How Lawyers Can Retain a High Number of New Paying Clients During an Economic Downturn

Dave Aarons: All right. Welcome to the Unbundled Lawyer podcast. Really excited for this episode because we have, in the house, one of the highest converting attorneys in our entire network. In fact, his podcast episode is one of the highest... Most often listened to episodes in the history of our podcast for a lot of reasons, which we'll be covering today. But the concept of leading with unbundled services, and the try it before you buy it philosophy. So, this is a round two with

Anthony Saunders. Thanks for making it in.

Anthony Saunders: Thanks for having me.

Dave Aarons: Yeah, man really excited for this opportunity. So, where we were three years ago, I mean, we've been working together about four or five years now, right? I think.

Anthony Saunders: No, we've been 2013-

Dave Aarons: 2013, right? You're pre unbundled

Anthony Saunders: Pre unbundled

Dave Aarons: Okay, so seven years?

Anthony Saunders: Seven years.

Dave Aarons: Seven years, man. Okay. So I think we did the interview around 2015, 2016 I think you'd at that time had just started with the Ault Firm or were you still working as a solo? I can't actually recall.

Anthony Saunders: So I was with Ault Firm, it was 2017.

Dave Aarons: Okay

Anthony Saunders: Actually I think September if I remember right.

Dave Aarons: That's right. So we only launched the podcast 2016 so-

Anthony Saunders: Yeah.

Dave Aarons: Take us through, just give us maybe an update you can share briefly, where you're from and so forth, but just an update on how things have evolved from there. Obviously you had just come on board with the Ault Firm, you had transitioned away from being a solo practitioner. I think we talked a bit about that in terms of the, benefit and opportunity that came with working with a firm and having a little more support staff and so forth as opposed to having to have all aspects of the case rely on you. So just talk about what that transition was like and maybe bring us up to speed a bit on these last few years.

Anthony Saunders: Well, we have, when I came into the Ault Firm, it was myself and one other attorney, Chris Ault. He's the founding member of the firm, a managing partner, all of that fun stuff. And since that time we have grown the firm. We are now up to four attorneys potentially hiring a fifth one here shortly. I know we've got an ad up. So if anybody's in the Salt Lake area come see us.

Dave Aarons: yeah.

Anthony Saunders: Support staff wise, we've added three other support staff, we're looking to hire another one of those as well. We've been conducting interviews in that. We've actually almost outgrown this building and started looking as well into moving into a bigger space as well.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: All of that in three years here, so.

Dave Aarons: Yeah. So from... it was you and Chris and now you've got you Chris and three other lawyers and you're looking at hiring an-

Anthony Saunders: Two other lawyers. [crosstalk 00:02:37].

Dave Aarons: You're looking at hiring a third.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: Then you have a paralegal, two support staffs,

Anthony Saunders: Paralegal, two support staff and another paralegal in the works right now. So,

Dave Aarons: Okay. So we, we need to talk a little bit about how you guys have made that transition because you know, obviously part of the problem you're constantly dealing with is you keep retaining all these leads, paying clients and how the heck do you keep up with all the legal work? So maybe we could start there, certainly what we want to cover today and I'm sure a lot of attorneys would want to hear is your process, when lead comes in, how do you approach it? But let's just cover real briefly, to the degree that you were, that you've been involved and so forth. What has been the process for you guys in, being able to grow and scale up your firm, both hiring the attorneys and getting the support staff? Was it... maybe take us through a bit of that process.

Anthony Saunders: So our, biggest thing is we, we factor in what we're going to look like and we constantly evaluate down the road. We know kind of our busy months, busy times of the year. And so even looking now, knowing where our caseload is that as of today, we're now, and this wasn't true in 2017 cause it was still fairly new to us when we first started hiring new attorneys. But it's, we can now project kind of, okay, in the next six months we're going to need at least one more attorney. And one more support staff or one more support staff, maybe an attorney in nine months instead of that and so we've been able to start preparing that aspect through just looking at... I mean we take very good... Track our leads extremely well, unbundled is kind of our biggest expense as far as marketing goes for a good reason in that regard.

Anthony Saunders: And so being able to track that and know, okay, these are kind of the busiest months where we get our most leads, which is true for us. It's generally they come and go as every year it's about the same percentage in each month so we can kind of gauge that aspect on it and where we've typically been able to have a really high 80% conversion right this time of year it's down about 50% right now, but being able to project that down the road and knowing that we're going to need that other support staff coming in, we can start looking now so we can get them fully trained and on board.

Anthony Saunders: Unbundled is still fairly new, especially in the Salt Lake area. There is a push for it through the Utah state bar actually right now for that type of services. But because we've been able to fluctuate that, we're kind of leading the pack as far as that goes and saying, Hey, this is what it looks like. And so people when they come in we can get them up to speed on Saint Kay and unbundled thing. You are really kind of limited in what you're doing right now and even though most people want to take the whole case as it goes, train them to scale that kind of back themselves so that we can treat our customer... Clients really with the upmost respect that we can give them, which is I think you can check our Google reviews. We do extremely well in that area. Customer satisfaction.

Dave Aarons: Yeah. Can you touch on how you guys track those numbers? Do you guys use a working Google sheet or spreadsheets and what are some typical numbers you guys attracting in terms of caseload churn? I mean, how do you guys,

Anthony Saunders: So we track every single lead that comes in is placed in a spreadsheet that we maintain here in the office and we track, one of the call was an outbound or an inbound call from us. We utilize the automated call that they have that system now,

Dave Aarons: Direct connect.

Anthony Saunders: Direct connect and love that by the way. One of the best things that has happened to us, it's made things so much easier on our end and so we track those if they're inbound or outbound, if we haven't heard from them or they came in maybe over the weekend and nobody was able to talk to them, we track whether or not we did the outbound as well as everything that we do. We do follow up emails, even if we've talked with them and confirmed an appointment with them, we still send them an email and a text message always.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: That follow up to us is the most important because we've had people who are like, Oh, it's so nice of you to respond this way. And they actually feel, and they've told us when they actually came in for their consultation that they feel like they, they felt more valued in that respect. So we track all of that in it. Who does the emails after the console. We also track whether or not they retained us if they hadn't, when our followup date is, and we track all of our followup on that email, phone call and text message as well.

Dave Aarons: Hmm. So as you work to lead you, whoever is working on that, that individually will make a mark of text message, send email, send follow up, next follow up date. So you have kind of a running tally on what's going on with each client.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: Nice.

Anthony Saunders: We have a system kind of set up specifically to track just unbundled calls specifically. We've kind of used it in some of our other marketing, but for unbundled in particular in being able to focus that on saying, okay, these followups, these followups, these followups on this date and we're doing this and one person being assigned to that each day, whoever that person is can come in and say, Kay, first thing I'm doing is contacting these guys, contact him first thing in the morning when they're still awake. Cause even the people who work the night shift generally still awake by nine o'clock in the morning, get that first phone call out and remind them, kind of say, hey, we're here. What can we do for you?

Dave Aarons: Hmm. Okay. All right. Awesome. So, and then obviously the benefit of tracking your numbers like you said, is it allows you to predict forward what it is the firm's going to need to advance,

Anthony Saunders: yes.

Dave Aarons: Right, because you know, well, our conversion rate is this, on average, we're going to get this many leads that's going to lead to this many cases, what are we going to need in the next one, two, three, four, five months. Also, when you've done this for years, right as you have, then you can also look at things, season out, seasonality right seasonally and know, okay, well in the spring our conversion rate tends to go up, from 50% which is already high, any unbundled, the lawyers that are watching this like 50% conversion rate would be the lowest time of the year. So half the clients, half the leads that it gets converted into a paying client.

Dave Aarons: So we're going to get into that a real briefly in terms of his processes so you can, garner some of that, those strategies and make that work for your firm. And so you've got the 50% conversion rate so but then it also goes up over time, right? You can track the conversion over the course of the year and so come spring, come summer, you can look back at those reports from last year and go, okay well conversion rate is probably going to go up to about here. If we keep our volume relatively consistent, you can also track lead volume of course, and that's something we can always adjust for of course. But that'll enable you to have a good idea of what are we going to need for staff or we need for attorneys and plan accordingly so you're not getting into position where you're, behind the eight ball trying to hire when you're already swamped.

Anthony Saunders: It also has allowed us to look at how long we should actually follow up on a particular lead. One phone call generally isn't enough in our experience. So when we look at it, so like right now, January of two of this year, people know that their taxes are coming, but they're still looking for attorneys. So when we look at the data that we've used over the last couple of years, we know that January is generally retention wise, a really slow month for us. So we also know February is, but we know that in March it starts to pick up an April. But the clients that we're retaining in March and April tend to have come from consults. We did in January and February, not just consults we did in March and April.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: And so knowing, okay, this time of year we kind of want to follow up with them for maybe three weeks or four weeks. We actually can ask ourselves of stressing about, oh never going to hear from these guys again. We already kind of plan on, we're going to follow up with them in about a month and maybe that's the best time to give them a chance to worry about it.

Dave Aarons: Well it gives you confidence, right?

