Elise Buie | Scaling With Soul: Building a Profitable Law Firm Without Burning Out Your Team

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of the Lawyer's Edge podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Some stories of law firm growth start with a business plan. This one starts with rebuilding after loss.

In this episode, you'll hear from a family law attorney who turned personal upheaval into professional transformation, growing a multimillion-dollar practice while redefining what success and balance really look like. From rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina and a divorce to leading a values-driven, people-first firm, she shares hard-won lessons on resilience, growth, and creating a business that aligns with the life you actually want.

Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.

To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite. I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Elise Buie, who is the founder and CEO of Elise Buie Family Law in Seattle, Washington. She is a passionate and creative family law attorney who has lived the life you're living now, juggling the endless tasks of a lawyer, and in her case, a law firm owner, while dreaming of something better.

She grew her firm from six figures to multiple seven figures, even with the pandemic thrown into the mix. She also intentionally scaled back to ensure that the firm operated with healthy numbers and a culturally aligned team. As you can imagine, she's made some mistakes and learned some painful, costly lessons along the way, but each one has been invaluable. So she's here today to share her journey with us and help you navigate your own path to success. Elise, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Elise Buie: Thanks so much, Elise. I love that we share the same name. I never get to do a podcast with somebody named Elise.

Elise Holtzman: We agree that we spell it correctly. So for all of you E-L-Y-S-E's out there, we love you, but get with the program, girl. Get with the program.

So I'm really happy to have you here, Elise. I wanted to talk to you because you have built a really well-respected family law firm in Washington State, but your journey to get there was not exactly a straight line. Can you share a little bit about your background and your personal experiences? I mean, I mentioned divorce. I mentioned Hurricane Katrina. That's a lot.

So how do you take those experiences and blend a family, start a new family, and then actually put together a law firm like this that can be so successful?

Elise Buie: It was a lot. Whenever I think about it, I'm like, "Huh, that was interesting." But part of it is, I think when these big things happen, Hurricane Katrina, clearly that was something outside of my control. What do you do? With COVID, how we all dealt with COVID recently, again, same thing. At that point for COVID, I was looking at a firm of, I think we had four or five people. I had just sent offers out to three people who were supposed to start March 9th. Well, the world shut down in Seattle, at least March 5th. So I was bringing on new people at a time when I had no idea if my firm was going to survive.

One thing that I do and have done consistently is I always put on my hat of what is the worst-case scenario, and I figure out the very worst case scenario, I mean, I get dramatic, really bad, really figure it out, and actually solve for it. I'll have a plan: okay, if we lose our house, if we don't earn any money for three years, whatever it is, I come up with a plan for that. Then I'm like, "Okay, I got it. I got a plan." So then I can go in and actually solve for the problems right in front of me.

I find that, I mean, it sounds so silly, but when COVID hit, I ended up doing these 43 whiteboards. I still have pictures of them on my phone. I would do this whiteboard and figure out: okay, what if we only have this much in trust? What if we don't get more in trust? Who am I going to pay? How am I going to deal with this? I brought my family together and I was like, "Okay, kid number six, you're in private school. No more. You're now in public school." I was like, "Family, we're not giving you any money. Pretend I don't work."

I had a single mom with two kids during COVID, and I looked at her money and the money I paid for private school. I was like, "Ethan, you're going to public school." That salary is paying that mom with her two kids. I was like, "[Inaudible] send you to a fancy school and then lay off somebody? That's just not going to vibe well."

So I really came up with solutions. But then I dug in and said, "I'm going to start doing all the consults." The least I can do at a time when the whole world was shut down and people were having all these family law issues. Co-parenting went cuckoo during COVID. So I did all these consults. Bazillions of free consults. I was doing consults like 14 hours a day. We just grew and grew and grew. I mean, it was wild. I had no idea that was going to happen, but it did, and then we've just gone from there.

Elise Holtzman: You mentioned that your firm is known for leading with empathy and what you call unreasonable hospitality. First of all, we can hear the empathy in your story about the private school versus paying the single mom and her two kids. What do you mean by unreasonable hospitality?

