Damien Weinstein | What Happens When You Run Your Law Firm Like Your Clients Run Their Businesses

Elise Holtzman: Hi everyone, it’s Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer, and the host of The Lawyers Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode.

Lawyers spend a lot of time helping business owners grow, hire well, and build something that lasts. So what happens when a lawyer turns that same lens on his own firm? My guest today did exactly that, growing a two person practice into a team of about 25 in just a few years, while earning national recognition as a great place to work. He’ll share the decisions that drove that growth, what gets harder about holding onto culture as a firm expands, and what he’s learned from watching business owners get prepared to sell. We’re gonna get into all of that today.

Before we dive in, todays episode is brought to you by the coaching team at The Lawyers Edge, a training and coaching firm, which has been focused exclusively on lawyers and law firms since 2008. Each member of The Lawyers Edge coaching team is a trained, certified, and experienced professional coach, and either a former practicing attorney, or a former law firm marketing and business development professional. Whatever your professional objectives, our coaches acan help you achieve your goals more quickly, more easily, and with significantly less stress. To get connected with your coach, just email the team at hello@thelawyersedge.com.

I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Damien Weinstein, who is the co-founder and managing partner of Weinstein and Klein a firm in Morristown, New Jersey, that represents small and mid-sized businesses in corporate transactions and employment matters. Damien and his partner Brian Klein started in 2019 and it has grown from two people to about 25. Along the way, it has appeared twice on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the country, most recently at number 622, and was named to the Inc Best Workplaces list for 2026. Damien leads the firm’s business and transaction group, where most of his work focuses on M&A, partnerships, and complex commercial agreements. He's been recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star every year since 2018, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Law Journal among others. Outside the office, he's working toward a professional wine certification, which he insists is a respectable excuse to drink good wine, that's a, that’s a good one. He's also a big soccer fan, though by his own account, he's much better at watching the game than playing it. Damian, welcome to the Lawyer's Edge.

Damien Weinstein: That was a great intro. Thank you, very happy to be here.

Elise Holtzman: I’m delighted to talk to you today, particularly because, what you and I are going to talk about today, is really important to me, and I think to the people listening. I, I see a lot of challenges in growing law firms, especially when you start really small, and you, and you want to grow into something that delivers tremendous value in the marketplace. And, I know you've done a lot of thinking about it, and a lot of shifting your behavior. So, let's start out by talking about how you started your firm, and what you and your partner were doing, as new firm owners for the first couple of years?

Damien Weinstein: That second part I’ll answer first, we we're doing nothing right, probably, for the first couple years. I always say, backing it up, you know, we kind of became a law firm owners by, by accident. I've known my business partner, Brian Klein, since the college days. We went to separate law schools, separate firms. Then always, typically over a drink or two, complain to each other about the places we work, the people we worked with, you know “Oh my God, I wouldn't even know where to begin, but how cool would it be if we just did something, just the two of us.” Fast forward to late 2018, I think early 2019 it was, and Brian give me the call. He was starting a solo shop, and wanted me to join him, and we both looked at each other, and said “Wow, all right. So we have absolutely no idea how to run a law firm, but we know what not to do.” Right? Because we saw a lot of things that we didn't like, the you know, different types of client experiences, billable practices, lack of mentorship programs, all the different things. We could break that down, obviously as we go on, but we saw all the things we didn't want to do, and we just kind of, went in the opposite direction. It was very, you know, by the seat of our pants type of approach. For a while, It really felt, until we kind of understand “Wait a minute. We're actually, this isn't just a law firm, it's also business. We have to start thinking about it that way.” But for, you know, a year, a year and a half or so, it was really just myself and Brian. We’d go out there, we’d find a business, we’d work the business, we’d send the invoice, we hopefully get paid on it, and we just do it all over again. It was very much just two guys practicing law, we just happen to be kind of shoulder to shoulder in that experience, it wasn't really an identity, an operation to the concept of the firm. So, I’m happy to break all that down, on how we kind of shifted into what we're doing now. But for for a while it was really, it was really just, just figuring it out as we went. Still kind of is.

