What happens when a probate litigator stops chasing every matter and starts designing a firm that can grow without them? In this episode, you’ll hear how Shawn Kerendian scaled a niche trust and estate litigation practice by saying no to the wrong work, obsessing over infrastructure, and using EOS, OKRs, and tech to build a truly scalable law firm.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Shawn Kerendian discuss:
- Choosing a narrow niche in trust and estate litigation
- Protecting capacity to pursue business development and opportunities
- Scaling from 20 to 40+ people and rebuilding firm infrastructure
- Implementing EOS, OKRs, and KPIs as a single operating system
- Tech stack, AI experimentation, and branding for talent and referrals
Key Takeaways:
- Protecting time and capacity—rather than maximizing short-term billables—creates room to pursue the opportunities that actually grow a firm.
- Committing to a narrow niche makes it easier to become the go‑to expert, generate referrals, and collaborate with other specialists.
- Rapid headcount growth without parallel investment in management, systems, and infrastructure eventually exposes serious strain on both clients and employees.
- Running on a single operating system with clear objectives, key results, and KPIs turns firm management from reactive chaos into a predictable rhythm.
- The biggest hiring risk isn’t moving too slowly—it’s bringing in the wrong people, which can damage culture, client service, and the morale of everyone who stays.
“The biggest mistake was chasing growth without worrying about the right people or the right fit.” — Shawn Kerendian
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About Shawn Kerendian: Shawn Kerendian is a probate litigator and the founder and Managing Partner of Keystone Law Group, P.C. He specializes in trust, estate, and conservatorship litigation, representing trustees, beneficiaries, and heirs in complex probate disputes. By narrowing his firm’s focus exclusively to probate litigation, Kerendian scaled Keystone Law Group into a premier niche practice while implementing modern business frameworks—such as EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), OKRs, and business intelligence tech—to streamline operations, law firm management, and sustainable team growth.
Connect with Shawn Kerendian:
Website: https://keystone-law.com/firm/attorneys/shawn-s-kerendian
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-kerendian-0b88ab16/
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, just want to remind you that the Be That Lawyer community is up and running and rock and rolling. We have a lot of amazing business developer and rainmaking attorneys in there. We’ve got incredible content, courses, live events, and all kinds of ways to help you to be that lawyer. Check it out today at bethatlawyer.com/community and other than that, please enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:29]
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.
Steve Fretzin [00:51]
Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here and welcome to the Be That Lawyer podcast. You know, we’ve been doing this a while and I absolutely love love love interviewing top rainmakers and managing partners and people that have kind of seen it from every angle. And that’s what this show is bringing to you twice a week every week now for about seven years. This is how you build your book, you own your future, and you be that lawyer. So I’ve got Shawn waiting in the wings. How’s it going, my friend? Good to see you, Steve. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, link a buddy from ProVisors, everybody. So shout out to our friends at ProVisors. We’re big ProVisors guys and group leaders and you had me out to speak at your group recently too, which was lovely. Yeah, well you spoke both to my team in
Shawn Kerendian [01:30]
Vegas, my partners, and then I invited you to speak to my group, the Westwood group. If anyone’s a ProVisors member, come visit us. We meet on Tuesdays, third Tuesday of every month. So I’m going to pitch that. But yeah, it was great. You gave that great presentation on the power of LinkedIn and networking and all that you do that’s helped me and a lot of my team.
Steve Fretzin [01:50]
Yeah, I the only mistake I made was I I did a terrible job of scheduling my trip to Vegas, so I ended up I didn’t have a chance to play blackjack. It was like the most beautiful day outside in Vegas. I didn’t even like I just opened the window a crack like a dog and sniffed out the window before heading to the airport. So if I had to make the takeover do over, I probably would have stayed an extra day.
Shawn Kerendian [02:09]
You got to make some time. You got to play some golf, you know, they got some good courses out there, play some blackjack.
Steve Fretzin [02:14]
But I was thrilled to come out and see you and meet your team. You have a lovely group of people and incredible firm. So, but let’s jump into it. I mean, people are really excited to hear what you’re going to say today and of course, we have to start off with our quote of the show. And this is funny because we we kind of agreed on a theme of the quote, but we didn’t have a quote, so we just kind of came up with one that we thought would be good and it’s: You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are full of yesterday’s junk. So, again, welcome to the show and tell us why you like that quote?
