In this episode, we feature an enriching conversation with Amanda Farahany, Managing Partner of Barrett and Farahany. Discover her journey, from starting as a solo practitioner to heading a renowned plaintiff employment law firm in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

So it's, a year or two years before the cases that we take turn into fees often. So it's trying to balance those different things. What's happened for me is that I've had a couple of really good cases that have turned into large fees and those fees... and at those points in time, I had to make a decision about whether I would take that money and invest in growth in the firm or just

take that money and keep it, and I decided that what I wanted to do is invest in growth in the firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hawkins, founder of Law Firm GC, a law firm that represents law firms and lawyers in business related matters. Excited to have our guest today, Amanda Farahaney. Amanda, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about your firm?

Amanda Farahany: Hi, I'm Amanda Farahani. I'm the managing partner of Barrett and Farahani. We are a plaintiff employment law firm. We do employment civil rights work. We're headquartered out of Atlanta, and we are now in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow, 10 states. That's a lot. So how many attorneys do you have now?

Jonathan Hawkins: And then what about employees? Non attorney and attorney

Amanda Farahany: Uh, 60 something total employees.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. That's impressive. So how long ago did you start the firm?

Jonathan Hawkins: So where were you before you started your firm?

Amanda Farahany: I was working at the Georgia Court of Appeals. So I actually never worked for a law firm. I was a summer associate, but I actually never worked for a law firm full time.

Jonathan Hawkins: Did you know when you went to law school that you would be starting your own firm?

Actually, about to start my 1st job, so I was coming out of the Georgia Court of appeals. I was interviewing from some different companies or different law firms and there was 1 firm. That was a international firm that was opening offices in Italy. And there was going to be some opportunities to do stuff with that.

And it sounded really cool, and I realized I didn't want it and so I. I started to really think through what is it that I wanted and I realized I just, I didn't want to work for somebody else. And so I decided to start my own law firm and now, 25 years later, same firm, never had a break.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you have experience with employment discrimination? So let's back up. You do plaintiff employment work, correct? Is it only, okay. So did you have experience with that before? And if not, how did you know, did the firm start out that way? And how did you get there?

So I'm very much about. Helping the underdog I like when there's a good guy and a bad guy. And so it really filled that part of my. You know, passion was to help somebody who had been discriminated against. So I started handling those cases. In the 1st year or 2, I also got a call from somebody who had been.

You said, all right, I'm going to narrow it in scale. How does that, how did that come about?

That her lacerations could not have been caused by the penis because it's not a sharp tool and that any abrasions that she had probably came because she shaved her private areas and then sanctioned me 250, 000 for bringing the case.

Jonathan Hawkins: Whoa.

Amanda Farahany: So. I decided that took about 4 or 5 years before it actually went up through the appellate courts and all the sanctions and the such.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. And so, okay, so you niche down, you decided to grow. At that point, how many attorneys did you have?

It's only in the last couple of years that we've finally gotten to where the firm is actually catapulted to the next stage.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I want to, talk through that. That's, when I think of growth, graphs about growth, yeah, it's sort of that even an exponential curve looks flat for a really long time and then all of a sudden it just shoots up. So, when did you start moving to other states and how quickly?

Has it grown, take us through sort of the timeline and sort of the off number of offices, number of employees.

And, you know, a lot of that has to do with The leader and the leader's capacity and capabilities and money, and, that doesn't always flow in the way and time that you want it to for the growth. And we're dealing with lawyers and lawyers want to get paid like lawyers, but there's not always in a small firm, the ability to pay lawyers the way that they might get paid if they were in a different place.

O. S. it's what it's called into the firm to really get it to the next step. And so I've been adding to. The firm, both on the professional services side, so I now have a team of people who are professionals who are running the firm. So non lawyers who are handling everything from the C suite side of things.

A young lawyer has been. A colleague and a friend and a really great lawyer and reached out to me and said, what do you think about being in Chicago? You know, I'm seeing what you're doing and I'm seeing that if you can make a practice doing employment law in Georgia, I want to take what you're doing and apply it and help to grow the firm.

