James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the docketwise video podcast where we dive deep into dynamic world of immigration law. I'm your host, James Pittman, cofounder of Docowise. And today, I have with me 2 very special guests. We have Scott Barry, who is the founder of Marketcrest, which is an award winning digital marketing agency focusing on, law firms. And we have Lucine Aghajanyan.

James Pittman: She is the, founder of LT Global Practice Management, a consultant who helps lawyers maximize their operations and profitability. Welcome, Scott and Lucine.

Scott Berry: Oh, James. Thank you.

Lucine Aghajanyan: Thank you, James.

James Pittman: Great to great to have you here. Alright. So I'm just gonna get started. Let's, just have Scott introduce himself. So, Scott, just tell us about your background. How did you so you have a marketing background. How did you get involved in specializing marketing for the legal industry?

Scott Berry: Yeah. You know, I've I've graduated in marketing, and I spent, a couple decades in the corporate world, chief sales and marketing officer for several $1,000,000,000 companies. And back in about 2015, opened up my own agency. And one of our first clients, purely by accident, was an immigration law firm that was doing about $700,000 a year and revenue had never been to 7 figures. And so we got that opportunity. We did what we do in our core business as a digital marketing agency and took them immediately to 3,000,000, then immediately to 5,000,000. And that really kicked off everything for us. Word got out and we ended up getting into other Texas cities, just through referrals and ended up going west and then, up California. And then we've got clients in, like, Detroit, Chicago, and New York, and then came back down to the Carolinas and Florida, all immigration law clients. So it was a little bit by accident, but that was 2016. And, we've just had a we we've kind of figured out the Rubik's cube on immigration law marketing.

James Pittman: Okay. Do I mean, do you wanna I mean, we're gonna go into depth, but do you wanna can you give me the nutshell version of the Rubik's cube?

Scott Berry: Well, yeah. It it's a combination of digital advertising and, SEO. So a combination of paid advertising and organic, paid is very quick. Organic takes a little bit longer, but once organic kicks in, then it lowers your, total cost per lead in about half. And so if you're able to do that effectively, it's a very powerful combination, and it's almost a 100% effective.

James Pittman: Okay. Alright. And let's have, Lucine, introduce herself, Lucine. So, tell us about LT Global and and how did you go? So were you a practicing attorney, and how how did you get into the the, management consulting business?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Certainly. Thank you, James. I started my career from managing Pittman at law firm. My background is in legal, so I am an attorney from a foreign country. James to the United States and and Scott pursuing my further education in, LLM from Southern Methodist University. I've chosen not to practice, but to manage, and, furthered my career towards recruiting and staffing, and excelled in that as well. And, given that my background is international, I see things from the global standpoint, that allowed me to merge the world, so to speak, and position myself as a manager and staffer that is available to provide resources worldwide. Hence, where's my education and background and, doing both created the business, and, found it to be, a niche. And, as the saying goes, you don't need to do a lot of schooling, you don't need to read or write a lot of books, but you kind of need to figure out what the people need and, cater to that market. And it just just like with Scott, it fell in my lap and I started, LT Global practice management, less than a 10 years ago, and it's been gradually growing. So it's I'm really grateful for for that.

James Pittman: And and you and Scott actually oftentimes work together with clients. How how did you meet each other?

Scott Berry: Yeah. Well, we actually met back in 2016 when I was talking about that first client, believe or not. She was helping on the operation side, and we were helping on the marketing side. So we've known each other the, you know, really the entire life cycle of us and and working with immigration clients. So and we we work with clients together all over the US.

James Pittman: Wonderful. Alright. So, Scott, let's talk about little bit about the main challenges law firms face in marketing their services effectively. How do you say it?

Scott Berry: Yeah. I and I'm I'm glad you said Maine, because there are so many challenges for law firms. I mean, I think you'd fill up an entire page if you tried to to jot down everything that a law firm owner has to deal with in order to try to grow and scale. And, and admittedly, I think it's really frustrating. There are tons of people trying to get your ad dollars. I mean, everybody, once they know that you're advertising and marketing, they all want a piece of that, whether it's gonna help you or Scott. They have sales quotas. And so you're getting it from everybody. Nola and Avvo and Martindale Hubbell and your local digital. I mean, just everybody wants in your pockets. And it can get really frustrated because after a few years, I think law firm founders get really disillusioned, disillusioned about marketing and does it work and who can I trust? And so we've found an interview on a lot of the people because, you know, we have a podcast as well. So we meet, an unusual number of immigration and family law firms across the US. So we always take that time to ask them, what are your challenges and what's causing this and what's causing that? And one of the things that we find is that they don't know who to trust. You know, they they they just have never found someone that they can trust that will deliver without any excuses. And that's a real challenge for law firms trying to grow. I think the second thing that we see the most is they've agreed to a proposal or a package that's really unrelated to their goals. And what I mean by that is in their mind, they may be thinking, hey, we're, you know, we're gonna get, you know, 7 figures this year, or we're gonna go 2,000,000. And then they buy, if you will, like a package of, you know, 2 grand in SEO or, I'm gonna spend 3,000 on Google Ads. But if you do the math, no one has done the math to see whether or not that's what they need in order to hit their goal. It it may sound simple, but I'm telling you people don't ever do that math early on to see if they even have a chance. And that really causes people to to really miss out and get frustrated and disillusioned.

James Pittman: Yes. And, you mentioned your podcast. I do wanna if I didn't mention at the beginning, I do wanna say Scott is also the host of the Immigration Nation podcast. So and he'll tell us at the end how to how to how to check him out on the podcast. But, Scott, how do you approach creating a marketing plan of which, takes into account a law firm's specific goals and objectives?

