Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Nicole and Warren Lavallee, a husband-and-wife team transforming their law firm. Discover how they overcame challenges, implemented the flow system, and built a thriving practice. Warren's IT expertise and Nicole's legal acumen create a dynamic duo, leading to increased efficiency and profitability. Whether you're a solo attorney or managing a growing team, this episode offers valuable insights into building a successful law firm. Listen now! 

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Atty. Nicole Lavallee: So I think that was a pivotal moment there of just getting the right team members. And I think again, Figuring out what those issues were with, well, why weren't we getting these tasks done? And again, it was changing my system when I'm setting them up as a task.

Let's put in, you know, who's in charge of it? Let's put in simple things like how long is it going to take? And then we have somebody that actually sets up our daily goals and says, okay, Nicole, you're working on these five tasks and Warren's working on these five tasks today. So now we all go into the day knowing exactly what it is.

 Warren Lavallee: I'm trying to incorporate one of my primary responsibilities in my mind is to retain good people.

So the first challenge is to find good people. And that's still a challenge for us. And we're still, we might be doing 10 or 15 interviews a week right now. And it's still a challenge. And we found out that people lie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had to come out and say that, but people, or maybe they deceive themselves.

I don't know, but the people who present in the interviews are different than the people that we hire. And that just happens.

Welcome to Your Practice Mastered Podcast 


MPS: Hey Law Firm Owner, welcome to the Your Practice Mastered Podcast. We're your hosts, I'm MPS. 


Richard James: And I'm Richard James. And MPS, what a great show we have. We have a husband and wife team, recently decided to work together, law firm owners that they've gone from small and solo, really doing it all herself to now growing into a much larger concern. We're going to hear the journey and learn as to whether or not they're enjoying this new process. 


But Nicole has been a member in our world for many years. I consider her and now her husband, Warren, friends. 


Warren and Nicole, welcome to the program today. Thanks for being here. 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: Thanks for having us. 


Warren Lavallee: Thank you. 


MPS: Of course. 


Meet Nicole and Warren: A Dynamic Duo 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: Oh, that's an open ended question. I love the practice of law. I like being a business owner. I really prefer to love being a business owner and that's my goal, so that I can get out of being a lawyer full time, and actually getting more money and spending more time with my family. And I love animals. 


Richard James: How many animals do you have at the house? 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: I have two dogs. 


Richard James: Two dogs. All right. I have my first dog ever, as an adult. And she's been with us now for nine months. And she just took a crap on the floor about an hour ago. I don't know how to stop that from happening, so maybe you can help me. 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: It's about a year and a half process. 


Richard James: Okay, that's good news. Great. Warren, how about you? 


Richard James: I don't know that I would have guessed that. I knew that. I think you'd shared that with me, once before. But you're so good, technically. I would not have expected you to be so good in the written word, as well. That's pretty cool. And of course, as a faith based company, I love that you have a faith based life and faith based podcasts, or a website, but are you just born that way? Did you work at being prolific in both areas? Cause you're really good in both. 


Richard James: If you ask MPS, he would tell you, I'm an inch wide and a mile deep. So we're the opposite, you and I. 


MPS: But the areas that you're good in, you're really good in. 


Richard James: There you go. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. 


MPS: Yeah. Nicole, why don't you kick this one off? 


Nicole's Entrepreneurial Journey 


MPS: So why don't you walk us through the high points of your entrepreneurial journey as a law firm owner? And then, when you and Warren made the decision to come together in this journey? 


But I could afford these things because I actually have that better marketing skills and a better business development and mindset that I didn't have before. That's what's allowed me to grow [00:04:00] from where I was to where I am today. 


Richard James: Congratulations to you. Thank you for telling us, they're giving us credit in whatever form. But at the end of the day, we meet hundreds of attorneys every single month. We just met 26 of them yesterday. And many of them don't do anything with the information we give them. And so, you get all the credit in the world for implementing, Nicole. 


I'm curious. Was it like necessity was the mother of invention? It was like, I'm sick and tired of being not working. I'm just going to figure this out. I'm a reasonably intelligent human being. And I could figure this out. I just go to find someplace that could tell me how to do it. I could follow the instructions, or was it this burning desire inside of you to want to be more of a business owner? 