So. So that happened there and then, as we've been hiring people, they're just different states. So that's how we get to the 10 states.

Jonathan Hawkins: So are you in California in the West Coast yet?

Amanda Farahany: I nope, but

to

Jonathan Hawkins: on the list, right? It's on the

Jonathan Hawkins: it's the opposite of the Southeast, right?

Amanda Farahany: exactly.

Jonathan Hawkins: For employment law. So, yeah, so you mentioned a few interesting things. So, I've personally seen it. I've talked to a lot of lawyers sort of experienced the same thing. It's like you want to grow, but you have limited resources. So time and money and attention and, but, and you got to sort of grow the client base and then also insert the lawyers to work it.

So it's sort of this balance. How did you figure out the balance? Is it just trial and error or,

Amanda Farahany: Trial and error fortuitous timing. So for us, the work has been there. I, the work has always been there in my cases and there's always been more work than I could handle in employment law. The problem is we work on a contingency basis and so the timeline of, taking those cases and getting to fees are different.

So it's, you know, a year or two years before the cases that we take turn into fees often. And so it's trying to balance those different things. What's happened for me is that I've had a couple of really good cases that have turned into large fees and those fees. And at those points in time, I had to make a decision about whether I would take that money and invest in growth in the firm or just.

Take that money and keep it and I decided that what I wanted to do is invest in growth in the firm because I go back to what I started with, which is I wanted to build something that allowed more people to be able to help more people as opposed to something that was really about. Compensating myself more and so that's what I did.

And so I took some of the idle loan and I've used that to also grow the firm. So, it's just, it's having those opportunities at different places that allow me to invest. In growth and growth is scary. I mean, last year, the firm was growing and it was. Not profitable. Hello. Hello.

Jonathan Hawkins: quick growth. You got other things to deal with , and you hope the growth's there and usually it is, but you're not sure.

You just got to take the risk.

A personal injury case. You're not going to lose that case. You know, there's not summary judgment. That's in the way that's going to say that you're going to end up having your case thrown out 86 percent of the time. You know, there is, there's the, it's just the getting the case that then obviously, there's work to be done and developing it and what the outcome might be, but we have this.

High risk, low reward scenario in the kind of work that we do so. There's still, I mean, I still live with the fear today that I'm building a model of something. That's not going to work. But, you know, I work with consultants. I have really smart people around me. We've worked out the numbers and how it works and it should and it seems to be, but, you know, that's one of the risks that you take when you're creating something that's different than what's out there.

And at that time, there weren't many firms doing anything like that. What led you to that? And what, you know, how did you, how were you confident enough to invest all of that into a platform like that?

Amanda Farahany: So, what led me to it is I'm I believe that. In the work that we do on the plantiff side efficiency is what matters. So if I can get something done in a 10th of the time, or I can, you know, use the computer to do something that a computer can do, then the computer should be doing it. So I can spend my time and, you know, our lawyers and our firm can spend their time actually utilizing what is their best and highest use of.

And so you can build your own infrastructure on it. And so I started doing that and working with different companies that helped with that. But really, I had to learn the program myself. I had to learn how it worked. And so a lot of what got built was based on what I needed in order to be able to handle my case in that particular time.

Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: And I imagine, it helps with efficiency for sure, but it probably helps create a more unified work product across the platform. Everybody doing it the same way. Keep the quality high. Probably you're able to track. I'm sure it spits out some really good metrics for you as a, as the owner that you can see what's going on at any given

Amanda Farahany: Yeah, I have dashboards and reports and information and I'm constantly, and that was part of actually why one of my own program is 'cause I couldn't get that from anything else. The reporting and anything else wasn't there. Or if it was there, I couldn't report on it because it didn't have the right field or the right information in order to be able to get what I wanted to.

There has a background and actually creating his own. Case management system before he went into sales for us and so he's been a phenomenal part of actually taking our what we had done because. I Created it without a real architect in place. And so my baby got ugly. And so he's really been taking it and redoing it so that it, it is becoming it's like the firm, right?

