Cyberattacks against law firms are exploding, and most firms are far less protected than they think. In this episode, you’ll learn how to close the biggest security gaps, modernize your tech, and treat IT as a growth engine instead of a necessary evil.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Frank Stephens discuss:
- Technical debt and outdated systems in law firms
- Cybersecurity attack vectors and real-world threats
- Cloud, backups, and the myth of “it’s secure because it’s in the cloud”
- Practical protections: MFA, training, SOCs, and remote access
- Evaluating vendors, cutting tech waste, and learning to delegate
Key Takeaways:
- Many law firms operate with significant technical debt and outdated workflows, which limit accessibility, flexibility, and security.
- A “we have a firewall and the cloud” mindset breeds dangerous false confidence; modern firms need layered protections across endpoints, email, cloud, and user behavior.
- Phishing remains the dominant entry point for breaches, making ongoing security awareness training just as critical as any software tool.
- Cloud platforms do not automatically guarantee robust backups or security, so firms must take ownership of their data retention, MFA, and backup strategies.
- Treating IT partners as strategic advisors, reviewing licenses, roadmapping upgrades, and delegating implementation, can both reduce risk and unlock significant cost savings and scalability.
“If you’re don’t have MFA on all your cloud solutions, you might as well just leave the doors open, and you’d be surprised at how many people don’t put that in place.” — Frank Stephens
Check out my new show, Be That Lawyer Coaches Corner, and get the strategies I use with my clients to win more business and love your career again.
Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don’t miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/
Thank you to our Sponsor!
Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/
Lawyer.com: https://www.lawyer.com/
Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let’s make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/
About Frank Stephens: Frank Stephens founded Computing Technology Solutions (CTS) in 2001 with the idea that small and mid-sized businesses deserve the same IT proactive support, cybersecurity, and strategies that Fortune 500 organizations receive. Before starting CTS, Frank worked at several enterprise businesses such as Abbott, AT&T, CNA Insurance, and Microsoft.
He is passionate about giving back to the community and has served on several boards, including the Salvation Army. Frank is married with three children, and his hobbies include boating, international travel, outdoor activities with his family, and coaching his sons’ teams.
Connect with Frank Stephens:
Website: https://www.onlinects.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankstephens/
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
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Hey everybody, before we get to the show, really big announcement for you. This is one of the most important things I’ve done in nearly two decades of working exclusively in the legal industry. It is the be that lawyer community, and it’s officially live today. This is a global platform designed to help lawyers become rainmakers, grow their law practices and take control of their careers. And it’s built for individuals just like you who want more. And it’s also for law firms who want to bring real business development coaching and training to their teams with a strong return on investment. Inside you’re going to find a massive library of content, practical courses, live events and direct engagement with rainmakers from around the world who are there to answer your questions and help you grow. Membership is only 699, per lawyer. It discounts available for groups, and for a limited time, April 15 to April 30, you will get that deal as a founding member at that special rate I just mentioned, you have two weeks take action. Be that lawyer.com/community I’ll say it again. Be that lawyer.com/community to sign up today. Hope to see you there. And by the way, enjoy the show.
Narrator [01:11]
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, we’ll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin, hey
Steve Fretzin [01:33]
everybody. Steve Fretzin, here and welcome, welcome. Welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. And as you all may know, if you’re and unless you’re a new listener, and I welcome you if you are that we do this twice a week, and we’ve been doing that for almost six years coming up on, I think, close to 600 shows. So we’re really rocking and rolling here to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. And I know I mentioned this at the very beginning of the show, the new be that lawyer community is out everybody. So again, you’re a business developer. You’re interested in business development. You want to learn from rainmakers. You want to learn from me. Courses, library full of content, chat rooms to talk with rainmakers and share your needs and concerns and issues. Resources page where you know Frank will be Hey, Frank. How are you?