Elise Holtzman: It’s funny because you have small children, and what, what struck me when you said, that you were just sort of, doing this next to each other, it struck me as like, parallel play. Like when little kids parallel play. Like we're kind of doing the same thing next to each other, but that's about it.

Damien Weinstein: I've never thought about it that way, but yes. Knowing what parallel play is with our, with two boys that I have, yes that's exactly what it was. And, and it worked, we were having fun, and we were making a little bit of money. But it wasn't a firm, it wasn't a brand, it wasn't a business, it was really just like I said, two guys lawyering.

Elise Holtzman: So, you decided to shift gears. And start thinking and behaving differently. So, what were some of the biggest mindset shifts or lessons, you had to learn when you stopped thinking just like a lawyer, and started thinking more like a business owner?

Damien Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, first we identified we wanted to make this shift, right? Brian and I from, from a pretty early part of that practice together, start to say “Well, we could scale this thing.” Right? And that way, we can focus more on the business and other people to do some of the legal work, and you know, maybe our day-to-day looks like the things we enjoy a little bit more, doing podcasts, doing business development, thought leadership, as opposed to, you know, negotiating that reps and warranties provision, so to speak. As exciting as that is. So, we identified that we wanted to do that early on, but we had no idea how the hell to do that, where to even start, right? Podcasts came in handy, books, mentorship, just speaking with other people. And that's when we saw it was possible. We started to learn a few things, try some things out, but the biggest mindset shift is, is really like, you know, kind of what got you here, of being a hopefully decent attorney, isn't what's going to get you there. Which, is building a great business that happens to be a law firm, right? Those are two very different concepts, right? I made the joke about the reps and warranties provision, you know, that's not my job right now, to make sure that that's the best provision, other attorneys here will do that. But I need to make sure we have really good attorneys at the frim. That those attorneys know our standards and expectations, that they have proper coaching and mentorship, accountability, and ownership even, to a certain extent, of course. So that mindset shift is really, you know, being a lawyer and building a law firm are just two completely different things to think about, right? I don't talk about reps and warranties that, or indemnification anymore, you know, post-closing transition support, nearly as much as I used to. I talk a lot about profit margins, utilization rates, you know, pricing strategies, you know, where is our next client coming from, and what are we doing now to make sure that that phone is ringing in three months from now, when we're ready to take on another deal or whatever it is. Recently there’s been a, a real focus has been on attorney capacity, making sure attorneys have enough work, but not too much work that they're overwhelmed, right? Finding that perfect amount. These are all things, that again, to repeat it, like, they don't teach you in law school. No one is talking about this. I might have even just lost a few viewers, I'm sorry if they heard that, and they’re like “The heck is this guy talking about.” But this is what I think about now, all day everyday, and that's a really big shift from what I've been doing in the many, many years leading up to that.

Elise Holtzman: To your point, nobody teaches this to us, they don't teach it in law school, and then they don't teach it when you get to your law firm, you know? And they're not in that business, so I get it. But what, I think happens for many people, particularly in established law firms, but certainly when you're starting your own, is it all the sudden you're thrust into this role, right? In an established firm somebody might say “Damien, you know, you're great, you have a good book of business, the clients really love you, we'd like you to become managing partner.” And it's like “What? Like, what are you talking about? I don't even know what that means. I don't know how to do that job.” So I think this is real for so many people, –

Damien Weinstein: Yeah.

Elise Holtzman: –and I think that it does require a mindset shift. So there you guys are, making this decision consciously, that you're going to do this differently. And again, you mentioned things like podcasts, and all of that sort of thing. I mean, is that how you kind of, learned to do this, just figuring out what it takes to run a business? And maybe looking at some of your clients and seeing what they're doing?

Damien Weinstein: Absolutely. We, speaking with our clients, so you know, we, we're, it's kind of a cool environment that we're in, right? I'm obviously talking a little bit about corporate transactional work. We do a couple other things including labor and employment work as well. A lot of our clients, we help, kind of from the legal perspective, we help them launch, and grow, and scale and all these beautiful things. So we're kind of giving advice to these clients, of things to do and everyone is saying something like, we should we should probably start –

Elise Holtzman: That’s a great idea.

