Building an Abundance-Minded Law Firm with Ben Glass

Most lawyers were taught how to practice law, but not how to build a business or a life they actually enjoy. In this episode, David sits down with legal marketing pioneer Ben Glass, who shares lessons from more than four decades in practice. They discuss mindset, business ownership, abundance versus scarcity, helping others, and why the best law firms are intentionally designed around the lives their owners want to live. 

Here’s what we discuss in this episode:

💼 Law Firms Are Businesses Too: Business-focused thinking for lawyers

🧠 Mindset Requires Training: Growth comes from consistently working on perspective 

🚪Get in Different “Rooms”: Find others who have already solved the problems you have

🌊 Abundance Beats Scarcity: Helping other lawyers can improve the profession and your own practice

🤖 AI Is Accelerating Everything: Technology helps lawyers spend more time on strategy and judgment

Get in touch with Ben:

Ben Glass Law: www.benglasslaw.com

Great Legal Marketing: https://www.greatlegalmarketing.com

Meet with Ben: www.lunchwithben.com

Download GLM Summit Notes: https://www.glmsummitnotes.com/

Injured? Begin the process here: 

Scott Vicknair Injury Lawyers: https://www.scottvicknair.com/

Car Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/car-accident-lawyer/ 

Truck Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/truck-accident-lawyer/ 

Motorcycle Accident Lawyer: https://www.scottvicknair.com/new-orleans/motorcycle-accident-lawyer/ 

Probate, Succession and Estate Legal Needs?
Visit Scott Law Group – Estate Counsel: https://www.louisianasuccessionattorney.com/

More Resources

Subscribe to the Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@scottvicknairlaw?sub_confirmation=1

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Scott Vignaire, danger et turnies. We fight for the win.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

How's it going, everybody? Welcome to the Overworld Podcast brought to you by the Scott Wignair Law Firm. I'm your host, David Wigner, and I'm excited to chat today with someone who's really helped me develop my mindset as a business owner, as an attorney, and helped me enable to put myself in a better place in my life as far as my day-to-day operations, my day-to-day mindset, my day-to-day things that I do on a daily basis. And inevitably made my life a lot better. My friend Ben Glass from the Ben Glass Law Firm up in Virginia. Ben, thank you so much for being here and chatting with me today.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yeah, it is fun. I'm surprised we haven't done one of these before. Uh, either uh and maybe you've been online, I don't know. But there's so many interesting people in the space now, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Ben, for the listeners who don't know much about you, uh, I'm just gonna give a preface and do my spiel and then kind of maybe let you talk a little bit about yourself. I think more than any lawyer in the space of people growing law firms, helping their law firms become more efficient, help their clients, that you have become you are really that person who helps lawyers think differently than the way, for example, the American Bar Association or local bar associations or law schools taught us to think about our roles as an advocate for the client and our roles in our personal lives versus our law firm lives and what the law firm should be doing for us. And I know for me, you have been an instrumental mentor, and years ago, just listening to your podcast, it shifted the way I thought about the interplay between my law firm and my life in a positive way. So I want to thank you for that and tee you up to maybe introduce yourself to all of our listeners who don't know much about you because they're not in the legal space or aren't in Virginia about kind of what you've been doing as you've grown the Ben Glass Law Firm and really had an impact on, as you know, through great legal marketing, so many other lawyers like me who you've positively influenced and affected their lives.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Well, you're you're very kind. And so for those who uh may not be in the legal space, uh I'm a full-time practicing attorney. I'm 68, I've been running my own firm for 30 years, I've been practicing for 42, which as I say when I'm all I'm also a 50, I've also refereed soccer games for 52 years. And so when I tell parents, look, I've been doing this for longer than most of you have been alive, doesn't mean I'm great at it, but I do have some wisdom and some body of experience in in both spaces. So, you know, I was really the first one uh 21 years or so ago to bring to market an event for lawyers that wasn't about how to be a better lawyer. There's plenty of those. The can the traditional CLE, continuing legal education, plenty of those, lots of good ones. But based on some work I had done under my mentor, Dan Kennedy, like I brought the first conference that said, hey, there's a business side to this whole thing, and you'll be a better lawyer if your business is good and solid underneath your lawyering skills. And so, you know, over the years, I think I've been um sort of uh, you know, the philosopher that reminds lawyers or maybe tells them for the first time it's your life, you get to live it as you see fit. None of us know how long we have just because the rest of the profession is building something over here, or law school is telling you how to build it, like that doesn't mean anything. Like you get to choose. And so I think, David, what I've done the best or the most impactful is to help lawyers like enjoy what we say, like make your family happy and proud that you became a lawyer andor a law firm owner, because I coach law firm owners and help them really enjoy this by by bringing like business smarts and ideas and philosophy to the space. Um so that's mainly what I I guess I'm known for. And when I started, I was you know, the first, and now there are many, many good places, as you know, good conferences, good gurus, good events. I think the biggest challenge today for lawyers uh who are looking for someone to lead them is like which room do I walk into?