Frank Stephens [02:18]
Hey, Steve, thanks for having me. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [02:20]
yeah. Yeah. So Frank will be on our resources, trusted resources page. So for example, if you need someone to help you with technology, there’ll be frank and a couple other friends of mine that you can pick through to see who you want to talk to about your legal tech. But this is all happening in the be that lawyer community, everybody. So go to be that lawyer. Check out our homepage and get some information on that. And that’s the end of the show. Thanks for showing up today, everybody. And no, just kidding, Frank’s like, what I haven’t even had a chance to say, hi,
Steve Fretzin [02:47]
yeah,
Steve Fretzin [02:47]
good to see you, Frank. How’s it going? Man,
Frank Stephens [02:49]
great. How are you
Steve Fretzin [02:50]
good? Good. We had a little lunch together through our buddy, our mutual friend, to cater town cell, and had a little Maria’s in Highwood, nice sandwiches and soups and and pasta. Forgot what you got, but I think you seemed pretty happy.
Frank Stephens [03:03]
I was very happy. Yeah, I left with a full belly. Right,
Steve Fretzin [03:07]
right. Oh yeah. Great lunch to fall asleep to. Well, let’s get into the show and get into your quote of the show. So here we are. Peter Drucker just keeps coming up again and again, but here we go. The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it’s to act with yesterday’s logic. So again, welcome to the show and tell us why that quote is so near and dear to you.
Frank Stephens [03:28]
Yeah, so for me, there’s a good play on that from the tech perspective, and obviously with AI and just technology and cyber and everything that though, in my entire world, yesterday is always in the past, and today’s to be in the past. So it’s ever evolving. Things are moving fast, and so that’s why that really applies to me. And I enjoy that quote,
Steve Fretzin [03:47]
yeah, and my snarky, sarcastic side is coming out saying, well, there’s nothing really turbulent going on today, is there?
Frank Stephens [03:53]
Yeah, right. I don’t want to get political, but every single move that the federal government does these days somehow falls onto me. We have Iran and Russia and the North Koreans constantly pounding our data center and data centers. Yeah, the world from hacking. So yes, the
Steve Fretzin [04:11]
reality is, and I’m not giving them any ideas by saying this, they don’t need to drop a bomb on Chicago, right? All they have to do is cut off our energy for about a day and we’ll be murdering each other in the streets
Frank Stephens [04:20]
chaos. Right? Absolutely chaos. So anyway, cut a couple fibers, and that’s the end of it. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [04:25]
all right, but let’s we’re gonna go more positive. We’re gonna go legal tech, right? And, you know the now, I’m actually a doom and gloom guy, a little bit. People don’t know that, but, like, I don’t. I’m an optimist, but I do it in a curmudgeony way. But if I start talking about this stuff with my wife, she goes, she runs out of the room screaming, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. All right. Well, listen everybody. We’ve got Frank Stephens here, president of computing technology solutions, the illegal attack and cyber expert in the legal space. And so welcome to the show and give us a little bit of your background, how you came to be in this crazy world called legal Tech.
Frank Stephens [04:59]
Tech, legal, tech, yeah, thank you again for having me on the show. So I started CTS about 25 years with a little over 25 years ago, and back then, for those who are around, I always say that because half my staff is not what weren’t born yet, or they were five or six years old at the time. But at the time, there was no one providing quality technical guidance and just IT support for the small, midsize business world, specifically in the professional services, so law firms, accounting, architectural so my previous stints were all Fortune, 500 fortune, 100 companies, Abbott Labs AT and T Microsoft, and so bringing a lot of that expertise to the SMB world was a godsend for some of these organizations. So it’s been a fun ride. We’ve grown as our clients have grown, and we really like to partner with organizations that want to see technology not as a cost center, but utilize it as a means to grow their firms. And we’ve seen this very successful with a lot of law firms and practices.
Steve Fretzin [06:02]
Yeah, it’s tough to spin people’s minds around. From this is costing me to this is an investment that it’s actually getting me somewhere, making me more efficient, helping us be more protected. I mean, look, we all pay for insurance, for our cars and our health and everything else, and I think we’ve got to have, you know, good tech to make sure that we’re protected from all the, all the agents that are out there to destroy us. You know, even if you know, they don’t even know who we are, but they just, they’re out to kill
Frank Stephens [06:29]
Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [06:30]
so maybe a good place to start is, you know, what are you seeing as the biggest technology mistakes that law firms are making right now?