Damien Weinstein: – Yeah, like. That’s a pretty good idea. I like what I just said there, let's, let's give that a go. But it's, you know. So you learn from your clients, right? You also learn from them things go wrong. And I always say those are, you know, those are good learning lessons, right? You mess up in your business, we are all going to our clients, make mistakes and their business. Happens all the time. And you can kind of learn “Okay what happened there? What led up to that? What was the blind spot?” And you can take away from that and, and ideally be better but it's a, it's a practice. Because the, you know, that those experiences will help a little bit. The things you absorb on the podcast and read in the books and on the articles online, and there's plenty of stuff out there. Those will all help, but you have to digest it, you have to understand it, and then you have to, not only have the interest in doing it, but also the guts to do it, and potentially embarrass yourself, fall flat on your face. And just as importantly, you have to have the time to do this, right? I'm sure you've spoken with other people, and we know we have, where we'll speak with a firm that's a little bit smaller than ours and they'll say “Hey I really want to focus on profit margins, and capacity, and making sure where the pipeline is strong, but I just can't get away from this deal I'm working on.” Right? Like “That sounds cool, I'd love to go to that networking event, but I've got a closing tomorrow. So I'm just going to be working all night on this thing.” So they didn't actually have the time or the capacity to do it.

Elise Holtzman: It strikes me that there's also, some risk tolerance here –

Damien Weinstein: Sure

Elise Holtzman: – that many lawyers may not feel that they have. So, first of all, in order to be hiring people, you know, you mentioned this idea of not having time, and one of the best ways to get more time, ‘cause we can't get more than the 24/7 that we have obviously, is to hire more people. And there's, so there's risk there, right? Because how do you know especially when you're a small shop how do you know when the, when the right time to hire is? Your firm has grown from two people to about 25 since 2019. So for you, when you look back, what were the decisions that you made, that drove that growth?

Damien Weinstein: Yeah. Well, you’ve laid the ground work here perfectly for the first part of that answer, which is hiring people, right? We waited about a year and a half, almost two years to do that and I remember a friend of ours who's a mentor, and has his own successful practice reached out and said “What are you what are you waiting for?” I said “Well, you know, we're hiring this person, and what if they don't work out, and what if you know we're paying them too much, and this and that, all the things.” And he said “If this person frees up…” You know, we've all heard this, it's cliche but I'm going to say it anyway, if they free up an hour of your day, and you can take that time you put it towards Business Development, or strengthening an existing client relationship, whatever it may be, you're going to get your money's worth for that. It may not be dollar for dollar, but it's going to be a good investment. That's a terrifying, terrifying thought. Especially that first hire when you just everything is new to you. In retrospect, I would have hired sooner right? And I would have hired probably even quicker than that. We were very cautious leading up to that growth and then it kind of, hockey stick’d in terms of going from 2 to 25. But having people to, be able to delegate to, to free up your time, people who are happy to do that job, right? When you give it to them. There’s sometimes a guilt we all have, especially us type a folks, of like, I feel bad that I'm giving this to you and I'm saying “All right good luck I'm going to be over here.” Obviously that's not how you delegate, but you know, hiring right person, that person will be like, “Great. Super.” Thankful, you know? Thankful that you gave them that project, that task, and now, you know, they're happy, you're happy to free up your time, so it works that way. But one thing I was talking about, is that, that growth, that scale right? You know hiring people, being able to delegate to them, obviously you have to mentor them, you have to train them, you have to make sure, you’re, you're comfortable with them, you need the systems, right? And the processes we hear about, like SOPs and stuff like that. You know, we admittedly, in the very beginning, we were over our skis a bit. Because we hired people and we didn't have that kind of backbone in terms of operations. So we have to slow down a little bit in order to speed up. Another cliche but a very true one. So hiring people, mentoring, training them, and then having the systems internally so that you can actually grow organically is, is the name of the game, for us at least.

Elise Holtzman: There’s a lot of talk in the legal Community about the value of having non-lawyer professionals to help run firms –

Damien Weinstein: Yes.