SPEAKER_03 4:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Because I think they're all pretty good. Like, and I know the guys and gals who are sort of quote unquote thought leaders. Like, I think they're all smart. But all of them, and they would say this, they're not right for everybody. And so figuring out like which room should I be in. Here's what I know, here's how big my firm is. I I will just tell you that there's a room for you that will push you to the next level, as you know.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Yeah, I mean, I think back to the first great legal marketing conference I went to back in probably the fall of 2022, Ben, it was like I was like, man, I have so much to do. It's I always I always remember we sometimes as humans, not necessarily just in running or managing a law firm or growing a law firm, I always like to remind people like we've we vastly overestimate what we can get accomplished in a year and vastly underestimate what we can do in five or ten. And so looking back from the first legal marketing conference that I went to with you over a four-year period, it is unbelievable what has happened in my law firm over a four-year period. Could any of that happened in a year? Absolutely not. And I think I think the mindset is a big piece of it. And when people ask me, I I I just wrote something on LinkedIn about this with Tony Albrecht, and I've been writing on LinkedIn every week and been enjoying that. I talk about mindset a lot. Miles is sitting in the bathroom, he's sick of hearing me talk about it. But I really learned all that from you, Ben. And I think that business owners and lawyers who are business owners, but business owners at large, forget that our mindsets are almost like our proverbial muscles that we have to work out in the gym every week. It is a muscle that we have to work on. What are some tricks that you you've taught me that, but could you share some tricks that you use to work on your mindset? Because even though that you're a guru, you're human, so you're susceptible to it failing you just like it fails me. And I have to like remind myself I'm your own worst enemy right now, you dummy. You know?

SPEAKER_02 6:14

So I think what you need to remember for yourself is that you probably would have ended up in the in the same place that you are today, because you're you're a smart guy, and a lot of people have heard my message, um, and the message of other gurus, but you acted on it. Like, and so you have vastly accelerated the growth of your firm. Um, but here's here's kind of the the big things, the big shifts for me over time was number one, like getting out of the at that time only lawyer CLE rooms. Like, so getting out of those rooms, David and getting into the rooms of other entrepreneurs who are successful running either big business or multiple big businesses, and just hang with them and and being curious and finding out how do they think, what are their habits. So being in a room outside of you know the group, think of whatever lawyers, plumbers, dentists, whatever it is, that was really important. Next was being in a room where you're not the smartest one, right? You're that you are truly the average of the five people you hang out with most. And so you always want to be in a place or find a place where like, oh, that guy or gal, like they they're now discussing the problem that I have, but they had five years ago and they have solved. That's the room you want to be in, because now there's transference of wisdom and knowledge versus the old the old way, the way I learned most of my stuff, which is like making mistakes and getting your your knees bloodied. Um, and then I think the third one is like being unafraid to then put these ideas out into the world.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Controversial as some may be or unorthodox, like get feedback, learn, learn how to make your arguments better, like learn how to persuade better. So those have been, I think, David, like the big fundamental building blocks of my own personal development. And getting coach, like having mindset coach and business coaches too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Yeah, it's it's it's fascinating that you said that because just coincidentally, I have some close friends who uh I have a close friend through them. He's a financial advisor in Oregon. Um, he was down in New Orleans a couple weeks ago, and he really was pushing for me to join. And now I'm talking to these people and I'm probably going to join it. It's I'm in a law firm mastermind, you're in law firm masterminds, but this is a mastermind that's run like four meetings a year. It's just once a once a quarter on Fridays. You fly into either LA or Chicago, and it's like 30 or 40 business owners, but nobody in the same industry. So it's all different industry. And he was very much talking that up because he's in the financial advising space, but obviously a lot of the problems that we need to solve in the law firm world have already been solved in other spaces. I feel like medical and law are like last to solve problems, right? Law and medical are the last people to be drug across the finish line of some technological or business system change. Um and the and the the next two things you you said really struck me as who not how, find the who, not how. You don't have to recreate it, an abundance mindset. Um, and I don't think that a lot of people think like that, especially lawyers, Ben. Why do you think that is? Like lawyers get in this silo I find where they're so worried about sharing what they do. You know, my good friend Mickey Love always says there's no secrets. We all know there's no secrets. Like, come on. Like, what if what is everybody so afraid of? And they think it's like I don't I don't understand it. Why do you think lawyers are so inherently like afraid of each other and compet competition in their market? It just never made any sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Well, yeah, and it's this is what you just said is probably true. Like if you were talking to a room full of dentists, they would probably say the same thing. So if you think of professionals, like you had to compete to finish top of the class in uh undergrad, you had to compete to get into your professional school, whether it's law school or whatever, you had to compete within that school. And so, and nobody there, like none of the people at the podium, the teachers, the professors, are saying abundance, share, the world is big. Like zero of that. You're right. They're just teaching, you know, what's a tort and what's a kind. Oh, God bless them. Um, and so that, and so that's why. But look, you're exactly right. At its core, we're talking about human psychology and persuasion, which, by the way, if you're a trial lawyer, like you have been doing this, you have been going to the uh how to pick a jury, how to persuade a jury. It's all the same stuff. It is all the same stuff. It's just that in those conversations, the jury's not usually talking back to you, except in Vordiar, maybe depending on where you are. But it but when you're presenting your case, you're not getting real-time feedback, which is something you can get, you know, in your marketing side. So, so I don't know, but here's the other thing I think people should know and should remember. Like, yeah, but today there's roomfuls of people who don't think like that anymore. Yeah, there's roomfuls of abundance-minded, highly successful. I will share my stuff with you, right? You just gotta be curious. And here's and you know, for anyone who's younger than us, know that my experience is that most highly successful people love to have someone who's younger or newer in the profession, right? Be curious and ask questions and they will share. Like that's how I learned so much. They will share.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