Scott Berry: That's exactly what law firm founders should be asking is what's a marketing plan that's tailored specifically to me and my goals for, like, 2025 and my objectives? Unfortunately, that's not what we tend to ask. We ask things like, well, how much do you charge? Right? Because they don't they don't know any better and they haven't had good coaching, the, you know, the average law firm. And so if you're asking how much do you charge and, you know, you're forcing people to say, well, I've got this package and this package. And again, you've got that huge disconnect between where you're trying to go right now and what you're capable of because of the package that you've purchased. So, sadly, there's a real disconnect between where the firm is going and, and what they need in order to, hit their goals. So one of the things we did was we created a use an Excel spreadsheet, what we call a calculator. It's a calculator that allows the law firm to put on the first tab how successful their immigration or family intake team is. So when they get leads, how many of those get converted into, a booked consult? How many consults actually happen? How many of those consults are fit? And then out of those that are fit, how many of those consults do they actually win and get hired on? So once they have a sense for how many leads that their, intake team, their specific intake team needs to get a higher case, now we can set forth, hey, we wanna do 2,000,000 and, and, and new business or 1,000,000 in new business. Then we can calculate exactly how many leads that they need based on how effective their intake team is. So now they've got a shot from the very first month to, to reach their goals. And so it it's, it's a a little bit of a kind of, masters in business approach. But if you use that approach, it's incredibly effective in helping a firm reach their very specific goals and objectives.

James Pittman: Okay. Alright. That that's fascinating, and, you know, sounds like a very, very data driven approach Yes. Very systematic approach, and I'm sure it's it's taken you a while to iron that out and and perfect it. Let's give Lucine a chance, Lucene.

James Pittman: So as far as the operational side, how does LT Global approach analyzing a firm's business operations, and what are some of the common inefficiencies and shortcomings that you've encountered?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Certainly. And as the saying goes, everything commences at the top level. Understanding what, law firm owner, has been had envisioned, what objectives they've put in front of themselves, and their team is very important. A lot of James, I'll I'll get into a law firm and, those objectives, those core values, vision, you know, vision, mission, values Scott been, defined. And that's where we start. We start with defining what is it that we're trying to accomplish for the owner and the team, to be able to, execute. And, typically, we'll we'll spend the 1st couple of weeks just doing that. And, then we'll reverse engineer. And now that we've we've set the goals, we'll start working on the loopholes within the firm. A lot of times I'll find that it has to do with, with the staff. Although I don't like the word staff, I, you know, individualize, everything and everybody. But, we start evaluating the team members, and we assign this good old KPIs around everyone's activity to where everything is measurable. Again, that's another loophole that a lot of law firms don't really pay attention to, but we define the key performing indicators and, make everything measurable to where there's no extra work on, on the management side. But the folks themselves end up, delivering their key performing indicators and self reporting, the things that were sitting around every single individual within the firm. And, the KPIs could be, according to their position, according to their tasks. We individualize it. Every firm has different tasks, different matrix that they they will have. So those are the two main loopholes that I usually see that require correcting. And, as soon as we will set everything up, then everything starts running as a well oiled machine to where, the management is just probably 10% of your task. But that all needs to be set out properly and accurately. Also, the technology is a big friend of ours. I always want to make sure that we have proper CRM, that we've incorporated. If we don't have a CRM, most of the times, you know, the law firms would be operating, believe it or not, in Excel spreadsheets, or they may have various CRM systems, and most of them would be underutilized. So I'd come in and I'll customize it for them. So that's kind of, the third loophole if you want to say that, many law firms, end up encountering, to where they just need that help to set it up properly for the team members to operate according to the vision, that top management would put in place.

James Pittman: Mhmm. And let's talk about some of the strategies that you use to help the firms with the workflow and the communication with their clients.

Lucine Aghajanyan: Certainly. So, workflows are very, very important in the case management process. Given that not every single person at the firm, is trained or at the same level, we do need to have workflows to lead the cases to completion. And it also helps with communication amongst the team members. So we, instead of looking at pages of notes, we'll look at the workflows and to understand where exactly we're in the process and the case processing. It also allows us to communicate with our clients, through the portal, should we have, workflows or or portal that's available to, keep our clients updated the client's clients updated. Right? So, client communication is very important. The number one of our complaint is usually my, attorney didn't communicate with me. They didn't call me, didn't text me. Nobody cares about me. So when, the portal is updated, and that's part of the KPIs to have the portal updated, then the client communication increases so as internal communication.

James Pittman: Let's talk a little bit about results now. So for Scott so, Scott, we've talked about how you develop the marketing plan. So now how do you go back and measure the success of marketing campaigns? So what are some of the key metrics, and how do you weigh them when you're gauging success?

Scott Berry: Yeah. James, a great great question. And why this is such a challenge is when a law firm is working with, like a website website developer, then the website developer will say, oh, well, the way you measure things is, you know, the speed and the health of the website, load times and all that kind of stuff. If if you're talking to an SEO guy, then he's reporting, well, we're ranking for 10 keywords and we moved up 3 spots. And so depending on if if you're talking to an email marketer, right, to follow that theme, then they're saying, well, the emails are opened, you know, this this many times and we had this many unsubscribes. But the real the real thing that law firm founders really need to focus on if they wanna grow in scale is ROI. That is so far and away the most important measurement at the level of a law firm founder. So you can call it return on investment. You can call it return on marketing Pittman, But the goal is and should always be to spend 10 and make 50. And if you're doing that, then everything makes sense and you can scale to whatever size that you want. But if we're looking at the wrong things, we're just showing incremental progress and what ends up happening. In my experience is a law firm founder says, look, man, like we're we can't do this anymore. Like I can't afford it and it's just not working out. And what they're really saying is I'm not getting a good enough return on my investment to keep this going. They just don't necessarily know how to say it. So return on marketing investment is so far and away the thing that everyone needs to really be focusing on.