Elise Holtzman: – is that something you do? If so why? And if so, why have you chosen not to?

Damien Weinstein: Definitely something we do. So I glossed over a fact before, but our first hire, she's no longer with our firm, she left to do a grad school, but she was with us for about two or three years, she was a paralegal at my old firm who we reached out to. And she said “What am I going to be a paralegal there?” And we said “Yeah kind of.”And she said “But also like kind of an office manager?” And we said “Yeah kind of.” “Like, but also kind of your marketing person?” “Yeah sure, we’ll, you can do that too.” And it was like “You're going to do everything. Other than practice law, you are going to do everything.” Right? Write, you know, help us write articles, help us get, you know, business development opportunities, but also deal with the client when they're having an issue, getting paid on their invoice, right? If they’re having a technology issue. So we started internally with that, we've always had someone in that operations, admin role within our firm. That was our first hire, we will always have that, because it's crucial. And then we've actually outsourced some of that as well, right? So we have a fractional COO that we work with, we have other vendors that we work with who, you know, entrepreneurship is lonely right? We talk about this with our clients a lot. We talk about with a lot of other small firms, and solo firms. You don't need to figure it all out yourself, there's someone out there who can help you figure it out. You have to pay them right? So there's that risk, that we talked about. And you have to hope you're getting the ROI on it. But there are people who really know these things, right? I might be freaking out about something we’re experiencing with the firm, but little do I know if I pick up the phone and spoke to this person, they're like “We see this every single week with our other law firm clients you know, here's what worked for them here's what didn't work for them.” It's like “Got it. Understood.” But you need to be able to to know who those people are, and be able to rely on their, their expertise, because otherwise, you will make mistakes if you do it all alone.

Elise Holtzman: Your firm was named to the 2026 Inc. Best Workplaces list, which I mentioned earlier. That tells me that culture, is something you've been very intentional about, because that doesn't happen in a few short years while you're growing rapidly, unless you're paying attention. How do you keep a strong culture intact, particularly as the firm grows?

Damien Weinstein: For us, culture is everything, right? So I, I, another thing I glossed over before, as I said Brian and I looked at each other and said “We have no idea how to run a firm but we know how not to run a firm.” A lot of the how not to run it was the cultural issues that we saw. And that, I think most lawyers especially junior lawyers see that at the firms they go to, right? There's high turnover, there's yelling, there's intensity, there's all the things that make it not an enjoyable work environment. And I truly believe that that bleeds into the service, right? The legal product that client’s experience. I'll answer your questions more directly, it was a lot easier to control culture when we were hiring our fourth or 5th person, where bringing on the 25th 26th 27th it's a different animal, right? There are smaller, you know, they're more of a drop in the bucket. For example, if you hire the 27th person, than if you hire the fourth person, right? So the risk perhaps is, is a bit different. But it's, it's just as important I think, right? Because one bad apple, so to speak. We hire, as crazy as it sounds, but I think other lawyers get it, and other business owners get it, we hire for kind of that cultural fit first. Or at least we look for that, when we’re hiring. We've been happy to train people who are on the some, somewhat lower end of experience, but they have the right cultural fit, they understand it, they have bedside manners, they understand how to explain something to a client in a human, non-lawyer way. So we screen for that, when we interview. We’re militant about it, when you join our firm. You know, we, from day one right? Even in our employee hand book, the first thing you'll hear about is this term ‘hospitality mentality’ it stems from the book Unreasonable Hospitality which I'm not sure if you? Yeah, i see you nodding head, it's just, it's an incredible read. I think for anyone in the service industry should read about how to create an incredible customer client experience. Which also impacts the culture. That's mandatory reading for every new hire, I don't care if you're an assisting, a paralegal, or a lawyer. So we really emphasize that, obviously there's more to it, there's mentorship, there's constant feedback, business development opportunities, thought leadership opportunities that we encourage new hires and younger attorneys getting involved in. But culture is everything, right? We have this opportunity to build this firm the way we envision it, why would I ever want to do that and go into the office “That person's here today, I hate that person, I can't stand that person.” Or you know, they're not a good cultural fit. We, life is too short and business is too, too fragile to, to build it with people who aren't A plus players.