It goes through a childhood and adulthood. And so now I think my teenager adult firm is on its way on walking on its own. And I think that the product is getting there to ourselves our infrastructure on it, or it's getting there.

And this is one of those types of assets that is proprietary. It's, I think it's a huge driver of value for your firm. And then that leads to the next question. Have you ever thought about, licensing that out to other employment firms, or do you just want to use it all for yourself?

Amanda Farahany: I want to use it all for myself, so I do not want to become a software broker. What we're creating really is a set of systems for how the firm works as opposed to a software program that will work for somebody else. So it's really about. Giving people inside of our systems, the infrastructure and tools that they need to be successful, but it's not going to work for someone who doesn't actually.

So, no, I don't want to do that. What I want to do is grow the firm. My ultimate vision is to bring in people who have the entrepreneurial spirit, want to actually be working in an infrastructure that allows them that kind of autonomy and ability to. To grow and do what they want to do while practicing law, but don't actually like the business side of the law.

And if they're. Strengths are in a certain place, only be working in those strengths and not everything else. So there's that. That idea that they can come in and be both entrepreneurial without really most lawyers who are entrepreneurial really don't want to run businesses. They just wanted to have their own practice.

So. So, that's the idea behind it, but no the, it is not going to be something that gets sold to other law firms. Right. for

And I'm sure you've with this really explosive growth of the last couple of years really how you handle that those challenges

Amanda Farahany: We've had a lot of turnover. I unfortunately when you bring in people with different cultures, I mean, we brought in a firm and so we had a culture in our own firm and we brought in a firm that had its own culture did not really account for how that. And really didn't plan for how to meld those cultures together.

So that was definitely a big learning curve that I'm hoping to apply in any future mergers to make sure that we really work through that. But, but it's a balance, , it really is. It's a balance. It's finding the right people who both, like I said, they want to be entrepreneurial. And so they understand that the work that we do is entrepreneurial.

We handle those meetings in certain ways. We put this infrastructure in place so that it works for everyone. So people. Want to become a part of it, they see it, they see the excitement, they come into it, and then they immediately come into it and say all the reasons why everything that we're doing is wrong.

And that's what lawyers do. So I think for me, a lot of it is I've got to focus some more on personal growth as well, to get past the frustrations and make sure that everybody else has what they need at all times, but also understands that for them to continue to be fulfilled in the system, they've got to They've got to do their part on, on the way that it's set up.

So it's a daily challenge.

Amanda Farahany: So, I

Jonathan Hawkins: it anyway, I guess.

Amanda Farahany: Yeah, so I use email. So there's a book email 3 visited that I read years ago and I started with that. I did 3 years of coaching with them and built the foundation of the firm. Is very similar to email. That really is just to me. It's a set of tools that you can get everybody around talking the same way focused in the same way.

And it's it is. It's an outside set of systems, so it's not Amanda saying, this is how it should be right. It is that there is a process and there's books that are out there and there are consultants that are out there that are saying, this is how it should be. But it really is just. It's really just putting in the pieces of a business that any business should have.

A place where I couldn't break through to the next level, I would break and get up to that level. And then, I couldn't I kept hitting like a glass ceiling type of thing. So I really think, , has helped in getting us to where we are. I think by putting it in place by using it, we have a phenomenal implementer.

And so she works with us on a quarterly basis. She has nothing to do with law firms in the past. So she, Literally, it's just an EOS implementer and so she's really been great on keeping us on track and then hiring the people and the infrastructure and putting it in that way has been really good. And then, having the resources to be able to bring in people who are high quality people.

But absolutely. I don't think I would not be here. But for EOS. But EOS would not be here if the timing wasn't right for it either.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. I mean, You're clearly a visionary. That's clear.

Jonathan Hawkins: What, you know, if you look at your typical week, what do you do in the firm now? And before you start answering, I know you recently got a pretty good, pretty big jury verdict and I'm pretty sure you were in there, right?

Running the trial. So, how much of your time is running the firm and trying cases and And, how do you envision that changing, if at all? I mean, maybe, there are lawyers out there that want to try cases.