James Pittman: So you said 5 times return on investment. Is this is this a benchmark that is sort of like a generalized benchmark that you use? Or

Scott Berry: Another great question. So the the return on investment is gonna vary by the campaign, and for the overall campaign. So let me say it this way is if we're working with a client to move them from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000, we might be running 10 different campaigns. There might be some advertising campaigns on Facebook, on Google. There might be email marketing, there's social media marketing, there's website work, there's content marketing campaigns, there's SEO campaigns, right? So we're monitoring all of these things. And the ultimate goal is to make sure that each campaign is functioning well and given us a good return and that overall they're getting a good return on their marketing. Investment. And so on certain campaigns, like a nice well performing Google ad campaign for a law firm, it would be it would be normal. If if there was a month where they had a 7, 8, or 9 times ROI. But then at the same time, if if if they're not far enough on their search engine optimization or content marketing campaigns, if they just started investing, they might have done some content, some SEO work, and maybe only gotten one case. So maybe there's just a one time ROI. So I think you're gonna see individual campaigns anywhere between, you know, no return early on to to maybe a a 9 times return. And then what you're hoping for is a blend, and what you're looking for is a blend that lands you somewhere between 4, 5, and 6 times ROI. That's what I'm seeing with very successful, law firms.

James Pittman: Okay. So let's let's give a few examples if you can of some successful marketing campaigns. Can you just throw out a couple so we can sort of visualize?

Scott Berry: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we obviously, we got a lot on our website and all that. There is just to pick a pick a few. There's the first one that we talked about where Lucine and I were working together and, and we took the client from 700,000 to 3,000,000 to 5,000,000, and then they've been at 5,000,000 every single year after that. They fit their target. We've also Scott a lot of recognition. You might even can see some of these, trophies behind us for our work, with a client in California that was doing about 600 and we were able to take them to 1,000,000 and then to 2,000,000 and she's hitting 2,000,000 on a very consistent basis. And both of these clients are doing the right thing. They are not investing just in one channel, because if you invest in just one channel for success, then if something happens at that channel, you're devastated. And I do see that a lot. You know, people that have only one core channel, maybe they, they go around and they do speaking engagements. And then if something happens and they can't do those speaking things, they may drop $1,000,000 just like that. Or they have a special contact that's feeding them, James. And then something happens with that contact. You can lose 800,000 just like that. So, you know, one of the things that I'm proud about these case studies is they've got leads coming in that are turning into cases from advertising and then also from the website and then also from social media and from Google. So a really nice safe campaign that is going to produce for you every single year is one that is built around 3 or 4 main channels, which is probably, you know, paid advertising, the website, the Google business profile, and some social media. And look, if, like, there are people that are really into TikTok. So they they have decided to really invest in that. And it's going well for them, which I love. But you know what you read. Right? So there's a lot of stuff being read right now. Man, if they pull that out from underneath people and that's 75% of their lead source, you may be having to let people go very quickly. So that's just a a a current example of why you don't put all your your eggs in one basket.

James Pittman: Absolutely. And Scott Scott is obviously talking about the potential ban of TikTok. We're gonna come back and talk about some of those other channels in a in a little more detail in a few in a minute. But let's, shift over to Lucine and talk about, you know, balancing costs with service quality. So law firms, especially often well, in general, but especially when they're first starting out, they're very concerned about costs and potential cost overruns. So, Lucine, how do you balance reducing costs or holding costs down, with maintaining or improving the quality of service?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Absolutely. Cost is always going to be there. It's a decision to be made, how and what type of organization we're going to be building. However, we can reduce the cost. Right? And, reduction in Scott, happens when we utilize the technology to our advantage. That's number 1. And number 2, like I mentioned in the beginning of our, podcast, utilizing worldwide talent is another. So we, want to keep the cost down utilizing that talent that's well trained and, educated, knows how to use the technology, to our advantage, and, to be able to meet those KPIs and matrix and to give us the ROI that we're looking to accomplish. So, just like, Scott, I also focus on, you know, 5 times, the pay, so to speak. So, and, we also measure how much our case cost us. Luckily, the CRM systems that we use, I traditionally, suggest using my case for multi practice practices and, for immigration, clients, definitely doc advice and my case. So, or just doc advice. So we are measuring everything that we can to be able to provide the, you know, to meet our ROI and keep the cost down.

James Pittman: Understood. And from cost to the idea of scaling, so it's all about scaling. Right? That's growth. Growth involves scaling. So what advice do you give to firms who wanna scale up, but they're concerned that, you know, as they automate and as they get bigger, they don't wanna lose, the quality of the client service. They don't wanna lose the personal touch, etcetera, those types of considerations.

Lucine Aghajanyan: So you're probably referring to AI and chat GPT and, you know, those type of, things. So I say embrace it because, convenience is, is something that we, need in our day to day operations. Just like with Amazon delivering everything to us on a daily basis, we also, you know, need technology delivering and helping us deliver on our, end product. So I I'd say, you know, let's not operate from, fear, and let's Scott and achieve the results that our clients are looking us to achieve. You know, utilizing AI and technology is just inevitable. We we can't just run away from it. Right? And, the human touch will always going to be needed, in my opinion. I don't think we would ever be able to transform our practices and businesses 100% to, using technology and AI solely. I believe that we would just simply need to have good managers of the AI and tools that we have in place. And, one of the things, that law firm clients would like to see, is a faster delivery on the services. So I think if we only deliver faster as a law firm, then our client satisfaction satisfaction will increase. So it's a good thing, in my opinion.

James Pittman: Do you think, that when you're scaling up I was also thinking about the idea of delegating. You know, as you scale up, you need to delegate and delegate carefully and delegate a lot of tasks. Do you, you know, do you ever see any any concerns on the part of clients that, you know, by delegating, you know, they might, you know, they they might lose sort of the individual touch with their clients?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Not at all. Delegation is a is a is a is a process and Uh-huh. And a goal. It should be every entrepreneur's goal to delegate because, if we're not delegating, we're not growing. And, I am a big proponent of having specialized individuals within the law firms, you know, folks that specialize in certain, practice area and certain, areas of case processing even. So delegation is the key to success in my opinion. And, a lot of, solo practitioners, as a matter of fact, end up being solo practitioners for many years just because they're afraid to delegate that someone will make a mistake or someone is not going to do it right or, or it's gonna cost us a lot of money. I've you know, my job as a consultant is to come in and actually change that. So we usually work on the fear factor, and we make sure that the fear is in the past. Literally, in a couple of months of working together, the practitioners are no longer afraid to Scott, are no longer afraid to delegate or use the technology. That change is vital. And if we're not changing, then we're choosing to be in the same boat that we were yesterday.

