In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Eddie Dabdoub discuss:
- Falling in love with your practice area but remembering it is a business.
- Transitioning from general law practice to a niche law practice.
- Getting buy-in from your team for the law firm growth.
- Taking care of your team to stop the turnover.
Key Takeaways:
- There is a barrier of entry for those transitioning from a PI practice to a Disability Insurance practice.
- If you structure your practice like a well oiled machine, even less lucrative niches will pay off financially.
- Build a core team that allows your firm to grow together. Even when you’re in different rolls, you want the core team to all be focused on the same business goals.
- Your firm does not need to be built like everyone else’s. You are different, build your firm to reflect what is important to you.
“My big advice is, if you want to scale a law firm, breakaway from the traditional model of assigning assistants and paralegals to attorneys. Instead, create different departments (even if they’re tiny), train your folks to be experts in that department, and have cases go through those departments as the lifecycle of the case carries it through the firm.” — Eddie Dabdoub
Read more from Steve at Above the Law: AboveTheLaw.com/tag/Steve-Fretzin/
Thank you to our Sponsors!
Ready to go from good to GOAT? Attend PIMCOM the inaugural personal injury mastermind conference Sept 15-17, 2024. Use promo code BeThatLawyer to get $200.00 off at https://www.pimcon.org/
Get Staffed Up: https://getstaffedup.com/bethatlawyer/
Lawmatics: https://www.lawmatics.com/bethatlawyer/
Episode References:
- Rules of the Road: A Plaintiff Lawyer’s Guide to Proving Liability by Rick Friedman – https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Plaintiff-Lawyers-Proving-Liability/dp/1934833177
About Eddie Dabdoub: Edward Dabdoub is a nationally-known disability insurance lawyer. He is the founder of Dabdoub Law Firm, a firm that specializes in disability and life insurance claims for claimants.
Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, he is one of five attorneys in his immediate family. Since becoming a lawyer, he has focused his law practice on representing people in this niche practice area and has grown his law firm from less than a handful of employees to a nationwide practice.
With Eddie at the helm, Dabdoub Law Firm has litigated and won significant disability and life insurance cases in federal courts. Some notable victories include a win against the NFL Disability Plan for a former pro-football player who was denied disability benefits and recent victory for a liver transplant surgeon who could no longer perform transplant surgeries after sustaining a career-ending injury.
Eddie has participated as a guest speaker at law conferences both on local and national stages, discussing disability insurance, life insurance, and ERISA for legal organizations such as the American Association for Justice and the Florida Association for Justice.
Eddie is a double-Canes, having obtained an undergraduate degree in Economics and a juris doctor degree at the University of Miami. Before law school, he obtained a Masters in Business Administration from Florida International University.
Connect with Eddie Dabdoub:
Website: https://www.longtermdisability.net/
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwarddabdoub
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dabdoub-disability-insurance-erisa-law-firm/
Twitter: https://x.com/disabilitylaws
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dabdoublawfirm
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, before we get to the show, I just want to share that I’m now writing for Above the Law. If you enjoy this podcast, you might also enjoy my monthly columns. You can go to Above the Law and type my name into the magnifying glass in the top right corner to read my latest articles. Thanks and enjoy the show.
[00:00:21] Narrator: You’re listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
[00:00:43] Steve Fretzin: Well, hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. We are here every single week, twice a week, to make sure that you’re being that lawyer. Someone who’s confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. I have such a treat for you. I’m gonna, uh, just introduce Eddie in a minute though.
[00:00:59] Steve Fretzin: How you doing, Eddie?
[00:01:00] Eddie Dabdoub: I’m doing great.
[00:01:02] Steve Fretzin: Alright. You got a nice frame there with the fireplace behind you and everything. It’s really, uh, really pretty. So you’re in North Carolina now?
[00:01:09] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah, I’m, I’m in Western North Carolina, about 40 minutes west of Asheville in a town called Waynesville.
[00:01:15] Steve Fretzin: Okay. All right. Now everybody flooded to Asheville.
