Scaling a Law Firm: Lessons from 1000% Growth with Matthew Davis

Freddy D: 00:02:18

ed Davis Business law to over: 1000

Martindale Hubbell awarded Davis its AV Preeminent rating in recognition of his outstanding skill and integrity.

With more than 25 years of legal and entrepreneurial experience, Davis has advised business leaders on mitigating risks and seizing opportunities through his firm's Strong Protected Business System trademark.

ms to groups such as the Inc.: 5000

ed Business, was published in: 2023

He also hosts two podcasts, The Strong Protected Business and the Art of Preventing Stupid, sharing his insights from decades of work helping entrepreneurs and business leaders.

In addition to his legal and business pursuits, Davis is an accomplished guitarist and leads a heavy metal band, Geriatric Steel, known for original hard rock songs that resonate with middle aged audiences. Please join me in welcoming Matthew Davis, founder of Davis Business Law.

Freddy D: 00:03:59

Welcome Matt, to the Business Superfans podcast. We're excited to have you this morning.

Matthew Davis: 00:04:04

Well, I'm thrilled to be here. Let's talk about this superfan business. How about that?

Freddy D: 00:04:09

That sounds like an excellent idea. So you're with Davis Business Law.

Tell us a little bit about the story behind that because I read that you've really scaled this thing from nothing to multi locations and multi states and everything else. So what's the backstory?

Matthew Davis: 00:04:26

Well, I was county seat lawyer, so had a solo practice in my hometown, which is an overgrown prairie town. Ten years ago I had a midlife crisis and said, hey, let's go start a law firm. And here we are.

We tried growing it in a small city, which just got kind of annoying because it's hard to attract talent. In fact, growing in this market made it worse for me personally. So we started out, moved a branch and started hiring in Oklahoma City.

And then we said, hey, we can do this. Let's go to Tulsa and Wichita. And then we said, well if we can do that, let's go to Kansas City and Austin and Fort Worth and Dallas.

And so we've got eight branches right now and looking at a couple other markets probably later this year. The way I describe what we do is we're the family doctor of business law.

Freddy D: 00:05:22

Business law is really important, especially for small businesses, because a lot of times you can get yourself caught up into a situation that you didn't think was a situation and becomes a situation. Things that in my career in the computer industry was that we had contracts that people signed when buying the technology.

And the reality is nobody cares about the contract until everybody cares about the contract.

Matthew Davis: 00:05:47

Exactly. And I remember I was sitting up here at one of our clients offices and I was reading like a hundred page contract with Exxon, right?

And this is going to sound pretty crazy, but I'm looking at it and I started kind of looking at it with awe and respect because I go, wow, every one of these paragraphs is about something that went wrong over the last hundred years. Yes. People don't worry about the contract. They just sign stuff and then it bites them and kind of have a saying.

When somebody's giving you a contract, they've probably written it to their advantage. Right. And we teach our clients that. The three main contracts you really want to look at are your customer contracts. Let's get those in order.

Let's make them fair to you.

We don't really want to stack the deck and screw your customers around, but let's make them fair vendor contracts, which is really what you're we're alluding to. And then you need to get your employee contracts in order. So those are your three baseline contracts that you want to deal with.

Freddy D: 00:06:58

As a small business, when I worked with vendors, I set up a bunch of resellers all over the different world. And what was important was that you had to incorporate whatever the laws were in Germany or if they were in Italy or Sweden or England.

You had to make sure that you abided by the local rules there. Because I was managing global sales for the tech software company and you had to take that into consideration.

Matthew Davis: 00:07:28

A New Zealand company has come into Texas, right. And they sent us a contract and it had New Zealand law. And I was like, guys, are you kidding us? We're doing business in Texas.

Ultimately, we were able to agree on Texas law. And as far as venues, I'll tell you, Zoom has really changed how people handle proceedings.

Because by Zoom, and there's of course the American Arbitration association, which is private court, right. And that leather body called the International center for Dispute Resolution. And that's a great body to work with when you're doing deals like that.

The ability to have hearings by Zoom is fantastic. Makes things move a lot quicker.