James Pittman: Yeah. That's the kind of thing I was getting at. I've you know, I've known and I've known, you know, colleagues and, acquaintances and so forth who were solos for many years, and and, you know, they were limited really in in how they could grow because of that kind of concern about delegating. They were uncomfortable with it and, you know but, you know, nowadays, with the technology, you you've just absolutely got to learn how to delegate delegate and delegate intelligently both to human beings and to the technology. So, yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing I was I was talking about. But let's, go to Scott and talk about some of these channels. So let's talk about email marketing, Scott. So how can law firms leverage email marketing campaigns to build and maintain relationships with our clients?

Scott Berry: Yeah. So email marketing is a bit of a tricky one. Right? Because, for 1, every law firm should be doing it as soon as they possibly can. And and here's why. We've done a lot of research on it. One of the challenges with, email is that it's really hard to attribute a lead to email marketing. Here's why. You'll send, an email, like a monthly newsletter, which I think is very wise about what's going on in the industry and what people need to to to know about what's brand new, and then ask them to reach back out to us if they, have another case or please forward this email to a friend or a family member that needs this information. Right? So that's one of the most powerful things that you can do. The the we talked a lot about ROI. What are the tricks to it is that you send that email out and then the client will forward it to a friend and then they'll maybe click on the website. Right? Because they're reading it and go, oh, this is just what we were talking about. So they click on, they go to the website and then they convert and the credit, if you will, goes to the website when in fact it was a client referral off of an email. So it's called 1st attribution and second attribution. And we've just found that with email marketing, it's really hard to give the email credit for all the value that it's bringing. But I will say this is we spent 2 months just studying it like crazy, at one of the law firms that we've seen and I were working with. And one of the things that we found is without question, without fail, email marketing always pays for itself. So it may do better because you just can't track everything. But after 2 exhaustive months of just tracking everything down, I'm completely confident that it always pays for itself. So if you have to hire someone to do it for you or hire an agency to design something impactful and and buy list and keep list and keep list clean and manage the test and then send it for approvals and then launch on a specific date and time. There's a lot that goes with newsletter type emails. No, for sure it always pays for itself. Plus some. Now everyone should be sending out an email to their list. Right. Which is in their CR CRM system, such as doctor wise. But there is another one, another type of email marketing that people should consider, and that is around inbound marketing. So I don't know if you studied this or whatever, but, like on the website, you can put ebooks and content that potential new clients are really fascinated with that helps answer their questions, puts them at ease. And as they download those for free, they just exchange their email for a free download. And therefore, you can tell where someone is in the buying cycle based on what they download. So, you know, if if they're they download everything you ever wanted to know about the fiance visa, then that probably says they're a little bit at the top of the funnel and they're just getting trying to get their arms around it. But if they download the ebook marked, how to choose the best immigration attorney for you, then you know they're ready to make a decision right now. So, that's inbound marketing, and email can be very powerful for people that wanna introduce inbound marketing at their law firm.

James Pittman: Yes. Absolutely. And and and those those marketing assets, you know, in marketing, they refer to things like an ebook like that as a marketing asset.

Scott Berry: Yes. You

James Pittman: know, that's that gets to your content. That also gets to your content marketing. Exactly. You know, if you could develop a wide variety of assets like that, that really showcase your professional expertise in immigration or family or whatever the field is, then you can leverage those assets. They're not that difficult to put together. Right? But, you know, you wanna deal with someone like Scott who really understands all the details of of a of a coordinated email marketing campaign. But getting those getting those marketing assets, out there is is absolutely, the right move to do.

Scott Berry: You know, there's also repurposing those, which people just kinda forget about. Right? You you can take something and you can make a video from it, and then you can transcribe it. And you've got a blog article, and you can take 2 or 3 blog articles and create an ebook. And, you can you can take the video and you can just use the audio, and now you've got an audio.

Scott Berry: So you got audio, video, you know, blog articles, ebooks, all off of the same single Right. Content experience. This is really how you help make marketing and your investment in marketing pay off. Right? Is to create content marketing can be very powerful. And and always remember that people wanna hire the attorney that's the most helpful.

James Pittman: Absolutely. They wanna hire the attorney who's the most helpful, and they wanna have trust. They have to have trust. And we've talked a lot. I've done whole episodes of the podcast on on building trust with clients. So that brings me to the next point of one of the things that helps to build trust with clients and potential clients are testimonials Yep. And reviews. So let's talk about the importance of those and how you leverage testimonials and reviews in your marketing efforts.

Scott Berry: So I think it's fair to say that, reviews and, from previous clients are gonna be important to your law firm for the next 5 or 10 years. I mean, things change all the time, right? This is not gonna change because it's really embedded in our culture now that I don't, I don't hire you unless I check your reviews. Now you could be a plumber, you could be a home builder, you could be a past guy, or you could be an attorney. But people have just learned through Amazon and, and, and eBay and Etsy and all these other tools, Yelp, even Avvo that, you don't hire somebody without doing the research and reviews from objective third party is what people rely on the most. So every attorney needs to remember that it's it's always going to be important over the next 10 years to have great Google reviews and Facebook reviews and Avvo reviews. And not everybody's gonna go looking for them. So I highly recommend that you get that information and you get it on your website and that you get it on like your Google business profile, and that you create content around that so people don't have to go dig to find out that you're great. And and so what that means is, you can take a nice Google review and create, you know, like a graphic and you can share that on social media so that they can be on social media because maybe that's their way of consuming content. And then you just brought forward, Hey, here's a 5 star review from Scott. Here's what he said. So I don't have to go dig for that. So it's important that you get these testimonials. Could be in writing, could be a video testimonial that you get that out onto every platform that you have. Platform, meaning YouTube, social media, the website, your Google business profile, obviously, you know, Google, Google business, which is Google maps, YouTube, all owned by, by Google. Right? So that's the biggest search engine on the planet far and away Berry none. So you want to feed those tools with your reviews and your testimonials and your happy clients, because that's what people can find pretty easily because they're Google owned properties. So get it on your website. I love those pictures, James, of happy, you know, happy clients and a male that'll come in. And, a lot of times for like immigration clients and they'll get their green cards or their notification and they'll pose like this with the attorney. And that is so powerful. Never underestimate how powerful reviews and testimonials are because it'll build your brand and it'll build confidence and give you credibility that is really vital if you want new customers.

