In the legal profession, success is not solely about winning cases but also about building a sustainable practice that endures the test of time. Douglas J. Wood, a veteran entertainment and media lawyer, underscores this in his latest book, From Dawn to Dusk. Wood shares valuable insights on the importance of strategic planning for lawyers and offers advice on navigating the emotional and practical challenges of transitioning out of active practice. His reflections provide a roadmap for legal professionals aiming to build a thriving practice and smoothly transition into retirement.
Wood emphasizes the critical role that a well-structured business plan plays in the success of a legal practice. Drawing from his personal journey, he highlights how he adopted basic business principles early in his career, focusing on creating a detailed, written plan with specific, measurable goals. According to Wood, lawyers often overlook the necessity of such planning, choosing instead to rely on their legal expertise alone. However, by integrating business strategies into their practice, lawyers can significantly enhance their chances of long-term success. Wood’s approach demonstrates that a solid business plan is not just an option but a necessity for those who wish to thrive in the competitive legal landscape.
As lawyers progress in their careers, they inevitably face the challenge of transitioning out of active practice. Wood candidly discusses the emotional strain associated with this process, particularly the sense of irrelevancy that can emerge as one nears retirement. He stresses the importance of having a transition plan in place, one that allows lawyers to gradually step back while ensuring their clients are well taken care of by other attorneys. This transition, Wood argues, should not be left to chance; instead, it should be a carefully managed process that begins years before retirement. His advice serves as a reminder that, just as in the early stages of a career, strategic planning is crucial in the later stages as well.
One of the more pressing issues in today’s legal industry, according to Wood, is the generational gap exacerbated by the shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. This gap, he believes, threatens the traditional methods of mentoring and knowledge transfer within law firms. The remote working model has disrupted the interpersonal relationships that are essential for passing down wisdom from senior lawyers to younger associates. Wood warns that law firms must find ways to bridge this divide if they are to maintain a cohesive and effective workforce. His observations highlight the need for firms to adapt to the changing work environment while preserving the core elements of mentorship and collaboration that are vital to a firm’s success.
In essence, Wood’s insights offer a comprehensive guide for lawyers at every stage of their careers. From the importance of a well-structured business plan to the challenges of transitioning out of practice, his advice is both practical and deeply reflective of his own experiences. Moreover, his concerns about the generational gap in law firms serve as a timely reminder that the legal profession must evolve with the times while maintaining its foundational practices. For any lawyer looking to build a successful career and plan for a smooth retirement, Wood’s wisdom is invaluable.
Douglas J. Wood’s reflections on building a legal legacy are a testament to the power of strategic planning and foresight in the legal profession. His emphasis on business planning, career transitions, and the generational gap provides a roadmap for lawyers aiming to achieve long-term success and relevance. Wood’s insights serve as a reminder that a successful legal career is not just about winning cases but about building a practice that endures and evolves.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to the Geek Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:11] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. So Marlene, I completely forgot about this. I know double a double L has been a few weeks ago, but I was reminded today on LinkedIn that the CIA, the Central Intelligence
[00:00:26] Marlene Gebauer: at AALL.
[00:00:28] Greg Lambert: was recruiting law librarians. and the funniest thing about this one, I got a little bit behind the scenes as well, but I noticed, they only had their first names.
[00:00:40] Marlene Gebauer: were looking for special and specific skills,
[00:00:42] Greg Lambert: yeah, they were looking for a certain set of skills. but apparently it caused some issues because, They not only did they only use their first name at the conference. That’s how they signed all the contracts was first name only. so when things got shipped in, it was only a first name
[00:01:02] Marlene Gebauer: They didn’t know where to bring it.
[00:01:04] Greg Lambert: the hotel held it and actually called the police to check to make sure that it was good. So, I think sometimes, the logistics of
[00:01:15] Marlene Gebauer: Sometimes being top secret is a little too top secret, right?