Yeah, I was I was sitting about four weeks ago, Ben. I've made a friend, a close friend, who's down here in New Orleans, too. He left his uh long-tenured plain affirm. He's about seven or eight years older than me, and he started his own practice a couple years ago, and we went grab a couple drinks. We have a joint case together, we're representing plainists together in the case uh family, and we're chatting, and he started picking my brain, and I just started telling him everything we do at the law firm. Like he's technically competing against me, right? I really like him and I want him to succeed, and I hope he's it has a lot of success. And at the end of that hour-long conversation, I was telling him, Oh, we do this, we do this. I was going through it all. He's like, I can't believe you just tell me all this stuff. Like, no, I'm like, why not? Like, why not? I just I don't I don't know if there's any other way to really live.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Well, uh, unless between the two of you, you already have all of the cases in New Orleans, right? Um, there's market there's market right, and and and then think about it like what do all of us need? Like, we don't need to own a market, right? No, we need to take whatever our level of market penetration is and increase it a point or two, right? Especially in the plaintiff's contingent fee world, right? Yes, where you know that next case can result in a very big fee. But I think it's I think it applies to every practice of law. Um, and people forget this, and then they try to overread, oh, I want to dominate Alabama in family law. Okay, well, that's like a really big place, like geographically. Like, how about if you just got more cases in your own town? Um, would that make you happy? Oh, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

I know, and I also think, Ben, you know, we're a business, we're also a profession. And part of being the profession interplay with business is that we actually care about each individual client, which I know you and Brian and your firm do just like we do. And so the way I view this is, you know, there's no chance that I'm ever going to have every single personal injury case in Louisiana. Like, not even close, nor do I want every single one of them, or can we ever handle them? So the more good plaintiff lawyers and plaintiff law firms that there are in my market and in Louisiana, it's better for the community and better for the profession as a whole because they will have a more positive impression and a positive result in their interaction with their plaintiff attorney, which there are some firms that fall drastically short, as you know. And so I don't really that's my mindset on it. It's like I want to help other people in my market be better because it helps everyone if they're better. I think a rising tide lifts all boats. Um, but me and you could really beat that one to death forever, and I have to get your take on another topic. AI. AI. Um, it's taking uh the world by storm. Law firms, um, it's a big topic in the law firm space. So why don't you tell me your perspective on AI? I think I know it. I think it's gonna be similar to mine, and maybe just tell me your general perspective on it. I read your weekly practice builder this week, and I thought it was amazing and spot on, um, talking about the different revolutions that you've been through in the practice in the newsletter this month. I read your newsletter and your weekly practice memo builder is the staple of mine. So tell me your perspective on AI and maybe a little bit about how y'all are using it.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