James Pittman: So you've got the you've got the Google reviews. You've got the testimonials on on your website. Yes. Help me about video video testimonials. I mean, do you utilize those? Do you or or or are there any special considerations with them?

Scott Berry: Scott interesting. The one consideration is if it's a law firm trying to get a, like, a picture with a client, or a quick little video, I do recommend that you have them sign a release. I know it sounds all legal and everything, but you're gonna put their face all over the Internet. Right. So it's I think it's prudent that you just have a stack of those at the office, and you have them sign real quick whenever you take the picture. So that's one consideration. It I understand that it is a little bit tricky if someone comes into your office to get a video. So a Scott of real savvy attorneys will set up a station and maybe put something in the background with their logos, you know, all on it or, you know, something that's decorated for professionalism and branding and just kinda set up a camera or set up a phone and set up lightning so that all they have to do is maybe just drop their phone in there and then turn on the lights. And it and it makes it easy. You can edit it later

James Pittman: and post

Scott Berry: it later. So, I'm seeing people have a lot of success with that. And one of the one of the things, James, that support is this is something you can do. It doesn't really cost you anything.

James Pittman: That's right.

Scott Berry: You know? And as we're trying to grow our law firms, sometimes we have a lot of money and sometimes we're not there yet. So we have a lot of time. And so you can help yourself by doing these things that only you can do that don't actually cost you anything, which is grab happy clients and create testimonials. And, and, and I think that's one of the reasons why posting on TikTok is so popular. It's something that you can do that doesn't really cost you a lot of money, like, maybe advertising. So I think this fits in that category.

James Pittman: Now, I mean, you know, it's a reality that, sometimes you can get negative feedback. Hopefully, you don't

Scott Berry: get it,

James Pittman: but you can get negative feedback or negative reviews. So

Scott Berry: Yep.

James Pittman: You know, part of, you know, your job as a marketing consultant is to teach attorneys, you know, sort of how to manage that. So how how do you manage that? Yeah.

Scott Berry: That's a tricky one. Especially for we work with a lot of family and a lot of immigration clients, and those are both, 2 practice areas that can get some blistering bad reviews. You know, the case doesn't get approved, whether it had anything to do with you, it's possible that somebody could really lash out. Or if you, it's a divorce case and you win, the other side can really lash out. So you Scott know that that's part of the territory and the best way to resolve that. There's two ways to to be proactive. And that is to get as many 5 star reviews consistently every single month, all the time as you can. Right? So every month, it's not every other month. It's it's every month. And then make sure that that you have an agency or a consultant that's replying to the negative reviews for you, the positive ones, obviously, but the negative ones, or you've become really well adept, at replying the negative ones, yourself because, you can actually get a bad review, a one star review. And if you handle the reply well, it won't hurt you at all.

James Pittman: That's right.

Scott Berry: It won't hurt

James Pittman: you well. If you don't answer, if somebody post a negative view and maybe make makes accusations or something I mean, let's just look at it look at it this way so people can kinda learn the lesson. If you don't respond to it, do you think there's something like you're almost, you know, admitting by silence or you're leaving open the possibility of people interpreting it that way?

Scott Berry: Yep. You have nothing to say. And and it's you're just basically saying it's true. I've been caught. You know, we never returned your phone call. So you have to reply back. And not only that, Google does track how many, reviews that you have and whether or not you're being responsive and replying. So that could end up hurting your how easy you are to be found, if you don't reply. So you have to reply back and you have to do it in a super professional way. There are actually books that you can get to learn how to reply perfectly. I think we tend to be very defensive, and that's one thing that you can't do.

James Pittman: Right.

Scott Berry: You can't. But, you know, you say that, but I see some crazy things out there. You know, people will just say you're a liar, you know, because, you know, we're emotionally invested in our firms. And so when someone says something that isn't exactly the way we perceived it, it can be hard to reply well. So you wanna never be defensive, always professional, very humble. Keep it short and sweet, but not rude. And and I always recommend that you reach out to the person, even if you don't feel like it and say, hey. We saw this. How else can I help you? Give me one more chance.

James Pittman: To make it right.

Scott Berry: Yeah. Give me one more chance, and it's not just to get the review down. Sometimes they won't, but then it allows you to reply back that, hey. Thank you so much for talking this out with us. We really appreciated the time. Now we have a better understanding of, how you feel, and we can't wait to work with you in the future. You reply back like that. Someone reads the one star view, there's no concern.

James Pittman: What do you think about this? I mean, if some if a if a lawyer feels like they might have difficulty articulating it or striking the right tone or putting everything they wanna put in their response, maybe try to use the AI to help

Scott Berry: you can now.

James Pittman: Right. Draft the perfect response. Because that's one thing AI is very good at is is is, you know, taking facts, synthesizing it, and also striking the tone. You can have it strike particular tone. It's very good.

Scott Berry: Yeah. I I love that because, you know, if we're left to our own devices, you know, especially because we're attorneys and very fact based, we might say, okay. Well, on January 3rd

James Pittman: Right.

Scott Berry: You call. Right? And, man, when you go down that road, you hurt yourself more than you're helping. So love the idea of using AI to generate the right kind of professional response and tone.