Frank Stephens [06:36]
I would have to say technical debt, and there’s, in many cases, they’re stuck in the way. So you’ve got, you know, you’ve got cases, you’re meeting with clients, you’re up and around, and a lot of people are using archaic ways to gate access to their data. Again, there’s the cloud. We’ve all heard of it. The cloud is actually someone else’s server, but there’s a time and place to move some of your systems or your data into the cloud. So the vast majority of the law firms that we support are what we consider hybrid. So the stuff that belongs in the cloud that they need access to and high availability to, we move that stuff in, but yet they may have a server that’s got a couple applications on the local machines. So when you’re looking at the full infrastructure of how they need to access their data, there’s kind of stuck in the ways of kind of some old school ways. And so we get very creative. There’s no cookie cutter solution for all the law firms. So we meet with them. We say, How often are you traveling as VPN an option? Are you going to be a low visibility areas? Not low visibility, but connectivity issues, like, if there are some courtrooms that you don’t get a cell connection, that’s the reality of it. Yet you need access to your data. So we work with them in developing a solution to make sure that they have full availability of their data in a secure manner, which is the most important thing. So it sounds like yielding up that profit, that productivity for
Steve Fretzin [07:49]
them, yeah, but it sounds like either kind of archaic ways of protecting themselves and doing legal tech and then, and then just stuck in their ways, which I think goes hand in hand,
Frank Stephens [07:59]
yeah? In case that their fault, like they don’t know what they don’t know, right? And so they’re stuck with either their previous ways or what they’re being told,
Steve Fretzin [08:07]
okay,
Frank Stephens [08:07]
should be the best. So
Steve Fretzin [08:09]
yeah, and so outside of the two things you mentioned, I mean, they failed to implement technology successfully, or maybe they’re just using out outdated stuff. But, I mean, how do they keep up to date. How should people be listening, watching, learning about what’s going on in legal tech? Is it following you on LinkedIn? Is there, is there a bigger, broader way to understand what’s going on?
Frank Stephens [08:30]
Yeah, what I would recommend to everyone out there is have a partner like me, or there’s other managed service providers that will basically be ingrained and understand both your business and your technical needs, right? And the most important thing is having that partner that will create that technology roadmap. Now, I’ve had clients say, give me a three year roadmap, like, I could build that out for you, but like, things are changing so fast, I don’t know what’s going to happen in 18 months or 24 so with our clients, we’re typically meeting with them on a yearly basis, and we’re building out what that roadmap looks like for the next 12 months. That could be hardware, software refreshes. That could be saying, hey, you’ve got some systems that might be a little end of life in the next, say, two years. Let’s start both budgeting and planning for those projects so it’s seamless and doesn’t have any downtime.
Steve Fretzin [09:16]
Yeah. And so then when you walk into a 10, 2050, person firm, you know, what are the first three things that you like audit immediately. Like, you just know you can go right to it and find issue.
Frank Stephens [09:28]
The biggest thing that we will look at, well, there’s three things I think we would look at. One is what the infrastructure looks like, both from the age of it, and how they’re operating. Another one would be their entire cybersecurity stack. Like, there’s four vectors, and maybe we could talk more about that later, but there are four main attack vectors that the bad dudes, bad actors are using because they know that these are the biggest vulnerabilities, and making sure that you have solutions and practices in place to fix that. And I think the third thing is, everyone has this belief that if I put it in the cloud. It’s secure and it’s being backed up, and that is never the case. I mean, I could tell you some horror stories of clients that we acquire because they were not told. But like, if you’re if you’re using Microsoft, right, you have a whole or Google, for that matter, any solution out there, Salesforce, HubSpot, you can name it. They all, if you read the details, they are only protecting and backing up your data for 30 to maybe 45 days. The onus is on you. It’s your data. You have to protect that and you know, so we’ll look at the cloud infrastructure, if it’s being backed up properly, and do they have the proper security measures like multi factor of authentication? If you’re don’t have MFA on all your cloud solutions, you might as well just leave the doors open, and you’d be surprised at how many people don’t put that in place. And any SaaS or cloud provider that’s free, like you literally just turn it on, and you’d be surprised how many people don’t have that in place.
