Our firm is turning six next month and we’ve started celebrating a little early! It is amazing to reflect on how the firm has changed over the years. Originally, we mainly handled patent litigation. Our team was lean, including me, our wonderful admin Pat Choplin and Of Counsel Chuck Goodwin. Over time, we built the firm into a full-service IP focused business boutique law firm, serving both emerging growth businesses and large company clients. Today, we handle all forms of IP litigation as well as general corporate work, IP counseling, registration and transactions and commercial litigation for clients in a variety of industries including life sciences, food and beverage, professional services, and alternative investments, among others.
In addition to the original team, we now have a full support team headed by Ladonna Mahecha, our Senior Paralegal and Practice Manager, and a number of attorneys including Of Counsel Scott Kislin and Denisse Genta García. It has been really fun to grow the firm and work with such wonderful clients and our fantastic team! As we grow and scale, I have learned a few important lessons about running a business, which I will share with you.
Lesson 1: Your Team is Your Most Important Asset.
As the business of the firm has expanded, I’ve needed more help in every area – from legal work to administration. You would be utterly amazed at how many people it takes to run one small law firm! In addition to myself, on the admin side, we have our Senior Paralegal/Practice Manager, two administrative assistants, and two case management assistants. We are also supported by outside resources from our accounting firm, our IT service provider, our marketing firm and our business scaling coach. For the legal work in addition to me and our Senior Paralegal we have two Of Counsel and a bevy of project lawyers (we flex between one and ten depending on the project). Thankfully, I have had a lot of experience in running teams both in my prior law firm positions and various volunteer organizations. One of the things that I have found most important is making you sure you have the right people doing the right tasks – it is really all about playing to strengths. As the team leader, part of this also is making sure that YOU are doing the right things – know your own strengths and delegate the work that isn’t in those areas. You also need to be willing to learn from others and to let others “run with the ball” in their domain of expertise. In short, you need to hire well and then get out of the way by empowering your team to carry out what you hired them to do.
Lesson 2: You Need Effective Systems and Processes for Everything.
Heck, that could be rewritten as you need to HAVE systems and processes! Lack of systems and processes is typically the Achilles heel of a growing business and ours was no stranger to this phenomenon. Relatedly, it is also important to recognize that the systems and processes that work when you are a three-person firm can totally break down and fall apart once you grow and scale. We experienced that over the last year as our firm essentially quadrupled in size, both in terms of revenues and people. Going fully remote added an additional layer of complexity to that process. We have made great strides in developing our systems and processes but are still figuring out how to make necessary improvements. One thing that has been a huge asset in this transition was that I was able to bring in experienced team members. Our Senior Paralegal/Practice Manager and her “posse” are whizzes at getting things organized and creating new systems and processes to get work done. (See Lesson Number 1 – the right team is essential!)
Lesson 3: Having a Strong “Inner” Network is Crucially Important.
There is a study that shows that successful women leaders tend to have two networks – the same broad network that men have, but also a strong inner network of close female contacts who share critical advice and information with them. The study suggests these inner circles tend to be 1-3 women who have separate networks from you and each other (think Venn diagram). There is no question that I feel like I have that, although my “inner network” has more people in it. For example, one group of women within my “inner circle” is a set of my Tory Burch Fellow colleagues – when the pandemic hit, I organized a weekly Happy Hour for the Fellows. We had a regular group of about 25 women who joined from time to time, but 3-4 of us attended almost every week throughout the entire pandemic. Without their support, I know that my experience of the pandemic would have been a whole lot different. So here is a huge shout out to Damali Peterman of Breakthrough ADR, Lauren Blanco of Markham & Fitz chocolates and Leslie Ciccone of (swah-rey) bakery for being terrific sounding boards and cheerleaders! Another member of my “inner circle” is my long-time mentor and friend Cindy Towers of JuriSolutions. Cindy’s advice (drawn from her own 20 years of business ownership and her experience advising many other entrepreneurs) has been incredibly helpful on my entrepreneurship journey, especially during the last year when we have been scaling. Finally, I have found that your inner circle can also include paid advisors who often bring value to the relationship even beyond their area of expertise. (In fact, that’s the kind of advisor I try to be for my clients!) I have been blessed with a number excellent advisors over the years (both men and women). Currently, one of my advisors is Leslie Hassler of Your Biz Rules, my business scaling coach. She’s a numbers and strategy whiz among other things, which has been a huge help to me as I navigate this next level in my business.
I am sure that I will learn many more lessons in the years to come in my business. I just hope that the next six years are as enjoyable as the last six.
Happy Anniversary to my whole team at ND Galli Law!