[00:01:18] Steve Fretzin: So is that like a too, too populated area now? You got to kind of get outside of it? Pretty much. Um, and,
[00:01:23] Eddie Dabdoub: and I wanted something a little bit less crowded and more in the mountains. So Waynesville fit the bill.
[00:01:28] Steve Fretzin: Okay. If you guys are picking up on that, that is a French accent that Eddie has, right? Exactly. I like the French accent.
[00:01:37] Steve Fretzin: From Paris. Straight from Paris. Straight from Paris. Listen, we, we’re gonna start, we’re gonna, definitely we’re gonna talk about, about the whole Jamaican thing, but let’s start off with our quote of the show, and I want you to give us the, the, the most Jamaican quote you can give us, so we can launch this show with some, with some laughs.
[00:01:51] Steve Fretzin: So what, what is that?
[00:01:53] Eddie Dabdoub: Well, so you have a lot of Jamaican sayings, but the one we use in the law firm, just to kind of get things done is we run things, which, you know, things in Jamaica, we drop the H, so it’s things we run things, right? And so, so it’s a way of telling the team, get it done. We are in charge.
[00:02:09] Eddie Dabdoub: We run things around here.
[00:02:11] Steve Fretzin: We run things. Do you think that would work on my teenager? It hasn’t worked with my kids, so I don’t think so. So maybe it’s better in the law firm, uh, you know, than, than at the, for the teenage or the kid level. But listen, I’m just so happy that, uh, we’re together. Um, Eddie Dabdub, everybody is the managing partner of Dabdub Law.
[00:02:31] Steve Fretzin: He’s in my Rainmaker Roundtable. We became fast friends a number of months ago, and I think we’re having a good time. And I’ve been trying to get you on the show for a while, and you’re just like the busiest guy I know. So. And I’m busy and then I’m just so happy and thrilled that we got together to do this.
[00:02:45] Steve Fretzin: I’d love to have you give your, your, your version of how you kind of came to be and, and became, become, whether it’s becoming a lawyer or building and building out and scaling your law practice, but give us, give us the heads up on, on, and welcome to the show again. I’m so happy you’re here.
[00:03:00] Eddie Dabdoub: I’m delighted to be here.
[00:03:01] Eddie Dabdoub: Thank you. Finally, we were able to coordinate our schedules. So, you know, growing up in Jamaica was, it was really interesting. It’s a third world country, right? But I was educated in the British system because Jamaica being a former colony, When the British left, we still had the educational system in place, which I think had done wonders for me.
[00:03:21] Eddie Dabdoub: And, um, after graduating from high school, I came to the, to the United States to attend undergraduate. And I always felt like law school was where I was going to end up going several reasons, but primarily my father is an attorney. He, he has law practice in Jamaica. My oldest brother is an attorney. My, um, two younger sisters are attorneys, so we all kind of ended up becoming attorneys doing different things, but being attorneys.
[00:03:49] Eddie Dabdoub: Right. And, and so you kind of just felt like whether it’s something in the water in Jamaica or just the upbringing that we were, we were all going to be attorneys, you know, you were built for this. Oh, so,
[00:04:02] Steve Fretzin: so, so no, no arguments at the dinner table, I’m assuming.
[00:04:06] Eddie Dabdoub: Exactly. Everything was hunky dory. Um, no, it, it, it was, let me say like
[00:04:11] Steve Fretzin: you get, get that many lawyers in a family together.
[00:04:14] Steve Fretzin: There’s going to be some, some arguments being made. Completely. I mean,
[00:04:18] Eddie Dabdoub: you know, I, I’d say I actually, I’m the one that I just kind of step back and I just watch them go at it. Including my father who is, who is now 82 and he, he doesn’t back down from a fight. And I just look at the guy and I’m like.
[00:04:29] Eddie Dabdoub: you’re not going to stop at this point, you know. So before law school, I always, always, this is important to me when I, when I kind of retell how Dabdub Law Firm has become this national firm that it is today. Um, I always say that I always knew even before law school that I wasn’t going to be an ordinary attorney.
[00:04:51] Eddie Dabdoub: Where we just have law books and we’re studying law and we’re arguing in courts and we’re doing good legal work for clients. I wanted to build something special and that means I needed a business background. So I did an MBA before going to law school. It was an intensive MBA, one year, got it done before law school.