Freddy D: 00:08:13

Years ago, I Had to go to Europe for a meeting.

And so I flew out there, got there in the morning, we had our meeting, we had lunch, ended up going out to dinner, and then I hopped on the plane the first thing the following morning and flew back to United States because there was no video stuff. And that's what you needed to do to get the deal done.

Matthew Davis: 00:08:33

I bet you had some great jet lag after that. Oh, yeah, I guess. Well, maybe not once you got back. That's aggravating.

Freddy D: 00:08:39

So let's go back to talking about what did you guys do to grow?

You must obviously created some kind of a following or what I would call super fans that were in turn promoting your business and became your sales force to attract more business. Cause in a 10 year period, if I got that correctly, you scaled this thing pretty quickly.

Matthew Davis: 00:08:59

Yeah. Particularly for a professional service firm, they are hard to grow because GM professionals is like herding cats.

One thing we do really, really well in the legal space is we understand that clients hate getting surprise bills.

They're already apprehensive about the cost of legal services and they just absolutely love the notion of, oh, I'm just giving this law firm a blank check and who knows what bill I'm going to get out of this deal. That is a constant hazard with how we manage things in this regard. Sometimes there's things we can't control.

For instance, last week Ryan was over in Tulsa in a mediation that went for almost 13 hours. Normally you see those last maybe four hours.

The client did get a bill bigger than they were expecting and bigger than we told them it was going to be. The bottom line with this is we do a really good job advising our clients up front what costs are going to be and keeping them apprised of that.

And our client satisfaction rate, our NPS scores are really good because of that. Builds a lot of client loyalty by just not sending surprise bills.

Freddy D: 00:10:22

Oh, absolutely. I remember I got divorced years ago and it was 15 minute increments.

And the part that annoyed me was that I would call the lawyer at the time and ask something and he'd be watching his clock in three minutes and he'd say, okay, we're all set, see you. Bye. I'm going, wait a minute, I got another 10 more minutes or so of time that I can talk. And it was like, nope, gotta go see it.

And I was like, that was very frustrating.

Matthew Davis: 00:10:52

Yeah, absolutely.

And when you set out into business, this is one thing we advise all of our clients, because we're attorneys in the council, go build A better mousetrap. Figure out what everybody hates about your industry and do a better job. Right?

On an external basis, we do a really good job of communicating with our clients. Look, we have times that we maybe don't hit the mark. Everybody does, right? But in comparison to our competition, we kill it.

And it's from internal discipline.

And this little lady over here, Tricia, who is our cfo, who's just a monster about it, and she started out as my receptionist 25 years ago, and I told her she was too smart to be doing that, so she went and got an accounting degree. Here she is, and she's just brilliant. You know, going back to your question, I always look externally, but then I talk about internal.

You know, the thing we do really well internal is I tell people when they ask me what I do, I'm in the attorney lobster. But the point is my job.

Make a law firm that gives great attorneys the support to really master their craft, autonomy to do it within reason, and to provide the support in case finance, the support in marketing that gives them work, life balance.

So I'm just pulling their hair out and that they can, you know, have a life outside of work because the law business, being a lawyer is very consuming. And we've built an internal system and internal system that finish your day and go home, do your hobbies, go be a dad, go be a mom.

And that's something we deliver on an internal basis that our competition really can't touch, frankly, because we run better than the rest of them because of Tricia, because of Jamie, because of our COO and so on.

Freddy D: 00:12:51

Well, it sounds like you guys got systems in place and those systems are followed and those systems give the ability to maximize throughput and then gives the ability to have people have a life.

Matthew Davis: 00:13:01

As you just mentioned, we're very serious about, for instance, our sales system and bring them in as clients.

We're very serious about our team development system, which we built based on Ken Blanchard's work in particular called Leadership and the One Minute Manager.

It's part of the One Minute Manager series, but it's really about his work and understanding how to talk to and lead our dealer and also everybody else. And when we implement those systems and just keep working on them and keep refining them. I was up at 5 this morning.

I was like, I was all excited because I'm like, I'm going to work on our sales system, which is, you know, just how big of a dork I am.