Steve Fretzin [10:52]
Wow, yeah, that’s crazy. And so there’s been, obviously, a lot of changes in the last two to three years, and I think you have already mentioned that the next two or three years are going to be bonkers. So then, what have you seen in the last two to three years that’s changed, that maybe lawyers are underestimating about how they protect themselves, or how they get more value, or how they use this as leverage, as an investment? What are two or three things that that you’re seeing that they’re typically, you know, not under that they’re underestimating,
Frank Stephens [11:20]
I would say two or three things. So if of the partners and law firms that we talk to and firm admins, they have a sense of false security, and they believe there’s this mentality that, hey, I have a firewall. My stuff’s in the cloud, and maybe we have virus protection. That should be enough. At the end of the day, they need to protect their clients data. They cannot afford to have a breach in any way. I mean the credibility that you lose, where you need to report that to your clients, that you lost data that’s detrimental to anybody, law firms or no law from any organization. So to making sure that you guys are properly protected and you’re not, it’s not the old saying of like, Hey, I think our guys are doing what they should be doing. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. So there’s solutions out there. Like, let’s take backups. For example, we always encourage our clients that, hey, we’re backing up, we’re testing it. But there’s nothing wrong with you just creating a silly word document on the server or OneDrive or whatever. Wait a day. Delete it and make sure that you are getting able to get that thing restored. Same way to make sure all your protection play from cyber most of the people out there will provide a free penetration testing. What that looks like is sending fake fishing attempts to your employees and contractors and saying, Are they clicking on it or not? So you got to make sure that, like the solutions that you guys have in place are actually do what they’re supposed to be doing. I
Steve Fretzin [12:45]
mean, is that the most obvious and clear way that a law firm or a lawyer would be breached would be those phishing scams, those links that we click, that we get on our email, in our in our phones. Or what would you say are the top or most common ways law firms get breached?
Frank Stephens [12:58]
Yeah, so the four, there’s four attack vectors, is what we call it. So you’ve got endpoints, which is a server computer, laptop, right? So if I’m at a Starbucks, someone could attack that. Someone might try to, you know, download something off of a web browser or something like that, and attack it. So that’s attack vectors.
Steve Fretzin [13:17]
Is that, because you’re on their internet, for example, or correct? Yeah,
Frank Stephens [13:20]
correct, yeah. I mean unsecured,
Steve Fretzin [13:23]
unsecured network,
Frank Stephens [13:24]
unsecured network. Or if I’m at home, that happens a lot. I’m sitting at home, I’m not behind my intrusion detection at the office, and I start downloading stuff, I’m vulnerable from that the the next thing I would say is going back to the cloud based accounts making sure that that stuff is locked down and secure. That is common, but phishing attempts is the absolute number one way I believe it’s, I mean, you could depend upon where who you read. It’s anywhere between 89 and, like, up to 93% of all successful hacks are because if someone clicked on something from the phishing perspective,
Steve Fretzin [13:59]
yeah, and I’m, you know what, what I’m getting, I’m just gonna put it out there maybe between, you know, three and five times a day is, when will you be home? Or, you know, did you want? Are you gonna get back to me?