Elise Buie: Sure. Unreasonable hospitality is my favorite thing in the world. It truly is who I am. Coming from New Orleans, I grew up in New Orleans and New Orleans, it's just a city of hospitality, a city of joy, creativity, hospitality. When I read Will Guidara's book, Unreasonable Hospitality, a few years ago, I literally stopped in my tracks. I read the book eight times, eight times. It spoke to my soul like none other, because he just explains the whole thing around coming up with things that you can do to delight people.

His book is set around a restaurant, 11 Madison Park, and how that was, and how he took that restaurant, not even on the best restaurant list, and brought it to number one. It was all focused on unreasonable hospitality. I think for me, it is just that feeling I have of how can I bring joy and delight to people, even when they are going through the most horrible thing?

Like what I was saying about COVID, when I was doing those free consults, how can I take all these people who are stressed out, talk to them, give them resources, do everything I could in my power to help them and not at all thinking I was going to get all this business back, literally thinking this is my service. This was my version of access to justice during a time when the courts weren't even open and people couldn't get the help they needed.

I thought, "Well, I can share what's in my brain." I know a lot about co-parenting and finances and how to help people deal with this. By doing all those consults, and it's so funny because even today we will get people who will say, "Oh, yeah, my neighbor talked to Elise during COVID, and she told me if I ever needed a divorce, I should call. So here I am five years later calling." It's amazing to me how that stuff works.

Elise Holtzman: It works, and I love this story because it's a perfect example of how people do well by doing good. I think sometimes people are afraid to reach out to be that helpful because they feel like they're giving away something for free. Look, they are. I mean, you worked really hard. A lot of those consults probably didn't turn into clients. Many of them did, but a lot didn't.

But you were doing something that was aligned with your values and delivering value in a different way, delivering value to people who really needed it. In that way, you were able to grow your practice. Is that something that you think trickles down to everybody in your firm? If that's a strong value for you, how do you imbue that into a firm's culture?

Elise Buie: Yeah, that's a great question. It's something we work really hard on. Right now, I do think it does because, one, we have an unreasonable hospitality KPI. It's actually one of the things I bonus my team on: their unreasonable hospitality. I do not bonus my team to work more billable hours.

We have created a firm where we have people choose their billable hour goal. We tell them what we're going to pay them. That's that. So we expect everyone to meet their billable hour goal by 100% because they've chosen it. I've got nothing to do with the choice of the hours. So in my mind, they have real agency over that. Then we have unreasonable hospitality goals. That really encourages team members to provide that unreasonable hospitality, not only to our clients, but to each other on the team. And then we also give them a budget.

They have an unreasonable hospitality budget where they can provide things for people and do gifts. I'll get requests from people. They'll be like, "Elise, could I get an increase in my unreasonable hospitality budget? We have this client who going to this play would mean the world to her. If we could buy a ticket for her and her daughter, that would be wildly awesome." I never say no to those. I'm always like, "Go for it," because it's fun to really delight people and make them happy.

I got a gift the other day. I referred a case to one of my "competitors," and they sent me a gift card to my favorite restaurant here in New Orleans. I was like, "How do you even know what my favorite restaurant in New Orleans is?" I truly don't know. I haven't asked her yet how they know that. But I sent a note back to her marketing director and I was like, "If this is not you absolutely hitting it out of the park, I don't know what is." I was like, "This is amazing."

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. Just to give some context to that. So you live in Seattle and work in Seattle, but you bought a house again so you could have a spot in New Orleans because you love it there so much. That really is amazing. Obviously, somebody took the time. They took the time and the care. They didn't just send you the same gift card that they're sending somebody else.

How has that helped you, if at all, with talent attraction and retention? I just came back from a conference of Managing Partners, which is, of course, what you are. We were talking about one of the biggest challenges for law firms right now, which is holding on to the lawyers that they have.