But it was really rewarding to see it paying off and to see this company growing and we're thrilled and we take it seriously and we just keep working on it.

Freddy D: 00:13:55

In my book Creating Business Superfans, I really talked about the importance of it starts with the culture and the company. And it sounds like that's what you guys are doing. You've got a culture in the company.

You empower the team so they have ability to make their own decisions, they don't have to run the dad and ask for permission. So they that empowerment and then so they're energized in that environment that comes across when they're talking to prospective customers.

Because people can sense stuff and they can sense a company. It's got energy, it's alive, it's vibrant, it's feeling. People are good, they're happy, they're smiling.

And you can go on to another place and you can go in there and you feel it like something's just not right here and off you go to somewhere else.

Matthew Davis: 00:14:38

Yes, I think that is true. And stated another way, the speed of the leader is the speed of the team.

And I really work hard at staying engaged and working and growing and inspiring everybody just to do great things and understanding how we can make things better.

For instance, as I mentioned, I was working on our sales stuff this morning and then I got an email out to the intake team going, 30 minutes on that today. Here's what we're going to implement. Here's some strategy, here's some tactics in contrast to that.

I have friends that run law firms and their dream is, oh, I'm going to go to Scotland for four months out of the year. I'm like, really?

I have a friend who runs a law firm up in the Midwest and he took off for 90 days to Columbia and then calls me and says, we're having trouble. And I'm like, well, yeah, surprise, shocker. But professional services is a really to hands on, it's people business.

And as the leader of that team, you got to be in the mix. And we do morning huddles and we do attorney happy half hours twice a week. Huddles are every day and leadership huddles are every day.

That's what Andrew Carnegie did. Got everybody together every morning. Let's do it. It makes a difference.

Freddy D: 00:16:02

It does. I took over a interpreting and translation company a couple years ago and we grew that by a million dollars in a year's window.

And this is a small interpreting project, so it's not like big money deals. But we did the same thing.

We had a Monday morning meeting, we just did it once a week reviewed of what the previous weeks were, what this week's objectives were, edified, who needed to be edified so that they, you know, recognize further extra efforts for week and et cetera. And that changed the culture. And more importantly, everybody knew the direction we were going in.

So they knew the sales figures, what we needed to do and got everybody in a racing rowboat where everybody's in a row and all the ores got to be synchronized and that's how we got everybody going. And it took off and it scaled. So you're doing the exact same thing, but in the law firm.

Matthew Davis: 00:16:51

Yeah. And it makes a difference. We're doing that next week.

We do strategic planning every quarter, just day out with the leadership team and makes all the difference in the world.

Freddy D: 00:17:01

So can you share a story, Matt, about a client that you guys took on, that had a challenge?

I don't need to know all the details, but how you guys turned that situation around and created a super fan out of that client who's been one of your champions.

Matthew Davis: 00:17:16

We do a lot of general counsel work with our clients and I don't have very many clients myself anymore. I've got kind of a small stable of people that you got to dance with the ones that brought you. Right.

And so I've got my old time clients that I still work for and one of those is a lithium exploration company which has been really fun for me because we merge really well from the entrepreneurial standpoint of, you know, I run an entrepreneurial firm and I understand renewable energy. I used to work for Department of Energy in the renewable division and I also understand oil and gas.

And we have been through the first iteration which we put on the front page of the Wall Street Journal when we sold it off. And then we're doing it again and it's been a really exciting just journey with these people, helping them grow.

And we're down in the trenches with them all the time. We have a lot of clients that we've helped take from just a startup to very successful businesses. I.

I love to tell the story of our client Robert, who lives in a little farm town out here and he's about a 6, 7, 400 pound guy, started out as a farm kid and he says things like, you know, man, I never thought I'd amount to a hill of beans. And I'm like, robert, you own your hometown. And he's like, oh, I guess I do. Yeah, he's a great friend of mine. We've been through a lot together.

The ups and downs of his business. So that's. You just take care of people and you put your heart in it and then all of a sudden you've got super fans. And that's.

We've got a whole stable of those. I was working for another one this morning. So that's how we do it.