Shawn Kerendian [02:41]
Yeah, I mean, early on, I kind of had an entrepreneurial mindset. I knew that I think I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. It stuck with me early on and I knew that I wanted to create something that was not going to be reliant solely on me. And one thing I learned early on, I think it was from a mentor of mine in business, and he always said that you have to open up your time in order to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. And if you’re so busy in the day-to-day of your work, wonderful opportunities are going to pass by, and you’re not going to have the ability to evaluate and potentially strike on that opportunity. So I took that to heart, and you know, very early on, I intentionally sacrificed earning capability. Don’t take on a client because I don’t have the capacity because I need to do business development as part of this time. So that really stuck with me early on. It’s something I, to this day, I adopt.
Steve Fretzin [03:39]
Yeah, and it’s it’s going to lead into our topic in a few minutes of working on the business, not just in the business. But everybody, just so you guys know who we’re talking to here, Shawn is the managing partner of Keystone Law Group, and how long have you run that? Is it like 14 years or something? Or
Shawn Kerendian [03:57]
Yeah, February 2014 is when we opened our doors, so it’s been 12 years now.
Steve Fretzin [04:02]
Okay, amazing. Give us a little background how you came to be in growing that practice, growing that firm.
Shawn Kerendian [04:07]
Yeah, so we’re a trust and estate boutique litigation practice. We don’t do any planning, we just do the litigation and administration side of trust and estate, so it’s very small, very niche. We opened our doors with myself, one other attorney, my partner Verlan Quan, one legal assistant, and my wife, Biana, who turned out, unbeknownst to me at that time, to be my secret weapon. But we started, and my I was working in the business, you have to be at that size, you’re in the mix of every legal task, every decision. I was handling and supervising the cases. But again, I still made time for business development, and that’s what led what I like to call those first six years from 2014 to 2020. It’s like our first phase of Keystone. It’s kind of our manageable growth period. We grew at about an attorney and a half every year, and, you know, I had Biana, and we kind of co-ran different aspects of the firm, account receivables, HR. She has an HR background. She worked for professional service firms in in tax and law. So, she ran that side, and I ran the legal side and the marketing side, and things were great. I mean, it was super manageable. By the end of 2020, I think we were around 12 or 15 people. And I think I was spending around a third of my time in management, and the rest doing legal work, so I was still in the weeds of things, and things were great.
Steve Fretzin [05:35]
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier that, you know, you guys are highly specialized, and I think when I met you and talked with your firm, I was super impressed that you guys had done that. Is that where you started, or is that what you sort of figured out over time that you guys could niche down into that? Or was that something from the beginning that you started and never let go?
Shawn Kerendian [05:52]
It was what I started with, right. Yeah, we didn’t do planning at all, even though most competitors in the industry do both, and it’s very natural to do both. I get calls all the time from people like offering me estate plans. I’m happy to refer those out because we wanted to be known as the specialist litigation firm in town, because there was a gap, I thought, in that service. I think there was very few probate litigators doing that exclusively. There were civil litigators dabbling in probate, and some planners doing some litigation, but there weren’t there were very few 100% dedicated probate litigators, and I thought there was a need for that.
Steve Fretzin [06:31]
Yeah. And I think that’s not the typical trajectory. I mean, seeing an opportunity and and a gap in the market and taking it, yes, I kind of see that. But most lawyers, right, they grab everything. And then over time, when they realize, you know, 80% of their business is here, 60% is there, then they start to like whittle away and figure out, Hey, let’s jump in and now that we know something, versus sort of seeing it from the get-go. So that’s kind of unique.
Shawn Kerendian [06:56]
I think so, and, you know, from a from a client’s perspective, feels good to hear that this is all we do, we don’t do any other form of work. If you called me for some other like a plan or something even similar to it, I will happily turn you away to someone who’s a specialist in that area, but this is what we do. And if we encounter a client who’s going through a trust a trust contest, a bad fiduciary dispute with a trustee, not getting their inheritance, we can tell them exactly why we’re the best team for the job. Well, and
Steve Fretzin [07:30]
one of the issues that comes up with either generalist attorneys, a general litigator, general transactional, whatever it might be, or even an estate planner that does, you know, has a full-service firm behind that individual, it makes it more challenging for them to network because they’re not going to be able to really give away a lot of referrals because they have to kind of hoard it all and get the origination all in. And when you’re a specialist, you can then work with people who are specialists or work with a lot of other people and get those referrals on the things they don’t do.