Frank Stephens [14:12]
Yes,
Steve Fretzin [14:12]
question mark. And I’m just like,
Frank Stephens [14:14]
yeah,
Steve Fretzin [14:14]
there’s no name, there’s a weird number. And I think they’re just, they’re literally fishing for you to like, what, have a conversation, to, like, build a life together. No,
Frank Stephens [14:22]
100% Yeah. I mean, they’re so the cool thing is not the cool thing, but a lot of these guys, they’re using multiple pieces to understand who you are, right? So like, and I could tell you horror stories, but like, they’re calling your office after hours to understand your voice, and they’re pulling that voice and going to use that as an attack mechanism. They’re going to look at your LinkedIn, they’re going to see who you’re connected to your organization. And it’s not like it’s a human doing that. That’s the downside of AI. They’re basically saying, Hey, I’m going to use, I’m going to hit this firm and go to town and do a social network piece of it to pull it all together so that they can’t send you fair. Very sophisticated things they’re going to find out, hey, do you like FedEx? Maybe follow FedEx. Odds are, then you’re probably using FedEx in your office. They’re going to start hitting you up with some fake phishing attempts from FedEx. And these guys are getting super smart. So no matter what system you have in place, spam protection, whatever, the biggest thing is, you need to be doing ongoing security awareness training for the employees. Yeah, hey
Steve Fretzin [15:26]
everybody, your next big client might call it 8pm on a Saturday night. The question is, who’s picking up with Lex reception? A real person answers every call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so you never miss a lead, no matter when they reach out, no AI agents, no voicemail, just professional legal, literate receptionist representing your firm the right way around the clock and right now, be that lawyer. Listeners get 250 off their first month. Visit www, dot lex reception.com/partners/be, that lawyer to claim your offer that’s www, dot lex reception.com/partner/v.lawyer. Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here [email protected] They don’t just market law firms. They help them grow from connecting millions of consumers to trusted lawyers to smarter intake and industry leading events, they’re building stronger connections across legal visibility, intake events, growth. That’s lawyer.com Check them out today with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality. The best firms, higher rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic in cases, other law firm, marketing agencies can’t deliver, get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today, and something you didn’t mention that I’m curious about is, you know, passwords, and then there’s all these password protectors, and there’s two step verification, and then there’s also, like, using fingerprints and face ID, and is that going to be a problem? And now my computer has my thumbprint or my fingerprint. Someone hacks my computer. Now they’ve got my fingerprints, right? What are you seeing on how do people I think maybe, just to summarize that a little better, is mainly just around passwords. I think people generally are pretty terrible about passwords.
Frank Stephens [17:24]
They’re horrendous. You’d be surprised how many clients we have where their passwords are still on their monitors, right? My username is password and my password is password, right? Yeah, yeah, right. So, I mean, we could talk for hours on that, but you know, you should absolutely have a strong password. That’s step one, it should not be characters and stuff on a specific thing, upper, lower, complex passwords, anything over 10 characters, they’re ideal. Then you have to have a something secondary, so multi factor authentication, or two of a that’s where, if you go to log into a system and it doesn’t recognize you, if so so someone does have your user ID and password, they still need a second step. So it’s either going to be send you a message, you can use the Microsoft authenticator, which is totally free, where it has every 60 or 30 seconds rotating keys that you have to put in. But even if you have that, Steve, the scary part is, if they infiltrate your machine and you’ve already logged on and you’ve done multifather authentication, you get what’s called a security token. So if I come to your computer, I put in my user, writing password, my Microsoft account, I get my code. That token resides on that machine, typically for 30 to 45 dates.
Steve Fretzin [18:32]
Oh no.
Frank Stephens [18:32]
If your machine gets hacked and they grab that token, they put on their machine, they have completely bypass MFA.
Steve Fretzin [18:40]
Guys, I just want to share with you, if you’re listening right now, this could be the most depressing show we’ve ever done, and maybe the most important and valuable. Frank, I’m not, I’m not trying to grab on our show, but it’s just I everyone that’s listening just like their their heart just sank into their stomach, because there’s so many different ways we can get screwed, and I don’t know that any of us individually are really covering our bases well enough, so maybe it’s time to flip into what are the top two or three suggestions that we all should be doing to protect law firms, to just protect ourselves individually.
Frank Stephens [19:14]
So have a cybersecurity stack that cover all the vectors that we talked about. So quality, firewall, endpoint protection, spam protection, that’s outside of Microsoft and Google, like they do a good job, but even themselves, like, Hey, we’re not the best.
