Michael Ellenhorn & Julie Henson | Grow Your Law Firm Through Strategic Lateral Hiring

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, and we're back for another episode of The Lawyer’s Edge Podcast. I'm really excited to welcome my guests today. My first guest is Michael Ellenhorn, founder and CEO of Decipher Investigative Intelligence, and he's joined by Julie Henson, the chief growth officer at Decipher.

Michael founded Decipher Investigative Intelligence to help clients create safer, more productive, and more profitable workplaces through reliable investigative intelligence and data analytics.

He counsels clients on mitigating risks associated with the hiring process as well as how to grow market share. Under Michael's leadership, Decipher has been recognized by Best Places to Work, Legal Week Innovation Awards, and the St. Louis Business Journal for Innovation in Corporate Philanthropy.

As chief growth officer at Decipher, Julie empowers law firms to make strategic growth decisions, whether it's lateral hiring, exploring new markets, or seizing M&A opportunities, she helps firms elevate client service, mitigate risk, boost revenue, and foster vibrant cultures.

With more than 20 years experience in the legal industry, including experience in business development strategy and prior experience as a chief client officer at an Am Law 100 law firm, Julie offers unparalleled insights into fostering growth and maximizing potential for law firms and other legal organizations.

Michael and Julie, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Julie Henson: Thanks for having us.

Elise Holtzman: I'm delighted to have you both here. I want to ask you a question that I have. Maybe this is a silly question, but I think it's a good place to start. One of the things you provide to your clients, as I said in the intro, is investigative intelligence. What does that even mean? Why is it important information for law firms to have when making decisions about how they're going to grow a firm?

Michael Ellenhorn: Elise, first of all, thank you so much for having us. It's great to join you today. Investigative intelligence is like it does what it says on the tin in a way. The best way to say it is whenever you go out to a restaurant, you usually check the Google reviews or you check the Yelp reviews or whichever review site you like.

Usually, you'll get a sense of what the food is like, what people's reactions are, et cetera, et cetera, whether they like the ambiance. You gather all of those things. I think the same can be said a lot for more contemporary dating websites, dating sites, and apps. It’s the same kind of thing.

The key part about investigative intelligence is we actually interface with it in our day-to-day lives. The challenge is that a lot of business people, and you see this a lot, frankly, with law firms, is oftentimes when it comes to hiring and strategic talent acquisition, they will not engage even in the same level of investigation that you would in effectively picking out a restaurant.

Investigative intelligence at its base is getting the informed intelligence and data that you need to make accurate decisions, and in our case, make those accurate decisions around hiring and talent acquisition.

Elise Holtzman: What are some types of information that you can gather through that sort of investigative intelligence? Is it information about obviously where the person has been before, what kind of work that they've done? Or is there something that's a little bit more intimate that you can gather about the kind of person you're dealing with or what other people are saying about them?

Michael Ellenhorn: I appreciate the question because oftentimes when people are engaging us for due diligence, they ask those immediate questions, which is effectively, like, how far in the weeds are we going to get?

There are really two types of investigative intelligence. One is called open-source intelligence, and that's anything that is linked back to a record. Then there's human intelligence, which is anything that is linked back to any form of data or intelligence that one person can impart to another.

As you can imagine when you're hiring, for instance, a lateral partner, when you're engaging in lateral growth, the quality of the partners, how well they do, their ability to port a book of business, their ability to be good firm citizens, their ability to effectively enhance your culture, improve your culture, rather than being a negative for your culture or wrecking your culture, you want to dig as much as you can to make sure to reassure yourself that the strategic purpose for the hire is fully aligned with the individual that you're planning on bringing on board and that they're not going to bring any negatives.

That key thing of making sure that everything from the basics like their qualifications to practice law, the basics like verifying their former employment, verifying their degrees, or verifying their claimed honors, whatever that may be, all of that open-source intelligence is critically important. That certainly goes to things like social media and traditional media and social media.