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: Because you know the numbers, you can count on the law of averages to continue. Right. I mean my previous position as a working for legal access plan, I was doing, 20, 30 calls a day to clients and we were enrolling them into a legal access plan. The conversion rate was, one out of six month in, month out and some days I would enroll nobody other days that were five people, but consistently for months after month, year after year, the conversion rate was roughly the same. And so that gives you the confidence and knowing that I don't have to enroll just this person, I don't have to push, I'm don't have to worry about that next client coming in because you just know that if you keep the process relatively consistent and you implement your systems and strategies that you can count on that conversion rate, count on those clients retaining you, and then of course count on that, that revenue for the firm.

Anthony Saunders: Yes, and with our try it the way try before you buy it mentality. Our goal is really initially even during that first three month window in most cases just give us a chance at something and after that we already know what's going to happen.

Dave Aarons: Right. They transition, hey?

Anthony Saunders: Yep.

Dave Aarons: Yeah. So let's talk about that. I think maybe we can do is start at the beginning in terms of like what happens when the lead comes in. You have a couple of people now that are, fielding the leads. So we can talk briefly about that. But just put that aside for just a second. So when a lead comes in, maybe just take us through your approach in terms of how you handle the initial call, email, text message goes out, you're getting them on the phone, and then what that, that initial concept looks like. I know you have the ability in Utah to go to look up the case and you tend to do that beforehand. So maybe just talk about what that process looks like for you and what your primary goal is on that initial consultation.

Anthony Saunders: So our initial consultation is to get them excited about seeing us. That's really what we're trying to focus on is get their excitement to come in to see us. And in our experience, at least in the legal field, the excitement comes in. And what can you already tell me that I haven't told you already? And so when a client looks at you and they're talking to you and our ability to be able to look up a case beforehand, so the lead comes in, I get the email from the lead. John Doe emails us at 11:55 in the morning lead pops in. I look up John Doe in the system to see if he's already got a case filed. If he does, I kind of browse through it to see where he's at. With direct connect, they're usually on the phone with me and about five minutes of that cause usually they're looking through the profile before they actually hit that call button, which is great for me because it gives me a chance to look them up as well.

Anthony Saunders: And so I take that opportunity to kind of look them up as well.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: So when-

Dave Aarons: So just to clarify, direct connect is the live transfer program that we've just released. It's in beta right now but will be as of the quarter, the beta review. But we'll be releasing the entire network your shortly so that you guys can take advantage of that live transfer system that he's talking about and get more of the clients calling you inbound.

Anthony Saunders: And if you get a chance to get it, please do. It is so fabulous.

Dave Aarons: Yeah [crosstalk 00:13:03].

Anthony Saunders: Dave's not paying me to say that by the way. But it really changed our whole way of addressing our phone calls with that direct connect, but then being able, me being able to look them up before that, that phone call, I know that that phone call is going to happen.

Anthony Saunders: I mean on our direct connect ones it is about 92% of our leads now use the direct connect button and so literally within five minutes I can expect that I'm going to hear from that person.

Dave Aarons: Wow.

Anthony Saunders: The only ones that don't tend to be ones that are at three in the morning searching the internet, send the lead through. They don't tend to call us, but I've taken phone calls that late as well.

Dave Aarons: Yeah the direct connect system is not active, but your profile page is still there and so they can call off the profile page if they wish, but that's going to help a lot. Okay, so you look up the case and kind of get an idea of what's going on, so what are you looking for? And then just enough to be able to get on the call with that client and just say, Hey, here's what's going on.

Anthony Saunders: I'm looking for where they're at in their case and their process, because the most important thing in the way we try to generate that excitement is to say, Oh, so John Doe, it looks like you guys just had mediation last month. I don't see you guys are certified for trial yet. You tell me now kind of what your next steps are that you are looking for.

Dave Aarons: So you'll open the conversation with that?

Anthony Saunders: I will open the conversation.

Dave Aarons: So you call the client and say, Hey, this is Anthony Sanders from the law firm.

Anthony Saunders: You're calling about a custody case. I see. I see that you guys just attended mediation last month. It doesn't look like you have a resolve. What can we do to help you?

Dave Aarons: And they're like, Whoa, okay. You already know that.

Anthony Saunders: Them knowing that has generated a lot of excitement as far as them trusting us because they know that I've actually done a little bit of research myself before speaking with them, and that's really the buzz we're trying to get to say, look, we stand out from everybody else because we've actually taken the time and we care. And that's what we're trying to do is generate, we call it excitement in that initial phone call.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: Give them a reason to want to come talk to us.

Dave Aarons: Right. Okay. And so then you've, you kind of look up the case, tell me a little what's going on and then do you educate a bit about the envelope service options you offer or do you just say, okay, this looks like the kind of haste we can help you out with coming to the door. What are, what are some of the things that you do to, to increase or optimize the amount of folks that are going to be looking to come in that door.

Anthony Saunders: So after we kind of explain that to them and ask them what we can do for them, they kind of tell us what they're looking for and at that point and say, great, we offer kind of these unbundled things. If you want us to just help you with that aspect of it, we're able to help you with just that aspect of it. You don't have to retain us for your whole case. We can help you with your whole case, but we try to generate that feed to them there to say, look, come in and talk to us and you're looking at doing a discovery, a motion to compel discovery, but you don't know what you're doing. Let us do that for you, and at the end of that, maybe like us and you keep us on and if not, that's okay. At least you got your motion for discovery done.

Dave Aarons: So you just talk about what that, what they're specifically needing help with right now. And then just focus on saying, Hey, we can help you out with that one piece right now. Why don't you come in the door, take a look at what's going on, we can try to help you out with that one piece that you're dealing with right now.

Anthony Saunders: Yeah, I used to, and this is true, back in 2017 when we first talked, we just kind of laid in and said, Hey, we've offered these unbundled things and did try to explain that people nowadays seem to be a little bit more, since at least the Utah bar has kind of gone out a little more familiar with what unbundled means.

Dave Aarons: Really?

Anthony Saunders: So we've tried to take that approach now to say, we're just going to focus on... You're telling me what you need, you need a motion to compel discovery. I can help you with that. Why don't we come in and sit down and talk about it and I can give you all the information you would need as far as that goes.

Dave Aarons: So you're saying the clients sometimes have an idea of what unbundled service... Obviously we're educating on the front end as well, but the clients have an idea or there's a lot of other attorneys that are offering that, so it's not as unique as what it used to be.

Anthony Saunders: There, it's still unique, but I think a lot of people here in Utah at least start kind of looking at the Utah bar.

Dave Aarons: Sure.

Anthony Saunders: That's where they go first. Who are the attorneys where the modest mean programs, what are all of this? What Utah's modest means and all of that stuff have started really advocating kind of an unbundled approach to themselves and so people kind of been able to read through it before they've talked to me. So when they call me up and they say, I need a motion to compel, then discovery in this case I'm going to go to trial and I don't know what I'm doing. I can focus now and say, can we do that unbundled thing? Oh, I've heard of that, but give me kind of some more information than we talk more about it because I mean their cursory overview of it is very limited.

Dave Aarons: Sure.

Anthony Saunders: Because they've just read something on the internet about it.

Dave Aarons: Yeah read the website, watch the video, which is, a couple minutes of attorneys explaining a little bit, but it's still a very... necessarily fully understand it. They just go hey, I'm looking for this kind of help, I need this done, this looks like a more affordable way to go about it. Can you help me? Right.

Anthony Saunders: And so by us focusing on that one issue that tell us, because every client that we have always talks about one issue on that initial phone call, they just tell you that one part focusing on that one part saying we can help you with that. If that's all you need help with, we can be the ones to help you with just that come in and sit down and talk with us. Then we learn about their case when they come in. We do kind of go over all the other things that we do, our flat fee pricing and everything else when they come in. But that initial phone call, we want to generate the excitement with them and let them know that even if they only need help with that one issue that they're really calling about, we can help them with that one thing.

Dave Aarons: Right. So do you have a sense for what your numbers are, just in terms of you know, contact rate, how many folks you're getting on the phone and number two, how many of those folks physically come in the office physically?

Anthony Saunders: So over. Overall, I won't use recent numbers cause January, February are bad months to go off of, but.

Dave Aarons: Overall for the past three to four years.

Anthony Saunders: For the past three to four years, contact rate is right now out in 90% because we do take the phone calls, we do actually divest to where attorneys go home at night.

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: And we each have assigned nights that we're going to fill the phone calls for that night.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: So it's not the same person doing them every night. You at least get a break once in a while, but we do rotate that out. But we try to get it to where those phone calls are done immediately whenever they call.

Dave Aarons: Up until what hour?

Anthony Saunders: I, like I said, I've taken phone calls at three in the morning before.

Dave Aarons: But what would be typical though.

Anthony Saunders: I mean on average-

Dave Aarons: On any given week, right?

Anthony Saunders: Like generally about 10 o'clock we don't get a lot after that, but we'll take phone calls generally up until 10 o'clock

Dave Aarons: So you have one attorney in the firm that will do the realtime call whenever possible within up to about 10 o'clock on average. Okay.