It is so exciting for us because uh, you know, as you read in the memo, like I'm the old guy that started with typewriters and and going to the law library to look at books, right? So like the whole online revolution was really cool for us, and and now like this this AI thing. So lots of different ways to use it, and AI is a term that covers a lot of different things. Yeah, and you know the problem is you know, the lawyer headlines, if you want to look for a negative headline, you can find out which lawyer this week submitted a brief with fake citations in it, right? Or judge or whatever, right? Yeah, um, but that's only a tiny, like a tiniest bit of AI. So for lawyers, AI allows us to get to our art faster. And our art is giving is wrapping our arms around the evidence and giving the client a great strategy, great advice. Like our job as lawyers is to help the client make a great decision about his or her case. That's what we do. Um, and so AI gets us to that point so much. For example, in our long-income disability insurance world, the space that I occupy, we get these claim files from insurance companies or a thousand or three thousand pages. Well, it used to literally back in the day, David, it was spread it out on the commerce room table, figure out what's here, put it all in the right order, and then try to figure out what it says. Today, I can pretty quickly um you know figure out what's it, what's it about, what's a disease, what's the occupation, what do the various doctors say, what does the policy say, blah, blah, blah. And so the way we're using it now is to is to take our body of work and create this second brain over here. Diego Forte, second brain, good book to go read, but now like AI wasn't even around when he was writing this. Is because it doesn't forget. And so the Benglas law way of looking at claim files, of you know, the five, six, seven things we need to know in what order about a claim file, now is all built into a system that doesn't forget every single step. And it's pretty good, since we're dealing with written documents, it's pretty good to go to search. And I swear these things get smarter and smarter all the time. So I think that's the predominant um opportunity that lawyers have is to take your body of work. Um, your body of work could be this is how we hire people, right? Even before we went live, we were talking about the challenges of hiring of hiring staff and growing practices, um, and putting that into an artificial intelligence platform to help us create one ads, create onboarding, all of that stuff. The thing that we are doing now is is really um even even to brief writing. So not to go legal do legal research, because we already have our handbook of the cases and law and regulations that are important to us. But AI is fantastic with saying here's our brief, here's their brief, and now for my reply brief, like what holes do I need to fill? Like the first draft. Like, like just get me there. Um so that's those are the big ways we're doing. I think AI can also is is great at doing um competitive research. Yeah. So if so if in my geographic location, um, who are the other personary firms that are that are is them this is important, like not just who I think is a competitor, but who's actually showing up on Google searches and AI searches. What's their messaging? And is there an opportunity for me to message something that nobody else is saying? And so as we start to do that work, we are discovering even more opportunities, David, for differentiating ourselves, you know, in the PI space, it's a very crowded market, long-term disability space, not quite as crowded, but there's a lot of players out there.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

What is the what has your perspective been on if it will ever be able to adequately or properly handle client calls?

SPEAKER_02 19:02

So um we almost leaned into that for after hours and weekends, and then we got some feedback from some of my friends who work with lots of firms that said that experiment is not going well. When I first heard this, and you and I were at an event last November, I heard a lot of this from the stage. I'm like, all right, I hope you big firms go and do what we can. And so so we you know, we played around, we we tested, like, we called it, you know, and said, hey, went to the zoo and my the gorilla ripped off my kid's arms and stuff. And um, you know, to be dramatic. Um and it tried to be empathetic. So I don't know, maybe you'll get there. I think the I think the small firm advantage is we can hire people, and I can hire them from all over the world. We just hired a fellow from Honduras who just started like last week and signed a couple cases this week of speaking to our Spanish-speaking clients. Um, so I don't know. We'll we'll stick with humans as long as we can. But here's what I think like the operating system I told you about, like for our risk system, our long-term disability stuff, it still requires really smart people to run the system. Like you can't just let this thing loose. But if you have smart people who know what questions to ask and what next question, what next question to ask, this is game changer. And I, you know, I'd feel bad if if you were someone who's like, this is too overwhelming, I can't learn at all, and I'm not gonna hire someone who's gonna help me. Like, I think you're gonna be behind.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Yeah, I I'm with you, and I I think you may have commented on a LinkedIn post made a couple weeks ago, which is I was at the same conference, I remember thinking these people literally out of their minds, and there's no way I'm letting somebody who's calling my law firm talk to a bot because as you know, 70 to 80 percent of the people calling are in a very bad place in their lives. They may have just lost a loved one or a family member, they may have had a disabling injury. I a bot can't listen and show emotion. And the argument then becomes well, you know, your reception teams, your new client teams, they're gonna have off days where they're not gonna be as good on the phone. Fair enough. I don't I can see that, but you know what? At least they're human. That is they're human, they're gonna have bad days, and that's when we take those lessons and and help them learn from them. But I I just don't buy it. Maybe it'll be there one day. Literally, Ben, somebody challenged me on LinkedIn, so I was like, all right, I'm calling you know uh my friends at Eve. I love Eve, we use Eve, but I'm calling Jenny, their AI agent. Not there yet. I gave it some crazy queries like a week and a half ago, and I'm like, I'm this isn't what I would expect for talking to somebody.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