[00:01:18] Greg Lambert: little too top secret. So it was fun. I really enjoyed the fact that my, sister in law always tags along for these things and I get her a vendor hall pass, as well.
And so she was very confident that she was too old to be recruited by the, the CIA. They quickly told her that apparently you’re never too old to be recruited by the CIA and even science teachers have value to the CIA.
[00:01:46] Marlene Gebauer: as you have special skills.
[00:01:48] Greg Lambert: as long as you have special skills. So, uh, yeah, I think. This was the first year that they were there, but they said they will be back.
So whether we see them or not, that
[00:02:00] Marlene Gebauer: that’s right.
[00:02:02] Greg Lambert: All right, well, let’s jump into today’s show. we have with us a very special guest. Douglas J. Wood. Doug’s a renowned entertainment and media lawyer with over four decades of experience, and Doug has built and managed multi million dollar practice, and served as general counsel for the Association of National Advertisers, along with, being a very prolific author, both in fiction and non fiction.
[00:02:29] Marlene Gebauer: And today we’ll discuss his latest book, From Dawn to Dusk, which offers insights, that are invaluable in building a successful legal practice and transitioning towards retirement. So Doug, welcome to the Geek Review.
[00:02:43] Douglas Wood: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
[00:02:45] Greg Lambert: So Doug, before we jump into your book, from Dawn to Dusk, and, and I have to say I love the old movie From Dusk Till Dawn, so I have a hard time not transposing that, but I know you’ve written a, a number of books over the year, including fiction and nonfiction, and I’m really interested in what does a lawyer write, you know, as far as fiction, what kind of fiction do you like to write?
[00:03:12] Douglas Wood: Most of my, my other books, my fictional books are essentially thrillers, political thrillers, Paris thrillers. And so to get my, get my, aggression out fictional characters rather than. People on the other side of the negotiating table, like, I’m soft there, I’m hard in the books.
[00:03:28] Greg Lambert: I can totally see that. I’ve seen some of the people on the other side of the table and murder mysteries, like, you know, really pop into my head when I’m talking with them.
[00:03:36] Douglas Wood: There’s a lot of lawyers who write novels. I think it must be an outlet for us to get our frustrations out or to be creative in ways that can’t get overruled. So, you know,it’s a, it’s a side gig that’s a lot of fun to do.
So I want to turn to your latest book, which is basically a guide for practice why are you emphasizing the importance of a written business plan for lawyers and what common mistakes do lawyers make when they’re planning their careers? It all stems from when I first graduated law school. I didn’t go to a very famous law school. I went to a relatively unknown law school and ended up in a law firm that was relatively small. All the folks, the partners there were middle to more, a little senior, but not in their 60s or 70s. So there was little likelihood that I would be inheriting anything or they would be giving me any business.
I resorted to looking at business books because I had no idea. You’re not taught in law school how to build a business or run a business. It’s just
[00:04:31] Marlene Gebauer: Still not. I
[00:04:33] Douglas Wood: I started reading a whole lot of business books and And sort of getting my, you know, cheapest MBA I could, and, realize that basic business planning, whether you’re teaching at Stanford or Harvard or Oxford or whatever, is a very regimented system of written business plans that are, are very strategic or tactical, start with what they call a SWOT analysis, just strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
And from there, you build a tactical plan at that, the key of which is tactics. I embraced that as a young attorney because no one was going to, you know, the mentors were there, but they weren’t really passing on business. And I sort of got, I drank the Kool Aid, essentially what it is. And over the years, it kept working and working until it kept building and building.
And I think that what lawyers, young lawyers don’t do, even older lawyers don’t do, is recognize that they’ve got to put their egos aside and understand that it’s a business. And if you want to build a business, you’ve got to use basic business principles. Do it, and if you’re loyal to them, and you follow through with them, You’re virtually guaranteed to succeed.