But that pendulum swings all the way to the other side, on the human intelligence side, which is what's their reputation like? What are they like as a human being in the workplace? What are they like as human being outside the workplace? What is their relationship with their client? Are they going to bring the promised book of business with them?

Julie Henson: One of the reasons why I've been so excited to be on the Decipher team after being in law firms for 20-plus years and working with the laterals to integrate—and I've seen everything, I've seen the folks that have promised a lot, they come and they don't really bring anything along with them or they interview really well and then all of a sudden they get into the firm and they can't integrate, they can't teach, they can't mentor. It just really affects everything at the firm—with Decipher from the human intelligence part of this, that's where I've been very excited and where I've seen the big impact.

I would always work with the research librarians within the firm to see where they went to law school, what their history has been. But that was never enough to be able to make an educated decision on how best to integrate not only the attorney but their clients into the culture that we had at the firm.

So that's, I think, where we really make the impact that's exciting and can make sure that any lateral that's out there, and for the lateral, too, because we want them to have a good experience. I think that they appreciate the lengths in which we go to, to make sure that their fit is a good one.

Elise Holtzman: I think it's going to be fascinating to a lot of lawyers and legal professionals that this sort of data even exists. Because to your point, both of you have mentioned this, that we didn't have this information before and many law firms still aren't using this information.

We're going to talk more about this, I think law firms are typically terrible at interviewing. It's like you have a great conversation with somebody. They seem like a decent person. They're obviously smart. They've done this kind of work, so let's give it a whirl and hire them. Obviously, both of you are instrumental in helping law firms not make mistakes when it comes to that.

Let's go back, because I ask you about the kinds of information that you have to share with your clients, with law firms. We're assuming that law firms are looking for growth here. There is a philosophy in business that you either grow or die. Do you think that's true? Is that true for law firms? Do they constantly have to be looking for ways to grow?

Julie Henson: I think so, but you have to define what growth looks like for you and what does success look like for you. I think you can grow, obviously, if you want to grow into a new market, because that's important from a client perspective.

I see a lot of firms that say, “Oh, I think we should be on the West Coast or I think we should be down in Florida,” but they say that because that's what they see the competition doing. But what they really need to focus on is from a client perspective, how is that going to impact their business?

Do they want to move into a new market because they see opportunity there for growth? Or do they have a current client that is based there so they can expand the relationship that way?

Or you can also look at, from a practice perspective, where do we want to invest? I see firms now really talk about, “Okay, here are the top four or five practice areas that we really want to invest in and grow.” But again, well, what does that look like for you?

I think when people just go out in the market and they go with their gut, that's when you see the strategy start to unravel and not be as successful as it can be. That's where we can really come in and help firm up that strategy, get the buy-in across the firm, and really make sure that that growth then can come to life no matter what it looks like.

Michael Ellenhorn: Elise, I just add to that that there are so many different types of growth and there's so many different strategic and operational nuances inside a law firm regardless of how large it is.

Let's just assume, for argument's sake, that you were not interested for whatever reason in any level of headcount growth. But let's just assume not interested in headcount growth. As a professional services firm, you would still need to deal with attrition, succession, pricing, and profitability.

You could literally set your goal as zero headcount growth. You'd still have to grow. You'd still have to hire. Attrition, succession, pricing, and profitability, you would still have to hire people all the time.

The way that professional services firms work and, as you know better than anybody, the way that law firms work intrinsically is you're constantly having to deal with the competitive pressures of the marketplace, whichever marketplace that may be in, whether it's geographic or whether it's practice or industry-oriented, all of those things will necessitate some level of strategic growth, even if you never grow your headcount.

Elise Holtzman: What I'm hearing is even if you never grow your headcount, people are going to leave one way or the other so you're going to be hiring. Even if the net number remains the same, there are going to be people in and people out.

Michael Ellenhorn: Yeah.

Elise Holtzman: It seems to me, and you guys will correct me if I'm wrong, that law firms, like every organization, I guess, can either grow headcount organically from the bottom, keep hiring in people who are first-year associates, let's say, and grow them, and hopefully, you're doing some of that and retaining your talent, or higher lateral partners and associates, perhaps, but higher laterally, or do it through mergers and acquisitions.