Amanda Farahany: Yeah. Yeah so I have over the course of the last year, I've been moving more and more out of direct cases so that I could get to a place where I was able to come in on cases to go to trial that were important cases. So, that case was a case that my partner, 7 Roberts had been handling for over 2 years.

very much. Good experience in getting verdicts from juries and working on developing ways to present a case. And so really, it was together that 1, 2 punch that allowed us to take this case to a jury. We had 2 associates that were with us, too. So I got to go to trial with this incredible and it was like driving a Ferrari, right?

So I have to be at the, the wheel, but I already had the Ferrari that had been built around me. Yeah, so it was a lot of fun. I mean, it's, it's high stress trials are a lot of stress. But it was. It was rewarding to be there with this group of great lawyers around me that allowed me to do the part that I do well, so that we could together come out with this verdict that I thought was a great verdict for a

Jonathan Hawkins: client. Yeah what was the verdict?

Jonathan Hawkins: And which court was it?

Amanda Farahany: The Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, yeah let's talk about that for a second. Another another thing that you did a number of years ago that I this may have been before we met, but I remember reading about it and I just thought I was just blown away that you did this that you commissioned a study of all the employment plaintiff cases in the Northern District of Georgia.

Maybe it was bigger than that

Amanda Farahany: No, that was it. Yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: tell us about that. What gave you the idea and tell us about it.

And so, over the course of several years, I started, like, learning more and more different ways to be able to get the information started quantifying it. And finally got to a place that I said, I think I'm in a place now that I can, I was seeing the problem, right? Which was that these cases were being granted at a really high rate.

And I also saw that there really was no accountability that there wasn't anybody who was talking about this. There were academics that had been talking about it. Interestingly, so there were all there were articles that had already been out there about how the courts are granting too much summary judgment for employment cases.

It was our court. So, I decided it was time to do something and to say something and the something that I said was literally just counting. Hello. That was not how it was taken. Right. But it was literally counting. And so I worked with a a really smart computer guy who put together. A bot that went on to the, onto the pacer website, we downloaded every docket.

So there were 189 orders that were decided in that 2 year period. So we went through and we pulled out. The judges, the claim types, the outcomes on those claim types if it was a race case, what the race was and gender of the people. And we, and then also if there was a magistrate judge, because I think one of the reasons our court has the highest instances is because all of our employment cases are automatically referred to magistrates.

And that's, there's another court in the nation that does that. So magistrates do a report and recommendation and then the district judge decides whether to follow it. And so we pulled apart all that information and we just created charts that showed. What happened by claim type? What happened for specific judges?

88 percent of the time, but a white man who complained about race discrimination only had his case dismissed 40 percent of the time. So, we didn't comment. We just put out the numbers. We had judges that were dismissing 100 percent of the cases that had come before them. And what we saw was that when the district, when the magistrate judge recommended dismissal that 100 percent of the time, the district judge follows it.

Followed that recommendation, but that when they recommended that it not be dismissed the 25 percent of the time, the judges would overturn it and dismiss the case anyway. And so, the magistrate judges are learning to do their job. Well, they should recommend dismissal. Which I believe led to more dismissals in our court than other places.

One of them wanted to sanction me for publishing it. Another person said, you can't do that. Academics publish this stuff. This is public record information, but they didn't like it. What they don't know and what I'm. I'm going to publish again soon and his study that actually shows what happened in those 2 years and what's happened in the last 10 years since.

So, what happened in the years following that is that the summary judgment rate went down. So it dropped from 86 to 60 the next year and then it started creeping back up and it's back up to where it was before but. My belief is not that we have a bunch of judges that are racist.

I think that was what they thought I was saying. What I'm saying is that there's an unconscious bias that is happening when an individual makes a decision. And that's why we have a jury system is so that individuals don't make that decision so that we put them into a group of our peers and those peers decide.