Elise Holtzman: I've seen a lot of law firms do hiring. And, the challenge in some cases, seems to be that, we hire quickly and fire slowly, right? Where we're, we're told that we're supposed to hire slowly and fire quickly, right? If the person is not a good fit, it's not good for anybody and we should take a lot more time to hire. And I find that you know, sometimes law firms get desperate, they need a warm body, you have a law degree, you seem like a nice person, right? That's how a lot of hiring gets done. And again, you know, no shade to lawyers, but it's not like anybody taught us how to hire. Just a quick anecdote, and I'm going to be outing myself as somebody who doesn't always eat so healthy, but I was recently in a Shake Shack, –

Damien Weinstein: It’s Delicious. It’s okay.

Elise Holtzman: – in, in my local area. I have to say they do a good job. And I actually, I was so shocked by the how the people who work there behave, that I actually went up found the manager, and said “The people who work here are unbelievable.” They are so, they're not, they're young people, from the neighborhood. And you know, they're probably in high school or something like that, or just after. And they were so conscious of every single person in the restaurant. Walking up to them, it's not a sit-down place where you order food and somebody comes, it's not, they're not waiters, but “Oh can I get you this? Can I help you with that?” You know “Is there anything else you need?” I just couldn't, it was so shocking to me because it's so unusual. And the reason I mention this is the guy, the owner. I guess a franchise owner, said what you said, which is “We hire for a customer service mentality, and a warm kind personality. We can train them on how to make a hamburger, or how to make french fries but we can't train them on that.” And it is, it's so obvious, that it really does become shocking. So I'm curious for you, you kind of, you mentioned it but you kind of glossed over it, and a couple of other things that I want to get to, how do you know when you're hiring, when you're interviewing, how do you screen for that sort of thing?

Damien Weinstein: It's another good question, you know. There's a, we're still figuring this out right? Because we, we’re not a, we're not 10 for 10 in terms of hiring the right people. Just to get that out there. So mistakes are, are still being made, but like we said, we kind of learn from them right? It's, you know, certainly in the questions we ask, in the interview. Really hard types of question, to figure out the right question to ask, to get that from someone right? We understand interviews. I remember interviewing when I was a junior attorney, you’re gonna say what you think the other person wants to hear, right? So you have to stress test that, and you have to come up with different angles and ways to figure it out. You know, we will tell candidates when we interview them “Hey listen, we're only interviewing you because we saw your resume, and we liked it.” Right? “So let's put that on the back burner, ‘cause you've already impressed us with your resume, we'll get to your resume, talk to me about you. I want to know about you.” I want to know about you, you know, down to how you how you, you know you treat the support staff at a hotel, in a restaurant. I think those things matter. Yeah so, obviously, there's questions, there's kind of a, an examination into that. We obviously bring them in-person, one of the things I always tell candidates, and I'm very upfront about it, right? I don't bury the lead with this, or kind of hide the ball, you know? We want to make sure that we are going to be okay working with you at 4:30, 5:00 on a Friday when things are really crazy, everyone's trying to get the heck out of there to start their weekend, and we just need to look around and be like “I need everyone to roll up their sleeves, and help out.” Are you that type of person? Right? And we’ll, we’ll just kind of, start role playing that a little bit, we’ll stress test that a little bit. I think, in person interviews are huge, right? I don't know how people are doing just virtual interviews at this point. I think you learn a lot, body language, just speaking to somebody. And then, you know, if the offers made there's, there's the opportunity to, to shine once they get there right? We'll put them in opportunities to kind of be able to demonstrate some of the skills that they claim that they have during the interview. Pretty early on and it's not to set them up to see you know, if they fall flat on their face. But it's kind of say “Okay where are we on like you know scale up 1 to 10 where we thought they were potentially be and then what can we do to get them as close to that 10 as possible?” So it's, it's a process for sure.