I interviewed Dan Kennedy on I interviewed Dan Kennedy on the Renegade Lawyer podcast a couple weeks ago, and that episode is up, and he's got a new book on this. And and it's the same, and he and I are philosophically aligned. Like, this is the small biz opportunity to not be like them.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Um and we're going to run with that opportunity for as long as we can.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I think that's smart. Um okay, let's talk a little bit about your practice. Um for the listeners who don't know much about Bangles Law up in Virginia, um, your main two practice areas are personal injury and long-term disability. Brian is really, I think, running the personal injury group, and you are just really doing some fascinating stuff in the long-term disability space. You're making new law at the federal appellate level in a good way for the different types of professional claimants that you represent. And you do that work nationwide, as I understand it. So now you're my long-term disability referral partner if we have that come in the door. So just tell everybody a little bit about that work. I know you're very excited about it. I've been reading about some of the law you've been making. I think it's really cool and interesting. So just tell us a little bit about it.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

So we'll make sure that you're getting our monthly update to our referral partners. I am. Which is no I am. Yeah. So, so you know, the first case, one of those cases came about 21, 22 years ago. So, what are these? Almost every person in America who's employed has group benefits, usually health, usually life insurance, and most often you have a long-term disability insurance policy. That's most of what we're talking about. But also, professionals go out and buy individual policies on their own. They're more expensive, but they're better coverage than a group policy. Um, because they come through your employer, they all most all of them fall under the umbrella of something called ERISA, which is scary, but it's the important retirement income security act.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Let me just jump in here and I ask like a non-lawyer question on this, Ben Thillson who's like, what is Ben talking about? Maybe like a surgeon who gets a disability in their hand, right? Um or some so keep going. Because that's that's who I think is.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Right. So it protects you if you if you get sick or injured and you can't perform typically the occupation that you are performing right now. So for lawyers, you you know, you have something that happens uh cognitively or takes your sort of cognitive stamina or you know, fatigue, things like that. A lawyer develops a tremor in his or her hand, can most of us can usually continue to do our work. A surgeon who develops the slightest tremor in his or her hand, early Parkinson, something like that, like they can't safely do their work. It's not safe for them, it's not safe for the patient. Right. And so what these policies say is what do you do? What are the essential duties, and how is your either your injury or your illness affecting your ability to do that so that you're losing income? So there are income protection policies. And the ERISA regulations allow anybody to be your advocate at the what they call the administrative appeal level back to the insurance company after a claim is denied, which is the it which is the the key that allows us and my friends who I compete with to do that work all over the country. Then when we litigate, we get local counsel. Although what I also discovered, David, is not every federal court requires local counsel. There's some you can just pay a fee and get in.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Like the Southern District of New York is one. We had some IDA cases up there, and we're like, we don't need local counsel, you can just go straight in.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Um but yeah, and then so much be and because the federal system has really sort of perfected the online filing with PACER and stuff, like you're not you're not driving to the courthouse uh to do much of anything. And not every state, like Virginia is as a state level is way, way behind in electronic filing of cases. Like we are still in the caveman age. It's crazy. And then every anyway, uh you can get me going on that. So so and and we get paid a couple different ways. Like one, when we work on someone's denied claim, we we win, we get their back benefits, we get a percentage of the back benefit recovery. But then we we work, we have a separate department that works, so on claim department keeps you on claim for the rest of your period at the age 65 or 66. And so every month we get hundreds of checks that come here and we have our fee that comes out of each one of those checks, and I've got people that run that to make it. Um, because as soon as you get paid, as soon as you're back on claim, the insurance company is trying to get you off claim, especially if you're younger or you're a high, you know, your high monthly benefit um claimant. Um, and then we litigate cases where we don't win at the administrative appeal level. And this is where we've made a lot of inroads because there's one particular insurance company that keeps choosing to litigate with us, and every time they do in the last five years, we beat them. And in many of those cases, we are we are clarifying or setting precedent in the Fourth Circuit where there was unsettled law. So we are we are creating claimant favorable settled law, sometimes in conflict with some other circuits, sometimes joining other circuits, which are really, and I don't want to get too tight, but are really changing the game for claimants. Um and really setting you up if you dabble in this space and you don't understand all of this, like there's a malpractice risk now if you don't have a system in place to take advantage of the law that we have clarified, at least in the Fourth Circuit and you know some other circuits around the country. Um and then the other the other place that we play, David, is is um uh I I have become this is strategic, but I've become the the lawyer to doctors all over the country who they have a diagnosis, they're still working, they have a policy stack, they have multiple businesses often, and now they want to know how do I walk through the process. Right. And so we have a consulting division, I guess, for that. And I've got a source um uh that is a Whitecoat Investor is a is a company that is the Dave Ramsey to doctors, and so I'm the lawyer that they tell doctors to go talk to if they have a diagnosis that's gonna prevent them from doing what they were born to do, and that has been um really, really good for us and for the doctors I get to talk to.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