Freddy D: 00:19:05

And that's the exciting part is when you've got those super fans that are happy with what you've done. You can't buy that kind of priority.

You can have the best marketing in the world, but that all marketing, because that's genuine, it's authentic, it's real.

Matthew Davis: 00:19:21

That referral business is great and we love it. There's lots of good lawyers out there.

But there's very few law firms with the systems supporting them and with the client relationship systems that we have that help celebrate their successes. One thing for us is, for instance, we know that there's just certain milestones in companies that we want to celebrate with them.

And we've built a system around that is pretty intuitive once you think about it. But nobody does it because the lawyers are busy running the business side of things.

And we really have a professional management team on our law firm. Again, I stay in the law business a little bit because I think it makes me more effective as a leader of the team to do that.

Even our COO keeps a couple clients, he's an attorney as well. Just keeps us in the game and helps us be leaders of the pack of all the attorneys, which is the.

Freddy D: 00:20:16

One key thing there that I want to bring back up is that you are celebrating the successes and milestones of your customers. And that's really the secret to creating superfans is it's not always about you.

It's really about the customer and the success of the customer and the growth that they're experiencing, the joy that you get for having helped them get there. So it's really a win win that creates a synergy between the two of you guys or the two entities.

Matthew Davis: 00:20:47

I'm breathing kind of deeply.

I had a little sigh there because Bailey is over here and she, her mom was one of the original gangsters around the firm, so to speak, and still a great friend of ours, but she has her own business, so she's kind of second generation firm for us.

And she used to work for an attorney that I really have contempt for and he's a shellboat lawyer and we do not have a good relationship because I boxed his ears numerous times. And once Bailey came over here, I said, hey, let me make this real. Clear. This guy's clients end up broke and often in jail.

Our clients end up rich and out of trouble. And the focus is different in our clients are the hero, we are not. And we get that.

And it is a tectonic shift in why we're growing, because we're champions for our clients. And we realize they're the heroes through the particular straits or problems or opportunities that hire us for. We're their guide.

We're their Obi Wan Kenobi. But man, they're Luke Skywalker, right?

Freddy D: 00:21:57

Absolutely. Yeah. When I was managing the International Channel, I had about 60 resellers around the world.

Some of the competitive companies would recognize the agency that was a distributor of ours. I went one step further as I went into the salesperson that was selling our technology and recognized them, including the agency.

But more importantly, I wanted to make sure that they got edified because they're the one that was selling the stuff to make the agency look good, made the sales, other salespeople within those agencies and other agencies, because we would have an awards ceremony for top performance and all that stuff. And people would say, whoa, wait a minute. You know, the other guys are just recognizing the agency.

He's recognizing the actual person that was the one that sold the most of our product and awarded the agency complete game changer.

Matthew Davis: 00:22:53

Let's celebrate their wins.

Freddy D: 00:22:55

Exactly. Very important. Very important. So if I remember correctly, you did some heavy metal stuff in the past.

Matthew Davis: 00:23:03

Oh, yeah. I was a hard rocker when I was a kid. Still am. And I was relearning some Def Leppard this weekend. So, yeah, we were playing guitar this weekend.

I've got one of my flying V's over here.

My wife originally thought I was joking and I'm like, no, I'm going to go play hard rock festivals as my retirement project, so I can get paid to go all over and do that. We've got a little band. We're missing a bass player right now, but yeah, we're having fun with it.

Freddy D: 00:23:29

Oh, it's important to have fun. It's important to have hobbies and things that you enjoy because, you know, that's what life is about. It's not always work, you know.

Sir Richard Branson says there is no difference between work and non work. It's called life. And so basically everything you're doing is life. You're living right now. So absolutely, yeah.

Matthew Davis: 00:23:50

I heard a similar quote that I'll paraphrase and he said the real masters, you can't tell if they're working or playing. Correct and yeah, I just, I think it's all fun and I'm just grateful and happy to get to do what I do.

And sometimes I get tired running a law firm, all that, it's pretty rewarding. And I love our team and we're having a great time doing it.

Freddy D: 00:24:13

And you're helping a lot of people.