We know that we're seeing a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the workplace. Somebody that you and I, Michael, know in common and Julie, you know as well, is John Remsen at The Managing Partner Forum. He does a lot of polling of small to mid-sized firms to find out what's going on with them.

On this issue, I recently saw him do some polling of law firms. A very large percent of these small to mid-sized law firms said that they had been approached by other firms. Not necessarily even larger firms but they had been approached by other firms who were interested in the possibility of doubling them up and acquiring them, merging with them so that they could grow.

How does a firm start to determine what the best path for them is going to be when they think about this idea of growing?

Julie Henson: When it comes specifically to the M&A topic that you just talked about, and I've been through several of those and have been through the process, you really have to line, obviously, from a cultural perspective, that's been the killer of a lot of these deals.

But obviously, from a financial perspective, what do your rates look like? What does your client base look like? What does your footprint look like? Those are the foundational things that you need to get through right away.

If those checkout, then the culture piece is absolutely critical that you take a good look. A lot of people will have a really small group at your firm that are deciding on what firms to go to approach it or not.

While that can be helpful, it can also waste a lot of time because you really have to understand who you are going to work with. I see firms that put six, nine months a year into something and ultimately it falls apart because they're not asking the right questions when it comes to talent, when it comes to culture, when it comes to the values that they have.

I've been a part of a couple of firms that have merged and it's been a huge success. It's been through a lot of hard work, a lot of hard conversations, but you get everything out on the table.

I've also been through a couple that have been disasters because the financials looked good so that was where we put our time and energy into it. But when it came together, it just didn't work because the cultures were not aligned. There are a lot of different things that firms have to think about.

Elise Holtzman: Can you share an example of a culture divide that created a problem? I’m going to just share one quick story that I have, not in the legal industry. I’m in New Jersey, and there’s a lot of pharma in New Jersey.

Many years ago, there was a huge merger of two companies. The company that was kind of running the show ultimately that was going to really be in leadership and management threw out a lot of different units because they had their own people.

They fired a lot of people. They identified the leaders that they wanted to take on. One of them, very senior leader, is a very dear friend of mine. She was all excited about it in the beginning.

Within about nine months, she made a decision to leave the company because the culture was so wildly different, and also because what they said their culture was and what their culture really was were really two different things.

She saw how they treated people. She saw how that was impacting the company and she didn't want to stick around. So I'm curious whether you can give us a little bit of an idea of what some of those culture divides looked like that didn't work out for people.

Julie Henson: I would say the one that was the most impactful was when, and obviously I'm not going to name names, but when you would talk about the culture, it was people were very excited to join the firm because rates could stay the same, the client base was pretty equal.

But lo and behold, after about six, nine months, all of a sudden, the revenue started to dip. Then all of a sudden, we had to raise our rates by a lot. The new firm that had come in said, “Well, wait a second. We told our clients that this merger was not going to affect our rates tremendously. So here's not something that we can do.”

That immediately, you can imagine, caused a huge rift because, one, the firm is there to make money, but two, we also have to retain the clients that we have. That was something where we saw some attorneys leave over time because they just couldn't get on board with the rate structure and the clients just wouldn't have it. That's probably an easy thing to point out because I think firms forget what you say to clients and clients don't forget.

Michael Ellenhorn: Yeah. I mean, Julie, it's interesting that you mentioned that because, I mean, rates obviously is one. A couple of other things are compensation structures, obviously, which is a huge thing. It's a big cultural tell for any kind of combination, especially for professional services, and then also resourcing, resourcing priorities which gel with your overall strategy.

One of the things that we see on a regular basis—because at least we do so much pre-hire due diligence and we do so much talent market strategy for law firms—one of the things that we see on a regular basis is that you really do need to try and dig into the weeds to figure out as much as you could possibly know before you do these combinations.