Yeah, it's funny you just said everybody's like a lot of uh harken back to law school. I couldn't help but think about when you said everybody's kind of scared of ERISA. I was one of the uh moot court oralists on our national moot court team at Lyola Law. And my the other, there were there's always two problems, and one of the other oralists, a guy named Tyler Rynch, who's a close friend of mine now, he's a partner at uh Jones Walker here in New Orleans. But there was an ERISA issue. The substantive law in the case was ERISA and whether or not the permanent uh federal permanent injunction should be granted. And so one of us was going to be arguing substantive ERISA law, one of us was gonna be arguing the four elements of a federal injunction and whether or not it was applicable. And Tyler just jumped out the bait, but he's on law review, of course. He says, I want the substantive ERISA argument. I'm like, so because ERISA was so scary to me and so overwhelming, but he wanted to dig right into it. I was like, I'll argue against the four elements of the injunction.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

It's funny you said that because as we think about the growth and the next lawyer we're looking for, like I needed someone who would who would be like a law review type who would jump at that.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Dive in the media issues of Arissa, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:04

And really, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah, it's just it's a lot of there. It's a lot of depth of understanding and law. And from my perspective, at least, Ben, I think you hit on this a little bit in your comment. Like, if you're a lawyer around the country listening to this, you know, I'm not gonna take a long-term disability claim one. That's a mistake. I'm setting up the client for failure and I'm setting up myself for a malpractice claim because I don't know substantively that area of law, nor do I have the systems and the processes in place to support that client and give them the best results. So if that case comes in, we're just gonna ask you to take care of it for us and the client.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

You know, yeah, and it, you know, it's the same thing. Like, like my advice for a younger lawyer is get good at something. Like you can be really good at personal injury, but probably not the 27 different flavors of personal, you know, what might fall under a personal injury pull-down menu. Like, you know, get really good at something, become a subject matter expert, and then just like be that person. Like you are special. There's you you're gonna be the right person for somebody out there and use that. Um, you know, be bold. And then, David, as you know, like when you have a team that believes that you are the right lawyer for a particular um future, you know, potential client, then you become unbeatable, both from the sales aspect but also the production aspect of it. So look, this stuff is complicated. I mean, you know, running a business is hard, right? Yeah. 42 years, and like we figured some things out over 42 years. Um, but today, you know, what young lawyers have that I didn't have is so, again, so many rooms to walk into where there's really good information about the business side, the mindset side that just didn't exist um even 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Yeah, what are some of the things today, Ben, that you and Brian, because the firm is growing very fast, what are some of the things that's a result of the kind of hospitality you're providing to your clients, the results that you're providing to the clients? What are some of the challenges that y'all are facing? Uh obviously hiring the right people and having the right person in the wrong seat is like the hardest part of any business, in my opinion. Like getting good people who are the right like because and I say good people, you know as well as me that like there have been a lot of good people who have come to the doors of my law firm who are no longer here. That doesn't mean they were a bad person. It just means they weren't the right person for that seat at that stage and time of the firm's growth and where the firm was. And it's very challenging to always place the right people in the right seats. So I know that's one thing we were chatting before that y'all are really struggling with and have some challenges with as y'all are growing very fast. But what are some of the things that y'all are struggling with right now that you're focused on solving?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