And I say to folks, if I did it, you can do it. This is not rocket science. It’s just, a function of being diligent to staying with a written plan, finding the time, you always have the time, and to be again, extremely tactical, you know, what are you going to do when you’re going to do it?
How are you going to do it? Who are you going to need to help you? Don’t do it alone. It’s a process. And that’s what I try to talk about in the first half of the book that the dawn side of the book is how someone can use those common principles of this development to develop a legal practice.
[00:06:11] Marlene Gebauer: mean, do you recommend, getting an MBA or having some sort of formal business training for new lawyers?
[00:06:19] Douglas Wood: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t do that, but if I had my druthers and go back 45, whatever the numbers use, I don’t want to say, any one of those joint JD MBA degrees is probably a good step forward. I got my JD at an LLM in trade regulation, which I know the new business and then moved on from there.
But yeah, if you can do that, if you got the time, but I also think it’s, you know, I say, it’s not rocket science. So really, in terms of what we do as lawyers. It’s not all that complicated. We’re not, you know,
[00:06:47] Greg Lambert: we’re not reinventing the lightbulb every day.
[00:06:49] Douglas Wood: And we’re basically just trying to convince people that we’re good as lawyers and that they could use our help. So that can be very, organized in terms of tactics, whether it’s networking, whether it’s, all sorts of other things you can do. And that’s kind of what I talk about in the book.
[00:07:05] Greg Lambert: One of, one of the things that I know we were talking about, kind of the youth side of being a lawyer, you know, within your first few years. I think a lot of times, you’re so busy doing. that you don’t necessarily think about what your long range plans are, and I think it’s really interesting in your book how you kind of stress that, the earlier the better, when it comes to planning out your career and what your strategic goals would be.
So how should young lawyers focus? On, setting a strong foundation for their career and more importantly, how should they be measuring that progress along the way?
[00:07:45] Douglas Wood: you start out kind of simple. I mean, you’re not trying to. create a 1, 000, 000 dollars in your 1st year out, whatever it is. I mean, it’s really small steps that you do take. You systematically take. I had 1 partner that I mentored over the years and the way she made sure she took the steps she needed to, she had posted notes all over a computer screen.
So that she would constantly see this, like the to do list on your refrigerator. The reason you do the list on your refrigerator, literally, it’s a, it’s an actual physiological thing that happens to your brain, it gets sick and tired of looking at it and makes you do it. And so, as long as you start with that simple steps and keep building on it year by year and staying in a discipline that.
Where I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of lawyers stumble is where they just don’t stay to the discipline because they have the excuse, I’ve got so much else I have to do, I’m busy, my clients are demanding, you know, my family’s demanding, I get all that. And that obviously is a difficult challenge, but as long as you stay disciplined with your tactics and find people to help you, don’t do it alone.
[00:08:47] Greg Lambert: you’ve got your assistants, you’ve got your associates, you’ve got your partners, make it a family kind of a thing, if you will. That sounds a little silly, but it’s kind of just getting a network together of people are going to help you do it. And it’ll be a lot easier to do it that way as well. And what about the measurements? What’s what’s a couple of examples of things that you think? You should
[00:09:05] Douglas Wood: are, there are two sets. are a set of measurements that are traditional that a law firm will put upon you, your bill of allowance, your revenues, your realization, all those. those are not goals to develop in your business. Those are goals that you have to maintain. In order to keep your job.
So they should be focused on, but that’s not the kind of business planning I’m talking about. I’m talking about saying, okay, I want to develop this expertise. I want to target that particular business or client. I want to accomplish this particular thing in my career, whether it’s being rated in chambers or legal 500 or whatever it is with very specific goals.
In addition to those that are established. By your firm. So you focus on those, you get your tactics towards those and keep developing. And at the end of the year, what I always used to do, I just had a list of all my tactics and I would just say done, not done, done, not done, done, not done. And the more tactics you have, business schools will show you the more tactically you are given a goal, the more likely it is.