Anthony Saunders: So Chris and I, we both have kind of alternating weekends with our kids and we've done it that way. So the weekends he has his kids. I take the phone calls, weekends, I have my kids, he takes the phone calls and we just kind of alternate the rest of the days that way.

Dave Aarons: Does it feel like it interrupts your evenings? Is it really difficult to do that? Is it... Because I would, I can imagine a lot of attorneys who are like, well hey, I want my evenings and more time with the kids and so forth. You know, I can't be reached... I work these specific hours, nine to five. Right. And again, I suppose it all will all really depend on the ambition of the attorney and their responsibilities and balancing things out. Do you personally feel like that's, that's very difficult to do or is that something that you've kind of come to struggle with? You do a quick call? I mean, I think your phone consultations are usually five, 10 minutes.

Anthony Saunders: Five minutes at the most now.

Dave Aarons: Five minutes say

Anthony Saunders: It used to be, we'd kind of let them go through a lot more, but we found when we were doing that, fewer people actually were coming into the office afterwards because they kind of got all the information they wanted and maybe they just decided at that point that they just didn't feel like they wanted to go with anybody. So we actually, now we have kind of a five minute timeframe that we, we will spend on the phone with at that point.

Dave Aarons: And the idea is just, okay, so we just looked up your case. This is what's going on. Definitely seems... What do you need any help with? Do you want help with that? Okay, that's definitely something we can do for you. Let's get you in the door. When's your next scheduled time? You're just scheduling them right in.

Anthony Saunders: And that's why we limit it to whatever the one issue is that they call when they say, I need help. PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:21:04]

Anthony Saunders: ... limited to whatever the one issue is that they call. When they say, "I need help with discovery, motion to compel discovery, I don't know what I'm doing," we focus in on that and say, "Okay, so we can help you with that. We'd love to have you come in the office and meet with somebody who's a discovery expert, and we can sit down and talk with you about how to get that done for you."

Dave Aarons: Sure. Do they say the specific legal aspect they need? Because a lot of folks don't know what the heck they're doing at all. They just know, "I can't see my kids. I need to do something about it." Right? So then you just focus on, "Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some paperwork we can file," or?

Anthony Saunders: We tend to steer them into whatever that is if they don't know specifically. So if you say, "I haven't seen my kids,"-

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: ... "And I haven't seen them in two years,"-

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Anthony Saunders: ... So you need a petition file.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: We can definitely help you file that petition and we kind of repeat what the issue is, because we want them to understand that it's not a matter of just writing to the court and saying, "I want to see my kids." So we want them to know there's a petition involved. We have an expert here who can come in with somebody who can just sit down with you and help write a petition for you to get you at least into court and get the process started. So why don't we have you meet with the person who handles the petition-

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Anthony Saunders: ... and that's the way we focus it now is on a specific issue.

Dave Aarons: Just the one task. Right?

Anthony Saunders: The one task.

Dave Aarons: And they can almost create a visual of that, right?

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: They're going to come in, someone's going to help me with this petition.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: And it's such a very easy decision for them. It's not pay $1500.00 to retain a lawyer, pay thousands of dollars, retain a lawyer. It's just we're going to help you with this drafting, right? You've got this thing that needs to be filed. We can help you with that.

Anthony Saunders: And because we offer the unbundled portion and we explain that to them there, they know now, "Okay, I'm just meeting with you to cover the petition. I'm not hiring you to come in and do all this other stuff for me right now." Now, that's still our goal to get them to do that.

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: But right then to the client's mind, it's a manner of, "I'm just coming in to look at the petition. They're offering me this ability to just do the petition. Sure I can." And they always say, "I think I can handle the rest on my own after that."

Dave Aarons: Sure.

Anthony Saunders: But it's a matter of getting them comfortable enough to come in and sit down and meet with us. So with the excitement, the focus on the one issue that is at hand, whether that's temporary orders, mediation, whatever, I'm focusing in on that aspect of the unbundled. So we bring the unbundled in and then we focus on that one issue. Right? Exactly. Okay.

Dave Aarons: Okay. So now they're coming into the office. What is the next step for you? okay. So let's back up a step.

Dave Aarons: One of the things that you've done over the years and just taking some time and doing this, is broken up a custody case, a visitation matter, a parentage issue, a divorce case, up into specific phases and specific segments so that when the person comes in you have broken down options that you can offer regardless of where it is that they're at in their case.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: So could you help lawyers that maybe haven't done that so much, like how they can start to think about how they can break things up and it could just be phases of the case. You mentioned a bunch of your phases here for temporary orders, motion to [inaudible 00:03:06], like all these different hearings that they make might be able to break up. So maybe you can talk just briefly about what that process looked like for you to break things down maybe give some examples of ways that you would break up a divorce case or a child custody case like that.

Anthony Saunders: So we have focused on what are the main issues in a divorce case, and we'd always know that there are other things that come up and we kind of leave that up to the client at that point. We'll discuss those issues one at a time with them. But we've broken things down to the initial filing or answer in counter petition mediation, temporary orders if there is. Utah now has mandatory scheduling conferences. We've now tried to build that into our flat fee structure to let them know what those cost as well, for each one of those we, we've really just broken down a divorce and into every smaller phases that we can in the more smaller phases we had, the easier it was for clients to actually understand what was going on in their case.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: And honestly, even for somebody who retains us on a full retainer, them seeing all the different phases in there has helped us eliminate a lot of needs on billing on that side, because now they understand why their costs go up so, so much.

Anthony Saunders: So by breaking it down and showing them saying, "look, if you want us just to draft the petition, if you want us just to attend mediation today, I have a guy who just hired me just to do as mediation next week, so I'm going to go do as mediation with him."

Anthony Saunders: But that guy understood that that's all we're doing for him. And if he wanted us after that, he would have to put down a retainer and everything else.

Dave Aarons: Sure.

Anthony Saunders: He actually gets to see what we can do as far as getting into that mediation by breaking everything down into those segments. We were actually able to go back over the last couple of years as well to develop our flat fee pricing saying, okay, so for three year average, and we use a running three year average, we updated every year, but we use a running three year average and say this is what it costs to do temporary orders in a divorce action on average for all of the cases that we've done and build that pricing in and say okay, so not only are you getting an unbundled price, but you're getting a flat fee price as well, and saying this is exactly what it's going to cost you.

Anthony Saunders: And so when somebody comes in for that unbundled service, and instead of saying well, it might take two to three hours, it could be five to 700 bucks. We can say "it's going to cost you $550" and we can just get them to do that.

Anthony Saunders: When people hear the flat fee pricing, it seems to actually trigger something in their head that makes them feel happy.

Dave Aarons: This is clear. It's this number. They know exactly what it is.

Anthony Saunders: It's like buying a TV now-

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Anthony Saunders: Instead of just putting something on the credit. And I don't really know what all the interest penalties are on the back end, but knowing that the purchase price of whatever it is that they're buying costs X amount of dollars than they had been able to actually afford us for. Maybe they don't want us anymore for mediation, but they can afford us to do the temporary orders. So they're going to have us just do the temporary orders now, but they know what the pricing is upfront and so they may actually adjust what they initially wanted us to do for them, but we can now move around with them and as far as all that goes.

Dave Aarons: Right. Okay, great. And so when they're coming into the office, they're coming in for a free consultation in office appointment, right? They're not paying for the initial visit.

Anthony Saunders: Right.

Dave Aarons: Okay. And so what does that initial visit look like? Because you're talking about, "hey, we can get that petition drafted for you, come in the office," and so forth. We can talk about if they ask you, "well how much is it going to typically cost," and so forth.

Dave Aarons: But when they're coming in the office, they're coming for a free initial visit, briefly, is there anything that you guys do as a team to prevent no shows, people booking and not showing up. Do you guys have a reminder system that you use? Do you guys follow up? What's your process look like to make sure that they're coming in?

Anthony Saunders: One major thing that we do is we do a pre call, pre text, pre email, and we send all three to a potential client the day before their appointment with us.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: Our goal right now is to have everybody in within 48 hours, and we're actually doing really well with that with few exceptions for people who couldn't make it in within the 48 hours. But generally 48 hours is our timeframe from the point of the phone call. They need to be in our office in the next 48 hours.

Dave Aarons: And why is that? In your experience, why has that been so important for you?

Anthony Saunders: The longer that they take between the initial, hit enter on that button on the unbundled website to sitting down and meeting with us, they've now talked to family, friends and everybody else who we all know that there's those jailhouse lawyers out there who say, "oh, you can do this yourself." And then they end up coming back to us later, and the problems are so much bigger than they could have been that we could have helped them with. But by getting them in within 48 hours, they one, feel they're important, is kind of the feedback we've got, that they actually feel very valued that we can get them in such a short amount of time. They can call other law firms who they may not hear from in the next five days. I can get you an appointment next Tuesday. Well that's great. I can meet with Anthony today.

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: And he's coming in at five o'clock, and I'll be there at five o'clock to meet with him and that's the way it works.

Dave Aarons: So 48 hours, that means many times that's going to be the same day or the next day most commonly, hey?