There's especially, depending on their generation, a lot of job hopping. We know that it's a tight market right now. People have choices. What has this unreasonable hospitality and empathy, the culture that you've created there, done either on the right side of this or the wrong side of this?

Elise Buie: It's both. To be fair, it's both. I think that we as a firm are getting better and better at only bringing in people who are truly aligned. People who are going to be empathetic. They're going to be that person that is going to put their clients' needs truly front and center and really dig in and understand. I have such a huge bent towards emotional intelligence and really bringing emotional intelligence into the practice of law, especially family law. It is critical that people can really get beyond themselves and put their kids front and center and do what's right.

We work really hard to bring on aligned team members. I would say in the past we were not as good at that, so we would have people that were just in it for the wrong reasons. We have had to manage out people that I really think were not aligned. To be fair, we turn away big numbers of applicants until we get to one we want. It's not easy necessarily to get into our firm. Just the other week, somebody was like, "Okay, we had 11 attorneys apply for this position, and we only agreed to interview one." I'm like, "Fair enough."

Elise Holtzman: That's a big decision. It takes fortitude because, especially when you think you need somebody and you've got clients beating down the door and perhaps other people are overloaded, you want to fill that seat. You probably want to give relief to some of the other attorneys or paralegals that are working on your team.

But there is this old saw, I guess, if you will, that we should be hiring slowly and firing quickly. Unfortunately, many law firms, many organizations generally, but nobody ever taught us how to do this stuff, so many law firms are doing it the other way around and they're winding up with the wrong people and then holding onto those people out of guilt or whatever it may be.

Elise Buie: Right. I feel like there is a big opportunity for law firms for people to look at their marketing as a way to fill their hiring pipeline and actually pay attention to that, to where your pipeline doesn't hit these big ebbs and flows. Even if you're not in the hiring mode right then, always be filling your pipeline and making sure you have depth on your bench so that you're not in that position where it's like a crisis.

At least for our firm, because I stay out of the legal work a lot, but when we do either let somebody go or somebody leaves, I can often step in and take a docket where I'm not sharing it around to everybody and causing more drama on all the rest of the team. I might pull some cases to certain attorneys because it might make more sense based on their expertise or whatever. But for the most part, I can grab a docket so that when a new person comes in, I can literally just hand over that docket to another person.

I've managed it. Obviously, I bill it whatever that lower associate's rate is. So usually, the clients are like, "Cool, I'll take a lease for a bit and then I'll go somewhere else." It's not perfect because I do step in sometimes and need to help. But I find that for me, at least, it's really important that I don't jam other people on my team.

We have somebody going on maternity leave really soon, and she's going to be gone for a long time. I was like, "I will take her docket. I am not going to give this over to other attorneys," because she just went out last year and was gone for a long time. You've got to think about that and how it impacts the other team members.

Elise Holtzman: I'm curious about that because obviously the work you do is deeply emotional, and it can get very stressful. You've got this team that's been trained on empathy and unreasonable hospitality. Then you have, what I presume from time to time, this bucket of crazy going on because people are going through really difficult things. They might not be at the most rational they've ever been. Their partner from whom they're separating is also probably in certain circumstances. How do you manage things?

Another big thing we talk about in the legal profession, of course, is stress and anxiety and all the kinds of things that people in the legal profession run into that we used to sweep under the rug. Under those circumstances, how do you help your attorneys handle both the legal side as well as the human side of this kind of business?

Elise Buie: Yeah. That is such a great question. It's so important. One thing is we have such a strong culture of life-work integration. People do not bill huge amounts of time; they choose their billable hours. In general, most people in the firm bill around twelve hundred hours a year. That gives them a huge amount of buffer to actually live their lives.

From our paralegal standpoint and hourly employees, we actually put into place about a year ago, I guess it's called 30 is the new 40. Our hourly employees can work 30 hours a week, but get paid like they're working 40, assuming they're hitting their KPIs.

We do a lot to teach people about delegation, using automation, and how we can create better workflows so that they are and can hit that, so that they can literally work 30 hours a week, which is a huge, I think, huge protective factor in the stress of the work we do.