[00:05:09] Eddie Dabdoub: I didn’t want to be in school forever, so got it out of the way in one year. And that taught you all sorts of things they don’t teach in law school. And I don’t know if it’s cheer. But when I was in law school, there was not a single class on how to run a law firm, how to scale an offer, how to structure a law firm.
[00:05:31] Eddie Dabdoub: Right. So I did that pit stop before, um, getting into laws.
[00:05:36] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And then how, like, then start up, like, give us like, then, all right, so now you’re out of law school, you decide to go solo or did you work with someone to get experience? How did that go? Yeah.
[00:05:47] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah, so I started as a law clerk in my second year of law school at a law firm that was handling disability insurance claims, which is what I do now.
[00:05:58] Eddie Dabdoub: And initially it was just a gig, right? It was just to get some legal experience as a second and third year attorney. But I handled a case for a man and I ended up winning the case and it had such a profound impact on me. And how transformative my legal work had been for him and his family. He still had young children, he couldn’t work, he fell off a pole.
[00:06:22] Eddie Dabdoub: And, um, he injured his back pretty badly and his disability insurance claim wasn’t being paid. When we won that case, it really, I saw the difference it made to him individually and his family. And I said, I think this is a practice area I really can fall in love with. And so after graduating from law school, I was at a juncture where I was going to go back to Jamaica, join my father’s practice and kind of follow that career path.
[00:06:48] Eddie Dabdoub: And then add that MBA that I had brought in to kind of make it something different than the traditional law firm it was and still is. Or kind of, you know, give it a go here for a bit. So I said, let me try it out here. And I joined that same law firm where I was a clerk as an associate now. And after two years, I said, this is really the practice area where I want to be in.
[00:07:15] Eddie Dabdoub: But there’s so much untapped potential in this legal market. And so I learned a lot from that firm legally, but I also learned a lot on, on the business side in terms of what they were not doing. And so I decided very early, maybe my second year out of law school, I’m doing this and I’m going to do it on my own and I’m going to build something from the ground up really special.
[00:07:41] Eddie Dabdoub: Before I got to that point, I left that firm with one of the partners. As we joined over, we started a partnership, just the two of us. And then after a few years, that partnership dissolved and I scaled my own law firm to over years,
[00:07:55] Steve Fretzin: right, to be what it is. And now you’ve got a national practice with how many, how many lawyers and how many staff?
[00:08:03] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah. So we’re eight. We’re, we’re looking for another attorney. We’re about 30.
[00:08:08] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Um, again, if you’re an attorney with disability insurance background, like that would be great for you.
[00:08:15] Eddie Dabdoub: Yes, exactly.
[00:08:16] Steve Fretzin: That’s,
[00:08:17] Eddie Dabdoub: that’s, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. And it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s an, it’s a niche practice.
[00:08:21] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, but that’s, but there, and there’s something to be said about that too. I mean, there’s a lot, I mean, my father, the late great Larry, the lawyer was, was one of the last general practitioners that did just about everything you could do, uh, short of getting out of divorce while he could, but that’s not what most lawyers are doing these days, right?
[00:08:39] Steve Fretzin: Most lawyers are figuring out they’ve got to specialize. They’ve got a niche down, be known for something. And so you really take it to another level of really hyper focusing on that disability stuff and then building off of that. Can you talk a little bit about specialization and niching down in the value of that?
[00:08:56] Eddie Dabdoub: Absolutely. So I, I am a firm believer in, in find one thing that you’re really good at and become great at it and be better than everybody else. I invested. a ton of time in my early career in really becoming an expert in this area of the law. The niche practice is such that I think there are probably less than 300 attorneys in the country that specialize in disability insurance claims for the plaintiff.
[00:09:23] Eddie Dabdoub: So this created an obvious opportunity to not just limit myself geographically, where we are located in Miami or in Florida, but the entire country. And so I think specialization is hugely important because it ties into how you brand yourself as an attorney. Right. We even see some of these big PI firms that have multiple practice areas.