Because I could figure out now how to pay him to do that. And he actually jumped on it, and I went, Oh my God. I was not expecting that answer, and I didn't know I needed him until he joined. And then I went, Oh my God, this is so much better. 


Richard James: Great. 


Warren's IT Expertise Transforms the Firm 


Richard James: Warren, was it a similar experience for you? 


Warren Lavallee: Yeah, she loves me for my scripts. I was excited to come and help her with her problems. She God processes that she's spending four hours on, and I spend four hours writing a script, and now all of a sudden, it takes five minutes, and she gets really excited about stuff like that. 


I like doing IT stuff. 


Richard James: So for those that are not computer literate, when you say scripts, it is a basic program you're writing that allows things to run in an automated version. 


So, it's a pleasure to work here every day, and I get to see her. And somehow, our offices are on opposite sides of the building, it seems. But we can still take the 45 second walk and see each other if we need to. 


MPS: I'm actually going out on a limb here. I don't know the answer to this. So you came from an IT background, and she recruited you to come into the firm to start helping with some of this stuff. Is that right? 


Warren Lavallee: Yes, I was the chief information security officer for a Manhattan financial company. And I'd been in IT for 30 or 40 years, back since the early 80s. I don't know if you remember the early 80s. We didn't have the internet back then. We had something called ARPANET. Do you remember ARPANET? 


Richard James: I remember ARPANET. 


People are like cats. Trying to get them all together and to go in the same place, I don't have that part down yet, but I'm working on it. 


Richard James: You can't write a script for it. 


Warren Lavallee: I can't. 


MPS: No scripts to manage the people. People are hard. People are messy. It's no surprise. That's the difficult part, coming from the background that you had. What's the experience been like working in a firm now? Do you enjoy it? 


Warren Lavallee: Oh, it's a lot of fun. I love doing the coding. And this flow, am I allowed to say flow yet? 


Richard James: Oh, sure. 


Warren Lavallee: The flow is really exciting. Because from IT, we do the Scrum Agile, which is the precursor to flow. And at the current place, we've been doing that for 5 or 10 years, and I don't think we ever did it right. 


And it's bringing into the foreground issues that we had with some employees where they didn't really want to be productive. They were nine to fivers, and they weren't really interested in getting stuff done and getting stuff done on time. And the flow is really exciting and painful. Cause the people who we really shouldn't be employing, you immediately knew who those were. And you try to work with them and then you work with them again. 


So we got to keep the money flowing. 


Richard James: Yeah, I agree. 


Implementing Flow: A Game Changer 


Richard James: Nicole, what is your view of this flow that you and Warren are installing into the business? Because you didn't really run a scrum like system or a agile like system or anything like flow before this. So this is new to you, correct? 


And now, I'm looking at them every day. Last week, we actually had no past [00:10:00] dues. And we were caught up for multiple days. So I'm just amazed. And really, when I was entering tasks before from what I'm doing now, now I'm entering 10 times the amount of tasks every day, and we got caught up. 


And I can see the process from here to there, and it's, Oh, my God. And now, obviously, you're getting more money because you're making more billable hours. And so, everything makes sense. It just flows perfectly. So to me, a complete game changer. 


Richard James: That's so exciting to hear. 


MPS: It's extremely exciting to hear. And congrats to you guys on implementing it. I'm going to want to dive a little deeper. Rich, for a little cliff note for the law firm owners listening from a high level, what is flow? 


And so Bert really sat down to come up with a system that allows law firms to be more profitable, make happier clients, and actually create an environment where employees, the team likes working there, which everybody thought was impossible. 


We thought they were always at odds with one of those three things. And he did it, and so we're perfecting that. We haven't released it to the world yet. But those inside of our world, we're perfecting it with them, and coming up with structures and systems and documents and all those types of things. 


And we know, it worked for our firm because we were generating 3,4,5,6 appointments a month. And now because we're running it in our own marketing team, we're generating a hundred appointments to 120 appointments a month plus. 


And so, that's all because of running this flow like mechanism system. So what is it difficult to explain without breaking into it. For those of you listening, it's a sneak peek behind the curtain of what's coming. It's around the corner. We're super excited to share it with you, but we wanted to make sure it worked everywhere else first. 