That you’ll achieve that goal. So you don’t have one tactic or two tactics. You have 10, 15, 20 tactics oriented towards accomplishing that particular goal. And if you measure that by saying, yeah, I did that tactic that one, that one, that one, you’re virtually guaranteed to achieve a goal. That’s what they’ll tell you in business school.
[00:10:20] Marlene Gebauer: I want to switch, from the dawn more to the dusk, part of the book. you know, I’m really sort of interested in this answer because I think it’s really a tough thing to do. what emotional and practical challenges do lawyers face when transitioning out of active practice and how can they prepare for these challenges?
[00:10:44] Douglas Wood: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. as I explained in the second half of the book, there is a real emotional challenge to letting go of a multi million dollar practice and finding what you’re going to do next with your life. The biggest emotional strain you go through is a feeling of relevancy. because people innocently think, you know, Doug’s getting older and he doesn’t need to be bothered by this, or I’ll put in the BCC. I won’t bother within this particular meeting. That’s all very innocent and good natured what they’re doing, but they don’t realize that the message that is giving the senior attorney is.
That you’re no longer relevant. And the reality is that you will eventually be irrelevant, you know, one way or the other. You’re gonna, you’re gonna be irrelevant. so at some point in your career, you need to embrace that possibility of irrelevancy. And figure it out by a plan. It’s the same kind of planning I did to build a practice.
I did the same thing in terms of transitioning my practice. It started five years before I left the firm. I started the process and worked with the firm to do that, to help get over the, you know, over those kind of hurdles that I didn’t know at the time I was going to face. And I was hardly any, you know, I hadn’t been there, done that yet.
And along the way, I dealt with each of those sort of emotional moments that you go through in transitioning, giving up and trying to figure out what you can do next. And that’s what I try to talk about in the book. That the thing that amazed me about that emotional journey was how little is, is done in law firms and in the marketplace to address that cohort.
You know, I admire the way law firms address all sorts of other cohorts, LGBTQ, disabled veterans, they do wonderful programs to help them advance in their career. But there’s one cohort that they almost entirely ignore, and that’s the cohort that everybody’s going to be in, God willing, sooner or later, and that’s getting older. So it’s an asset that is not utilized as well as it could. It’s a process that is kind of left to the individual. You know, some firms will give some kind of financial advice or whatever. But that’s from the receiving standpoint, that’s as if you walked into your doctor’s office and the doctor said, get your affairs in order. It’s not that there’s a, there’s a, you know, a malicious desire here or anything like that. It’s just that the management of firms and lawyers in general don’t think about that. Their egos are too big. They feel too necessary to lawyers and to clients. so they never see that, this is going to come to an end. embracing that and moving forward is the most difficult part of this process.
[00:13:21] Marlene Gebauer: so I was really interested because, you know, you said you worked with your firm and I had read that you said a lot of firms don’t really sort of pay attention to this, but, it seemed like your firm was very much engaged, so I’m, wondering what they did right.
[00:13:34] Douglas Wood: Well, they were engaged with me. And so I can only speak to that. There wasn’t a program, but I could have, it was through my plan. And I was lucky enough, obviously I had a big enough of a book of business, so I had some leverage. So they did, you know, they kept to the plan. They kept to the commitments that they were supposed to do, you know, from a financial standpoint and from a measurement standpoint and those kinds of things.
but it was more passive on their part than, than it, but that I can blame myself for because I wasn’t, in hindsight, I wasn’t asking for all that much. I was just saying what I was going to do and then I would do it.
That’s not to criticize the firm. there were some things they did wrong. Some things I did wrong. But the thing that was lacking on both sides, I think, was a much more robust communication process. You know, talking to one another as opposed to, hey, let’s leave Doug alone. Which is, which I, you know, I was sitting there saying, gee, leave me alone kind of thing.
