What if the best thing you ever built started with a single text message? Meghan Freed never planned to start a law firm—let alone lead the largest family law practice in Connecticut. But what happens when you stop doing what you’re “supposed” to do… and start listening to what actually lights you up? In this episode, we talk about breakups (business and personal), niching down, uncomfortable feedback, and the moment you realize: I’m sick of this problem. I want a new one. What if your growth started with letting go?

Meghan Freed: Yeah. And we really wish we had known. Right. And so yeah I could tilt it windmills and be aggravated that people don't tell us when there's something they don't like, or I can find out a different way to ask and use it to ask them. Right. That's one of the things I think that it's understandable for lawyers to be frustrated when clients don't share that information.

So fine, let's let humans be humans and just figure out a way to ask them that people are more comfortable with.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We'll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you're in the right place.

Let's dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview law firm founders and owners and hear about their journeys and lessons learned, and you, the listener, get to hopefully learn something along the way as well. So, today really excited.

Meghan Freed: Oh, thanks Jonathan. So I started out in the early part of this century as more of a traditional corporate litigator did well in law school and was a summer associate in one of our big firms here in Connecticut. Sort of followed that path for a while until launching the predecessor to Freed Marcroft which is called Freed McKean.

And so that's how we hatched Freed Marcroft back in 2013.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You know, I have found just through the years, it's really hard to do a personal injury contingency practice with a non-con contingency practice. There are people that make it work. I've seen it, but it's just, it's really hard to make that work whether it's, I mean, lots of reasons why, but I have just found it hard to do.

And then we start working with the law firm coach anyway, in that first call with them the sales call, not our first coaching call. In the first sales call, they were like, if you're gonna work with us, you have to level down to one practice area. And so it really drives home the point you're making, Jonathan, where not only for us, did a PI hourly firm not work, because I think that's like the first cut, right? Contingency, hourly, tricky, bad fellows. I get the appeal. But then for us, we wound up quickly discovering that, like, for example, I used to before law school I was a financial planner and I loved doing trust in state's work.

But thank goodness we did.

Meghan Freed: What paralegal are you hiring? What skills does that person need to have? I mean, oh my God. It, I mean, pass, I think we're at the size now where we could add a second practice area. I wouldn't go to something that had an entirely different billing model or anything like that because I've no interest in reinventing that particular wheel.

But we're probably large enough to add on another practice area, and I still, it's just not my jam at this point. Like, let's just do the thing

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, There's probably still plenty of growth you can do without it. So, okay, so, I do wanna dive into the niche thing, but I wanna go back because I was looking at your LinkedIn and did you work in-house for a while too?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, I did in the middle. I skipped that. So after the, like, there was big firms and then I was in-house, and then we started the firm.

And I can, if someone asks me, I could sort of tell you, but my sense just from my own journey and others, that there comes a time in many lawyers careers, careers, probably

Meghan Freed: is very nice.

Jonathan Hawkins: Four, four to eight years in where you're just like, I don't wanna do this at all. I'm just, I don't, you know, and then you might jump at another firm 'cause you're like, maybe it's the firm. And then you go to the other firm and you're like, maybe it's not the firm. Maybe it's being a lawyer. So then you try something else. So I'm curious, what led you, you know, you started out sort of, I'll call it big firm, you know, traditional civil, and then you went in-house. What was sort of the steps along the way that drove you there?

My section was only 50 people, so the top 10% was a very small number right of heavens. So I was like, I better really study hard and focus on my grades. I didn't think through why I was following the path that was available to me, other than it seemed to be what everyone was in a feeding frenzy over so that I should wanna do it.

I wish the first firm had been matter to the second firm, but I learned the lesson that you don't go somewhere for money if you're me, right? Like, that has to be a component of it, but that alone isn't the cure. And then after that I loved being in house actually. I just had done it. Like I, my in-house stint was complete.

I couldn't keep doing my job forever. It was, it had lost its shine because it, I had just done it hadn't, I wasn't growing enough. I was still really young. And so. There, we there, I get a text message from Ryan McKean. I was sitting on a plane. I was always sitting on a plane 'cause I was in, in-house manage litigation in-house and I just was like flying around the country, right?

I was a federal litigator prior to going in-house was the it wasn't just the idea, it was like the safety net. I felt confident that the skills he had and the experience he had were some of the things I would've been most nervous about. And so that's how we started. I definitely wanted more freedom. That was the primary motivator.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you decide to jump into private practice.

Meghan Freed: Mm-hmm.

