Joshua Reimer’s Post

Hot tip for job applicants to law firms: take care when doing your cut and pastes. This weekend I’ve been flipping through piles of resumes for a few roles we have open at the moment. As usual, there are a sizeable pile of applicants who write something like, “I am so excited about the opportunity to apply for this role at [INSERT NAME OF FIRM].” Some have done a bit better and left in the name of the last law firm they applied to. Others have gone a whole extra step and said something like, “it has been my dream for years to work in a role in [INSERT INDUSTRY]. Invariably this is just ahead of the paragraph about how the applicant has unrivaled attention to detail and impeccable written skills. I get it - I was a law student once sending out hundreds of resumes hoping to land a legal job somewhere. A discussion of the merits of such a scattergun approach is probably a whole separate post. BUT at the very least do yourself a favour, and check your cut and pasting before you send out that resume 😉 Hit 👍 and ‘follow’ for more random thoughts from my adventures building and running a law firm!

Client while waiting at court: "What’s it like working for your dad’s firm?" Me: "Actually... it's my firm. My dad isn't a lawyer." Followed by awkward wait until matter got called on into court two hours later... Should I take this as a compliment - maybe I look younger than I feel??!

This is counter-intuitive, but hear me out:  💡 You have to let go to grow. 📈 Letting go does not come easily for me (understatement of the year?) - but learning to trust and let go has been the only way we have been able to grow our law firm from 2 staff to 55 staff over the past 9 years. When you start a business on a shoestring you do everything as business owner. I did everything from answering the phones to buying the coffee for the staff room. But you will hit a ceiling if you keep trying to do everything. Your business will never be able to grow. Over the years I’ve had to learn to outsource and delegate so many things: 👉 IT management - starting our firm on a shoestring budget, I used to crawl under desks, wiring cables and patching together our computer system. I loved it - but it consumed a lot of time and I really didn't know what I was doing. Outsourcing to Concord IT to run our network was one of the best decisions we made (especially in 2019, just before the world shut down and we relied on our network more than ever!) 👉 Lawyer supervision - I used to directly supervise all the lawyers in the firm, but we now have six awesome team leaders heading up our practice groups - who all know what they are doing. Over the past few years these team leaders have been taking on more and more responsibility for the day-to-day supervision of our 20+ lawyers and file operators. It’s simply not possible for me to be able to adequately supervise all those staff directly; instead, my focus is now on mentoring the team leaders so they in turn can manage and supervise their teams. 👉 File work – I used to run a full file load as well as run an office. It was a big transition a few years ago for me to shift to not running files, and focus on people management and problem solving. Now I only jump in on running files if someone has to go on crisis leave or something has fallen apart in one of our practice groups and I need to step in. Even with all this delegation - amazingly I am busier than ever (how did I ever have time to do all the IT??). I am now thinking about what else I need to let go of over the coming years, so the firm can continue to thrive and grow. As your firm grows - you'll need to keep learning to let go, to grow. 📈 ➡ Hit like 👍 and "follow" to ensure you don't miss any of my random thoughts from my adventures in law!

You can’t steer a parked car. Don’t freeze in decision paralysis. Get out and start doing something. You can adjust course once you are moving if needed, but you can’t change direction if you aren’t already moving. I’ve always found the hardest bit is jumping in and getting going. Sometimes you have to ‘Just Do It.’ #Monday #NewWeek #LawyerLife #Goals

If you are a lawyer with young kids - how do you explain to your kids what you do at work? I have a grumble about this every year, because one of my kid's classmate's dad is a police officer, and he always comes into school and shows off his patrol car to the class - even letting the kids take turns sitting in it. He always has a friendly jab at me at the school dropoff about how he locks up the bad guys and I just get them let back out again. He's super annoying. Our job as lawyers is much harder to explain to kids; it’s a bit harder to conceptualise. The best I've done at the moment is explaining to my kids that I help people when they are in trouble - arguing for them in court, or trying to fix their problems. Our firm does a lot of "people law" - criminal law, personal injuries, deceased estates, family law, crimes compensation, etc. So that explanation kind of works. But it isn't as graphic and "cool" as if your dad has a patrol car they can bring to school to show off. So how do you make what you do at the law office understandable and real for your kids? (I should say - my kids certainly do think it's cool to come into my office to get cookies from the staff room! THAT part of lawyering they can understand no problems.)

Contrary to what may seem to be the case from what you see on LinkedIn - ‘Overnight success’ is almost never a thing. If you see someone who ‘suddenly’ seems to have ‘made it’ in their career or business - I can almost guarantee it didn’t happen overnight. There would have been weeks, months, and probably years of hard work and sweat and tears before everything finally clicked together and started working. Don’t envy overnight success, because it almost invariably wasn’t. It’s was more than likely the culmination of a lot of research, development, and old fashioned hard work. Don’t focus on making your business an overnight success. Focus on a plan to build a solid business structure over months and years; one step at a time. One day - if the foundations are right - the hard work will pay off. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

Don't focus on the big picture. 💡🚨 Okay - if you are doing visionary thinking stuff, sure, focus on the big picture. But if you are trying to meet big goals, don't focus on them. Break it down into little, daily, achievable goals. If you want to hit a massive annual budget in your law firm billings, break it down. To hit that budget, it means I need to put an average of X number of hours on the clock each day. To do that, I will need to sign up X number of new clients per week. To do that, I will need to have coffee with X number of potential referrers per month, or have Y number of initial consultations. Big picture goals are important. But you will only hit those goals if you break them down into little, achievable micro goals. ➡️ hit 👍 and ‘follow’ for more random advice from my journey in law