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: Yep.

Anthony Saunders: And that's what we shoot for, is 48 hours. And so if you don't talk to us and your appointment is say, you call on him, you fill out the questionnaire on a Monday, you're going to come in on Wednesday, we send you the reminder on Monday about your appointment, on Tuesday night at around five o'clock. Alex, our receptionist, she's going to take and she's going to send all of those people a reminder email, phone call, and text.

Dave Aarons: She calls them just reminding them.

Anthony Saunders: Call them and say "you've got an appointment," probably get a voicemail if you talk to him directly. Great. But an email and a text as well.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: The next morning if we hadn't heard from any of those people, so if you didn't respond to us the night before, she's going to again go through the same process for everybody she didn't talk to or get a response in email or text and send them a phone call, email, and text again in the morning to remind them of their appointment that day.

Dave Aarons: Right. We can't really stress the importance of this enough. I mean, it's like you can glaze over this and be like, "oh, okay, so he sends an email, send a text." But you have a systematic process for making sure they show up because from experience, if you don't have some of these systems in place, what happens? You're going to have a third of them maybe not show up, or a quarter of them not show up. And so having those systems there is going to make a huge difference in the number of people that are showing up, right?

Anthony Saunders: It makes a huge difference in the number of people that show up. The fact that they get reminded in the morning, they may have forgot already. I mean, they were pretty excited when they talked to me on Monday night.

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Anthony Saunders: Tuesday, kind of calm down. Wednesday morning, even though they got the email and text, they just forgot about it, and so having forgot about it, that extra little reminder that morning or that reminder the night before, reminder, "oh yeah, I've got to go in and meet with them. Oh yeah, that's right. It's about my kids," because we try, even on our phone calls and emails say, "Hey, you've got this custody case or you've got this divorce action. We really were going to sit down and talk with you," and we kind of reference it back to what they're doing.

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: Instead of just putting it out there blankly, "hey, you've got an appointment with Anthony at ... three o'clock.

Dave Aarons: Following up on your custody case, they're going to be meeting with you about filing a petition [crosstalk 00:31:30].

Anthony Saunders: And that extra little reminder saying, "Hey, this is what it's about," triggers something back in their mind that says "I've really got to get this done and it's not something I can keep putting off."

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Dave Aarons: Do you have any sense for what the difference was in your, in the amount of clients that used to not show up versus what your numbers are, maybe now? If you know anything or you can guess the top of your head, what that difference was once you implemented this system, like what it was before and what are ways now?

Anthony Saunders: So before we were having a lot, lot of no call, no shows and we would talk to them afterwards and be like, "oh yeah, I found another lawyer or I found this." And part of that was cause we didn't care when we scheduled the appointment, we just scheduled it for when they told us they were available.

Anthony Saunders: Now we don't ask them when they're available. We tell them these are the dates and times we have available.

Dave Aarons: Which is key, so key, I'm just going to sit here every time and just pound on the desk. Okay. Take the notes on this. Those of you that are active on model lawyers, this is really key stuff. Those of you that are interested in using the services, these are going to be the keys you're going to want to write down. You can obviously go back over these points, but these are the nuances that make all the difference, right?

Anthony Saunders: And it's really that idea of when you talk to somebody, is your voice active or passive? And passive voice to us was, when are you available to us? That says to a client that's calling us on the phone. "Well, I don't know when I want to meet with you, so why don't you just kind of tell me when you want to meet with me?"

Anthony Saunders: And that's more of a passive way. Actively saying, "I've got appointments tomorrow at three o'clock and I've got appointment on Wednesday at four o'clock. Which one would you like?"

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: The active voice sense sends to tell them, say, "look you're important to me. Get in here as soon as you can."

Anthony Saunders: And that voice in and of itself probably changed our conversion rate alone.

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: In how many people actually showed up.

Dave Aarons: Right. And then of course the reminders. So what percentage of people nowadays would you say what it was before and what do you think? Do you have any sense for that now?

Anthony Saunders: So since we've kind of implemented this in, I will tell you, Alex is still fairly new with us right now, but she's done the best at it tracking wise, just in the last three months.

Anthony Saunders: She can get people in here more than half of the time who may not have shown up before. These are the people who don't say, "I need to meet with you today."

Dave Aarons: Yes.

Anthony Saunders: "I'm coming in at five o'clock." But the people who are like, "I don't know, like I can do Thursday," when she changes that voice to say, "well, we don't have Thursday available. We can get you in tomorrow at four o'clock this is when the attorney has available, you have a really important matter. He really wants to be able to talk with you." That kind of changed that and so somebody who may not have shown up on Thursday is definitely there on Wednesday.

Dave Aarons: Yeah, kind of gets them off their britches on just getting in the door. Okay, great. Okay, so they come in for that initial visit, are they meeting with any number of attorneys or they typically will meet with you. or one of the other associates?

Anthony Saunders: They, they will generally meet with the attorney that took the phone call. If one of the attorneys took the phone call and that's because that rapport is already been built for us. So if they talk to Chris on a Tuesday night, they're going to meet with Chris on Wednesday afternoon.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: Even though Chris may not, which that's the way we've tried to structure it because that initial rapport of that, "Hey, I know you've got this issue, you did mediation, what can I help you with?" That initial rapport, that initial excitement tends to stay with that one attorney and that's who they want to talk to because that person went above and beyond and said, "Hey, I already know a little bit about your case," and so by keeping it with the attorney who grabbed their attention outright. That's what we try to get the consult done with.

Dave Aarons: Right. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. If a receptionist, if one of your staff members gives them a call and actually does the consultation, are they just booking a phone consultation with one of the attorneys if you guys aren't available or will they try to also get them in the door to?

Anthony Saunders: They will try to get them in the door. She's very well trained in what she's been asked to say to them and her phone calls out there are the same way. She looks it up. "Hey, we see that you've got this divorce case going on and it looks like you guys handle mediation. We want to get you in to talk with one of our attorneys about what the next steps are in your case." And we've kind of trained, in that regards to get her to do that extra little step.

Dave Aarons: Yeah.

Anthony Saunders: I mean, if you have three leads a day, it's only an extra 15 minutes of her time to do that. But it gets a client in the door and a paying client is a happy client.

Dave Aarons: That's right.

Anthony Saunders: Happy Anthony. So-

Dave Aarons: Yeah, and I can also stress what you just said as terms of the active voice versus passive. Another way to say it would be like hypothetical. "If you were to come in, we would do this, we could do that, when do you think would work for your schedule?" That kind of thing. Versus "okay look, it looks like you're needing to get this done, and get this done. What can we help you with? Specifically could go, okay, let's get you scheduled and we've got an opening at four o'clock on this afternoon. Or we can also do tomorrow at two, which works best for you?" You know? And then it's assumptive. You're coming in, we're scheduling you, this is happening, right. Because people don't know how it works, right? And so they've submitted the request they're looking for, they obviously definitely need help with their case, otherwise they wouldn't have submitted the request. And so it's a matter of helping them understand, "okay, here's the next steps involved." Right. As opposed to leaving in their hands to decide what the next steps going to be.

Anthony Saunders: And that's exactly right. I think the only time we've ever used a passive voice was when we already knew we didn't want them as a client. And then we will use a passive voice because we already know a passive voice is going to push them away because they're going to think we're not interested in their case.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: But our goal on every call is to have that active voice and the call to action, sort of so to speak. Say, "look, you need help with this." I keep using this motion to compel discovery is an example. But "you need help with that. I can do that for you. Come in, sit down with me, tell me what the issues are and let's get this drafted for you."

Dave Aarons: Okay. All right. So now they've come in the office, they sat down. What's the approach for that initial consultation? By the way, is that like a 30 minute visit? Is it 15 minutes? Is it an hour? And what's the general structure of that? Because it's a free visit, and then they're going to be enrolling into drafting a petition and so forth. Briefly before we get to that, I'll just bookmark it briefly. When you're on the phone with them and they say, "well how much is it going to cost or draft the petition?" Will you, will you typically give them a price quote over the phone or did he say it just depends on the complexity of your case. We can also structure it different ways cause we offer a bundled services coming in the door.

Anthony Saunders: So ask me the question. Let's do the phone call right now.

Dave Aarons: Okay, great. Well I need to get this divorce filed. Can you give me an idea of how much it's going to cost?

Anthony Saunders: There's a lot of things that go into divorce, whether it's going to be uncontested, contested, children, no children house, real property, and that's stuff that I don't really have the time to go over with you over the phone because there's a lot of complex issues that come up in that. I'm the attorney, when we sit down and meet with you, we'll go over all of that and that can kind of help shape what the costs are going to be.

Dave Aarons: Okay. Can you give me a general idea? I mean is it, $1,000, 2000? Like I said, I'm a little bit on a budget right now.

Anthony Saunders: There's really not a way for me to do that without having all of the information laid out in front of me because me doing that would not be doing you a good service. It would be doing you a disservice because I may over" quote you on that.

Dave Aarons: Right, right. And then also you obviously you offer the option to say, well and we can also structure different ways to do that, right?" Cause you can draft documents, you can just draft the documents and go for an appearance. You can just give the person advice, right? So there's a lot of different ways you could structure it too.