So that was, in hindsight, I think that, you know, if a firm were to set up a more robust communication process, if we were to create a cohort of similarly situated attorneys? So, they can get together almost like a group session. And that’s what it is. It’s a very psychological process.
[00:14:45] Greg Lambert: And all the principles of psychology and change in life can be applied to this cohort as much as any others. So, they could, you know, firms could do better with that as well. But to this day, they’re not, and that’s why I’m pushing this conversation hard as I can, because I think we can do a lot better, and, we need to do a lot better. Doug let me, let me also follow up on that because I think, and I’m going to say this a little bit tongue in cheek, but also I think, I think we’ve all experienced it. there’s a lot of partners. That their retirement plan is I’m they’re going to carry me out feet first of the office, right?
[00:15:24] Marlene Gebauer: and you mentioned that one of the obstacles is the ego of of the partner because they’ve Got such a great book of business. They’ve built, you know a whole lifetime around and probably consider their whole, uh, personality being tied to practicing law. How do you walk away from that?
Yeah, but I mean, imagine, it’s just got to be so hard, like something that, you know, you have worked on and built and grown, Your entire career most of your life and being able to say okay, I’m gonna let that all go and I’m gonna move on to something else you have an outlet in writing books, you know, you may have other activities.
I’m not sure that everybody does and that’s just gotta be a strain.
[00:16:13] Greg Lambert: much golf one can play.
[00:16:15] Douglas Wood: Well, in my case, it wouldn’t matter how much I played, it wouldn’t make any difference.
[00:16:18] Marlene Gebauer: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
[00:16:20] Douglas Wood: fall back almost always on how do sound businesses operate? And one of the things that any. corporation that’s doing well or whatever will tell you any leading brand will tell you that they expect succession plans from all of their executives, five year succession plans.
I was just talking to a former partner of mine who went in in house with a big financial institution. a general counsel and he had to constantly have a succession plan in place and had to present it to them. Law firms don’t do that, they don’t have succession plans of process for that. So the first thing they could do is, I think, is start to talk about that and start to institute that.
So an individual understands, that’s part of their obligation, succession. Now you can have a succession plan when you’re 90 years old, as far as I’m concerned, but at least have the succession plan. So they’re focusing on otherwise, as I saw so many times with so many lawyers in my, in my career, they didn’t plan and they would literally die at their desk on just about, or they would.
Just so fade away where they weren’t being called anymore. They weren’t important anymore as generations come up in corporations and clients. They want to talk to their peers more than they want to talk to the. So, you know, the gray haired person, and it’s just a natural evolution, and if your ego is such, and lawyers have gigantic egos, we all do, and that you can’t imagine that you’re not the most important person to your client’s life.
It’s just not how you think, because you’re solving problems all the time. So it is very hard to let that go. So you need help. So you need, your firm needs to assist you in that, in that journey. And early on, so that it’s very transparent and to, and to help you through that process in a way that is going to keep you relevant and make you comfortable and also hopefully, as you said, you know, Marlene, that you’ve got something else to do.
I mean, I’ve also seen partners when I ran law firm and I, you know, in the management of law firms who just had nothing else to do. And that was just. I don’t know what you can do about that. That’s something that, you may just have to say, well, okay, there’s an exception to the rule, but hopefully they’re just a few and far between.
[00:18:29] Greg Lambert: well, to me, just having this conversation, I mean, the law firm itself goes through multiple of these transitions of partners, you know, leaving the firm, retiring where you only do it once. And so, you know, it’s, it’s kind of hard to, to
[00:18:48] Douglas Wood: like 10 times, but yeah, I only did it once.
[00:18:51] Greg Lambert: yeah, but it seems unfair then to put that responsibility on the individual to basically come up with their own plan.