Shawn Kerendian [07:58]
100%. And ProVisors, going back to that for a second, you know, walk in as a guest to 95% of ProVisors groups that don’t have a trust and estate litigator, but they have a planner. So, it’s, you know, it’s a great network there to go in and start drum up business development.
Steve Fretzin [08:15]
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier, you keep bringing up things early that I have to bring back, which is lovely. But that there was like some transition that you had around working in the business to then working like on the business. So tell us a little bit about how that shift occurred in your world, where you kind of either had a realization or it just happened more naturally as you got more support.
Shawn Kerendian [08:36]
Yeah, so, you know, to mention, to reiterate, I was always willing to spend more time on the business, but
Steve Fretzin [08:44]
being
Shawn Kerendian [08:45]
a 15-person firm in 2020, there wasn’t enough management work, right? So I, you know, I tried to build my craft of being the best attorney I can be. COVID hit and that’s when we had a substantial growth. I have some numbers. I think we went from 21 people to 42 in a matter of two years. So we had grown to 21 in six years, and then 21 to 42 in two years. And the demand was just came flooding in, right? And my initial reaction was, we need more attorneys, we need more legal assistants, we need more paralegals, and that’s what we did. We wanted to meet that demand. And oftentimes we couldn’t meet that demand because we have a certain level of quality that we want to have at the firm, and we just didn’t hire everyone who’s available and they have to go through a vetting process. And one of the most painful things we had to do was stop accepting cases during this period because we didn’t have the legal staff to manage it. So, that was crazy period. I mean, we hired 21 people in 24 months. So, our recruiting team was just exhausted. But what I realized at the end of that period, by the end of 2022, was that I had an infrastructure in place for 20 people. I didn’t have an infrastructure in place for 42 people. So, I stopped even accepting We limited the growth from 23 23 to 25, we created a plan. We put together a three-year plan. So this is not sustainable. We’re, we’re getting, the management is where we lack the capacity. We had a lot of attorneys. We were servicing our clients, but we weren’t support, supporting our employees as much as we could have during that time. So I paused our growth. I said we can’t grow more than maybe an attorney or max two a year from 23 to 25. We need to build out our infrastructure and we need to do that thoughtfully.
Steve Fretzin [10:48]
And so there are lawyers who are starting out with no infrastructure and then they get a tech stack and then they bring in an assistant or they bring in an attorney and they eventually they’ve got this little baby firm, right, that they’re building up. At what point does someone that has a couple people start, should you have started building that infrastructure for that scalability earlier, or did you, it just had to happen when it happened?
Shawn Kerendian [11:12]
I think I could have done it. So we had a pretty good infrastructure for 15, 20 people at around that time. So I was building it as I went along. I added a software, we promoted one of our legal assistants to manager, we brought in some extra support. So we were doing that. I think that once you hit 30 people, I’d say, things materially change, right? And maybe even 35, 40, things materially change. So what we’ve done during that three-year period, 23 to 25, we built our departments, we documented exactly what each department was responsible for, we hired directors to lead each department, so we have accounting, HR, operations, marketing, technology, and legal, and legal, the partners handle the legal work, but we needed a director for each of the other five departments. So we built that out, we built out the management team, and that took a ton of strain off myself and my wife and our other manager Anna. Her light went off, sorry about that. So that was the goal, and we barely grew in the number of attorneys during that period of time because that wasn’t our focus and we were okay with that. Did we generate Did we meet all of our revenue aspirations during that period? No, but that was completely fine because now what we’ve done and where we are in 2026 now, having completed that three-year plan to build the infrastructure, is we have the ability to scale with at least probably 10 or 15 more attorneys without substantially affecting our management structure. We’ll have to build like more legal assistants and and some legal staff, but otherwise, our management team is in a really prime position for scale.
Steve Fretzin [12:55]
So it sounds like what a lot of firms do at your size and and moving up from there is they’ll bring in a COO, they’ll bring in a CEO, they’ll bring in department heads that manage things so that you, as the managing partner, aren’t being pulled into 1,000 directions in areas that aren’t allowing you to either stay out and grow business or manage, you know, manage the leadership and be there for the team. But I mean, any other things that you would say helped you, you know, kind of make sure that this is this is is scalable beyond where you are?
Shawn Kerendian [13:27]
100%. Yeah. So first, it’s about the people. You’re not going to get away with bringing in the wrong people to the firm. So first and foremost, the right fit, the right people, the right seats. I’m quoting a book, and I’ll tell you about it later, but
Steve Fretzin [13:43]
Is it Traction?