Anthony Saunders: And there, there is a lot of ways that we cover that, but we generally try to steer them away from that and lay out those complexities to a point that if you're really pushing on it and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, I'm going to say, "look, if you want help with just a petition, it's a lot cheaper in that respect because we know what it costs to just draft a petition, but you're handling the rest of that without knowing full well what you're looking for out of us, I can't really give you a price over the phone."

Dave Aarons: Right. And so to be clear, it doesn't sound like you're giving a price quote over the phone almost ever.

Anthony Saunders: I haven't given a price quote over the phone in probably a year and a half.

Dave Aarons: Yes. Because what happens if you give a price quote over the phone?

Anthony Saunders: They're now going to start shopping everywhere else and looking for a cheaper price on that and they don't get to meet me. They don't get to know what I can do for them. And I don't get to have that conversation to really sell myself. I mean in the try it before you buy it mentality, it's like the free sample mode at Costco is kind of like I used in 2017, I may know that I might like that milkshake, but I also know that I can get that milkshake over at another store for a different price and it may cost me less, maybe a different brand, maybe something else. They may not be the made the exact same way. And so what I'm trying to do is give them that little sample.

Anthony Saunders: Well you can't give them the sample over the phone. I can't have you try my milkshake in a phone call. You've got to come in, sit down and actually take the sip of the milkshake. And so our goal with that try before you buy it mentality is it only works if you come in and sit down with us.

Dave Aarons: Yes. Well, I really appreciate you, the opportunity to really stress this point, I think it's really key because I think the natural way for attorneys, especially when they're first starting out with working with a lawyer and starting to get leads, these folks haven't met you yet, right? It's not like a third party referral where they've been referred by someone. They said, "you've got to work with Anthony. He helped me, he helped me with my custody case. He was there every step of the way. If you're going to hire someone, you got to hire him, right?"

Dave Aarons: And they're coming in, they're already ready to enroll, whereas with this case, a lot of times they've this the first time they've heard your name. Right? And so in order to build that rapport, and that trust, and also give them the opportunity to try what it is you're doing, you want to meet with them in person, that's what we found is the best way when possible to build that trust and that confidence. Just to have him sitting down in front of you and get to know you personally.

Anthony Saunders: And it works in so many facets, and I carry over kind of the Costco mentality into the law profession in that way, is I can't give you a sample of what I can do over the phone. If you want to see the way the knife sharpens in this little gadget that I have, if you want to see the way the blender works, you want to try the chicken pot pie thing, you got to go into the store and you actually got to sit there and walk around and try it.

Anthony Saunders: And I can't do that over the phone. I can't recreate that same aspect or mentality or image in their head, what I can actually do and the way I look to them and the way I present myself. Because honestly, divorce cases and custody cases a lot are presentation of a story, and if I'm not a good storyteller to you, I can't tell you that over the phone because you can't see what I'm doing. You can't see the hand motions and the different nuances and my facial expressions. So it's really PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]

Anthony Saunders: It says in my facial expressions. So I... It's really important to us to get them to come in.

Dave Aarons: Yes. Absolutely 100%, okay. So now they come in the... Thank you for covering that, it's really key. Now they come in the office, what's the overall strategy for that initial visit? Usually what's the... How long is that visit usually look like? And maybe just take us through in terms of what your approach is with that sit down consultation.

Anthony Saunders: We used to do hour long consults, we changed that about eight months ago, six to eight months ago to now half hour consults on it. And part of that is because of the number of consults we had and trying to keep that 48 hour goal. We couldn't do that if all the consults were an hour long, we can do that at 30 minutes, but we weren't able to at an hour.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: So we now do 30 minute consults. We try our best to time that, but we aren't always accurate, but we focus on having them actually start the paperwork beforehand and we let them know when they're coming in to meet with us, they're going to have some time to fill out the paperwork. It's better that they show up early so the consult can start on time, but we have them fill out kind of a questionnaire and depending upon what the issue is that we know that they're looking at. If they're looking at starting a petition, the questionnaire's different than the one that they're going to get, if they're in the middle of a case or if you're looking at hiring us for just mediation, it's going to look a little bit different in that, because I don't need as much information at that point than I do when I start an initial petition.

Anthony Saunders: So we actually formed some different questionnaires, is... Targeting what it is they're doing and we do that for a reason, somebody who's coming in and just sit down and talk to you about mediating their case, doesn't want to spend 15 to 20 minutes filling out a questionnaire about their entire case history.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: They want to get in and meet with you and say, this is what's going on. I want to do this. So it's kind of a shorter questionnaire with name, address, phone number, type of things, about a page long.

Dave Aarons: These are written questionnaires or do you have you guys digitize those yet?

Anthony Saunders: They are written questionnaires, Still. We have on a new case, the petition... I mean the paperwork that you fill on that is 15... I mean it's quite lengthy, but it's because we need all this stuff we need for vital statistics forms and divorce action and custody and serving and all of that stuff. So it's a much longer form that we use, but we've tried to tailor that down to what their specific need is, so that we can actually get in. So somebody who's coming in for mediation, they may sit here and fill out paperwork for five minutes. We're right in, let's talk about this mediation. You've got this case going on, this is what I remember from our phone call the other day. Things didn't work out at the last mediation, but this was the issue you told me what's going on, how can I help you address that and give them pointers and different things.

Anthony Saunders: We try our best to kind of focused on what our strategy would be for them. So we already know that they need mediation, so we go into a topic like that. What's our strategy going to be for you? And we try to start outlining kind of an overview of how we can help them and we then we bring that overview back and say, but if you don't need us for everything, we can just do the mediation from here and this is kind of what I can do. And just that, we give them a broader overview first and then pull it back to unbundled aspect.

Dave Aarons: Did that broader view in terms of like, here's how you would approach their case legally. Like this is how we would go about this and then from there you say, and then there's a different... Bunch of different ways in which we can proceed with that, and then you lead with... And you talk about the unbundled option. I mean you've talked about this before where you will typically have them do an unbundled service first rather than full representation. Even if, they lean in the full representation direction?

Anthony Saunders: Yes. And that's for a couple of reasons. Our view is one, we don't really want every client there. It's kind of nice to be in the position we're in where we can kind of pick and choose who we actually let retain us.

Dave Aarons: That's right.

Anthony Saunders: And that's kind of a unique position to be in that not every attorney is in, but being in that position where we can kind of pick and choose those clients saying, so we want you to try it, let's just do your mediation. Let's get through that, afterwards, we'll talk about what the next steps are and come mediation. I might find out that they're like the worst client ever and I don't want them on my docket here. So I don't want to take their case any farther than that. So it allows me in and out, while allows them in and out as well for the same reason.

Dave Aarons: So it's try before you buy it for the client in the sense that we can help you with this one thing and that's going to be usually a flat rate. So they know exactly what it's going to cost. They know exactly what they're going to get and there's no getting billed for every email, every phone call, that kind of stuff. It's the spot right. And it's very clear in terms of what is you're delivering to them. Right? They know exactly what they're going to receive.

Anthony Saunders: Exactly what they're going to get.

Dave Aarons: Right. And so they have that opportunity at a lowest... Realistically the lowest price barrier that they could... That you could offer them to some degree. I mean there's something maybe a lower, you give them just advice or something, but usually it's in is you're leading... We'll talk about the service offers you offer, but you would usually lead with document preparation and then a hearing or what's the most common service option you would usually lead with or offer?

Anthony Saunders: So we... First document preparation is kind of the biggest one that we lead with, but we actually have scaled it back even more lately. Utah has, and I mentioned this before on the prior podcast, a system that allows any individual to go fill out paperwork and so now we've scaled it back down and say, "okay, if you don't want us to draft it, why don't you draft it and then come back to us and we'll look at it and give you our opinion as to what we would do to fix it for you."

Anthony Saunders: And then because of the way the program works, they can go fix it themselves before they file it. But they've now had a chance to interact with me and say, "Oh, I really didn't think about that. I didn't think about what's going to happen when my kid goes to school because they're only two years old right now. Who's paying for all these school fees? I really got to think about all of that stuff. Maybe I... And it generates that now in their mind maybe I don't really know everything that I thought I did and maybe this is a lot more complicated than I thought it was." And they generally tend to come back. But we've scaled it back now to even just reviewing documents for them and then giving our advice and opinion and we just them for the hour on that.

Dave Aarons: And so you... Would you lead with that option to start with? Like the most minimal or do you tend to lead with limited scope representation and then back-

Anthony Saunders: we lead with the limited scope representation.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: But to us the document review is still part of the limited scope representation. Because our scope is now limited to looking at your documents and giving you our opinion. So we have the limited scope representation, but we've scaled it down kind of just a little bit to say if that doesn't work for you, we still have this other option

Dave Aarons: That's like kind of the dropdown.

Anthony Saunders: Is a dropdown.