I’m
[00:19:00] Douglas Wood: would I argue, It’s not fair. It’s just not smart. I mean, our profession, the boomers are coming out, but we’re all approaching the time when we’re going to retire and we’re going to go on. So there’s a lot of older attorneys that are practicing today, the boomers, and the firms too, if they’re smart, they’re going to look at that cohort and say, listen, There’s a wealth of wisdom there, but it’s going to leave, and we need to figure out a way to harness that and to bring it back down to the next generations of lawyers, and we’re going to have a bigger volume of that problem than we’ve ever had before, because just the population, if you look at it, look at the demographics.
So, a firm who’s thinking intelligently about this, It’s going to say not only do I not want that person to do it alone, I want to create a group, a support group around those people, I want to make them feel relevant, I want to keep them on to some extent, make them feel important, but also be very frank with them about, A, we have to have a process of succession, and if you have to, find me firms that have that kind of dialogue.
With their older partners, and I’ll, I’ll tell you, they’re going to be, you can count them on one hand if you’ve lost three fingers.
[00:20:12] Greg Lambert: uh, well, Doug and, reading your, Managing your transition out. you had a couple of barriers going on in that, you know, you were turning 70 and trying to manage your transition and then all of a sudden, COVID hits, and we all. Go remote and that must have been incredibly you know, challenging at the time.
So can you share your experience, during this time and particularly how you navigated the transition out of your firm and, and what lessons did you kind of learn dealing, circumstances around your specific retirement?
[00:20:50] Douglas Wood: Yeah, on the technology side, I was somewhat lucky in that. I decided to go remote before hit and move to North Carolina. And it’s very funny, the managing partner at the time said, gee, Doug, I don’t know if that’s going to work or not. I said, too bad I’m gone. so I had all the technology in place. So that side of it during the COVID change was relatively painless.
the other side of it, where I was transitioning clients to other lawyers and wanting to make sure they knew the client, met the client, whatever it was, became much more difficult because there were no more meetings. It went over lunches, no more dinners, no more any of that kind of socializing. so you had to do it on zoom meetings and they were all wonky.
If you remember in the beginning, they didn’t work. Right? and people wouldn’t realize that they’re on camera. So what they’re doing, whatever. I mean, it became ridiculous. We had, I had meetings where they have 1 meeting was a parrot on 1 guys shoulder. Yeah, I don’t know. It just, it was just insane. So we all have those stories.
But that was the challenge to really sort of find a way of something totally new, a new way to communicate. You know, you always knew about video conferencing and stuff like that, and there were people trying to sell it, but nobody really bought into it, you know, in the pre COVID days in any extensive degree.
So that was the challenge, is trying to create a bridge to a personal relationship between new attorneys and my clients without having any physical presence of one another. I would literally do, Zoom lunches. I would ship a lunch to the client’s house, and then we would get on and have lunch together with the other attorney.
I would try to do innovative things that were a little different, to try to bridge that gap. and in the end, it all worked out. I think we all sort of eventually evolved into the COVID world and the remote world. And if you like that world, it seems to be manageable today.
[00:22:43] Marlene Gebauer: So, I’m really curious about, the client feedback and sort of the client side. You know, you’ve just talked a little bit about, how you tried to make the transition and introduce people. but, you know, clients often have more than one counsel, and they also, have personal relationships with their counsel, and to sort of bring somebody new in may not always, go over that great.
So what type of feedback, did you get from clients and, why do you think that was?
[00:23:18] Douglas Wood: Yeah, most of it was positive. you know, they kind of understood. In fact, they were asking questions even before I told them, you know, what are you doing, Doug? why are you moving to North Carolina? that kind of stuff. So there were elements in the conversation, but I did something that I always urged all my partners to do when they were, you know, work when I was managing business and that was if you really want to build a large book of business.
The key to it is to delegate the work, so that the more lawyers you have working on, it’s a simple thing, the more lawyers you have working on your matters, the more money you’re going to make. it’s, it’s simple. But lawyers for the most part are very possessive. They’re afraid to delegate because they’re afraid to lose a client.