MPS: Yeah. So Nicole, as you were at that pivotal point of, you're running the business, things weren't clicking necessarily like you wanted to. I, again, appreciate the kudos to us. What was the main obstacle or bottleneck that you were facing at that point that made you realize you needed to find a solution? 


And so now, when we have people actually engaging us in conversation every week. So I think that was a pivotal moment there of just getting the right team members. And I think again, figuring out what those issues were with, why weren't we getting these tasks done? And again, it was changing my system when I'm setting them up as a task. 


So more structure and more ability to communicate with one another and figure out, we need to move this along, and who's going to be responsible for that. 


Richard James: Nicole, thank you for sharing that. 


Building a Stronger Team 


Richard James: Let's speak to this attorney that owns a law firm that's listening right now that's going, I don't even know how to keep a staff person. I get them and they leave or I fire them. I just can't seem to keep anybody. Why do they keep quitting? Have you experienced that? 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: Oh, to the nauseam. Unfortunately, that has been a big issue. And a lot of it has just been dealing with people that I want to hand out. I want to be an attorney, but I don't want to go to court. Or I expect the paralegal to do all my work for me, and I just walk in and I'm a sounding board. Or you have the paralegals that go, Oh, I don't really know how to do that. I have a certificate, but why don't you teach me? 


Richard James: Thank you for that, Nicole. Warren, for you, as you sit back and now you've been from a weekend warrior, helping Nicole while you're having your favorite libation on the back porch, talking through all of her challenges and trying to figure them out together or writing scripts to automate what you could automate, but now you're fully involved and you're installed flow system into your business, what do you think the difference is? Did the systems that you have allow you to attract a better quality of person, or did you have the same people and you put a different system in and it made those people better? How do you think that worked? We went from frustrated about the team and turning 'em over regularly to now developing a team we can count on. 


Warren Lavallee: That's an excellent question. 


When we started flow, we had 3 paralegals. Right now, we're down to 1 paralegal. So flow led to us either getting rid of the two paralegals. So right now, we're in a better position with a smaller team, which is more efficient. As far as finding the right people, that's still an equation we're looking for, but I really appreciated that author who spoke at the last thing and I'm trying to incorporate one of my primary responsibilities in my mind is to retain good people. 


I am looking forward to finding the right people. And when we find the right people, I am going to retain them. I'm working on good benefits, we're working on teamworking events, we're sending boxes to offshore people to retain them, we're playing theme songs or walk on music, we're trying to implement everything, and we're trying to make reeve's of valley the most positive employer that they've ever come to, and the last employer that they're ever going to come to. 


We asked him what their goals are. We're going to help them make their goals. We're turning them into loyal people. At least that's the plan. And right now it's just a plan because we haven't delivered yet, but I'm excited to try to deliver on that. 


And two, I think that what I heard Warren say, and tell me if you think I'm wrong is that, yeah, you want great people, but until you have a great system to operate the people that you have, you'll never really know who's great. And so now that they have a great system that's operating and they're most efficient. Now, when they plug somebody in, they can have confidence. 


It's not the system that's broken. It would be the person that's not the wrong person. Michael, do you agree with that? 


Warren Lavallee: We promoted them. 


MPS: Exactly. There you go. You guys are currently, you identified that you were having issues with team and people and you implemented a system to do so, and it's been working. 


Looking Ahead: Excitement and Future Plans 


MPS: What's got you guys excited? What's got you fired up? Could be business, could be personal, could be both? 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: I think from my perspective, it's that we were down an attorney for the last five months, and it didn't hurt us. We continue to do what we needed to do. We've made record high numbers. We, again, are doing all of these systems and this automation that I've been hearing about for how many years, and now all of a sudden, it's clicking. 


Richard James: Warren, how about you? What are you excited about? 


Warren Lavallee: I'm excited about the endless possibilities ahead. There's so much potential in the soon, the now, and what lies just beyond the horizon. What we're building today is paving the way for something even greater tomorrow, and that's incredibly exciting. It's about moving forward with purpose while staying open to unexpected opportunities that seem to arrive just at the right moment. Can you tell that was pre written? 


Richard James: No, that's great. 


MPS: It's good. 


Richard James: A smart teacher once said, I know the plans I have for you, and they are for you to prosper. And I'm excited about that for both you. 