So I so there's a couple things. One, I I can't remember if we mentioned it since we're in line, but I'm 68. Like I've been doing this a long time. It's still interesting. I don't have a lot of cases myself. I run the team and I'm the I'm sort of the brand ambassador for the team. But one of the big things Brian and I are working on, and we have coaches and consultants and lawyers that help us, like, is our transition plan. Like, how does the Ben Glass Law brand stay grow when Ben is no longer coming in five days a week? I'm really only in the office three days a week now. Um, so that's a big thing, sort of writ large. The second is what you alluded to is the the people that travel with you from one level of growth to the next are often not able to travel with you to the next level. And guess what? Neither are you, because every time when you grow, now you're playing in a place that you've never played in before. And you're so so now you gotta have a coach, or and you gotta be in rooms. Like any pick any one of the many good mastermind groups that are out there, you gotta be in those rooms. Um, so those are those are the two of the biggest things. For some reason, lawyers are not, we there's the number of lawyers who want to be licensed in Virginia, and again, it's because Virginia stayed backwards for so long in the um bar exams, and I don't even understand all of it, but there's a universal bar exam, like, oh no, we're not gonna do that here in Virginia. Well, guess what? Nobody wants to take a bar.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Louisiana, too. It's it's the same, it's the same thing in Louisiana, Ben.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

We have It's crazy. Yeah, so you know, we have this big legal desert now, right? The direct result of Virginia State Bar policies. Again, another podcast, and they know that I say this stuff. Um and they still invite me to speak sometimes, so that's fine. Um so I think um, you know, the other thing that uh lawyers in growing firms struggle with is not only attracting good people, then what are the compensation plans? Like, yeah, like how do we um pay, pay well, um, keep people uh wanting to believe that this is the best place that they will ever work. And we are not going to be perfect for everybody, uh for sure. But that is that is a big um has been a big, big challenge. And again, we spend freely, we invest a lot of money on our coaches. So we have an EEOS coach, you know, traction coach, Brian and I each have mindset coach, um, and we uh and even to to help the um the transition plan for Brian and I as father-son, like we each have separate lawyers and we have an overall lawyer for the firm. So so we are not afraid uh to spend the money to get this right, so that at the end of the day everyone can be as happy as they can be. And you know, he and I have uh I forget if you run US, I think you do, but we do. You know, we have same page meetings, like, hey dude, like is this still good for you? Is this good for you? Yes, what can we do? What can I do as dad, right, to make this better for you? What could what do I need to get from you? Um, so those those are the big things. I think that um we've got a great digital marketing partner, but most of our money, over 83% of our money, comes because someone mentioned my name or Brian's name or the firm's name, and that started their journey. So we have a huge, you know, we ran this analog marketing boot camp two months ago. We have a huge system uh at the firm for staying in front of people like you in a way that we believe is interesting, um, so that if a disability case or a Virginia personal entry case like crosses your uh intake, that we're the ones um that you think of first.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Yeah, I think um one of the things that I've really been struggling with uh is something you hit on is I am too hard, and I think lawyers have the tendency to like seek perfection and be OCD imperfectionists. And if something's happening like at the firm that is not optimal, it'll like drive me crazy. And sometimes it's like reminding myself to have the grace, like as long as your team knows that you care and that you're trying, like they're gonna be imperfections. Everything's never gonna be perfect. That's the biggest thing I struggle with personally at the firm now, is just like they don't expect you to be perfect. You can't be perfect, you can't be on at all times. But I'm thinking a little too hard on myself on that front. I I do think the biggest issue, like you talked about like talking through like compensation plans, talking about pay raises, talking through how do they grow, like helping them understand it, because as long as you care and you talk about it with them, like with 90% of your A players and your really good people, they're gonna know you care and you're gonna talk about it and address issues in the workplace, and that's better than most every other business that they would potentially work at if we're being honest.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

One of the things that lawyers struggle with is hey, if David is my associate and I show him all of this stuff and I send him to conferences and make him a better lawyer, there's a fear David will go out and compete with me. Yes. Right? And you know, Mike Mogul said to me many, many years ago, said, Would you rather have someone who stays the same for five years, never grows, never learns anything, or would you rather have somebody who's gonna grow, who's gonna be curious, and yes, sometimes they will go out and start their own thing. And that's that's okay. That's life in the entrepreneurial fast lane, right? Yeah. We are good luck.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

It's hard, you know. Like, good luck. It's hard. Like, this isn't an easy thing to do. Like, and for some.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Hey David, like um, I I can't promise perfect, but I need to know like what working for me, like what would perfect look like for you? I can't again, I can't promise I can fulfill every bucket, but if you don't know what that is and you can't communicate it to me, then we can't work towards that. And I am, you know, the older you get, um I think the more you realize you're exactly right what you just said. Like, we're not gonna be perfect, we're gonna make mistakes, everybody around us is gonna make mistakes, hardly any of them can be fatal. Like for you know, lawyers saying, I blow statute of limitations. Well, hell, you should be running a business where you're not getting close to any statute of limitations. Like this should not be an issue that we're missing statute limitations in case we that's a that's a lawyer's that's an owner's systemic problem, not a people problem.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