Elise Holtzman: Well, and it sounds like it’s an ongoing process for you, because one of the things that you said earlier that I, I again, want to highlight, is that you talked about things like mentoring, and training and all of those sorts of things. And so you could you know, one could hire for all the right reasons, and then say do the same thing that, you know, often happens, which is “Okay you're here, you know God bless. You. See what you can do, we'll see if we like you or not.” –

Damien Weinstein: “Here’s the file, go.” Right?

Elise Holtzman: -- Right. So tell me a little bit more about those things, I mean not necessarily in, in gory detail, but what are the things that you've put in place, that you think have contributed to the culture, and a desire for people to stay, and for you to want them to stay?

Damien Weinstein: You know, we promise people is. You'll get a lot of, especially Junior attorneys, they want client experience up front right? A lot of it just happens to be, and maybe that's us being a smaller firm, and people are coming from some bigger shops, you know, what are you looking for? I really want to have more of an impact, I wanna have more ownership and autonomy in what I do, and speak with clients directly without being just like, the, the junior that sits in the corner of the office during the phone call and I can't say a word. So we give them those opportunities early on, like they have that autonomy, they have that flexibility. But it’s paired with accountability. So they’ll, they will sometimes just sit in, and have an opportunity to just say “Hey Bill, Sue, you know, no need to do anything on this call. You don't even really need to understand who the client is, or what we’re doing with them, I just want you to listen in, on how we deal with this, this owner is calling us, their stressed out about this issue, we're just going to kind of workshop it with them. Your job is to simply just absorb how we deal with their legal issue, and talk about it. But we also kind of, act as that, you know, therapist and shoulder to lean on, and just take that in.” There's a lot of candid feedback. We'll talk about, I'll mention another book that, everyone in our firm reads, which is Radical Candor, just an incredible book of, way to be, for lack of a better term, blunt or direct in terms of the feedback that you give people, but to make sure that it's meaningful. That it means something to them and it doesn't come across, as just, you know “You bad, do this instead.” Type of approach. So that's another thing. Clear expectations, this is something you know, we were still improving on very much, you know. I think defining what”Hey we expect from you the next 30, 60, 90 days, hard skills, and soft skills.” Right? That's really helpful. It kind of sets people up for success as to what's expected of them, so it becomes I think more of an enjoyable experience compared to like, what you said, “Welcome to the firm here's the file, yeah go get them you know bill, bill, bill.”

Elise Holtzman: You mentioned soft skills, you mentioned sometimes being a shoulder to cry on for the client, if I understood that correctly. I noticed that you were recently on a podcast, and one of the things that you said is that half of the conversations were having with clients are not legal conversations, we're talking about whether the transaction is a good business opportunity. And I know that you've also described your philosophy as advisor first, lawyer second. So what does that actually look like in practice, and why is it something that you've chosen to highlight?

Damien Weinstein: I’ll be cynical for a second, and maybe it's because that, that part I think, AI is still a step behind us. So their AI hasn't been humanized completely yet, I say yet. So, you know, I used to always say any third, fourth, fifth, six year, whatever, attorney can, can explain a contract right? Here's what this provision means, here's what that provision means. And maybe even, here's why we're making this change, or that change. AI can do that now, as well. So I guess, that’s, that's the modern day version of, of that spiel. But what AI can't do, and what a junior associate oftentimes can’t do is, not always of course, is talk to the client about, you know, put aside whether Section 3 of that paragraph, of that contract is, is worth fighting over. Is this transaction part of the bigger, a piece of the the larger puzzle, right? Where are you trying to take the business, what are you trying to accomplish from this? Is there something else right? So we've, we've talked our clients out of transactions, not intentionally, but we’ll kind of educate them, and open up their eyes to different things, different opportunities. Clients come to us and say “I want to take say, I want to take this, this investor on.” And we'll start talking to them about different funding opportunities and suddenly, they don't want to take that investor on because that had some risk to it that they didn't really think through, and they want to do something else instead. That's different financials and economics, but it makes more sense for them as a business. That's just an example. Those things I think require asking questions before you start answering questions, right? You have to be inquisitive, you have to ask your clients where they're going with the business, what's, what's keeping them up at night? What they’re trying to accomplish when they ask you to review something or opine on something? I think the more and more you do that, you become that advisor who happens to have a legal education, as opposed to the lawyer who, every once in a while sprinkles in an advisory type of piece of information. So we train that, we we emphasize that a lot. It's something that we use to distinguish ourselves from other law firms, and it's also something that I think is a huge value add to clients, right? They’ll sometimes call us, and they'll say, you know, half the call was kind of about, that legal stuff right? The paragraph three or section whatever, and the other half is just kind of talking shop about the business, and other things that are going on, and things to think about. We will often sometimes say like, “We're going to ask a bunch of questions, don't answer them. Just stew on it a little bit, right? These are, these are meant to be thought provoking questions, homework if we could call it that.” And I think clients really appreciate that, again, because they can go to ChatGPT or Claude and say “Does paragraph 3 of this agreement help me or hurt me? Is a more favorable to me or the other side.” But they can't get that, kind of more human approach to it, and that's a big part of what we hope distinguishes ourselves.