Warren Lavallee: That's true. 


Richard James: I do have a follow up question on that, Nicole. So again, speaking to the attorney who's listening. 


But it sounds to me like adding that person in that was going to help you install the systems and allow you to do what you do best. In this case, right now, be the attorney while you were covering for the attorney that was down, what was really a secret. It was important for you to have that person. 


Can you speak to how important it was to have, not just because he was your husband, but somebody that could take charge of installing these systems into your practice? 


It was a huge relief to get off my plate all of these things that again, all this automation, all of this structure that I could hear it, I could see it, but it wasn't tangible. And he brought that into the mix. And he's definitely much more happier than I am. I am the Debbie Downer of the group, I am the one that is always the pessimist, so he just brightens everything up. We made a comment today that it was just funny. We're like, yeah, we don't know if we can take Warren seriously on something if he was injured, because he's always happy, he's always upbeat. 


So I think that adds another layer to the firm that I'm very serious. I'm very motivated, but I got to get this done. And he lightens it up. 


Warren Lavallee: I think you have to have a positive outlook if you're going to do this. This is something I say in interviews all the time. You need to be able to engage with the team, and it needs to be a genuine engagement, not just on the surface. So you actually need to build a relationship. And it has to be a real relationship, because people know when something's not real. 


So I try to authentically engage with each and every person and meet them where they are, and then understand what their problems are and pull them into the new system that we're trying to roll out. It's not just asking them a question and listening, it's having them know that what they say is important. And we're actually going to action based on what they respond. It's the attitude. 


And I'm not a people person, believe it or not. It's people skills. You have to be willing to engage. You have to be willing to care. And you have to really care. It's not just, the surface plastic stuff, you have to care. 


And we're really blessed, if I can use that word, to have the people we have. And have just the perfect people. And I think as we move forward and we pull in new people, they're going to be coming into a functional team, instead of this dysfunctional thing. And I think it's going to start them in a much better place to have a much higher chance to integrate and fit in to what we have now. 


Richard James: Well said. 


Warren Lavallee: Did I answer your question? 


Richard James: Oh, yes, you did. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Well said. Yes, you can absolutely use the word blessed. I support it and underwrite it myself. MPS? 


Warren Lavallee: Oh, I think it's very helpful. I'm not an attorney at all. And I don't even understand, they speak in tongues, sometimes. And I really don't know what they're saying. She wrote some sort of manual or something, but I haven't been through it yet because it's so long. It's 20 pages. 


It's good to speak in just plain English with people instead of some special language, so that people can make sure that you're speaking the same dialect and everybody can understand. 


Does that make sense? 


MPS: It does make sense, very much does. It's always interesting to hear when that implementation or implementer role is not an attorney. I find that's a power couple right there, being able to group the two. Rich, would you agree with that? 


It's how I started in working with lawyers. I was the guy that not at your level, Warren, with writing scripts, but I had a guy that did that. But I was the guy that implemented the systems. Because the attorney understood certain things. They just didn't understand the things we needed to do to build the business. And so the attorney, the owner of the firm, Michael, has to be willing to release the responsibility to somebody who knows more about these particular soft skills, and they have to, in some sense, get out of the way. 


And then, they have to be true to who they are. They have to set the culture. They have to set the vision. But having somebody there that's not an attorney help run everything is really one of the formulas we see to some really high performing firms. Now, there are exceptions to that rule. And that's great when we see those exceptions. But for the most part, the attorney could use some help. 


Conclusion and Final Thoughts 


MPS: Very good episode. And Warren and Nicole, I appreciate both of you. Lots of value dropped here. And to the law firm owners listening, thank you. 


Thank you for taking the time to be here and listen. And depending on the platform you're listening or watching, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button, turn those bell notifications on, and let's show Nicole and Warren some love down in the comments below. 


Any questions, drop them down below. Hit that like button. Otherwise, Nicole, Warren, thank you both for taking the time to be on today. 


Atty. Nicole Lavallee: Thank you. 


Warren Lavallee: Thank you for having us. 


Richard James: Yeah, you guys absolutely rock. I'm so proud of you. Congratulations on your success. Like you said, Warren, this is just the foundation that is now going to allow you to pave the way to what's coming next. I'm looking forward to watching that. Everybody, that's the pod.