Steve Fretzin [19:29]
Yeah,
Frank Stephens [19:30]
all your cloud solutions have to have MFA. You should absolutely be then all the users security awareness training. And then point that’s point number one. Point number two, you need to be partnering with someone who’s not just going to provide you with those solutions, but they have a security operations center, what’s called a SOC, and that’s bringing the logs and monitoring and management of all those items that I talked about, so they can correlate the data. So in the event that someone is doing absolutely what they’re supposed to be doing, but. They slip up. Once they grab that token, the bells go off, and things get locked down appropriately. And then you could do remediation,
Steve Fretzin [20:08]
yeah, yeah, that’s really it like I get upset, but also I’m happy when, you know, my something will pop up, you know, this person in, you know, in Spain, is, you know, trying to get into your, you know, Instagram account or something like that.
Frank Stephens [20:24]
Yes,
Steve Fretzin [20:25]
you know, go in and change the password. If this is not, you go in and chat. I’m like, Damn right away, and I go in and change the password. I feel like, Thank God that. You know, banks have been doing that for years, right? With your online account. There’s something fishy going on, but it’s just scary. And so we really, we really have to take, take, you know, little extra time to protect ourselves. And so if you, if you’re listening, and you don’t have someone in your corner, or you have an IT company, and they haven’t gone through all of this with you, I’m going to say, either go back to them and ask, or just reach out to Frank, because you clearly, everything is riding on, you know, similar, like health insurance, right? It just takes one bad illness or one bad accident and you’re, you’re bankrupt. And here, this could take away everything from you, even if you’re the best lawyer, best business developer, but you lose everything because of a slip up. Um, that’s not, that’s not, you know, a great way, you know, great way to go down,
Frank Stephens [21:18]
yeah.
Steve Fretzin [21:18]
So, all right, let’s move to more positive subjects. What are you working with law firms on in tech? From a technology standpoint, that’s making them more efficient and more money right now, like, obviously, there’s a lot of ACE AI stuff coming on, but there’s just generally legal tech that is just there, that’s all about making them more efficient. What are you helping them with
Frank Stephens [21:38]
on that? Yeah, so from an AI perspective, we’re not we’re always relying we’re telling people, talk to the vendors and software vendors that you’re working with for your practice management, your document, your billing and all that we’re we’re we’re we’re filling the gap is helping them make that transition. And what I mean by that is the software vendors and partners will come in, will help do the analysis, meaning, like, Hey, let me take a look at which projects you guys want to look at. And we’re we’re basically quarterbacking, doing the project management, and helping them get to that to that next level. So there’s a lot of cool solutions out there that makes them more efficient. But the problem is, is that project going to take a year and a half, or if you work with the quality partner, maybe it’s going to get down to three months, and you can really start taking advantage of that. So that’s some of the stuff that we’re doing. The other piece is that remote piece, we have a lot of law practices that they want to be in multiple locations at the same time, and so a lot of them, what they’re doing, essentially, is they’re either getting remote offices or they’re spinning up smaller offices throughout the entire area. And so how do you handle that connectivity between them all to have access to that so we’ve got a couple of cool solutions, either site to site. VPNs. We’re spinning up a server that they can all remote into so they have quick and easy access to their applications and data, so that they’re not pulling those large amounts of data. Because a lot of problems are they’ll say, hey, we want to be able to travel. We want to be able to go wherever, right? And that VPN connection super slow to access their practice management, their document management, so we’re giving them those capabilities of hopping in there pretty quickly on remote sessions.
Steve Fretzin [23:21]
Is there newer legal tech or cloud tech or whatever that is that you’re implementing to help firms save money? Like, you look at what their what their monthly spend is on, on their current vendor or their current system, and you’re like, this is, you know, either outdated or this is just not what’s new and and they could be, you know, losing 1000s or 10s of $1,000 a year.