So I mean, that's the bottom line is you're helping a lot of people, as you just mentioned earlier, keeping them out of trouble and which is actually saving them thousands, if not millions of dollars. And you're having a blast doing it. Super cool.

Matthew Davis: 00:24:31

Yeah, it's fun. And we're still on a roll.

Freddy D: 00:24:34

So for any of the lawyer firms that are listening, what would be one action item that you would recommend that they should incorporate into their business?

Matthew Davis: 00:24:43

I talk to a lot of lawyers that are trying to start firms and grow them. Let's go back to Richard Branson. Take care of your people and they'll take care of your customers, Right? Okay, absolutely. And I do that.

That's why I tell people I'm in the attorney lifestyle business. If I can build a team of staff and me that will take care of our attorneys, the firm will grow, right? Yep, that's the deal.

You can run a firm by coercion, you can run a firm by abdication, which means you just kind of let them do what you want to do.

Or you can run a firm by commitment and encouraging them through good leadership, which dovetails back into Ken Blanchard and situational leadership theory. And if you will do it that way and recognize your people where they're struggling, help them grow.

Basically, when you get self reliant high achievers, just leave them alone. Let them do their work. Don't bother them. I check in with Dixie and Jeff once every two weeks and they're like, great, I'm fine, Leave me alone.

Take care of your people. Learn how to take care of your people and be a great leader of your company. It will grow because they will take care of your customers, your clients.

Freddy D: 00:25:55

Yeah, absolutely. I say people. One of my quotes of my book is, people crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.

Matthew Davis: 00:26:03

Truth.

Freddy D: 00:26:04

And so preach it. Yeah, but that's what you're doing. You've empowered the people. And like you just said, you don't micromanage them.

They're empowered to be able to do it. But then when they hit something cool, you recognize them.

And you don't recognize them individually, you recognize them in front of everybody else, which elevates everybody else into the equation because they Go. Wow, this is a great company. So that all that is important that a lot of people don't do, which you guys are doing.

Takes a village to make things happen and you got to feed the village.

Matthew Davis: 00:26:38

Yeah, I always. My life's even easier than that because Ashton just had a good win down in Austin. Guess what?

They all got after cheering for him before I even got started. So, you know, here's the firm email of. Great job. He was so proud and he did a great job. Got a client out of a lot of trouble.

Freddy D: 00:26:57

That's what it's all about. Matt, how can people find you?

Matthew Davis: 00:27:00

Davis Business Law is our website.com and my email is M. Davis, Davis Business Law. If anybody wants to contact me. I'm one of those dorks that has like five emails in my inbox because I just clean it out.

So I'm a touch it once, move it on guy.

Freddy D: 00:27:17

Very important, very important. That's another strategy right there. Don't deal with it 12 times. Yeah, grab it, move on.

Matthew Davis: 00:27:25

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:27:26

And then you mentioned that you have an offer for our listeners.

Matthew Davis: 00:27:30

Well, yeah, have them go look at our Strong protected tab on our website. There's some really good tools there.

And one thing we did with like the Strong protected business checklist is fantastic because your company needs different things depending on the size that it is. Can't build Rome in a day. Let's prioritize the first things. And by the way, let's look at it this way.

When you're small and just starting, we're not really concerned about succession or selling your business because you don't have anything to sell. Right. A little bigger. Let's start concerning ourselves with that. So we did that legal.

It's mostly legal checklist of let's look at what you need to be doing, what you need to be worried about based on how big your company is. And we broke it down based on revenue and employees, which are kind of congruencies once you think about it, usually.

So that's a really good tool for people. And people will look through that self grade themselves and they'll pick up the phone and say, hey, can you help us with this?

Freddy D: 00:28:31

Okay, yeah, we'll make sure that's in the show Notes.

Matthew Davis: 00:28:34

Got our audience.

Freddy D: 00:28:35

So, Matt, it's been a pleasure having you on Business Superfans podcast. Great conversation, great insights, fabulous story. So we look forward to having you on the show down the road.

Matthew Davis: 00:28:45

Thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun. Enjoyed working with.