Dave Aarons: Because, the limited scope... Well we'll talk about the options in a minute, but that's going to be kind of the most inexpensive way for someone to be able to have one of your lawyers... You or one of your lawyers represent them for a hearing. Right? Because you don't have to... You're not going to be going beyond that and so it's like if we want us to come to the hearing, we can do this, draft the documents, give you the advice and go for that hearing. If you... And then it's like, can you do that? Is that work for you within the timeframe and so forth. Offer the payment plans and we can talk a little about the payment options you offer. And if they can't afford that, then you have that as a dropdown and say, well look, 'if you can't really come up with that or you're not ready to commit for that, we can just do this one piece. You can draft these things using this resource and then we can review it, make sure it's all good, and then you can decide if you want to proceed from there on your own or not.'.

Anthony Saunders: Exactly. And it's kind of... We call it the reserved unbundled because it's still unbundled so to speak, but it's not something we would give to every client. I mean it's really just there for the people who... We know a lot of people come in and I think all the attorneys probably in to do unbundled notice. They come in and they're shopping around for information. Well that's great, we'll give you the information, but how do you know that you're not missing something and what you're thinking, why don't you bring it back to us. We'll just charge you for the hours worth of time for us to sit down with you and we'll review it and we'll give you kind of some legal advice at that point in time for you to go make the changes to.

Anthony Saunders: But at least we... In our opinion, we at least got our money's worth out of them. And secondly, now that they've seen all of those other things, 'Oh, I didn't think about school, I didn't think, Oh my gosh, I totally didn't think about that. What am I going to do? I want every Christmas. I don't know that I like every Christmas going this way.' And it gives them kind of nuances to now think about, and you'd be surprised at how many people have gone from that reserved unbundled to a full representation just because they now no long feel like they can do it themselves.

Dave Aarons: Right. And it gives you that option for someone that maybe is shopping around or trying to get that information where you can give them a kind of a low hanging fruit that they can grab, which is like a... Probably a $200, $250, $300 service, I would assume if it's one hour or so. I'm not sure what the hourly rates, but what is that reserve on bundled service usually costs?

Anthony Saunders: About 275.

Dave Aarons: Yeah, so about somewhere between two to 300, depending on what the hourly rate is for the attorney. It's like if they can't do limited scope representation, which is probably 1000, 1500, 2000 depending on what it is that you're doing for them, and you can maybe be more specific about that, then you have that as a dropdown. There's clearly that isn't a fit, which you're obviously leading with that primarily, then you can drop it down to the reserve.

Anthony Saunders: Exactly. I've had a friend of mine call it 'limited, limited scope.' It was his way of looking at it. But I mean it works for us because they are getting the clients in. That's the number one goal is getting them in. The second goal is to get them to retain us in at least some manner because that's what we're all here for, we want to do what we can for the clients and giving them, 'so why don't you go draft it? There's this great program...' And we point them to it.

Anthony Saunders: We tell them where it's at and we say, 'there's this great program you can use to write your own documents, but you might miss something, so why don't you just come back when you're ready with that and we'll review that.' And for a while there, we had a month where I did probably nine or 10 of those, of the nine or 10 that we did, we retained six of them on a full representation within the next 30 to 45 days. Just because after they heard all the things that they kind of weren't thinking of, they're no longer did they think they could do it on their own.

Dave Aarons: Right. Well that's... and that's one of the things that we found really common is... Maybe you could just share, what percentage have you found of the clients where you offer that initial limited scope service, whether it be the reserve or the limited scope representation that will transition then to hire for either additional or unbundled services or full representation from there?

Anthony Saunders: So if you... If a client is, let us do an unbundled service on average right now it's about a 90%... or rate of conversion into a full retention client, right now. It's about eight... Might be down to 89 but it's roughly around 90% on that. And that's been statistically true for us. For a 2017 the number was the same, it's the same today in 2020. Being able to give them that option, brings them back around so many more times than it does when we don't.

Dave Aarons: Right. And so that would be the only reason why an attorney would not offer unbundled services to start, is they think if they would assume that they... By offering full presentation, they're going to get the full amount, they're going to get more money by doing that. Whereas if they just do unbundled, it's going to end up blasts because that's a less amount of money to start with. Whereas what you found is that if you do the limited scope services first, they get a chance to try you out. It's a lower commitment and then once they had an opportunity to experience the quality of representation that you provide that 90% of them, which is amazing, right? At least two thirds if not 90% are hiring you guys for additional services from there.

Anthony Saunders: And to me it's more than that and I know me and you have talked about this before, I don't know if I shared this on the last time we talked, but to us it's a lot more than that. So somebody who we've done a limited representation, they may not have the most amount of money and that person may not come back. But I can't tell you the number of referrals we've got from people who we've done limited scope representation. Even if we're just doing a limited scope for their friend or their family member, that one person that we helped has turned... I have a gentleman in our office, he's almost earned enough credits to pay his entire bill off. He refers everybody to us and it all starts on limited scope basis, somebody who comes in and they've got a mediation next week and they need an attorney to represent them for the mediation.

Anthony Saunders: Great. We can help you with that, we can do that. Its referral from somebody else who, that's all we did for them because they couldn't afford us for a full retention. But that one person, I mean he's referred now 16 people to us because he was so happy with what we were able to do and it's all we did for him was drafted a petition. We didn't do anything else for him, we drafted a petition, we didn't file it, he filed it. We literally just drafted petition. But we've had 16 referrals, most of which are actually full retention clients, but many of which we've at least helped in some aspect. And so when I talk about the numbers, I don't look just at the one unbundled lead. We look at... And we track this in our spreadsheets too in our numbers, is that one unbundled lead cost me 75 bucks or whatever it, I don't even know what it costs.

Anthony Saunders: I don't even look anymore, but don't overcharge me. But I take that one lead and I look at the number of people that's generated down the road and that's what's helped us grow our business probably the most, is by taking that active approach in saying, this is... Coming and me hearing. Keeping that active voice throughout their entire time, they're with us. Don't ever go back to passive. Keeping that active voice with them and moving them along makes them feel valued, gets the reviews up for your clients. And we all know, everybody relies on Google reviews, like they're the best thing in the world and they truly are. It seems like so, but you're one of a friend who says, Hey, I just left these guys a review. They share it on their Facebook page or they share it wherever that review goes out, somebody that they know is looking for an attorney and suddenly a $75 lead now generates five or six clients by the time you're done with it.

Dave Aarons: Yes, yes. And this is one of the things that a lot of attorneys that start with lead generation or start working with unbundled leads and they maybe don't land a client in the first five or 10 leads. They think, Oh, this isn't going to work or whatever it might happen. And so they never really have the opportunity to see that... I want to say backend money, but like to see the impact of providing a middle services here. Then the next step, and then they transition to more services or, and then they refer and then these things have to build up over time. So they just never get really an opportunity to see how the whole system kind of unfolds over time. And you guys have over years-

Anthony Saunders: And using the unbundled part to be kind of the glue to all of that is, we're potentially... I mean we had a recession in what, 2009 last... Potentially people think we're going to have another one soon. People's access to this stuff is going to go way down, we believe in access to justice in our firm and doing the unbundled part, generating just one happy person, just one happy person with what we could do for them. They may not be able to afford us for everything else, but you don't want to call it backend money, but that's really what it is at the end of the day, that one person refers us to somebody else who then refers us to two more people in that it compounds up to a point that offering the unbundled services has truly kind of help grow the practice for us in a lot of ways because of it.

Dave Aarons: You're opening the doors to folks that otherwise wouldn't be able to receive help, and so for those folks that like their expectation is I probably can't afford a lawyer, and then all of a sudden they have a lawyer helping them with something that is very, very important to them and dear to their heart. That's going to be an ambassador, someone that you've been able to open the door to that otherwise would have that door closed and couldn't get the help they needed. It's no surprise that these folks are going to be zealous advocates of what is it you do.

Anthony Saunders: And that's what we're shooting for, we want them to be happy, we want them to be... Even if, it's just one small thing. An example, I had a lady who came in who just needed to file a written of garnishment. Had divorced, to get the money that her husband owed her. We told her it costs her 500 bucks. We take that action, we do all the paperwork, we get the money, she recoups 2800, she spent the 500 with us. She'll probably never recoup that from him, because she'd have to file with that.

Anthony Saunders: It's going to cost her more money. So I understand her a reason not to do it. But at the end of the day she was happy, she was extremely ecstatic, she got her stuff done and she's referred three of her friends to us, just because of that one experience of us saying, we don't need to do everything for you. Just let us handle that aspect for you, because that's... Those are complicated things. You could do it on your own, there's a core website, but why don't you let us do it. This is what we'll charge you to do it, and keeping it in that unbundled format has allowed us to grow our practice.

Dave Aarons: [inaudible 00:59:10] absolutely. And so we looked at the numbers of that. If, let's say out of 10 leads, if you're only leading with full representation and requiring 3000 or something like that, and even if it was like half down, like pay us 1500 and so forth, you might be able to convert one out of 10 clients. Right? That's probably pretty typical because we have some lawyers that start off that way and then we have to, then we work with them to help them start implementing them on the service. It's about one and a 10 at best, right? If you're doing that, whereas if you do the on legal services options and you're giving them the service options that are going to be a lot more affordable to start, you're providing services to so many more people. Now your conversion rate becomes two, three, four, five out of 10 as it is in your case, depending on the type of year.