Frank Stephens [23:43]
Yeah, so there’s a couple things that we’re doing, from a cost savings perspective, that we do for all of our clients that are managed it clients is we will take their technology bills, whether it be their VoIP, their internet connection, or their Microsoft and licensing, and we are making sure that they’re reviewing them and provide them other options. So one thing that everybody and this is, here’s a great Knowledge Nugget for everyone. Our friends at Microsoft are jacking up their prices in July anywhere, depending upon what you have, between 11 and 12% up to 33% you should be reviewing your Microsoft licensing, or all vendors for that matter, on a monthly basis, you would be shocked at how many people will say, hey, we let an attorney go or a paralegal go, and they just shut down the account, and these licenses continuously build up. We just did something for a client that we acquired. I’m like, Oh, don’t you guys review that? Like we haven’t had that chance. So at the end of every month, all of our clients get that, we ended up saving them 700 and like, $30 a month, like, that’s real money, and they weren’t getting anything out of it, right? So there’s always cost savings to be made from on a tech side that we help our clients with.
Steve Fretzin [24:52]
And something I ask a lot of the marketing agency people that I have on this show is how. Should people be evaluating legal tech vendors that could be you, that could be a software, that could be whatever, but what do you recommend that they should be learning and asking and identifying and early in the meeting to know that they’re dealing with a reputable and strong player in the space?
Frank Stephens [25:18]
That’s a really good question outside of the referral,
Steve Fretzin [25:21]
my first rodeo, my friend,
Frank Stephens [25:22]
yeah, right, yeah, right outside of everyone given just positive referrals. Anyway. That’s a tough question, because, you know, the people should be going in, not trying to sell solutions or or products or anything like that. But the person who you’re speaking with is x, you know, they’re asking, What are your business needs, and how can we apply technology to solve them or solve a problem that’s a that’s a big differentiator, if they care or not, and if they be a great partner or not.
Steve Fretzin [25:51]
Is it also like longevity in the business? Is it also like, how many like law firms they work with? Like, I get it that, you know it, is it or this, that and the other but,
Frank Stephens [26:00]
yeah,
Steve Fretzin [26:01]
I, I think lawyers, you know, I know this from experience that they they like working with specialists, people that know that they’re special little snowflakes, and they want to know that someone has experience, right? So, like, when I started doing this with lawyers, I think I was in 50 industries, and so you would ask me, like, you know, what experience do you have working with lawyers and law firms? I think I did that. Fake it to you, make it thing. But ultimately, you know, you know, a year half later, it’s 80, 85% of my business. And I’m very confident talking to law firms and lawyers about my experience. But what’s your take on is that, I mean, is that another piece of the puzzle is, like, you know, their experience and background?
Frank Stephens [26:38]
Yeah, it is so and not to put down lawyers, but they are less technical than they think
Steve Fretzin [26:44]
they are. No, I think
Steve Fretzin [26:46]
that,
Frank Stephens [26:47]
yeah, they do know that. They know they need to,
Steve Fretzin [26:50]
yeah,
Frank Stephens [26:50]
yeah. And so they are. Now they’re going to hate me, right? But I just
Steve Fretzin [26:56]
agree with you, and I just told them they attack you too. So you’re
Frank Stephens [26:59]
Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [26:59]
you’re all safe, man. So
Frank Stephens [27:01]
what we do with a lot of law firms that we don’t do with other industries, to be perfectly honest, we will lock down their environments. And what I mean by that is they only get they do not have administrative access to their laptops or computers, because they will go out and they will install stuff that they shouldn’t be installing. They will Google something and look, oh, that looks legit, but it really isn’t. And so we can put all the barriers in place, but if they’re clicking and stopping doing stuff that they shouldn’t be doing, they’re going to hurt themselves. So I will say that there are some things that, yeah, we we’ve managed, I don’t know about 20 law firms, like a lot. We understand their applications. We understand the connectivity and the integrations that they have with whatever they with whatever they’re using. We understand the pains of the silly plugins into their word and an outlook that continuously break. I don’t know why people can’t fix that, but we’re aware of that stuff, and we do a really good job in managing that. So they should. I go back to your question, having familiarity with a practice and law firms and their technology needs and how they operate is a huge thing for when you’re picking up a provider
Steve Fretzin [28:11]
well. But I also liked what you said, and I’m a big proponent of this. If somebody’s out trying to push a product on you, a service on you, sell you stuff without really getting to know what your needs are. I mean, that seems like common sense, but there’s a lot of lawyers and a lot of vendors out there that aren’t really doing a proper diagnosis and evaluation, and I think that leads, that leads to problems.
