missing both.
Jonathan Hawkins: So to bring it [00:56:00] full circle, I saw, I think it was Marc Andreessen or somebody created an AI, maybe it was Paul Graham, created a few AI bots. He created a few of them and he got them talking to each other and he, dropped something into one of them and said, all right, create a cryptocurrency. And all the AI bots ran up the cost. So this thing was out there. It’s worth like a million bucks. They became millionaires. It was hilarious.
Kellam Parks: Oh yeah. No, great. Well, And then you see the micro trends guy, you know, he absolutely got into. And I just remember, and again, I, I have pay attention to this stuff. So I remember at the time, he was all in. And then his company was looking at like he was going bankrupt and everyone’s calling him a fool.
And now that it’s hit a 100k, now he’s making everyone’s, like, wow, what a brilliant guy. And I’m like, all right, okay. exactly Hindsight, right?
Jonathan Hawkins: well That’s going to be fun to watch, but uh, yeah, be careful, be careful.
So, well, Cool, well, I appreciate it, Kellam, for your spending your time here. And for people out there that want to reach out, maybe talk to you about tech or AI or whatever, what’s the best way to get in touch with [00:57:00] you?
Kellam Parks: Yeah. Best way to get in touch me, I’m, you know, as an old guy, I’m attached to the hip, the e email’s best way. So just email me at K Parks K P A R K S @pzlaw.com. I know it’ll be in the show notes. My website is PZLaw.com is our website. And then if you reach out to me, obviously, when I launch my Koji business and stuff, I’ll be all over the place on that. But I’m always happy for free to share information. Like I said, my AI presentation or whatever, just reach out to me.
Jonathan Hawkins: Cool, Kellam, I appreciate it. It’s been fun.
Kellam Parks: Sure. Thanks so much for having me. It was great.
[00:58:00]