Shawn Kerendian [13:45]
Traction. Gino Oh, I know.
Steve Fretzin [13:46]
I know. You say seats, and you don’t have to say anymore. Like I It’s like a name that tune, but with words, and yeah, I’m a big EOS guy, and I took out a lot of it, but I started with An EOS guy helped convince me to not have run not run four businesses at once and take it down to one. And They’re amazing
Shawn Kerendian [14:04]
resources.
Steve Fretzin [14:05]
Yeah.
Shawn Kerendian [14:05]
They’re amazing resources. I worked with Kevin Kevin Baum, B-A-U-M. A shout-out to him. He introduced me to the book, and having one operating system. So on that front, I was like, What is our operating system? And I’m not Like we use OKRs, objectives and key results, and we love it, and it works great for us. I don’t think that it’s going to be mind-blowingly better than maybe some other systems, but I strongly believe you need to have one operating system at this level. Because what I started to realize, like, great, I have the people in place. We added some systems, some tasking systems, we had a phenomenal legal practice management solution that we did a lot of custom work for to build to our specification, so we had a lot of that. Tech side was like my thing, and that was always being built concurrently. But what I didn’t have was a way to oversee the directors and also give us one common. Direction, one common language, one common operating system that we’re all working towards, and that’s where the OKR system and Gino Wickman’s book Traction was a game changer for us. Yeah, we implemented that, and you know it took a year to or two even to get familiar with how that stuff works, to get into that mindset, really start relying on what KPIs do we have? How do we measure a successful endeavor to improve something? Right. So it takes a couple years to build that foundation, but once you’re there, now it’s like clockwork. Now we have our quarterly check-ins and bi-weekly meetings or bi-monthly meetings, and it’s game changer. Hey
Steve Fretzin [15:42]
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Shawn Kerendian [18:10]
I agree, actually. I think having that knowledge at the outset would have done a lot. I would have avoided a lot of the problems because I would have known that I needed something bigger and more sophisticated down the line, rather than getting bigger and then figuring that out after the fact. But it’s funny you mentioned you had so many ideas. That was I had chills when you said that because I remember that is a that was a huge problem of mine. I would come up with these ideas, and every idea in my head when I come up with is the best idea I’ve ever thought of, right?
Steve Fretzin [18:39]
Yeah. Yeah.
Shawn Kerendian [18:40]
And I want everything, everyone to just stop what they’re doing, drop what you’re doing, and start working on this immediately. And it was a it was a disaster.
Steve Fretzin [18:47]
Yeah. I knew I couldn’t
Shawn Kerendian [18:49]
operate that way.
Steve Fretzin [18:49]
Yep. So it was a great checks and balances on myself. Like put it in the list, and we’ll we’ll discuss it. Does it meet our three-year plan? Does it meet our yearly plans? Does it meet our quarterly objectives? And if it does, it can fit in. If not, we can plan for it next year. Right. Yeah, I think I call it the shiny penny syndrome or something, just always stopping to pick up a shiny penny when, you know, maybe stumbling over dollars to get them. It’s not It’s just not a good way to go. You, We’ve talked a little bit about scaling and bringing in good people and and, how that’s changed things. How about your tech stack, your software, like how What are you using to run the firm that’s allowing you to keep control of everything as as you build out as far as you built?
Shawn Kerendian [19:33]
Yeah, we can we can spend a couple hours on this, honestly, if you want. Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a passion of mine. So, I’ve been involved in a lot of the the selecting, the the configuring, the how the systems talk to each other. But our first buy was a was a legal practice management solution called Curo 365. It’s built on Microsoft Dynamics. It’s a CRM, super customizable. You know, every other program platform was very limited on customizations, and I hope you can tell now that I just don’t like out-of-the-box stuff. I want to customize things that are going to work for my firm and work for me. So, I went with that, and then, you know, once we started bringing in the directors and we had all this staff, how are you going to manage all this work? We needed a project management or tasking system. And, you know, a lot of law firms go with law-specific software. We went with Asana, which is like one of the bigger companies, and we hired a consultant, and we customized it. Now, fast forward many years and lots of hours invested into it, pretty much every piece of work that happens at Keystone, whether it’s the legal team or the accounting team or the HR team, it’s been pre-thought through. There’s a template with all subtasks assigned to different people launched, and everyone has their role. So, there’s a process. It gets followed. There are specific instructions in each one of those to control quality so everyone knows. You know, we spent a whole year—I think it was last year—documenting every single one of our processes, and it was the best thing we did.