Lucine Aghajanyan: Yeah. I wanted to add something to to this, because I pay attention to Google reviews a lot, and that's one of the, KPIs actually that I incorporate. I want for the employees to know that, they should be asking for positive Google reviews and watching, for negative, Google reviews as well, and helping the firm to mitigate. So oftentimes, you'll see negative Google reviews from, former employees posting, actually. So Google is not a platform to express your, you know, unpleasantries, so to stick, with your former employer. So that's something that the business owners can dispute. So there are some Google reviews that, you know, talk about everything and anything but for the service that was provided to them because that's not the, again, that's not the platform, for, you know, for for discussion. Right? So we want to make sure as business owners to pay attention to the reputation management, not only on Google, but on other platforms as well. So when, Scott and I work together on our joint accounts, so we truly pay attention to that. Because in my opinion, for every negative review, you need at least 10 positive reviews. So, just ask for positive reviews when you're doing a good job. And that also, you know, boosts the employee morale as well, so they're happy that their name was mentioned somewhere on on the platforms. Why not?

James Pittman: Absolutely. And, Lucina, I wanted to ask you about leadership development because that is part of the consulting that you do. So you help, you know, law firm owners and leaders to sort of develop their leadership capabilities. Let's talk about that. What are some of the key traits that you believe that every successful attorney should cultivate?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Sure. So achieving success is a personal pursuit. Leadership skills is something that can be developed in my opinion. I believe that each one of us, in the leadership seat should be constantly educating, self educating, ourselves, and, with the goal of passing the information and knowledge to the next person. We want to be able to grow and multiply, and and we, as leaders, will also would don't only have responsibility of making sure that our well-being is intact, but we're also responsible for our team members. So I always wanna make sure that, the owners of the firms understand that they have a responsibility before, their team members. We want to make sure that the retention is in place because that also speaks to how good of a leader you are. Right? So are you articulating your, goals and your vision? Are you a good visionary, and do you have the proper, executionist on on your team? Sometimes, you know, I I think of visionaries as artists. You know, they will have something in mind that they want to see happening with their firm, but then they don't have their operators. So I recommend that they get equipped with their operational knowledge and hire the proper operational support, to be able to enhance their day to day operations, and to continue educating themselves just simply because once you are, a business owner and a true leader, you have a higher degree of responsibility than only for yourself. So that's something that we we cover a Scott, and, we talk about, job satisfaction that our team members would need to have. And as leaders, we need to make sure that the team members are not only growing, you know, their knowledge base is growing and they're growing financially as well. I I find it, particularly important, in, day to day operations because the folks also need to be ripening the benefits of of your success. You know? If you're a good leader, you need to make sure that, they're also being successful and feeling successful on top of that. So, my, goal of a consultant is to make sure that the leadership is equipped with proper knowledge and tools to be able to, to be successful and and see it in, their day to day operations, and not only at the end of the year when they're looking at their bottom line.

James Pittman: Now, Lucine, I and you do one to one coaching for with the the lawyers for leadership, and I've and I've seen you refer to yourself as a lawyer whisperer. What do

Lucine Aghajanyan: you mean by that? Certainly. Yes. So I don't limit myself to only having 1 on 1 sessions once a week or once a month. It doesn't work like that with me. And, I've I I may have 10 law firms a month that I am consulting with, and they all have access to me. They can text me, email me. We create this environment to where I am available to, answer their questions on the go. And, that's what I mean by the being a lower whisper. So I am available to answer any and all of their questions, whether how they're feeling about their team members, their operations, their marketing, or their, bank account, if you wish. Right? So I'm really engraved into their day to day lives. And, I at the end of the day, I enjoy creating these friendships with my clients and celebrating successes, on a monthly basis to where we're not it's not a formality. It's not, a set day when we're going to be discussing everything that we need to be discussing. We have those sessions on the calendar, but we're also I'm also available to answer their questions as they come in or reach out to them with, anything that I see in the process of my management of the firm on a daily or weekly basis.

James Pittman: Now what are so if you're if you're setting up leadership goals, are these gonna be organizational goals? Are they gonna be individual goals? Are they gonna be both?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Both. So the organizational goals stem from having the goals that we set for the team members, for them to deliver on set goals. That James sense? And for the law firm owner, we'll be looking on the overall goal that we'll set that we will be discussing and reviewing on a monthly basis. So it's a monthly recurrence of, review, to to review the set goals to where they see the increase in their revenue and increase in the productivity and the quality of the work on a monthly basis. So we don't wait for the performance reviews in 6 month or a year from now to talk about what needs to be improved. We do it on a monthly basis.

James Pittman: But what are some of the leadership don'ts or mistakes or missteps that you see, and how do you help people correct them?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Every leader needs to have the support system that consists of the directors or managers that would need to be overseeing the team members. The mistakes that I'm seeing often, the closeness between the business owner and the the the team members. So there has to be a buffer, so to speak, to be able to communicate and articulate the requirements and, and the goals that we're setting. So oftentimes, the closeness actually either creates fear, or creates this feeling of the employee that everything is okay only only if I am close to the business owner. And that's most of the times it happens, in the smaller environments, in smaller firms under 5, team members. So I prefer that there is a buffer in between the leadership and, and the team members to be able to properly channel the expectations and measure the success.

James Pittman: As you've been in this business and coaching coaching lawyers, what are some leadership lessons that you have learned from working with various firms and attorneys, and how has that helped you refine your approach?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Absolutely. Every person that we work with gives us something to learn. It's it's a learning experience to be either softer or sometimes stricter. And, I can see even in my personality traits, you know, my personality traits changing as I, you know, dive in into every single practice and I see, similarities, in the in the approach or I see, trends that, I kinda, like, borrow from previous client and incorporate with, with with with the new one. There's always a learning curve. We all learn from each other. I'm trying to remember one that I can give you an example, but maybe we'd come back to it.

James Pittman: Okay. Sure. Sure. Let, let's let's make sure that we get, Scott into, tell us about Immigration Nation podcast because I did mention that you're the host of that. And I do wanna say, how did, Scott, how did that come about? And and, you know, what do you try to cover on your podcast, and how can people tune in?

Scott Berry: Oh, yeah. Thanks, James. It it came about very organically. Here's why. We were doing a lot of video in the office because, obviously, video is great for content.