So I would urge them, I’d say, listen, you may lose a client. And let’s say you, you’ve got a 5 million book of business you’ve been able to create because you’ve delegated and you lose 500, 000. You’re still going to do a lot better off than if you just had a 2 million business because you’re busting your ass trying to do all the work.
but most lawyers didn’t do that. I used to joke, say, I want to be the laziest lawyer in the world. And as soon as anything ever came in, I just delegated, delegated. There was one year at Reed Smith, there were 300 lawyers that worked on my matters in some incremental amount of time. so when I did my transition, Marlene, to get to the question.
I had already sort of done it. I had kind of brought everybody else in and built other relationships. So when I transitioned, we didn’t lose a single client. We lost some pieces of a few, because they had other relationships, as you mentioned, Marlene, but the vast bulk of the business stayed together.
And I think it was really because, I was lazy and I delegated a whole hell of a lot when I was practicing law and I allowed, I lost business over the years and I gained business over the years. it was just part of the business and I would, again, have my written plan. I would put down my tactics.
I would do all of those things in a very diligent way. and, you know, clients eventually came around it. A few of them though, I will say a few said, no, you can’t go. You can’t leave. you’re not going anywhere. And so I still have some relationships with some clients who are moral book. They can secretly area.
They call me. Every once in a while and bounce, which makes you feel very good. I mean, look, that’s the relevancy factor if all my clients said, hey, great, Doug, you know, good going, I’ll see you, that would crush. So, you know, part of me wanted to resist the other part of me wanted to say, okay.
So it was an interesting thing. It was a mix, but for the most part, I was lucky. Uh, they, they responded well to it.
[00:25:48] Marlene Gebauer: Well, it sounds like you planned very well for it. They knew everybody already, so it wasn’t like you’re bringing in someone strange.
[00:25:55] Douglas Wood: That’s the key. And the planning can be, again, it’s a two way street. If the law firms would lean into this idea of having a program where they help senior lawyers transition and build plans and do this kind of thing, it’s going to be a plus for both sides of the equation.
Law firms, however, just don’t think that way.
[00:26:17] Greg Lambert: And for the clients that you didn’t want to continue doing work for, did you just double your billing rate and that discouraged them?
[00:26:23] Douglas Wood: here’s the funniest thing of all. When I left Reed Smith, my billing rate was $1925 $1925 an hour, at a ridiculously high rate. So when these clients came to me, they said, almost sheepishly, Now what’s your billing rate? I said no. Said it’s not gonna be 1925. Are you crazy? I don’t have any overhead.
So I lowered my price, to $750 an hour. And it was just as if they were, you know, getting the bargain of the year that I, I, they said to one client who jumped right on. And I said, oh, wait a minute, did I say seven 50? now let me, let me correct that.
[00:26:56] Marlene Gebauer: Let me think about this.
[00:26:56] Greg Lambert: a one in front of that.
[00:26:58] Douglas Wood: Yeah, no, I wish, you know, if I could have gone away with that, it would’ve been, it would’ve been great. I should have, I don’t know. It’s too late now. They know what it is.
[00:27:06] Greg Lambert: well, Doug, in your book, there’s, you know, you shared lots of personal stories about your career. if you had to pull out kind of one that you believe kind of encapsulates the most important lesson of your book, what, what do you think that would be? Yeah,
[00:27:22] Douglas Wood: and, and there was one client I had who was almost like a brother to me, a guy named Eddie Phillips. Um, uh, he, he brought into the business here, Belvedere and Chopin vodkas. He was in the distilled business, distilled spirits businesses, in fact.
he was a philanthropic man. He was a very, Wise man. he was the son of Dear Abby. So you can imagine sort of what his childhood was like growing up with his mother’s Dear Abby. But, but he brought me into, the sale of his company, to LVMH in, 2004. And it was doing extremely well.