Dave Aarons: It could be higher than that for you guys, but now you have five people that have received services from you that probably in many of those cases. Otherwise, wouldn't they be able to get help? By definition, if you offer 1500 to start or $3000 before full representation, one of the 10 hires, if you could do unbundled limited scope to start, you're getting four or five. So because it's... For all the reasons that we've mentioned, that's opening the doors for those four or five people, right? And now they're ambassadors because of that, because you've given them the help that they needed when other attorneys would turn them away.

Anthony Saunders: And I've been with you for seven... I mean this is before unbundled actually became the name and I don't even remember what it was before.

Dave Aarons: Family legal help.

Anthony Saunders: Family legal help. Seven years I've been with you and I started off with that mentality that I just need one out of 10 and I need full representation on everybody. I need that, and that's the way I started. And it didn't work, I wasn't doing well. I had to figure out kind of the mindset on me and you had numerous conversations about what I needed to do and the way kind of structure that and when that mentality finally hit, and it kind of struck me, said, 'why don't I least try to recuperate?' And that's what it was, you told me one time, 'why don't you just at least credit recuperate what you spend on the lead and offer the one thing.'

Anthony Saunders: And that's what I'd started to do and by doing that, my practice in that regard started to grow because yes, in my mind... My initial mindset was I just need to recoup the money I spend on the lead. Let's at least do that. Oh well now they want to retain me for everything and now that one out of 10 suddenly became four out of 10 and kind of expanded out as far as all of that went, and so that's what really stuck with me. And it's been there, I think that was probably six years ago that we had that conversation and that mentality has stuck with me the entire time in that six years to say, look, it's not necessarily about everything else, but you've got to have this way to break it down to ways that people can afford it. Because, everybody needs a lawyer. Everybody deserves a lawyer and helping them helps you in the long run.

Dave Aarons: And you said something earlier that I think is extremely important, and that was that the client gets to try out your services, but you also get the opportunity to try out working with them.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: And because one of the things we all know about family law in many of these immigration so forth is you will have certain cases and certain clients that if you went full representation right away, you're going to... You may... You're going to have those moments when you kind of wished you hadn't got involved in this one.

Anthony Saunders: Oh, all the time.

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: And I can tell you this, that mentality of it's also as much of a try before you buy it for us, it's phenomenal to think the number of people who I've been able to say, we really can't take on another full case right now and give them a reason why I can't do it. I could help you with that one part, but I really can't do any more than that. But go talk to so-and-so if [crosstalk 01:02:39] you want, or whatever. But being able to do that is... Has been so nice because clients are the same as attorneys, when you sit across that table, they're selling themselves to you as much as you are to them. And you don't necessarily see that full personality until you get into a temporary order hearing where they're start getting mad at the judge or talking out over people and talking to you too- PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:03:04]

Anthony Saunders: As you're talking out over people and talking to you too much, to a point where you can't do anything for them and being able to see that mentality and say, "Okay, this isn't necessarily somebody who I want to represent going forward," it allows us to step back and say, "Okay, it's time for us to part ways."

Dave Aarons: Right. Yeah. It's the 20% of clients that take up 80% of your energy and time.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: Right. And if you can eliminate a good majority of those folks from your practice ... there's so many attorneys, I think that burnout from family law because it's emotionally difficult. You sometimes have these very difficult clients.

Anthony Saunders: Attorneys, paralegals, I think the heck, it's all of them. They can all just go down really quickly if you take on so many of those. And we had a period of time where we had a couple of those who got past the first phase and then you got into their case really and you're like, "Hey, I got to let you go." And those are tough decisions to make. They're business decisions at the end of the day. But being able to see that beforehand-

Dave Aarons: Yes. Without having to sign the full representation yet. You're just limited scope at this point.

Anthony Saunders: We have limited our need to withdraw on cases greatly because of that aspect.

Dave Aarons: Yeah. And that's so key for your overall enthusiasm for what it is that you're doing. Because all that energy that would have otherwise been taken by someone that probably wasn't a good fit in terms of the relationship, I mean, in some ways it's a partnership. It has to be a win-win. You both have to feel like it's working out for both parties. But the problem with family law and many different practice areas is once you sign off for that full presentation case, it's very difficult to withdraw. It's not necessarily something you want to be doing all the time.

Dave Aarons: So you're in a difficult situation where sometimes you have to persist in representing someone, even if the partnership doesn't feel good. Or they're not paying or these different things are happening. So being able to mitigate your exposure to that type of experience, which can feel like a lot of negativity. You can get into a collection situation like that and all of a sudden you have kind of an adversarial relationship between you and that client, and that just degrades the spirit of what it is that you probably got involved in doing family law in the first place.

Anthony Saunders: In our experience those people who become the trouble clients, you can generally tell with that first initial whatever you do for them. You can generally tell, not always, but most of the time you can tell, and those are the people who aren't going to end up paying you. They're the people who are going to write bad reviews for you and they're going to just be downright dirty no matter what you did for them. You can win a hearing for them and they're still not going to be happy and go write those bad reviews because you didn't say the exact words that they necessarily wanted. So we try to eliminate that out by doing that try-before-you-buy mentality because it's as much for us as it is for them.

Dave Aarons: Yeah, well you're engineering your own firm. You get to design your firm and that includes who do we help, who do we get to serve? And you guys are obviously opening the doors to so many people that otherwise wouldn't. And the flip side of that, there's some folks that you can also self-select out, that you can select to not necessarily provide services beyond that unbundled service. And so you were able to help them with that one thing that helped them with their case, got them some assistance but not necessarily continue on with them.

Anthony Saunders: And my paralegal is very happy we do it that way.

Dave Aarons: I can only imagine. Okay. All right. So I would be remiss if we didn't cover this one final piece, which is the unbundled service options you offer, some specific price points. It's going to be different for every marketplace. And so I don't think we have to get too specific on that. But let's just talk about like some different ways you unbundle in child custody cases. We've talked about limited scope representation. Maybe we can give some example cases or like in this type of case this is what normally would happen, but here's how we unbundle this piece or this piece. So maybe just give some examples of ways in which you can offer that limited scope representation within the perspective of actual legal issues that you see every day.

Anthony Saunders: So we've taken our time to go through our cases. So I'll give you kind of a typical divorce case. It's probably the easiest because it covers-

Dave Aarons: You have to break it up.

Anthony Saunders: It covers child custody as well in that. And so we break it down into the initial documents, whether that be the answer and counter petition or the petition itself. (silence)

Dave Aarons: Initial documents.

Anthony Saunders: Initial documents.

Dave Aarons: Initial disclosures.

Anthony Saunders: Initial disclosures, two separate categories of the way we've broke it down. They are not considered in the same thing because the way initial disclosures work and the documents you have to provide and witnesses and everything else, totally different aspects so we've broken that down. You have two steps that you generally take next in one of these cases. You either go to mediation because you think you're close anyways or you go in for temporary orders. Those are two different ways. So we've broken it down so we have a price listing for temporary orders and we have a price listing for mediation. In Utah, you have to do mediation anyways about in every case, unless you come to an agreement without ever going to mediation, but you have to do mediation at least once, so that price is going to be there no matter what you choose anyways.

Dave Aarons: Do you have a couple of different ways you would handle each of them where it's like you can go to mediation, I can be your advisor, I can represent you for mediation or I can draft your documents and you go to mediation. Is there a couple of different examples or is it usually just the limited scope rep, I do 100% of the tasks, but just for this one phase?

Anthony Saunders: So we actually do, it's 100% of the tasks for that one phase and we do it that way because when we've had clients before who, and this is just our experience, who've said, "Well, I want you to do the temporary orders with me, but I'm going to draft all the documents." And then we go to court and you're like-

Dave Aarons: You can't go to court on someone else's paperwork, yeah.

Anthony Saunders: ... I can't really argue any of this stuff because it doesn't make sense at all to me and that's going to make it very hard. And I still have to put forth that effort to give them the best representation, but I'm probably as confused as the court at that point in time. And the court probably gets better with it because they see it quite frankly with a lot of pro se clients, but it's really hard to then have that attorney tried to argue this because now they're looking at you like, "Did you write this? Did you help them write this?"

Dave Aarons: Yeah. So it seems like if you're going to go to court, you have to be the one drafting the documents?

Anthony Saunders: We want to be the one that drafted.

Dave Aarons: You could do the advice and documents but then they have to go to court on that, right?

Anthony Saunders: Yes. We will draft the documents and let you go to court, but if we're going to court, we're going to draft the documents for you.

Dave Aarons: Okay.

Anthony Saunders: Mediation, we don't generally do a lot of documents in mediation care, so if you want us in mediation, great. If not, we don't need to be there for you. The documents that come after that, we break that down into discovery issues.