Elise Holtzman: It's interesting because, you're talking about thinking of business owner, and it's not just to run your own business, –

Damien Weinstein: Right.

Elise: – it's to help your clients.

Damien Weinstein: Correct.

Elise Holtzman: – And we do know that a lot of corporate commercial clients out there, talk about their lawyers or their legal departments as the department of “No.” Right? And it's just, you know, somebody looks at something, and said “Well this doesn't work you can't do it, or you know you're going to get yourself in trouble if you do that.” And it's, I mean, and that's going to happen sometimes, right? Because that's part of our job, is, is to be, risk analysts. But it sounds like you, you really are looking in, more deeply into the business. And so you're spending a lot of time with these business owners, who are preparing to sell, and perhaps to do some other things. So from your perch, as somebody who's running a law firm as a business, and also somebody who is the lawyer watching what your clients are doing, what do you think your your clients, your sellers who are getting the best outcomes, what do you think they tend to have in common?

Damien Weinstein: So they’re, sellers are starting to get it a little bit more, so we deal with kind of, that lower middle market space right? A lot of our deals are kind of , $15 million and under or so. Not the types of deals that are going to land you on the news, or the front page of the Wall Street Journal, really more of, a little bit closer to more Main Street certainly than Wall Street, probably, somewhere a little bit in between. There's a lot more sophistication, in levels of sophistication in that, kind of lower middle market transactional space. Sellers are a lot more educated, I think. Lately I think AI is a big thing, I think there's just a lot of content, material out there online. They're assembling a deal team early, earlier on, right? We're starting to hear about more people who say “Hey, I want to sell my business in like two or three years, are there things we could be doing now to maximize value?” We still get the “Hey I want to sell my business, when I’d love to close in like, 90 days if possible.” It’s like woah, okay. So, there's very little that can be changed or improved upon that time, that we can still handle that, and we often, we obviously do, but we're finding that sellers, I think are, they're paying attention to getting it right, right? They're starting the process earlier, bringing in their deal team earlier, lawyers and non-lawyers, they're focusing on cleaning up their books, building the management team beneath them, making sure that they've got good practices and policies in place, all of those things, I think are really helping sellers position themselves better in the market, and, and it's a hot market right now, especially in that sub 15 million dollar space right? So sellers who do it right are going to get the benefit for, for doing that. And I think awareness, education, sophistication, it’s starting to shift in a positive way. Finally which, which makes our, our job a little bit easier, and I think the transaction generally a little bit more enjoyable. So that was a little bit, about kind of what we're seeing from Sellers, and how it's, I think generally speaking, the seller experience is improving a little bit, for the reasons that I just mentioned.