Whether that's doing a full-blown merger, some full-blown combination, or whether it's bringing in a team to one particular office, or it also could mean a significant lateral hire, if you don't nail down as much as you can on the front end, if you don't nail down all of the data and intelligence on those things like compensation expectations, compensation systems, rates, and rate expectations and systems, resourcing, how is work assigned, how will I get my work done, who will be the associates, how does the professional staff interact with partners, do they do it directly or do they do it through office administrators?

Elise, you know, I mean, because you've been conflicting for years, you could create a list of those things that are literally like as long as your arm. But all of those things have to get nailed down because the cost of making a mistake is massive.

It's absolutely massive. I know that a lot of lawyers don't like to think about the actual pounds and pence of how expensive these mistakes are, but the CFO will definitely know. They will see in black and white how expensive these mistakes are.

Elise Holtzman: Michael, would you say that those are the kinds of mistakes that law firms are making across the board, whether it's new mergers and acquisitions or simply hiring one lateral partner, not doing the research beforehand?

Michael Ellenhorn: Yes, it's just the degree. It's the degree. Julie, I guess you would say this whole concept of like falling in love with a lateral or falling in love with a merger partner or, all of a sudden, you just have that glassy-eyed, everything is going to be perfect, everything is going to work out, this is the answer to all of my prayers.

Then everybody is so four squares behind getting something done that they don't stop to think. By the way, this isn't us pointing the finger at firms. It's just we do this all day long. We know what the downsides are.

We also know that roughly, and this is statistically speaking, 50% of the time it doesn't work out. We know that because we literally do hundreds of projects a year. We know, based on survey data and actual practice, that half of these deals don't work.

Elise Holtzman: Which is remarkable. Yeah. I mean, and we've seen the research. I was actually going to ask you about that because I've had this conversation with other people about this idea that 50% of lateral hires fail.

You talk about the financial loss, which is tremendous. There are other losses as well. I mean, I assume that just the human end of things also creates challenges when a lateral hire doesn't work.

Michael Ellenhorn: Elise, the big one that I can point out, and I'm sure Julie has like 28 other examples, but when you have a lateral hire that goes wrong or you have a merger that goes wrong, you have professional staff and associates that you have been developing, investing in, and grooming over a period of years.

When these strategic acquisitions don't work, oftentimes the people that end up hurting the most are the professional staff and the associates that you've been developing.

So it's not just the money that you lose because something may not necessarily work out, it's also these wonderful associates that you expected were going to become your new crop of partners or your professional staff that have carefully built the culture of an office. All of that can go up in smoke because you bring in the wrong people.

Julie Henson: One of the recent trends that some firms are starting to adopt, which I think hasn't been as successful as they thought, was they're starting to give incentive bonuses to partners that bring in, say, a friend or they refer a lateral partner to their firm.

What we've been finding is that while they can vouch for their friend, they really might not be a good fit but the firms are very committed to them because one, they want to keep their current partner happy and they're trying to fight to bring their friend there because they want the bonus.

But then they actually get into the firm without doing the background checks or to the depth of which they should. It just causes a lot of people getting upset, like what Michael just said about from an associate perspective, it's just so disruptive to the firm.

Then when they don't work out, then the partner that brought them on starts to lose their clout as well. I think when we see that firms are starting to try to take that investment piece into their own hands, it's not going as well as they had hoped, unfortunately.

Elise Holtzman: Let's assume for the moment that you are talking to a law firm that has made a decision that they want to bring in a lateral hire to fill a certain need that they have. First of all, what's it like out there? What's the competition like? Am I, as that law firm, going to have a hard time finding the person I want to find?

Is it fairly easy to find the laterals that you want to bring in? How can I as a law firm get ahead of my competition and find the person that's going to be the best fit for us?

Michael Ellenhorn: Well, the short answer, Elise, is that competition for partners who are going to be game-changing for your firm is fierce. It is fierce and it is vicious right now. Mind you, as we've seen, Julie and I have seen throughout our careers, that there’s a place for every lawyer.

For the most part, the legal talent market is porous enough that everyone will be able to find a seat eventually. But your question is, what's the market like right now for those game changes, for the people who can really move the dial? The answer to that is it's absolutely fierce.