[00:09:48] Eddie Dabdoub: And that works, right? It works for the Morgan Morgans and those firms, obviously. But when you have, um, an area that you’ve honed in on, if you can really hold yourself out as the expert and you’re specializing and you’re doing things in a way that other people can’t, and then you add to that, that you’re branding yourself that way, right?
[00:10:06] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah. And that’s the important thing. You have to hold yourself out. So I want everybody to know, and I get calls from around the country, that there’s this Jamaican guy. Right. With a disability insurance law firm. And so that sticks in people’s head because I’ve branded myself in that way. That’s how I differentiate myself from all the other attorneys, including attorneys in my practice area.
[00:10:29] Steve Fretzin: And so I think, I think, you know, lawyers that are stuck between, you know, litigation and transaction, or they’re stuck in litigation, you know, even being too broad of a space of saying, Hey, I’m, I can litigate anything. Where they’re not really being thought of because of the, of the, of the scope is so large, you know, so that like, for example, a Jackson Lewis, they, they focus on labor and employment, you know, exclusively.
[00:10:52] Steve Fretzin: All right, so that’s, you know, makes them very easy to remember and just like what you’re doing, but how do people transition out of being more general to a niche? Is there, is there a secret sauce to that in your opinion?
[00:11:05] Eddie Dabdoub: I think a lot of it is kind of just you fall into it to some extent, right? Like I do, but you know, when I think when you look at the legal market, it’s really saturated.
[00:11:15] Eddie Dabdoub: Right. In, in, in every state. And it’s hard to find a practice area. That’s not very saturated. My, my practice area, for example, while it’s not saturated, the learning curve is really steep and it’s going to take years. So there’s a barrier of entry of sorts that blocks attorneys who want to transition from a PI practice to disability insurance.
[00:11:37] Eddie Dabdoub: Because you, you, you, you think it’s a regular type of insurance claim when it’s anything but, and they usually get burned on a case or two and realize this isn’t profitable, I want out. So I have a nice barrier of, of, of entry in my practice area, but I, I think, you know, I think what you want to, to, to try and do is to differentiate yourself.
[00:11:59] Eddie Dabdoub: By either finding a practice area that really, and there are a few out there, Medicare, Deans, there are other practice areas out there that attorneys can find that you may not make a 4 million fee, but if you practice, if you structure the practice in a way where it’s a well oiled machine, you can get the nice revenue coming in from it.
[00:12:16] Steve Fretzin: Yeah,
[00:12:17] Eddie Dabdoub: so there are a few opportunities out there, but I think as time goes by, there are few and far between to be honest.
[00:12:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I mean, I, I get asked on a pretty regular basis, you know, I’m not a lawyer. How did I get into working with lawyers? And the reality is that I wasn’t going to push my chips in and be a specialist until I hit a certain threshold of my client base being, say, 80, 85%.
[00:12:39] Steve Fretzin: And at that point, when you realize like you’re good at something, you get along with a group of people or an industry. And it actually makes more money and more sense to focus than to try to continue bringing in, you know, for example, financial planners or accountants or other groups. And then, then to your point, you get that branding focus on one thing, and that’s where you can separate yourself from the pack.
[00:13:02] Steve Fretzin: Indeed. Yeah. So how about, but how about scaling? I mean, you’re in Florida and you’ve got this practice and you say, you know what, there’s a lot more business if I can move it out and scale it out nationally. How does someone do that?
[00:13:15] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah. So I think the first thing you really want to do, I remember when I started doing this, I bought a gigantic map.
[00:13:22] Eddie Dabdoub: Of the United States. And I pasted it on a wall in the office. I did it myself. I loved that. I loved the visual. And that morning everybody started coming into the office, one at a time, and started looking at this like, what the hell is he doing now? You know, and I started to put, um, in marks in different places.
[00:13:44] Eddie Dabdoub: And so I, I, I first decided to target certain cities, and I did that by doing a deep dive into the research. I think this is where the business background comes in. I started to look up population centers that are close to medical offices, um, to hospital clusters. Um, the average median income for certain cities.