Yeah, I think the quote I always think about you mentioned the Mike Mochul comment he made to you five years ago. I think what's worse is you train somebody up, you elevate them, you praise them, and then they leave, or you don't train them and they stay. I'd much rather elevate them, train them, highlight them, like try to keep them, and if they leave, like wish them nothing but the best. I don't I've also never gotten that like fear about like lawyers leaving to start their own law firm. Do you know how freaking hard it is to do this? Like, good luck. That's the way I look at it. Like, if you if you want to take this on, like have at it. Like, I'm gonna help support you to do it. Um, but I've lived all the scores for the last 15 years, so I know what it took to get here. It's not easy, you know?

SPEAKER_02 39:03

No, no, it's not it's not easy and it's not for everybody. Um, but lawyers like we need to get over these fears because at the at the end of the day, David, we make money with our brains.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

The guy and the gal who's at Starbucks, the FedEx guy who comes to my office every single day, like they have hard jobs. The people that are serving us in hotels have hard jobs. What are we complaining about?

SPEAKER_03 39:32

I agree.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

I mean, is there a strategy? Yeah, of course. But it's not like the person who is out driving a truck in bad weather, hefting boxes, whatever. So that's another thing. Like I'm sort of critical of the profession writ large for its whining, and for the state bar, at least in Virginia, for contributing to the whining. Like, oh, this is the way it's supposed to be. It's really hard.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

I went on a tangent at our quarterly, and that's probably been I've been being fed too much Barbara Corcoran on my uh algorithm because on Shark Tank. I'm a huge Barbara fan, and she freaking hates complainers. She's like, she would set up meetings at her real estate company on Fridays to fire people who complain. She loved firing complainers. And it's like, I just went on a rant on the quarterly. It's like, what are you fucking complaining about? You work in the air conditioning, like you're at a place where everybody wants, nobody is going to be rude or mean to you. Everybody wants to support you and help you. Like, there's nothing to complain. Like, yeah, we have bad days, but like that's life. So you're kind of speaking my language there. Ben, anybody who wants to know a little bit more about the firm, your disability practice, Brian's injury group up in Virginia, the firm does injury and long-term disability. Um, how do they find you? I know you're pretty much everywhere, but just give them all the spew. We're going to link it all in the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

So the law firm is benglasslaw.com. Greatle marketing is greatlegalmarketing.com. We do have something for anyone who wasn't at our summit and doesn't already have this. Like we have the we're the only conference that produces at the end of every summit like a complete set of notes and slides for anyone who wants it for free. So I think that's at GLM Summitnotes.com. That's a great place just to go and see what we're doing. And and the other thing, yeah, like I I love talking to lawyers, particularly lawyers who will come and who are curious. I run a program called lunchwithben.com, and you buy me a sandwich, and we can have a discussion, you know, about it, about anything. Just make sure the sandwich or the salad gets delivered. I'm at that stage of my life where you know I'm looking for you know mentoring opportunities. Um again, they they they keep me out of uh most cases, um, except at the Court of Appeals level. Um and uh, you know, the product of hard work. I mean, for sure, the product of hard work, but now we're um you know, I'm sort of enjoying this run a lot.

SPEAKER_03 41:56

Well, Ben, thank you so much for being here. Another personal thank you. You're the person who convinced me in 2021 when I was listening to your podcast to get out of my cases. I had a very bad mindset. I thought I was the only person who could achieve these results. And it's a funny thing, once I stopped managing the cases in the administrative department and the finances and the phones and the problems, and this and this and this, the case results when I was not directly managing the data and the files actually got better because it was a good lawyer focused only on the case.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

But we're just having a very consistent story, my friend.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

We have these stupid lawyer brains, don't we? That we just think we're the only ones who can do this.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Yeah, it's objectively not true.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

I know, but thank you so much for being here, Ben. It's a great discussion. Everybody who needs a personal injury lawyer uh in Virginia should check y'all out. Also, any kind of long-term disability case across the country, Ben can handle it. He's a good person, a good lawyer, a good mentor, and would be a great partner for your firm. Thank you all for listening. It's been a great discussion on the overall podcast brought to you by the Scott Wignair Law Firm. We are so glad that you listened, and we can't wait to see you next time. Thanks again, Ben.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Scott Vignaire, danger attorneys, we fight for the win.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

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