Then the next question is, okay, well, if I'm in it to win it, and I realize in order for us to make gains strategically in the manner that we seek to as a firm, what do I need to do to “get this right”? What do I need to get it right?

You actually, Elise, answered your own question in a way, because the first thing is hiring strategy. That's the first thing. Most firms, when you ask them, are you “in the market”? nine times out of ten, what a firm is going to tell you, a firm leader is going to say, “We're opportunistic.” The stock answer is, “We're opportunistic.” But what opportunistic means in the context of professional services firms is we don't have a hiring strategy.

Elise Holtzman: Right. So if a bright, shiny object comes along, we might consider it, but we don't actually have an approach.

Michael Ellenhorn: Right. We don't have a strategy.

Julie Henson: From a competition perspective, what we see firms do now is that they'll call their recruiter that they've historically worked with and say, “Hey, we need an IP attorney that specializes in engineering or something.”

That recruiter will go out to the well of folks and try to drum up some options for you to view. Why that doesn't work is because a lot of the big partners that have that book a business or have that specialty that you really want, they're not answering the calls from the recruiters.

What we do is we find out exactly what you need down to the minute detail. We go out into the market. We do our own due diligence. We find those folks that don't want to be talked to.

We provide you with that information and empower, whether it's the managing partner or the practice group leader to make the phone calls directly to the candidates to say, “Hey, I really admire your career and I would love to have a conversation with you.” That is the call that that attorney will answer and that's the meeting that they'll take.

From a competition perspective, that's one way to drastically put you far and away ahead of your competition because most firms aren't willing to go to the lengths that they need to, to attract that type of talent.

Michael Ellenhorn: Just following Julie's point, which is a big part of figuring this out, so to speak, is making sure that you're utilizing the correct information. I mean, Julie, as you said, a lot of times the leaders of firms don't actually understand all the tools that are available to them.

They don't understand that with the right advice, there is a wealth of information that is available to them. I guess the best analogy to this is probably oil refining. You can't take a barrel of oil and pump it into your car. Because if you have an engine that runs on gasoline, you can't take crude oil and pump it into your car.

What do you have to do? You have to take the oil. You have to refine it. You have to take things out. You have to add things in. You have to make sure that it gets to a point where it is finely tuned enough, where the engine will run properly on it.

Lateral hiring data and strategic data that goes into that whole process of deciding who you're going to hire, when, and where, it's the same thing. One of the things that we do is we help our clients really refine all of those data inputs and help frame them in a way that they can better use them to make better hiring decisions.

Julie Henson: And to be proactive instead of reactive. Again, if you want to get ahead of your competition, you have to have a strategy that makes you proactive in what you're trying to do. That'll put you right at the top of the list.

Elise Holtzman: Also, I think to stick to your strategy because I think what happens is people say they have a strategy, they develop a strategy, they take the piece of paper that the strategy is written on, stick it off to the side, start interviewing, and as you said, Michael, before, start falling in love with somebody and forget that they even had a strategy, not use their own benchmarks, not use their own data, not use their own rules, and start pushing something.

Again, going back to what you said about not criticizing lawyers, but understanding that this is where they are, because as I always say, nobody ever bothered teaching us this stuff in law school, it's not like lawyers and law firms are hiring experts, so I think sticking to the strategy is an important point.

What about the interviewing process and the, I guess we could call it a dating process almost. You don't want to ask somebody to walk down the aisle with you the first time you meet them. What do you think that dating process should look like in a perfect world?

How long should people spend making sure that this person is a good fit for a firm? Who should be meeting with this lateral hire? Is it one or two people making this decision? Is it making a decision by committee? What's the best way to do this?

Michael Ellenhorn: Well, Elise, Julie and I are going to have a million answers to this, but Julie, this will be my [inaudible]. I'll jump in with this one. Elise, you've seen this a million times in your career, first and foremost, everybody has to be on the same page for what the process is and how long it will take.