[00:14:06] Eddie Dabdoub: So rather than just kind of having a shotgun approach and just trying to throw marketing money in 50 states, I started to target geographic regions that met my criteria for what my target client would look like. Okay. So for example, our most profitable clients are physicians. Or especially surgeons who can’t perform surgery anymore, but they can continue practicing medicine some way.
[00:14:31] Eddie Dabdoub: They still qualify for total disability benefits under their disability insurance policy. So I wanted to target physicians, well, where hospitals clustered, you know, and what you tend to find is where you have like a cluster of hospitals, you tend to have very wealthy neighborhoods. Close by, because that’s where all the doctors are.
[00:14:50] Eddie Dabdoub: And so I started there and then slowly started building out into other cities. But I had a spreadsheet, Steve, of every city in every state with population numbers, average income, education levels. There’s so much information out there that you can read. You just have to first start by figuring out what are the data points that I need for My target client and then work back ways and and find that doctor
[00:15:19] Steve Fretzin: Okay, and in your in your specific practice area, you don’t have to be licensed in all those states or you do so
[00:15:26] Eddie Dabdoub: Disability insurance, which is a high barrier to entry.
[00:15:28] Eddie Dabdoub: I was mentioning is governed by a federal law Called the result in about 90 percent of the cases, which means federal law can practice nationwide on this. Um, but it’s a very complicated practice area. Most attorneys don’t know it. So I am licensed in multiple states though. So, and so are some of the other attorneys, which helps, but generally speaking, it’s not a bar.
[00:15:49] Steve Fretzin: Okay.
[00:15:50] Eddie Dabdoub: Having a national practice.
[00:15:52] Steve Fretzin: All right. Ready to take your law firm from good to goat? The Inaugural Personal Injury Mastermind Conference, or PIMCON, is happening September 15th through 17th, 2024 at the luxurious Venetian Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting, master legal marketing and ensure your law firm stands out in an ever competitive landscape.
[00:16:16] Steve Fretzin: Be That Lawyer listeners can receive 200 off any ticket to PymCon by entering the promo code BETHATLAWYER at checkout. Go from good to GOAT and get your tickets at PymCon, P I M C O N dot org. Here’s everything you need to know about Lawmatics, ready? They are the number one law firm automation platform in legal.
[00:16:36] Steve Fretzin: They help law firms win new business, speed up intake, and boost efficiency. They integrate smoothly with your favorite practice management tools like Clio, Smokeball, and Practice Panther. And get this, on average, Lawmatics users get 25 percent more clients, save six hours a week, and grow their revenue by at least 25 percent.
[00:16:55] Steve Fretzin: Curious? I think so. Give Lawmatics a try with a 10 percent discount by going to lawmatics. com. That’s Lawmatics, L A W M A T I C S dot com slash be that lawyer. As you all know, finding amazing employees can be the toughest job for any law firm leader. You deserve to run the law firm you’ve always dreamed of, but you can’t get there without a great team.
[00:17:20] Steve Fretzin: To get staffed up, they will help you by staffing your law firm with incredible full time, offshore executive assistants, legal assistants, marketing assistants, and much more. The best part, they will find you a highly qualified English speaking VA based in Latin America for only a fraction of the cost locally.
[00:17:37] Steve Fretzin: At Fretzin, we use GetStaffedUp for marketing person and you know how good our marketing is. Learn more at GetStaffedUp. com slash BeThatLawyer. So you kind of do your research, you come up with, with where you’re going to move into. How did you kind of get the team around this concept and like to buy into the idea that, we’re actually going to expand this thing nationally.
[00:18:00] Steve Fretzin: What was their response? What was their kind of reaction like, oh, is Eddie going at it again? Or what was like,
[00:18:06] Eddie Dabdoub: you know, it’s the, we run things, this is what we’re doing, guys. . Right? And, and I coming back, like to keep coming back to that and I like to say, you know, what is it that we want to be right? We are the best disability insurance attorneys in the country.
[00:18:18] Eddie Dabdoub: We are, in my opinion, and I I, we have some of the biggest, um, court winds around the country. Uh, not just in Florida, and we make good law for future clients, and we protect the disability insured, um, by, by, by creating precedent. And so, what I tell people in my office is, do we want to remain the best right here in Miami?