I think it violates the right to a jury trial. I think it's inappropriate and I think it gets overused in our court, but it also gets overused across the nation. It's just

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I wonder too, you know, I know these judges have sort of the camera, what they call it, but the reports to say how long their doc, you know, cases on their docket. So there's sort of a, pressure just to get rid of cases probably

Amanda Farahany: there's actually a spike in September and March of dismissals. So, another thing that I didn't publish, but actually have seen in the stuff that we're doing. So that's the only way that they get measured is the 6 month list in September. It comes out, it goes to Congress and says they have motions that have been for 6 months and in March.

Jonathan Hawkins: wow.

Amanda Farahany: Judges are just people, right? And people have biases that they don't know about. It's why we decided that our court system and that our, you know, dispute should be handled by juries and not by people.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, you got a little bit of blowback or at least you heard about it.

Did you see any, like, I don't know if you could point to any tangible blowback on certain cases

Amanda Farahany: yeah, I don't.

Jonathan Hawkins: of that or not?

So I knew there was a problem there. But the other side of it, she said is, look. They're going to want to be fair to you when you do this, because otherwise they're going to, you know, the bias against you might be so great that you might get a fair shake. So I decided, you know, I might get a fair shake for a little bit.

I think. I think that's come back around. I do think that there's some hostility that some judges have against me personally, but hopefully that hasn't ever affected any of my clients.

Jonathan Hawkins: well, I commend you on, I think that was a bold move and, you know, and, you know, somebody needed to do it. So congrats on actually doing it. And, you know, it seems like that's sort of a theme in your careers. It's you just do it. If it's not there, you just do it. Right. You didn't have a software system, so you did it.

Amanda Farahany: Oh, no, I mean, it's, you know, I'm who I was when I was 8 years old. So my mom is an entrepreneur. She started several different businesses and has grown them. My father is a physician and had his own practice. I'm an only child. Both my parents grew up in another country. Like, you put all those things together.

I am destined to be an entrepreneur and, you know, and I can't sit still with stuff. I mean, I'm now also an angel investor. It was also part of why. Okay. Part of the deciding to invest a lot of money in the firm and grow it was part of going and doing angel investing and seeing how in that world, they're bringing in cash, right?

But, yes, I'm an entrepreneur looking at other businesses right now. I'm constantly. You know, wanting to do something, so, yeah, I think it's in my blood and in my upbringing and my. I have my other business, the panda business that is the 1 that I'm most involved in, which is the personal assistant next door app that helps people to have fractional personal assistant help using app to do that.

Jonathan Hawkins: so if you weren't running your law practice I guess you have the My Panda app. Is there anything else? What would you be doing? Do you

So now I've got a great team around me and my goal has been to get to where I'm not working on cases individually that I'm actually working like coming in on a case like severance case to, you know, help him at trial, but really to be spending my time on impact work. So there are no laws in Georgia that protect employees in the workplace.

So I've been working on trying to get some legislation passed in Georgia. very much. So, I've got 2 bills pending right now in Georgia that I'm hoping to pass this year and a 3rd 1 that I'm hoping to get introduced and I'm also working at the congressional level. So I just spent Tuesday flying up to DC to meet with.

It was a company that was discriminating literally across the board. They. Made a decision to only hire American Caucasian white men between the ages of 26 and 40 and so anyone else who applied got excluded and we had that in writing. So, all these other people were being discriminated against, but it was the black man was able to bring the case and have the company held accountable.

The discrimination employment laws all have cap damages. And so I want to change that. So I'm working with the National Employment Lawyers Association and a coalition of people to try and get a law introduced to eliminate caps on damages in Congress. And got some really great traction this week.

I think I have an original co sponsor and somebody who's going to champion the bill and introduce the bill this in the next couple months. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, if you get them to fix everything else and actually get things done, that'd be

Amanda Farahany: Yeah. So getting the bill passed will be obviously a challenge given everything else that's going on in Congress right now. But, you know, even getting.

That's where I want to spend my time.

Jonathan Hawkins: that's cool. So, you know, I want to switch back to the law firm. You know, you started it 25 years ago. You've gone through, you know, Ups and downs, slow growth, and then sort of expansive growth. You know, looking back, if you could give yourself or a young attorney, you know, one or two pieces of advice, if they're starting their firm, what would you tell yourself?