Buyers still, I think, have a little bit of work to do when we're on the buy side. The first thing that we will do before again, going back to advisor versus lawyer first. The first thing we'll do is, is talk to them about what it is that they're trying to accomplish, from the transaction right? Sometimes buyers are just very economical ,very financial focused and that's, that's what the opportunity is. One thing I say to them, almost always kind of gives them pause. Which is, what's making the seller tick here, right? They’re like. What’re you talking about, we’re negotiating the LOI, they want this many million, I'm willing to do this much million, and these payment terms. No, no, no. Who is the seller here? What drives them into this transaction, right? And sometimes buyers are like, it's like this right? It's pure silence. And you're like “Let me explain this to you. You're buying you know an 8 million, 9 million dollar business, is very likely or very possibly, a family run business right? Grandma and Grandpa started it back then, they handed it to their kids, they want to give it to the grandkids or whatever. The grandkids don't want it, so here they are selling it.” You can't just go in, and just start trading numbers with these people right? Payment terms, earn outs, they're going to say “What the heck are you talking about?” They want you to understand their business, understand how meaningful this was to them, understand that, at that transaction size the seller is often a real person right? A Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, whatever it is, who's selling that business, you have to relate to them on a human element first, right? So we'll sometimes focus on that, when we advise buyers. Early stage in the transaction, just because they're going to be focused immidiately on how quickly can we get to LOI, I'm ready to start due diligence, and we're like hold on. You’ve gotta go, you got to spend time, maybe have some coffee, bringing lunch and talk to the seller, get to know them, because at a certain point in this transaction it's going to get a little heated. There's no, every deal dies twice, so to speak right? There's going to be some sort of impasse where they're not happy with something we're negotiating for. But if you've gotten to understand Bill and Sue's business, and you kind of understand how, you know their family built it up, and they survived all these different periods of time and stuff like that, you'll have a little bit more human connection with clients and I think that's really important when you're buying the 4, 5, 6, 10 million dollar business. Maybe not so much when you're buying a half a billion dollar business, right? Those are obviously different animals, different sellers with different motivations, so it requires a different approach from buyers.

Elise Holtzman: I’m thinking about this as being analogous to some of what law firm leaders can be thinking about when they're hiring, because we have these big generational differences, and I work often with managing artners and law firm leaders who are complaining, right? About the younger generation, and you know, they just go from place to place, all they want is money. And then get annoyed when they find out, actually that's not the case, they're looking for other things, and they don't really understand why they're looking for those things, ‘cause after all we didn't do it.

Damien Weinstein: Correct.

Elise Holtzman: So I think understanding your seller, of legal services or, or you know who somebody that might be coming into your firm, it's a good idea. And it's not, as you say, it's not just about business, it's about human relationships. And I think that goes to your culture, as well right? You talk about that as being part of your culture.

Damien Weinstein: Yeah. Well said.

Elise Holtzman: Damien, as we wrap up our time here together today, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. There's a phenomenon called The Curse of Knowledge. Where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them, is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to running a law firm, with the same discipline your best business clients bring to running their organizations, what's a principal or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for people to hear?

Damien Weinstein: I, I’ll keep it brief, because I, I kind of have two. I mean, they're very much related. The first is, you've got to surround yourself with good people, right? This is the people you hire internally, it's the advisors that you hire professionally, you know, your vendors, it's your mentors, right? It's even your networking groups, it's your peer mentorship groups, you know, making sure that you have the right people around you. Because, business is tricky, life is tricky, things happen that we don't like, and it's typically not something that's never happened before, so you need to be able to lean on the people to your left and right to gain experience from them, that's one. And then the second, it kind of all ties together with what we talked about culture, client experience and all those things. We found as many business issues as we've had and hiccups as we've had, a really strong client relationship tends to, kind of, cure nearly all of it right? If, if, and, and that's I think, advice I received when I kind of started. It's get in deep with your clients, and, and be their best person to go to at all times right? Someone we know once said “You want to be the lawyer client's call when they can't find their car keys.” Right? Silly, but I love the concept of it. All the things and the issues that you deal with in business, when you have a really good client relationship, it makes it a lot easier to navigate through, for sure.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, it’s such a great point. As lawyers we like to call ourselves trusted advisors, but are we really trusted advisors, or are we just focused on whatever the next transaction is going to be? So, it's great advice. All right. Well Damian, thank you so much for being here today. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you, and there's some great takeaways here for, I think, every managing partner and law firm leader.

Damien Weinstein: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Elise Holtzman: I’m gonna thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.