[00:18:46] Eddie Dabdoub: Or, you know, do we want to do bigger and better? And that’s how kind of, that’s how I am wired. I cannot stop at enough. Enough is not a word in my vocabulary. If there is more, if there is a bigger market, if there are better cases, I’m going out there and I’m going to get them. And I like to say, when I, on the days I’m frustrated, you’ll hear me say things like, you know, that, you know, this is not the Mickey Mouse club, right?
[00:19:12] Eddie Dabdoub: Like, come on, we can do
[00:19:14] Steve Fretzin: better. And so you’re, I mean, so I’m just, I’m kind of going down a bunch of different tracks here, but I think they’re all important. The, um, you’re motivated, you’re driven, you, you know, we run things. Okay. And now you’ve got this team of people under you of, you know, 30 people, they have to buy into that culture.
[00:19:32] Steve Fretzin: Like, this is a culture of, of, of unlimited growth and consistent growth. And that’s not everybody’s jam, right? So how, how are you developing, you know, if we can shift a little bit to culture, how are you developing the people in the culture to make this work and continue to be the best firm you can be?
[00:19:50] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah, good, great questions. I think it starts at the top, right? So I can’t do this on my own boat. So what I have right beneath me is a core team of four to five people, partners and other core team members. And they buy into the idea that we want to grow. Not for my personal benefit, but for everybody’s benefit.
[00:20:14] Eddie Dabdoub: And what they’ve seen is as we are growing, we’re all growing together. They all have skin in the game on this. And so I, I look for a certain personality type, somebody who buys in to the idea that we can be bigger and better and still provide a high level quality legal representation. And that as we grow this law firm, they’re going to grow personally in their careers and also financially they’ll have growth.
[00:20:45] Eddie Dabdoub: And the important thing is they’re all my age or younger. Right. That core team. Okay. Because we have to grow together. Okay. And then once you have the core team in place, it kind of just kind of drips down from there because they all have different roles and responsibilities and, and, uh, uh, you know, so the, the, the staff.
[00:21:05] Eddie Dabdoub: Which the staff doesn’t usually doesn’t buy into the growth model, the idea of growth. They don’t see it that way, right? They want to show up. They want to do their jobs and they want to go home to their, their family. And that’s, that’s completely understandable. Not, not everybody’s going to be with you on this growth.
[00:21:22] Eddie Dabdoub: And you don’t need everybody to be with you on it. You need the core team in place. Then you need to set up systems and processes. For the mechanisms and the rules you’re creating for that growth to be facilitated, but in terms of the staff, what we’ve done is created a culture where it’s a very laid back environment.
[00:21:39] Eddie Dabdoub: We have people walking around the law firm without wearing shoes. That’s just how they want. They just want to be casual, right? And so we encourage that. It’s a very relaxed environment. atmosphere. It’s not structured by a law firm. When you look at my law firm, law books are not allowed in the law firm, right?
[00:21:56] Eddie Dabdoub: There’s no traditional bookshelf with law books. It looks more like a firm from Silicon Valley, where blue, blue concrete floors, glass walls, separating offices, tons of open space. And so there’s this massive collaborative environment. Staff is compensated more than the average, right? And so what I’ve done is when I find, um, staff members that are really good and talented and I want them to stay, we, we sit down and we talk to them about it.
[00:22:27] Eddie Dabdoub: We say, we think you’ve got something really special to offer the firm. And, uh, we’d love you to stay on for a very long time. And we want this to be your home. No, that that’s nice and dandy you say, but then you have to show it to them. So what we then do is we pay them at a salary level that is significantly above.
[00:22:47] Eddie Dabdoub: The going rate for that position. Okay, we have a compensation package that includes a very good 401k package. We cover a hundred percent of insurance for them and their children. And so collectively, when you take care of your people, what you see is they don’t want to leave. And what you get when people don’t want to leave is you get longevity.
[00:23:09] Eddie Dabdoub: And what longevity gives you is consistency. Turnover is a problem when you’re trying to scale. So you have to stop the turnover. And the way you do it is you keep your people happy. You can’t make everybody happy. So what ends up happening when you have that model in place, the people who can never be happy, they get weeded out.