A place to become a great lawyer but the 2 things are not always the same. And so you really have to decide where, what is it that you want to be? Because a business is an entire infrastructure and being a lawyer is. Is the job and so you're either creating a job or you're creating a business.

So, if you're creating a job for yourself, that's great. Focus on how do you be a great lawyer? But if you're really looking to create something that lasts beyond you or create a business, then you really need to be spending time learning about business and how a business runs and how it functions and how to create a set of systems that help to make that business last.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah that's the hard part, right?

Amanda Farahany: It's the hard part

Jonathan Hawkins: know,

I mean, you can have all the systems and technology in place, but it's finding the people and it's more than just they're really good lawyers. I mean, they, like you said, they gotta be aligned with the vision. I mean, they've got to be in the right place. All of that. It's just, it's challenging.

That's the hard part. Yeah.

Amanda Farahany: Yeah. And then once you find them, you've got to make sure that you keep them.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yes, retaining them.

Amanda Farahany: Yeah. So that's a whole nother thing too. So you can attract people with your vision and what they see, but then when they come in, you've got to make sure that you're not looking to the next person that you're hiring.

You've got to make sure that you're supporting them in the way they need to be supported.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so your vision for your firm is to create a national platform, employment, plaintiff boutique firm. And how do you go about finding new people?

And she's been a great part of. You know, taking it to the next part severance been with me for over a decade. And so that was really growing the talent internally and bringing them up. And I'm looking at my partners right now that Aaron is somebody who I've known since, you know, 20 some years ago and came to me about it.

Hopefully there's an opportunity that we're talking through that has come from other connections people seeing what we're doing and seeing other people talking about it. So in the. Going to other states and growing it that way, I'm really wanting to do that more organically than intentionally. I want to really just find where the right fit happens.

And so that's been. We've been working on using predictive index, which is a company that does, you know, helps you with identify what are the right skills and personality and combination of traits to create the avatar of the right person. And then, you know, trying to work through that. So some of that's just.

Connecting to people being involved in places indeed LinkedIn. bUt that's the most difficult part, right? I mean, it's, it is, you can create a great set of systems, but if you don't have the right people in those systems, then it doesn't matter. It's. It doesn't work, so it's really the combination of that.

Jonathan Hawkins: I am, you know, part of the fun of, you know, Growing a firm is bumping into these challenges and trying to figure out a way around them or through them. Maybe even you know, I get bored pretty easy too. I need a new challenge. I think you get bored easy

Jonathan Hawkins: And every time you grow, it's a new challenge.

You know, probably when it was, you know, your first out of state office, you probably learned a bunch from that. And when you did it again, you know, you. Some of the mistakes you made the first time, maybe made some more mistakes and you get better every time you do it. So, you know, you've been gracious with your time today.

So, you know, I will say this too, for any listeners that might be interested in reaching out and. joining your platform, you know, feel free and maybe you'll get some hits, but why don't you tell everybody how they can find you a best way to get in touch with you.

Amanda Farahany: Yeah, so, I'm Amanda at justice at work dot com. Our website is justice at work all spelled out dot com. And so easy enough to get to me. It's just Amanda at justice at work. So, you know, people can reach out. I'm happy to talk to them and I'm happy to talk to people who are looking to grow their own firm and give people advice.

Jonathan Hawkins: It sounds like you need to write a book too. So

Amanda Farahany: yeah, I know. My sister just wrote a book. So she's if you haven't read that book, it's called battle for your brain. It's fascinating. She's on. Like, the New York Times list now, and the paper and stuff like that. So it's a she is the book writer. I am not.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you know, I think you probably have a lot of good stories to tell. So put a pin in that you need to do that at some point when you have time, when you

Amanda Farahany: when I have time, yes, that'll be my next high learning curve is learning how to write something that people want to read.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, well cool. Well, I appreciate you joining us today and I look forward to watching you continue to grow your firm

Amanda Farahany: Thank you. It's great to see you.