Steve Fretzin [21:14]
Yeah.
Shawn Kerendian [21:14]
So, there’s Asana. There’s there’s Curo. We, and, yeah. Oh, and I mean, is AI is a Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
Steve Fretzin [21:24]
I was going to say, is AI throwing a wrench into this? Like, you get all this stuff put together and then somebody says, Oh, by the way, there’s now this thing that’s going to change the game for everybody. That kind of throw you for a loop or no? No, it’s been great. It just enhances
Shawn Kerendian [21:37]
things. Yeah. And it’s overwhelming because it can do so much, yet it has so many limitations. And you really have to understand those limitations and capabilities in order to utilize it to its fullest extent. But, you know, another couple hires that we did on our tech team, we brought a business intelligence analyst who’s now our director of tech and then bringing in a software developer in-house to expedite a lot of this. So now, we’re we’re kind of evaluating whether to build our own internal AI. Do we use a lot of the ones that are available in the market and just tweak it? So we’re going through some actually really interesting tests right now on the capabilities of five or six different ones and and evaluating which ones are going to work for us, so it’s exciting times.
Steve Fretzin [22:24]
Yeah, awesome. I mean, I I you and I talked earlier, I work with about I don’t know, 20 to 30 managing partners around the country in these rainmaker roundtables I run, and the number one challenge they’re all having right now is people, is finding good associates and stuff. Is that happening in your space or is your space, you know, fluid with new talent?
Shawn Kerendian [22:46]
No, it’s talent is the the the biggest the biggest and most important resource. So you’re right in line
Steve Fretzin [22:51]
with them. Okay, okay. And then is there anything you’re doing differently to try to find the talent or are you okay on talent right now?
Shawn Kerendian [22:57]
We are currently not accepting cases because we are at capacity, and so we won’t we won’t accept new cases unless we feel like we can service them, and we just can’t. So, no, it’s a problem, but AI may be able to help with some of that by taking some of the legal workload off of the team and allow us to do more for less and help more people. So that’s one of the things that we’re investing heavily in right now.
Steve Fretzin [23:21]
Okay. I mean, are you other than recruiters, are you doing anything creative to try to bring in new people, or are you comfortable with the team that you have, and you’re not really looking to grow?
Shawn Kerendian [23:30]
We’ve have We’ve like looked everywhere, and
Steve Fretzin [23:33]
tried everything. So you are looking to grow. It’s just it’s it’s hard for everybody. Okay.
Shawn Kerendian [23:36]
Yeah, like the quarterly rocks, we’ve probably had 15 on different recruiting methods. Right, explored all of them. But, you know, again, we’re we’re also There’s people out there, but we’re also pretty picky.
Steve Fretzin [23:46]
Yeah.
Shawn Kerendian [23:47]
We want good long-term fits for us and for them, because, you know, one of the things, and maybe save this for later, but one of the things that’s going to be more problematic is bringing in the wrong people.
Steve Fretzin [23:58]
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, yes. There’s nothing nothing worse than bringing in someone who who doesn’t really fit the environment, the culture, and it it takes everything away, including your time, and money, and energy. Well, that’s that’s amazing. The the thing I was going to share too is I had this I don’t know if this blew my client’s mind, but I just mentioned that their website, their LinkedIn, their branding is for the firm, and I said, Are you branding for talent? And the person was like, What? I was like, Yeah, there’s like there’s more than branding for new business, right? There’s branding to like show your culture, to show what an incredible workplace this is, the systems you have. How much better is it working for you than at a mid-market or big firm where you have no life, and maybe you’re making a couple of shekels more, but you’re not happy in any way, shape, or form? And that branding hits that person the right way, the right time, and he was like, Holy crap, like, yeah! Like how do I do that? So that was our next our next call. But is are you doing anything around that?
Shawn Kerendian [24:57]
Yeah, we have a careers page where we’ve outlined everything you just mentioned. We have some we invested in video where we highlight what it’s like to be an associate, what it’s like to be a senior associate, what it’s like to be a partner. We have a lot of women attorneys, and we highlight their accomplishments and we have a lot of women in management and upper management and the executive committee. So, you know, we have a lot of opportunities, and we do try to post more of that on social. I feel like we can always do better and more, but we’re definitely aware of it. You know Mary Beth from my firm, right? So she’s she’s great and she’s got her hands full with a lot of things, but that’s on her plate as well to do more of that.