[00:23:25] Eddie Dabdoub: Just naturally they end up getting pushed out. And then eventually you’ll find somebody who fits that mold and you go, okay, they’re here to stay.
[00:23:33] Steve Fretzin: And then, of course, you’re, as you said, taking care of them in a way where if they were meant to be, that they will stay, and then you get the consistency, but the other thing I want to go back to, because you mentioned this, and I, and I don’t want to roll over it like it’s anything, you mentioned like processes and systems that you have in place to make things sustainable and to make things more consistent, I have to believe that that improves the staff experience, because they’re not always on fire the way some law firms run.
[00:24:04] Eddie Dabdoub: Yeah, right. Exactly. I want to speak to that because I think that’s a very important point. The first two years I practiced, I kind of locked myself in my office and I just got deep into the law books, learning everything I could about the practice area. But one of the things I would hear and observe is a constant fighting and screaming matches and bickering among the staff.
[00:24:24] Eddie Dabdoub: I thought you were going to take care of this. No, he’s mad at me because you didn’t do it. And there’s just this confusion and this bickering. When I started the firm many years ago, I said, I’m creating departments and I’m putting assistants, paralegals in silos. And so right now I have about five different departments and what ended up being really fantastic.
[00:24:46] Eddie Dabdoub: And this kind of grew organically, right, is each department fits one stage of my case. My disability insurance case, like any case, even a PI case has a lifeline. There’s a starting point, there’s stuff that gets done in between, and then there’s an end point, right, usually checking out where hopefully you have a check for the client and the accounting stuff that has to get reconciled.
[00:25:08] Eddie Dabdoub: I have created five departments that track that life cycle of every case, and so my client’s cases aren’t assigned to assistants. They’re assigned to departments, and each department is staffed by assistants who are experts in that specific department. So my pre litigation appeals department, right, you have these mandatory pre lawsuit appeals you have to carry out.
[00:25:34] Eddie Dabdoub: My assistants and paralegals in the appeal department can speak like attorneys on the legal requirements for appeals in disability insurance claims. for your time, and have a great day. No, they can’t help me at all in the litigation department or in other departments. There is no overlap. They have no idea what goes on in that department, but they become micro experts in this area.
[00:25:57] Eddie Dabdoub: And the efficiency level Steve goes through the roof, they become so good and efficient at it. And there is no bickering because there is no way I thought this, this paralegal would handle that. Nope. Nope. That case is in your department. So it’s on your, it’s on your lap. Yeah. So I don’t have to deal with those issues and the efficiency is just huge.
[00:26:17] Eddie Dabdoub: So my, my big advice here to anybody listening to this is if you want to scale a law firm, break away from the traditional model of assigning assistance and paralegals to attorneys. Instead, create the different, create different departments and they can be tiny departments, whether it’s two people in a department or 20.
[00:26:33] Eddie Dabdoub: Create departments, train your folks to be experts in that specific department and have cases go through the departments as their life cycle of the case carries through the firm.
[00:26:45] Steve Fretzin: I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time, Eddie, and I’m not, I’m not hearing this at all. I mean, I’m hearing this, I don’t want to say for the first time, but kind of for the first time.
[00:26:53] Steve Fretzin: From you. And I don’t know that there are many attorneys that think this way or have put it together, that that may be a better model for how they run their, their teams then than what they’re traditionally being taught to do or what they’ve always done. So I, I just can’t thank you enough for. You know, the culture and the scaling and the, and the, and the, just the different take and spin on how you’re running this thing.
[00:27:14] Steve Fretzin: And I know it’s going to be just gangbusters moving forward. I want to wrap up with a couple things. One is the game change is a game changing book. The rules of the road. Is that a book that you, that you’re recommending, or is that a podcast? Yeah, it’s,
[00:27:26] Eddie Dabdoub: it’s a book.
[00:27:27] Steve Fretzin: Okay.
[00:27:28] Eddie Dabdoub: It’s, it’s, I think every, um, plaintiff’s attorney should read that book.