Frank Stephens [28:31]
Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [28:32]
hey, man, we got to wrap up. But I have to know what’s Frank’s big mistake
Frank Stephens [28:36]
you did prep me for this. I got a lot of, lot of mistakes. The one mistake that I had probably in within my organization, and I learned this probably about four or five years ago. So pretty recent is I did not understand delegation properly within my organization, and I’ve had to learn in the last four years that was a big undertaking for me. I hired a general manager. I had to build out my structure and basically let let go of the reins and put faith in other people. So if you are a business owner, learn to delegate and trust other people. They are absolutely not going to do the same work, that they’re not going to do it the way I would do it,
Steve Fretzin [29:14]
yeah.
Frank Stephens [29:15]
But without doing that, I inhibited myself years ago from scaling and growth,
Steve Fretzin [29:20]
yeah, and that’s, I mean, that’s a great there’s a lot of great lessons that have come out of this, this question on the show, and I think that’s one that every, every lawyer, especially law firm owner, needs to and, you know, I do these Rainmaker round tables, and this comes up on a regular basis, and they’re like, I’m so successful. Why am I working so hard? Well, you haven’t let go of enough. They’re still the king of the castle, and you’ve still got all the tentacles of of you know, everybody reporting to you instead of letting go some things, it’s hard, yeah, really, really, great stuff. Well, let’s take a moment. Thank our wonderful sponsors, of course, lawyer.com a phenomenal directory there rankings, io and pimcon coming up in October, and. And Lex reception. You know, again, you got to get you got to automate and delegate. Well, why do you have receptionists that you’re paying all this money to? And you can do it virtually through Lex. And of course, the be the lawyer community I mentioned the beginning of the show. Check that out at be that lawyer.com and you’ll see what’s up. It’s a really cool way to get in, engaged with us, in a very easy way. And for your associates, anyone that in your world that wants to start getting going on business development, it’s not a full blown program like I work with, you know, with rainmakers on and stuff, but it’s a great way to start getting in the groove and getting on the right track. So Frank, people want to get in touch with you. They’d loved everything you said, especially the scary stuff and and they wanted to reach out to you. How do they get how do they find you?
Frank Stephens [30:42]
Yeah, email or sell. So my email is Frank at online cts.com, and you can call my cell phone. I don’t usually give that out, but if you’re, if you’re a fan of Steve, then I will give it out. You can reach me at 847-894-6304,
Steve Fretzin [30:59]
yeah, and you mentioned me offline, that off the show that you like being called late at night, 1011, 12. You mentioned, I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. Don’t do that, to poor Frank, but thanks, man. I so appreciate you coming on the show. And as scary as some of this stuff is, I think the point and the takeaway is it’s all things that we can manage if we have the right partner in our corner, if we do the smart things and don’t just, you know, suffer silently, let’s get, you know, good people in our corners. And I appreciate you being that good person.
Frank Stephens [31:28]
Thank you for having me, yeah,
Steve Fretzin [31:29]
yeah, absolutely. Thank you everybody for hanging out for the last 30 and, you know, getting, you know, we don’t normally talk about these kinds of subjects on a show about growth, but you can’t grow, and you can’t be that lawyer and be the success that you want to be if you’re being pulled back by technology that’s holding you back or that’s putting you in your firm and your your life at risk. So let’s just take a step back and get those passwords protected and have an expert like Frank look at our stuff and just make sure that we’re not being exposed. And I think that’s that’s all about helping you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker, take care. Everybody. Be safe and well, and we will talk again so very soon.
Narrator [32:10]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, 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.