Steve Fretzin [25:40]
There you go. Okay. And I guess two questions left. One is, you know, for our ProVisors friends, what what’s one what’s been the most successful thing that you’ve done being in ProVisors, running a group and everything, to bring in business for yourself? Yes, add value for others. We know that you and I do that, but what has worked for you to actually bring in the business for you and the firm? Yeah, and just to clarify, Stephen Roucher is the the group leader. I’m the
Shawn Kerendian [26:06]
I’m the co-leader, and before that, it was it was G Park. Shout out to both of them. They’re G was great and Steve is is great. Give as much as you can and it’ll come back to you, right? I mean, you hear that and it sounds like a cliché, but it’s 100% true. And what’s great about it is, for the reasons we’ve discussed already, that we’re a specialist and we don’t do a lot, and we get hit up for a lot of different types of things, we are able to give out a lot. Yeah. So that’s been really great. And you know, I this gives me a a trusted set of resources to refer to, right? Because now there’s accountability. You want to make sure you do a good job for your fellow members and and all that. So ProVisors has been great in that regard.
Steve Fretzin [26:48]
If you didn’t say it, I was going to say it, that there’s a lot of people that show up and believe because they show up that they should they deserve or they’re entitled to getting business because they put the money down, they showed up at the meeting, they did the troika, and unfortunately, have to call them professional meeters because they don’t get it. And it’s all about how we build trust through giving and helping and being of service and help to others. So I’m glad that you and I are on the same wavelength there, and and that’s what makes people like us successful in a in a system like, you know, ProVisors. Last question: What’s Shawn’s big mistake? The biggest mistake was chasing growth without
Shawn Kerendian [27:30]
worrying about the right people or the right fit. Hiring the wrong people, it affects so many things. You think you can name those things, sure, culture, it affects camaraderie, it affects clients, it affects your coworkers who stay and have to absorb the work of the person who left. It’s just everything is bad. So, you know, hire fast, fire faster, and go through a much more robust interview process to make sure that the person or persons you’re bringing on are the right fit for both yourself and them. You don’t want to bring someone in who’s not going to have a good experience, right? It’s not beneficial for either side.
Steve Fretzin [28:08]
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Really good. Well, let’s take a moment and thank our incredible sponsors. Of course, PIMCon, the number one personal injury mastermind conference coming up soon in October. We’ve got Lex Reception, so you’re not answering your phones. You’re putting in a system of getting all those calls answered, so you don’t have to pick up the phone. And, of course, Lawyer.com, a great directory to check out, be on, and to check out to refer and to get referred. So, there’s that. Shawn, people want to get in touch with you, Shawn Kerendian?
Shawn Kerendian [28:36]
Kerendian, yeah. Kerendian.
Steve Fretzin [28:37]
And they want to, you know, they want to refer you. They want to, you know, hear more about you, and they want to check you out. What are your digits?
Shawn Kerendian [28:43]
Yeah, just check out our website, keystone-law.com. Our phone number is 310-444-9060. My email is Shawn, S-H-A-W-N, at keystone-law.com. If you want to, referrals are great, but if you want to talk about any of the stuff that we talked about on this podcast, I’m a geek for this stuff and I love business development and operations. If you want to just pick my brain, give me a call.
Steve Fretzin [29:06]
Awesome, man. Good times. Well, thanks for, hey, thanks for having me out to Vegas. Thanks for inviting me to speak at your ProVisors group, and thanks for coming on the podcast. I call this the this must be the everything comes in threes. Hopefully not deaths, but good things come in threes. I appreciate it, man, so much.
Shawn Kerendian [29:22]
I appreciate you having me. This was a lot of fun. Thanks, Steve. Awesome
Steve Fretzin [29:25]
job, awesome job. All right, everybody. Thank you for hanging out with Shawn and I for the last 30. Hopefully took a bunch of things away. Again, whether you’re in big law or you’re solo, one way or the other, it’s important to know, you know, good people and culture and systems and all these things that you, you know, you’re going to either do on your own or help your firm with, helping you to be that lawyer and build that book and grow that and own that future and and be that lawyer, everybody. That’s what the name of the game. Take care, everybody. Be safe and well. We will talk again so very soon.
Narrator [29:57]
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.