[00:27:32] Eddie Dabdoub: Okay. It’s more specific on, on how to handle cases, you know, way to get the job done for the client, but absolutely. It’s a great
[00:27:39] Steve Fretzin: book. All right. So that’s, so that, I want to just get that out of the way. So again, if you’re on the plaintiff’s side, that’s when you’re going to want to at least research and maybe pull up on Amazon and see what it’s all about.
[00:27:47] Steve Fretzin: You know, I also want to take a minute, um, because I don’t really talk much on the show about, um, My rainmakers roundtables. You’ve been in it. I want to say just a short time, maybe six months. I mean, it could be making that number up. Um, I just, I mean, you’re getting together with this group every month.
[00:28:00] Steve Fretzin: Can you just share 30 seconds about what your experiences have been so far?
[00:28:04] Eddie Dabdoub: Right. So even at my level, when you think, you know, everything, when you think you’ve figured out how to run a law firm, right? You really don’t. Because when you get together with a group of people like we do, that rainmaker group and, and you put a question out there and you go, guys, I’m running into this specific issue.
[00:28:19] Eddie Dabdoub: I haven’t run into this before. Right. Somebody else has Steve, and that’s what I really love about that group, because then we have that kind of like this brainstorming that’s taking place and a ton of ideas are just coming out of it. And so, yeah, I leave every meeting energized with, with great ideas and possible solutions to some of the obstacles that I am facing at the stage I am at, but other people have already.
[00:28:44] Eddie Dabdoub: Kind of addressed and figured out how to solve. It’s wonderful.
[00:28:48] Steve Fretzin: Well, I enjoy having you and I enjoy facilitating those groups and we’ve got some Phenomenal guest speakers coming up, uh, to educate us on, on their best practices as well. So, um, anyway, everybody listening, if you’re a managing partner or Rainmaker and you want to find out more about the Rainmaker Roundtables, just email me at steve at bretson.
[00:29:06] Steve Fretzin: com. I’m always happy to take a, you know, 15, 30 minute call to just sort of evaluate if it’s a good fit. Of course, have to thank our wonderful sponsors. We’ve got PymCon coming up for those, uh, Personal injury attorneys that want to take things to the next level on the marketing. You can sign up, uh, pincon.
[00:29:21] Steve Fretzin: com and then, uh, use, uh, Be That Lawyer as your discount code to, uh, get a discount. Uh, Lawmatics, helping to, again, automate the way that you’re running your law firm and Get Staffed Up, getting you those full time assistants and marketing folks to, uh, again, take the, take the, the crud off your plate and allow you to keep building business and, and doing the work.
[00:29:43] Steve Fretzin: Um, Eddie, if people want to learn more about your practice, they want to maybe apply for a job in disability insurance with you. What, what are the best ways for them to reach you?
[00:29:51] Eddie Dabdoub: Well, I think the easiest way with, with me traveling right now is email Eddie, E D D I E at longtermdisability. net.
[00:30:00] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Okay.
[00:30:02] Steve Fretzin: Very cool. Very cool. And all that information will be in the show notes as well, man. I’m just so happy that you were a, we got together. We were able to like coordinate this and get it together. That big shout out to your assistant who helped put that together. But this is just so great. And I’m just excited that you were able to come on and share your wisdom.
[00:30:17] Steve Fretzin: I mean, so many great and honestly, fresh ideas that lawyers need to hear whether they’re scaling a business now, or they’re looking to think about in the future or just You know, just thinking about specialization, we covered a lot of ground. So just thanks again, man. I really appreciate it.
[00:30:33] Eddie Dabdoub: Thank you so much.
[00:30:34] Eddie Dabdoub: I love speaking about this stuff. We could speak about it for hours, right? So awesome. Thank you very much.
[00:30:40] Steve Fretzin: Absolutely. And thank you everybody for spending time with Eddie today, Eddie and I today on the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast, helping you to be that lawyer and, um, uh, just keep listening.
[00:30:49] Steve Fretzin: Don’t be shy about telling other lawyers about it. I mean, we are looking to continue to grow the audience and add as much value in the legal industry community as we can. So. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.
[00:31:05] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, Fretzin. com, for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.