One of the biggest frustrations in lateral partner hiring is—or in any kind of combination, so even in a merger—people have different expectations on either side about what the process is and how long it's going to take.

You have law firms that, for one reason or another, don't have internal agreement about what the process should be or what it actually is and how long it’s going to take. On the other side of the table, you have somebody who is often in the dark.

What they’re hearing is, “One more meeting, one more meeting.” Long stretch of time without conversations. Okay, one more meeting, two more meetings. “Oh, we need you to meet with this whole group of people in Chicago.” It goes on and on and on.

I would say first and foremost is have a clear understanding of what your process is, stick to it, and communicate it in a positive way to the people on the other side, whether it's a lateral partner, a team, or a full-scale combination.

Elise Holtzman: I know of one firm that is a smallish firm that has gone into the marketplace to hire some lateral partners. One of the partners of that firm told me that there is a list of people that typically are required to interview this person, but that the people who make the decision don't ever come back to them to say, “Hey, you met Michael or you met Julie, what did you think?”

It's almost like they're putting on a show for the candidate to make the candidate want to come to the firm, but they're not even gathering the internal data and the opinions of the people internally to find out whether this person is the right hire.

Michael Ellenhorn: And Elise, on top of that, which is obviously an incredibly important point, oftentimes, firms aren't even gathering the baseline data on the candidates or the combination to make, again, this goes back to the whole falling in love with your hire, they may not have a lateral partner questionnaire.

They may not have actually had baseline discussions about what the business case actually looks like. You can get far down the road with another meeting, another meeting, another meeting, only to find out later on in the process, “Oh, we have a major client conflict here.”

Or, “Wait a second, your rates are way too low for us.” So you couldn’t support your client. Or, “Hang on, 90% of your book has been one client. We’re in an industry sector where we have no track record.”

This can go on and on and on. It's really putting together the basics, getting all of that information upfront as much as you possibly can, doing proper due diligence, and doing it all in a timeline that not only works for the candidate—because you've obviously fallen in love with the candidate—not only works for the timeline of the candidate but also, to your point, really helps you organize your thoughts and your consensus internally. This is not easy. It's really, really challenging stuff.

Julie Henson: Yeah, and Elise, to that example that you just shared, my first thought is, “What a waste of time.” Even though they're able to bring that lateral on, the folks internally that you had engaging with them, they feel like they're not valued, that they were just used for the process. From a culture perspective, those are the types of things that can erode your culture very, very quickly.

Elise Holtzman: This reminds me of a term that I know you know that we use when it comes to business development for lawyers, this idea of scattershot marketing. Just running around and talking to somebody over here and having lunch with somebody over there and speaking on a panel every couple of years and not really having any focus.

There's prep that has to be done if you want to be successful in that regard. It strikes me that the same thing can be said here; you can have scattershot hiring going on. That's not serving the firm. It's not serving the person you hire and it's certainly not serving the strategic growth of the firm.

Let's say you now have done the due diligence. You've done the research. You've talked to the two of you and gotten all of the intelligence that you can. You feel like you're really knocking it out of the park on this one. You're making a great decision. This is going to be a marriage for the ages.

Now the marriage takes place. What are a few things that law firms can do and that perhaps the laterals themselves can do to help ensure that this is a partnership that's going to continue over time and is not going to be one of those 50% failures?

Julie Henson: That's a great question. I'm glad you asked that because a lot of firms, once they get that lateral over the finish line, then it's like, “Okay, now you're off to the races. We'll see you when we see you.” From the lateral's perspective, that isn't good.

One of the things that I did, which we were very successful in with our team, is you really need to sit down immediately with that lateral and say, “Okay, let's talk about what are your goals now. Let's talk about each client relationship. Let's get to know them. Let's get to know what we could add to that client relationship. From a client perspective at the firm, where can we plug you in? Here are the top 20 folks that you need to meet with within the next two to three weeks at the firm because they're a lot like you. You could give them some really good insight and they can provide you some good insight.”