Scott Berry: And, and people, the our lawyers that were clients were really enjoying it. And they're like, you know what? I like to do this every week, you know, every 2 weeks, you know, what what about, you know, what if I what if I made like a podcast? And of course, they don't have any idea what's involved in a podcast. As you know, it's like, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, way more than what you think. The technology, the processes, the editing, the planning. I mean, it's it feels like another whole job. And so, I started telling people, like, you know what? We'll have a podcast. So we'll make a podcast for our immigration friends. And then you can just come on, enjoy all the benefits. You don't have to do any of the work. And so that's how it started. We started bringing them in every couple of weeks, once a month, and letting them just be the guest and and let them answer frequently asked questions that people have. So they got to do all the fun part, but didn't have to do any of the work. And it's been, I don't know, but maybe a year and a half now. And, we've won one international award, for our work. And it's a lot of work, but, it's really fun to see our clients and friends do really well. And Lucine gotten involved. She's done several. She's cohosted with me. She's actually co you know, hosted one of them when I wasn't available. So it's a lot of fun and you can actually take some of those episodes and break it down into video shorts and release them on social media and stuff, which helps our lawyers with their kind of thought leadership positioning. So that's that's how it came about.

James Pittman: Yep. Are the episodes, on your website or on the YouTube channel both? Or

Scott Berry: Oh, yeah. Well, they're on all all the channels. They're on YouTube, immigration nation podcast, and then all the big channels, Amazon, Spotify, immigration nation podcast, use all three words. And we even have a website, immigration nation podcast.com, where we've put them all on there. We actually one of the things that is unique is we're 1st and foremost, a video podcast. So everything gets recorded with like 3 or 4 cameras. So you get to see it and hear it. So, that's a little bit different in some podcasts or audio only. And Spotify, I think just recently added the video capability to it. That's a brand new feature. Unfortunately, for us, we had the videos. So we're beginning to kind of upload those to where, people can either watch it or just listen.

James Pittman: Understood. Yeah. I mean, the video podcast that has like, when I'm doing the video podcast format, you know, that's that's really the best of both worlds. But, you know, there's there's people who who who who just wanna do the audio. You know, they like to watch it when they drive or they're commuting or something, and, you know, so you need to, you know, hopefully have, available both both modalities. But, Lucine, let's talk a little bit about your role in staffing and and personnel development. So in terms of augmenting personnel, you know, what does that typically look like when you're dealing with your clients, for LT Global? What challenges are you trying to solve? How do you ensure that outsourced personnel align with the firm's culture and maintain the service standards?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Sure. So I'm a strong believer of, making sure that the right person is in the right seat. Oftentimes, I'd go in and I'll see, manager, especially with the law firms, this happens very often, and that have a manager that has, no experience in the legal field managing a firm. So that's, that that happens very often. And, or let's say, an attorney that is, asked specifically in the immigration field to, you know, now that we're kind of focused on immigration side, I'd be I'd like to touch on that, would be asking the the owner would be asking the same lawyer to be drafting, researching, going to court, going to USCIS. I don't believe that, the same person should be doing everything. Yeah. So I like, dividing that up. And, it's not uncommon for me to advise to utilize contractors in, in a law firm practice that are specialized in a certain area. Because the dissatisfaction of having a lawyer or paralegal even, that is required to know and do it all, is pretty high to where we're asking the lawyer to draft, go to court, go to USCIS, and do all these things. But they may not be, that great in drafting, but maybe amazing in in litigating cases or drafting briefs. So, I see that a lot when they're asking way too much from one individual. So, I'll I'd like to, you know, separate it up and and augment it. When it comes to the paralegal world, again, I like when everybody is specialized. And if it's a smaller firm, that cannot afford, you know, 10, 15 year paralegal, then I'd recommend utilizing contractors instead of full time, employees and expecting them to do everything that they won't be able to do. So that's another way of doing it. Now when it comes to the outsource staff, because of my background in staffing and recruiting, I also and especially in the immigration field, because I have the knowledge base, I know what I'm looking for. And I can do the knowledge check before placing them for a certain role. So that's the benefit of working with me because I have the background and, obviously, the continuous training. So I want them all constantly be training, training, and training. And, and and, largest firms actually me than large larger firms, it's not uncommon to have a trainer, to have a team leader and a trainer. So if we don't have a trainer, I still ask that we have those training sessions at least once a month to where people would come in and bring in their questions and get the training that they deserve.

James Pittman: Now but what are some of the, you know, give me an example of some of the KPIs, that you would be assigning to the personnel. Are they, you know, qualitative, quantitative, both, and, you know, how often should you evaluate them?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Both. So I want everyone to be, recording their time, whether they're attorneys or paralegals. So recording times and requiring certain number of hours, even if it's not, litigation firm where we have billable hours. So I want them still recording their time. And that's one KPI. The second goes by the number of cases they're filing on a monthly basis. Now that's customized depending on the type of cases they handle and their capabilities. So and the third would be, I usually, ask the business owners to draft their core values, and we want to make sure that our team members are satisfying the core values. Because we want to make sure that our team members know what's important to us to behave in such such a way. And that's important to me. So there were 3 things that I want us to measure on a monthly basis. And then there are different perks that exist for meeting those KPIs. And if they don't meet those KPIs, it's an easy separation as well. You could you can imagine. Right? So it makes it very, the relationship becomes on one side transactional, on the other side fun and and rewarding.

James Pittman: So act with staff augmentation and today with the outsourcing and so forth, smaller firms can, you know, really use, the staff augmentation to compete with larger firms without having everybody in house. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Yeah. As well, in in in today's world of technology, we can track everything. Right? Everything that everybody's doing can be trackable, traceable. So the worry of I don't know what my staff member is doing because they're not sitting next to me is way gone, and, and that's that's not something that we should be worried about, in my opinion. So, on the contrary, especially when we add the measurables, it makes it so much easier to track and just have everyone, self report and and and and have have that operational success that we're driving to to get. So people can be sitting on the other side of the planet and doing the work for you while you're asleep. Right? So it's a wonderful thing, to to have. Pre COVID, honestly, I had to, be convincing people to utilize staff that's outside of the country, but not anymore. So in today's environment with technology and, and, you know, the world becoming 1, it's relatively easy to accomplish and and and be hand to hand with those bigger companies that, have more staff. But even with that, even with with larger companies, you know, they they're diving in, right, into the outsourced world, and they utilize technology. I think everybody is in, in this world together, and, it's just a wonderful place to be.