Elise Holtzman: It's remarkable. I'm going to speak for the person who's sitting there listening to this going, "All right, Elise, calm down here for a second. How do we get a profitable law firm out of people working 1,200 hours a year, working 30 hours a week, and getting paid 40 hours a week? How on earth does that hit the bottom line in a way that makes sense for a functioning business?"

Elise Buie: It requires that you run your business by the numbers. When I say these people are hitting their KPIs, they had KPIs at their 40-hour a week, 1,200-hour a year billable. We did not decrease those numbers. We just said, "You need to pull off all the non-billable work you were doing because everyone of us does non-billable work that we shouldn't be doing."

We analyzed, we went into our practice management software, and we analyzed how much non-billable work every person was doing. What was it? Where could we put it off to? Should it be with an admin person? Should it be with a legal assistant? What was the thing?

Then we manage and monitor labor efficiency. We look at how efficient each person on our team is because the more efficient they are, the more likely they are to work their 30 hours, hit their goals, and everything's great. If we have an inefficient person, we're going to train them to become more efficient so they can utilize this benefit, because I want people to get the benefit.

When we hire people, we offer them a certain ROI on whatever they're going to bill. We always want a three-time ROI on somebody's work. Many firms I know can get four- and five-time ROI. We don't try to get a four- or five-time ROI. That's not our goal. Could I be even more profitable than I am now at 30%? Probably, for sure. Is that my goal? No, it's not.

Elise Holtzman: Right. What's the cost of that for you and the people around you?

Elise Buie: And what am I creating? I'm creating a mill so that I can earn another million? No thanks. I want my team to be their best selves so they can bring their best selves to our clients who are not being their best selves. When our team can show up in meetings with the lowest heart rate in the room, they are calm. They are not freaking out about things.

They are modeling to our clients how to deal with stress, conflict. My big goal is all that trickles down to my client's children. My biggest goal is that divorce does not become a trauma in every child's life. That instead, it's just a thing that happens. For the divorcing adult, it becomes transformational. They're able to actually see, "I can do these things. I can get better. I can be a better co-parent. I don't have to scream, yell, and cause conflict all the time."

Elise Holtzman: This is a really great example of people's why and people knowing what their why is. It seems very clear to me that you know what that why is. Why am I doing this beyond making money? Yes, of course, you want to have your house in Seattle and your house in New Orleans, and you want to be able to travel back and forth and enjoy all of those six children and your blended family and all of that sort of thing. But you have something beyond the profit and beyond the material things that you have in your life. Not just for yourself, right? But for the people that you're on a mission for, these children and their parents.

Elise Buie: Absolutely.

Elise Holtzman: I'm curious about where your business acumen comes from. And I'm not being silly when I say that because you and I are around a lot of lawyers all the time. We do know that most lawyers have not been given any sort of business background. We were taught the law, but we weren't taught much else. I'm curious where that came from. Is this something that came to you naturally? Did you grow up around people who ran successful businesses? Did you study to figure out how to do it? Where is all this coming from?

Elise Buie: Yeah, I would say a lot of studying. When I started my firm 10 years ago, I didn't know a thing in the universe. I was literally just like, "Oh my. Okay." But I am a serious lifelong learner type. If I'm curious about something, I am going to go down every rabbit hole.

I spent just so many hours reading, going to conferences, getting involved in different groups, and masterminds. I have been a sponge of business. I tend to be fairly, I'm not risk-averse, which I think a lot of lawyers are so risk-averse that they're not willing to try things and just be like, "Let's see how this goes." I'm a "Let's see how this goes" kind of girl. If I fail, I just look at the failings. I look at the data and I learn from it. Then I'm like, "Oh, okay, we can make this change or do this."

I have become a psycho around data. I know my firm's data backwards and forwards. I can look at a dashboard and I get data daily and I can look and be like, "Oh, we're having a website issue. Notice this, these numbers went down, or we're converting at a funny level this week, what's going on?" Where I can see leading indicators of issues. I think my brain loves all that.