Making sure that there is a lot of different people at a lot of different levels that come up alongside that lateral is key to make sure that from an integration perspective, it is smooth. But I will say on the client side of things, if that lateral does not feel comfortable with how the onboarding is going, there's going to be a lot of issues there. If you can really come up alongside them from that perspective, that is going to help you tremendously.

Michael Ellenhorn: Elise, the other thing that I would mention to Julie's extraordinarily valid point is figuring out a way where lawyers from the firm can immediately start working on at least one matter of the joining lawyer and vice versa.

The more quickly you can get integrated teams and pull them immediately out of their natural silos, the better chance you're going to have, ultimately, of integration success.

But the interesting thing about that, and all three of us know this, easier said than done. Most partners who join who are successful have a thriving business. When they join a firm, they have clients that need service right now.

They don't intrinsically think, “Oh, yeah, I'll just stop all of this so that we can engage in this grand integration exercise.” So it's not always easy to do it. Worst of all, when you bet on someone that doesn't have immediate business, that becomes even more difficult because now you're trying to integrate them into firm business, but there's no reciprocity, which of course, doesn't breed good feeling at the outset of one of these relationships.

Those are two areas right off the top. You could certainly discuss 10 more. But again, this all goes back to do you know who you're hiring? Does everybody have a clear understanding of what they're getting?

Elise Holtzman: I would say, based on what you've said, and you guys know this, but what you're talking about is borne out by research. I know Heidi Gardner at Harvard is one of the people who've done the research on this idea of integrating lateral hires and helping them be more successful, that that integration is very, very important.

You can't just say, “Okay, we hire this person, he's got a great book of business, let's let him run with it,” and expect it to work out. That's what most law firms, I think, historically have done.

It does require, as you say, Michael, people stepping back and saying, “This is great. We want you to serve your clients and we want them to be clients of our firm forever. But there's this other thing that we need to be working on to make sure this works out in the long term.”

So I think that all of this is to say that having the kinds of intelligence, data, information, and strategy that you help law firms with and that they may be able to get in other places—I'll let that idea float out there somewhere that somebody else might have some of this information—but I think that this is really important because it's not enough to do it the old fashioned way. We have more information now about what works and what doesn't work, it's not just about feelings. It's also not just about the numbers.

On one extreme, it's just about the feelings, “This is a great guy. He's got a great book of business. I think this will be really great for the firm.” On the other hand, it's all about the numbers. I think what I'm taking away from both of you is that neither one of those is true. Having the strategy, having all the information, making sure that you are looking at financial issues as well as cultural fit issues, all of it is really important.

As we start to wind up our time here together today, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of our 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 successfully, effectively growing your firm through lateral hiring and making those lateral hires stick, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem really obvious to you, but you think is important for law firm leaders to hear?

Julie Henson: Mine's going to be very simple, but it's true. Mine is be kind. Get to know people for who they are. I know that can go into you fall in love very quickly. But be kind at every level. Be kind to the folks that are working in your talent department and that are trying their best to get the information that they need for you to make a decision.

Be kind to the folks that are answering the phone when you call them. Just come out with a good heart and remember that people are just human beings and treat them nicely. I'm sure Michael will have a very different answer, but that's mine.

Michael Ellenhorn: I totally agree. I completely agree with that. My answer would be, and Elise, this really comes, well, we've already discussed this a couple of times, this whole idea of don't fall in love with your hire.

The corollary to that, don't fall in love with your hire, is really, speak out and pay attention to the red flags. So many firms will go through an entire process only to find out after the person has joined the firm, “Oh, we should have paid more attention to this or we should have done more digging on that.” Seek them out and pay attention to the red flags early on in the process.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I love that.

Michael Ellenhorn: That's both with individual lateral partners, but that's also when working out your talent strategy is it's very difficult to make accurate decisions and positive decisions, the firm, when you're doing it without enough intelligence. It's very, very difficult.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, great advice. All right, well, thank you so much, Michael and Julie, for being here today. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you about this very important and timely issue because there's so much of this going on in the marketplace. I think a lot of people are doing it without the kinds of support and information that they need.

I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in today. 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.

Thank you 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.