James Pittman: Now, Lucine, when firms are thinking about adopting technology or changing technology, I mean, that can be that can involve, you know, sometimes anxiety. They they can have various concerns. So, I mean, what's your philosophy about that, and how do you approach that, in in terms of, you know, counseling firms on on who who are thinking about making technological changes, and they and they have worries about it?

Lucine Aghajanyan: Absolutely. That comes up as number one topic, in my engagement with law firms, actually. Because what we can't measure, we can see. And, I, you know, I I need to have that CRM system to see what the staff is doing. Because nobody has the time to create Excel spreadsheets, follow what's on the Excel spreadsheet. I mean, the you'd be surprised how many law firms just track the progress on an Excel spreadsheet Pittman how meticulous it could be to go back and check and see if Excel spreadsheet has been updated. And, and on top of it, you can't see things in the real time. So in order for us to know what everybody is doing, if we're meeting our KPIs, if we're collecting the money that we're supposed to be collecting because collections is another thing that it's another, aspect of business, a big aspect of business, that is in the James, CRM. You know, I'd go over the importance of every aspect of the business, case notes, time recording, collections, revenue, KPIs, leads, and lead follow-up. And then we'll see how they're managing it, and then we'll quickly discover all the loopholes that they're having. And then I'll introduce them to technology that I trust, and then we'll transfer to the technology that we can trust together. And oftentimes, it is doc advice and it is my case. And, we've been really fortunate to have a a great working relationship with these softwares that have allowed us to be successful in law firm growth and operational success as well.

James Pittman: And let me ask you a question about the AI, which has been our you know, the hottest sort of tech trend for the last couple of years now and both to Lucine and to Scott. I mean, when you're dealing with firms and you're thinking about incorporating AI into either their their operations or their, you know, their marketing efforts, I mean, what kind of reception are you, you know, are you getting? Are you are you finding, most lawyers these days receptive to the AI? Do you hear specific concerns voiced, and how do you address them?

Scott Berry: Most people are surprised that there's been some AI already in, you know, like Adobe software and Google, advertising, for, over a year now. And so, it hasn't quite changed that much on the marketing side. I think change is coming, especially when you look at, with the government talking to Google about a monopoly and they might have to give up Chrome. And so I think there is change coming, but it hasn't happened as quickly as maybe what we've seen is seeing because of all the people that have created apps, AI apps for attorneys. That seems to be something to help them operationally. Like that happened very quickly. Not that they're great, but that part happened really quickly. The marketing part, I think, is gonna lag behind that a little bit. So I'll let Lucine talk about what she's saying.

Lucine Aghajanyan: I'm a big believer at AI. So I I love AI. And why? Because it makes things faster. Yeah. Okay. So not that it's, better. It's and it's somewhat better, right, than it was before. So we've lived with AI for years now. We just didn't know we had it in every aspect of, our business operations because nobody was talking about it as much and it wasn't as popular. But I think, anything that makes things faster, I'm a big proponent of that. Now lawyers, I I see them being very receptive. The the lawyers that like technology and, see how efficiently we can be operating, They like it. There are some lawyers that are wondering if it's going to replace something. So but in my opinion, if it helps with the research, if it helps us draft and review the paperwork and summarize, why wouldn't we want to use it? Especially going back to immigration law law firms. I would love for the AI tool to come in and review all the FOIAs, 1,000 a 1,000 page FOIAs. That would be amazing. You know, the high volume law firms usually, in my experience, I see hundreds of cases sitting on the on the chair, on the bench, on the desk, you know, without getting reviewed for months. If it helps the practitioners to move things faster, why not? Now, for the litigation firms, I think, that operate on a billable fee environment, potential could be more challenging, right, to to do to meet their billable hours. But then that's a different question, different structure, and perhaps they could be looking into flat fee environment. Those are just kind of, topics that I've discussed with a few practitioners, and how to do that. But, again, you know, the business is changing. The map market is changing. Just like we've adapted to the outsourced team members of of our team, and we're so receptive to it right now, we will be receptive to AI. Again, if things may get faster, better, why not? So and I am so happy to see, Docuetwise utilizing AI now, with, you know, it's so easy to assemble packets and but create the index. It it takes time to do those things. It seems to be very simple. Sometimes the practitioners will say, well, all I want from the paralegal is to put the packet together and do the index. Well, that advice will do it for you. So you just have the paralegals and legal assistants do the client communication. Because that's something that I don't think AI is going to replace, not in the near future. Because I personally get annoyed when I make a phone call and AI keep trying to answer my question, then I hang up and then call again to ask for a human being. But when it thinks like, you know, putting things together and researching and reviewing, that would be fantastic. So I'm glad that DocAdvice and my case, they're going in that direction. It's, it's just that cheer on top that will, you know, see it soon and and move things in a better direction.

James Pittman: Absolutely. Thank you for those kind words, Lucine. And, you know, it's just it's really a fascinating time that we're in. We're in the early phases of this AI revolution. We're still in the early days of it. And and the technology is changing, and the regulatory environment is changing, and people's, you know, creativity is really, you know, blossoming. It's being, you know, tested, and it's blossoming with, you know, all the applications that we're finding, and it's really, really has the opportunity to to streamline, you know, legal work and can play a role in in all different facets of of legal work. We've done some episodes on AI. We certainly have plenty more planned for the next year. But, certainly, fascinating time to be following LegalSec and and and especially AI. Oh, this has been an amazing conversation with 2 industry leaders in law firm marketing and in practice management consulting, Scott and Lucine. And thank thank you both for joining us. You know, you've been you've been wonderful. This has been extremely valuable discussion, and we're definitely gonna have you back, you know, over the next year and so forth and and continue to follow a lot of these issues. Thank you both.

Lucine Aghajanyan: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Scott Berry: Thanks, James. Congratulations to you, man.