And I thought everything was fine. And we were walking, we were literally, this is going to sound a little, whatever. We’re walking along the street in Paris one afternoon. Doing the deal in, in, in Paris. And I said to him, I said, Eddie, you know, why, why are you selling now? you’re at the top of the game.
Your profits are going up, you know, why are you selling now? And he said, well, I, he said, I looked at what was around me. And I said that I’m individually no longer adding value. it’s growing because it’s growing, but it’s not growing because I’m adding value. So it’s better for me and better for the business to find another place to add value and to let somebody else who can add value take this business to the next level.
That really hit me. And he said, and sometime sooner or later you’re going to get to a point where you’re going to have to ask yourself that very difficult question. Are you continuing to add value or are you just treading water? So that’s the most difficult question. You face as you get into the seniors years of your of your practice.
Are you adding value to the client? Or are you just treading water and just waiting for the day to come? But, you know, it was it was a lesson that I learned many from Eddie.
[00:29:16] Marlene Gebauer: A true client service lesson. So, Doug, we have reached the point in the podcast where we ask all of our clients Our guests, a crystal ball question and the question we’re going to ask you is, you know, what do you see as a change or a challenge in the next two to five years that the legal industry is going to need to address?
[00:29:42] Douglas Wood: You know, the, uh, the canned answer is AI. Everybody says AI, but that, to me, that’s not the answer. To me, it’s what I call the generational gap. COVID took everybody away from one another in the traditional way we learned law, that we learned to interact with clients, that we learned to interact with each other.
He suddenly became distant and remote, images on a screen that could be put on mute, that could be put on blank, so that a totally different kind of a, a relationship that my generation has. Now with the younger generation where there’s no longer that kind of physical presence together and all the things that helped me learn how to be a lawyer.
Trying for management of law firms to get back to that, which I think is a far better model from my perspective than exists today is a very hard road for them. Most of them, a vast majority, are still not back in the office 100%, not even close. most are sort of a 50 percent maybe or a couple of days a week.
I watched this and I say to myself, you know, how sustainable is that in the next 3 to 5, 10 years, you know, the technology is going to do what it does. And if all those things are gonna sort of get dealt with, but the interpersonal relationships. And the passing on of the torch, is much more difficult today, from my perspective.
And I think that’s the challenge firms have to figure out how to do. How to, how do we engage that again? The point of that problem is also. The partners don’t come in, you know, they’re financially, I’m spoiled, obviously, I don’t go in because I live in North Carolina. I can financially, I don’t have to go in.
But many partners, senior partners in particular, are similarly situated like that. They got spoiled during COVID. And they don’t necessarily want to go into the office. So if you think of the, if you think of the imbalance that that creates. First of all, you got all your staff there. They have to go there, so they don’t have that privilege.
That creates a tension. And your associates, young associates are coming in when they come in, the partners are coming in when they come in. How is that a cohesive way to build business? to build connections, to build somebody who’s not going to just be a journeyman and look to lead every three years or just chase the greener pasture, wherever that’s going to be.
[00:32:00] Greg Lambert: That’s, to me, if I were in firm management, which I would not want to be today, but if I were in firm management again, I’d be scratching my head. How do we get back to breaking that generational gap that is increasing? that’s the tough question to answer. I guess.
[00:32:17] Marlene Gebauer: true.
Well, Douglas J. Wood, author of From Dawn Till Dusk. I want to thank you very much for coming in and talking with us today. This has been great. And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review Podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on LinkedIn. Doug, is there any particular place that you want to point listeners to to learn more or reach out to you?
Okay.
[00:32:47] Douglas Wood: yeah, you can, uh, I have my website is Douglas J. wood. com. You can see all my books and stuff there and I can be reached by a via email at Douglas dot wood at wood.
[00:32:59] Marlene Gebauer: We’ll have links in the show notes. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you so much, Jerry.
[00:33:06] Greg Lambert: Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene. I’ll talk to you later.
[00:33:08] Marlene Gebauer: Okay, bye bye.