Anthony Saunders: Utah does custody valuations. What is a 4903 conference going to take in that at the end of the custody evaluation, where the custody evaluator, the attorneys and a mediator there. And we break down all of those costs. We break down trial into half day and full day and it's per day. If you do full day what the cost is per day and we break it down and say so that you know if you go to trial and the judge says it's going to be a half day, now you need to decide if you want to retain us for the trial or if you want us to get off because we can get off. I just need to know the costs are going to cost you. A judge has said it's a two day trial, it's going to cost you roughly X amount of dollars for us to do it. Do you want to do it or do you want us to do it?

Dave Aarons: Right.

Anthony Saunders: And we can break that down. We also broken it down to on final documents in these cases whether they are stipulated final documents, negotiated final documents or trial final documents, documents after a trial and we've broken it down into those three categories so that we can actually tell them, "Okay, so you guys went to mediation but you don't have final documents yet. I've got to draft off of those. You guys did the mediation yourself. I don't know what any of this stuff means. I've got to come up with a way to put that in. It's probably going to cost you a little bit more than this one here." We can break that down and show them what those prices are. And by doing that, they can now determine whether or not they want us to or not. I do a lot of final documents for people who have represented themselves throughout an entire case because they don't know what they're doing when they get to that point.

Dave Aarons: Okay. Wow. Yeah. And so there's 10 to 20 different phases in there for a standard divorce, depending on the forks they go down and if they get to the point of mediation or if they go to evaluator or if they're going to trial or not, after trial, whatever it might be, and so people can come to your firm at any point in that entire A to Z flow, wherever it might be, and then you can offer an unbundled service for just the next step wherever they're at in their case.

Anthony Saunders: And with the price point right next to it so that they know exactly what the cost is going to be with that. For a family law case, our unbundled packages, it's about two pages long on it. We've really broken it down to as much as we can just to keep people coming in. As I said, we've kind of got that micro unbundled aspect going as well, but it's by breaking it down in those unbundled services and them saying, "Look, this is all I really can afford. I can really only afford you to do this review hearing for me." "Great. That's going to be 750 we are happy to go there for you. We don't have to draft documents. We're just going to show up and argue for you on your behalf." And if there are documents afterwards, we'll draft those, but we don't know who's going to draft those at the end. And being able to show them that and give them all of that has really helped.

Dave Aarons: Right. Yeah. And then I guess the final piece is how did you guys go about determining your pricing? And because you're offering a flat rate, there can be contingencies, things can happen that are a little bit unpredictable, so obviously that's going to come with experience to know, "Hey, when you're doing these filings, you could get served with discovery or you could get served at these different things," that could be additional upon whatever it is, was the initial scope of representation. And so how would you recommend determining pricing for each of these individual phases? Do you look at it by hours and then build a buffer or what's your ...?

Anthony Saunders: So we look at it in kind of two ways when we've done it. So as I told you, we do kind of a rolling three-year average and the way we do the rolling three-year average, week after Christmas, we're pretty much dead, but we're still here. Our accounts payable person still wants a paycheck, so she still shows up too.

Dave Aarons: Imagine that.

Anthony Saunders: And so what we generally have people do during that last week is we break down what it costs for that year for that. Now at the end of 2019, we dropped off the 2016 one and now we added '17, '18 and '19, we come up with a new number, what that average cost is on all of that stuff.

Dave Aarons: For each unbundled service that you offer? And average them out for the entire year?

Anthony Saunders: For each unbundled service. Yes.

Dave Aarons: So you will keep track of we did this unbundled service, this and unbundled service, this unbundled service and you keep track of what it costs, what you charged, or what-?

Anthony Saunders: So that's the first part. So I told you that there's two kinds of things that we do with that. So one of them is what was the billing on it? The second aspect on that is what did we collect on it?

Dave Aarons: Okay, sure.

Anthony Saunders: And we use those two points are extremely important on us because 1) we already know, if we're not collecting the money, it doesn't do us any good to charge that much money. So if I'm looking at a review hearing and our average is really probably about 1200 bucks on a review hearing, but we're only collecting about 500 on that, I'm going to find somewhere in the middle on that and what my price point's going to be, because I'm probably going to get them to pay that amount. I may not get them to pay 1200 but I'm going to get them to pay 750 probably.

Dave Aarons: That's interesting. Okay. All right.

Anthony Saunders: So we look at both what we billed and what we actually collected.

Dave Aarons: Okay. Okay. So you look at both those numbers as an average over the course of the year. You have a rolling three-year, broken down by specific service option or unbundled service. So review hearing, mediation. These are all the mediations we did this year. This is what we charge for them and this is how much we collected. Find that average in the middle and then update pricing if necessary.

Anthony Saunders: Yep. The only thing we exclude, we do exclude the unbundled pricing when we find those numbers, because we're looking at the ones who we did full representation on and everything else. What does it cost us to do a full representation on it? That's how we come up with our average. So we do exclude the unbundled when we kind of price that out because we already know that that's 750 each, every single time.

Dave Aarons: Well that's 0% account receivable. Right? Because it's paid upon delivery.

Anthony Saunders: Right. So we don't factor that aspect in when we do those numbers. We're looking at the people who we did an hourly billing for. This is what we billed for. This is what we collected. Somewhere in between there is where our price point needs to be.

Dave Aarons: Right. Okay. Awesome. And then there was one other thing you mentioned a little earlier, which was referral credits for clients.

Anthony Saunders: Yes.

Dave Aarons: So do they get a services credit, if they refer a client here to your office.

Anthony Saunders: We do not offer it in that way. But we do, we have people who are looking for ways to kind of reduce their bill. A lot of attorneys do this as well. If you pay off 85%, I'll wave the other 15 type of thing. So what we kind of do is you send a referral our way and you get enough referrals on here. When you ask us to kind of wave it ... this guy who's I think 15 or 16 people he's referred to us, writes to me the other day, he says, "Hey, I've got this new case on here." We didn't make him put a retainer down right. We did told him, "Don't worry about it. We'll cover this petition. We're going to do the petition on our own." We're not billing him for that aspect on it. But that's kind of where the referral credits built in is kind of the work you're going to do in the future to say, "Hey, thanks for all you did for us. Why don't we do this part for you now?"

Dave Aarons: So you kind of just keep track of it internally and go, "Okay, this guy's been referring. He's built up some goodwill with us in terms of the amount of business he's brought to us, so the next time this person needs some service, we're going to make sure we take care of him or waive it or whatever it looks like.

Anthony Saunders: We do reduce fees. We do all sorts of things for people based upon what they refer to us. People have got hourly billings down to where they're 35% of what we normally would do and, they're happy with it. They take those referrals and they take them out and happy to send more people our way. So.

Dave Aarons: Absolutely. Well you guys are giving service to a lot, a lot of folks and so I'm sure you have a lot of ambassadors out there that are very stoked about what as you guys have been doing and we just really appreciate all the work you guys do for these clients and the methodic way that you continue to evolve what it is you do and test it out. And also just the original willingness to try this out and to give it a shot and to start unbundling. Now like you said, you're one of the leaders in the Salt Lake area in terms of providing unbundled services. You were one of the first and continue to refine it and provide unbundled services in more effective ways. So just can't appreciate what you guys are doing more.

Dave Aarons: It's just really been a pleasure working with you. A pleasure having this partnership together and couldn't be more excited about what's to come in years ahead. So just really appreciate you making the time and being so transparent and helpful for so many other lawyers that, like I said before, your original podcast was extremely helpful for so many attorneys to start to get this mentality of leading with unbundled services. You can have confidence that people are going to want to receive more service after that once you do one. And guess what? Even if they don't, they're going to refer people. Just kind of take that leap of faith because they've heard you talk about it, heard the success you've had in your firm, and it gives them that confidence in knowing that they can take that next step and just give it a shot. And so I just really appreciate your willingness to share so openly what's worked well for your firm and certainly very excited about the success of your guys' firm as well.

Anthony Saunders: Oh, we're excited to be with you guys. So, as always, if anybody ever needs to reach out to me, they're more than welcome to. I'm happy to help with anybody. So love doing this stuff. Love, like I said, the unbundled thing, seven years we've been together. That first year was rough, but it took a while for me to get the mentality myself and it's grown and we've adapted it and modified the way we've applied it and it's so important. So important to get to everything and grow your business. So.

Dave Aarons: Yeah. All right. Well for those that are listening, I hope you took good notes because we really laid out I think some of the real nuts and bolts of making this thing work and they are important nuts and bolts to make this whole thing fasten together. And so each of these phases from the way you handle the initial call and get people in the door, the way you're leading with unbundled service options, how you make sure they don't show up by having the reminder system set up. I think there's even some things that we could talk about in terms of using digital intake forms and so forth and having that lead into document automation software that can really streamline the delivery of these services a bit more. So that might be our next chapter is to talk a little more about the technological components, but it's not necessary either.

Dave Aarons: Obviously you can build a really successful firm whether you have you high tech or not. So just appreciate all of you for being a part of this community and constantly learning new ways in which we can implement these service options so that we can serve the amount of folks out there, the 70% plus that currently are going unrepresented and have a significant shift in the affordability of legal services in this country. So we appreciate you being a part of this and we certainly look forward to seeing you on the next episode. PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:21:10]