I love the challenge of running a business, and kind of like to your point, how can you be profitable? I mean, it's sad, but true. There are many times I work with people because I consult with other law firm owners a lot, and I'll work with people who have higher billable goals. They're all working harder, and we are substantially more profitable.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, it's remarkable. I mean, it's remarkable that they didn't teach us this stuff. I think what happens is a lot of people are so busy billing their time and feeling like that's what they have to do, that they don't take the time to learn all this other stuff.

Elise Buie: I think to that point, because of what a large family I had, I learned how to delegate at such a fundamental but silly level with my kids in school. I never baked a cupcake or delivered a cupcake or dropped off the wine for the school auction, dropped off the clothes for the school rummage sale.

I had a person named Sondra who was literally in her 20s, and she taught me how to delegate. She fundamentally sat down with me, went through my calendar, and she was like, "Elise, here are 18 things this month that I could do that you do not have to do. You could go bill way more than you're going to pay me to do this." So I became the delegating queen. I mean like crazy.

Then we brought that into our firm. I took Sondra's company and I said, "Wait a minute, why am I the only one delegating here? My receptionist needs to learn this skill. My paralegal needs to learn this skill." One of our benefits in our firm is that everyone has this concierge delegation service at their beck and call. It's wildly helpful because it teaches people how to delegate and thus create bigger impact. Because you have more time to do your billable work if you're not on the phone scheduling your car maintenance or scheduling your kid's dentist appointment. All of that got delegated away.

Elise Holtzman: That's amazing. So many lawyers, I talk about this all the time in the work I do, have an attitude that something along the lines of, "If I want something done right, I do it myself. I don't delegate it." I try to help people shift that mindset. It's interesting, though, you're not just telling people to do it. You're giving them the resources to do it. You're teaching them how to do it. I think that is something very unique in law firm leaders.

Elise Buie: I think it's critical. We attorneys have this idea that the person has to do it better than we do. I look at it as there are some things I delegate, and they absolutely do it better than me. A hundred percent. There are other things I delegate. They might get me 50% of the way there, but that's 50% of the way that I don't have to do it.

Elise Holtzman: That's okay. Exactly. It's not okay because we tend to be perfectionists in this profession. Look, some things have to be perfect and most of it doesn't have to be perfect. It really doesn't.

Elise, this is such a great conversation. You and I have already talked so much that we actually ran out of time for today. Before the call, we talked so much. That was a lot of fun.

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 scaling a law firm without losing the soul of what makes you special, what makes your practice special, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you at this point, but you think is important for people to hear?

Elise Buie: Be kind. Be kind to your clients, be kind to your team, be kind to your vendors. Realize that people are going through so many things that you can't see on the surface. If you are coming at people from a place of kindness, assuming good intent, you're going to just make it all work better. Everything is going to go better. You can't control how other people act at all. But you can control how you act.

Elise Holtzman: I love this advice because this is the thing that we hear. People put it in a meme online or you see it with a kitty cat or something on a poster. But the fact is that coming from you, this is extremely meaningful because you've actually used these values and this practice to not only grow a law firm where people want to come to work and where you're having an impact on the children and the divorcing parents that you were talking about, but it's a real business. It's a profitable business. The model that we've been taught and the model that many lawyers are using doesn't have to be the model that we keep using forever.

Elise Buie: That's the thing. If I could wave a magic wand, I would change how law firm leadership operates literally nationwide. I feel like we have lost our way in so many examples. One day, I'm going to go teach in law school so that I can help young lawyers understand what should they be looking for? What matters? Because it's tough work we do.

Elise Holtzman: It's tough. The generations that are coming behind you and me think differently about how work and life align with each other and what their values are in a way that no one really gave us the time to think about.

So, Elise, thank you so much for being here today. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you.

Elise Buie: Yeah, I love talking to you. Thanks for having me.

Elise Holtzman: Absolutely. This was a lot of fun. I'm also going to thank our listeners for tuning in. 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.