Meghan Freed: Yeah, so Ryan had a lot of background and had been at a civil litigation practice, like a more general practice prior. So that helped that sort of set the stage. The original concept was just sort of a general civil litigation practice. That's how we started. And then the niching down really happened after that.

Ryan was doing some PI at that time in that context, but a lot of it was things I was my work, he was teaching me. I was teach I took so many CLEs and Kristen, who at that time was with us and who had just graduated from law firms from law school rather, we were doing these things independently and together.

Jonathan Hawkins: So there's some lawyers that just sort of always knew they were gonna start a firm. It sounds like that

Meghan Freed: Never, Never. Not an like, wouldn't have, Nope.

Jonathan Hawkins: but once the text came your mind, something, some a flip was a switch was flipped and you just jumped on. Is that accurate?

Meghan Freed: flip was, Kristen's switch was flipped. Shit. I was like, oh, that's so it's an honor. Be nominated was my approach. I was like, yeah, I mean, what? That would be cool, but you know, what do I know about running a law firm? We're probably not gonna get any securities derivative cases in, and I don't dunno.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you've talked about this on other podcasts, you know, ultimately that partnership, you know, didn't work out. You guys Went your separate ways, and we can get into as much as that as you want. But I'm curious just the experience of going into starting a firm, not really having a plan, really it sounds like

Meghan Freed: Right. Well, we had

Jonathan Hawkins: it out.

Meghan Freed: We had plans. We spent a lot of time on a lot of plans, but one of them wasn't. What are our, what's our like, preferred practice area? Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So with the, you know, benefit of hindsight, if there's somebody out there that's sort of, maybe I want to get, do something any thoughts on jumping into a firm with the attitude of we'll just do whatever comes in versus, all right, let's figure out what we're gonna focus on.

That's part of the gig, right? It's not gonna be perfect. But we would've changed the order, and I think would've started in a niche rather than corrected into a niche. That's if I were gonna start if Freed Marcroft disappeared and we were gonna start a new firm, we would not ever do the general practice step.

Meghan Freed: I think that neither Kristen nor I knew what we were actually interested in practicing when we started, because we didn't have the requisite experience to know what was going to ring our bells. So in that way, there's kind of with Freed McKean our firm with Ryan people gravitating towards different practice areas wasn't necessarily foreseeable. So it's just sort of like that's, you know, that's one of the things that happens. But I think that if you are in a position where you do know what practice areas you're interested in, you've kind of cleared one of the hurdles that we didn't clear.

But the decision between having let's take the, a classic structure and it's just like two partners starting a firm. What does 50 50 mean? Would 51 49 be better? How are we gonna, how are we gonna resolve things like this? How much money are we willing to invest? And in what, especially in the really early stages, like how much do we need to get out versus what we put in?

And I think if you wanna do that, that's fine. It will limit your growth. But if you wanna start that way I get it. Pre decide who gets stuck with the beeping copier release. But, you know, but that's a fine way to start. But it's if you're going into a more collaborative model where one person may be more responsible for generating work and another person may be more responsible for doing it, you have to make sure that you, everyone is making a profit on how they value their own in each other's efforts.

It wasn't the most fun I've ever had to go through a partnership breakup. I'm not proud of everything I did in it. I'm proud of how we are now and I'm not sure anyone is rooting for him more than I am. Right? So like, isn't that a wonderful outcome? That doesn't mean there isn't anything to learn about how we did it, how we could have done it better.

Don't make the same mistakes that I made. Take them for what they're worth and make your own mistakes that are similar.

Jonathan Hawkins: A lot of wisdom in all of that. A lot of wisdom there, you know, and I have found, you know, I do a lot of law firm breakups too. And it's even the cases that objectively from the outside, there's like nothing to fight about. There's

Meghan Freed: Nope.

Meghan Freed: Yes. We're

Jonathan Hawkins: other person just feels abandoned. You know? It's just it's,

Meghan Freed: were doing this together. Right. And I wouldn't have gone in with someone, this wasn't my experience, but I can think I, I can see someone feeling like, but we just talked about this five years ago. Where are you going right now? All of a sudden, you wanna be a yoga instructor, right?

Jonathan Hawkins: It is not you. It's me.

Meghan Freed: Right. I mean, right. Relationships are relationships. Or relationships, whether it's a marriage or a partnership or, you know, my intense relationship with my Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, they're all give and take.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. You can call it whatever you want with your great accent.

Jonathan Hawkins: so I, what led you, you know, why family law, I mean, you had no, no experience in it. What led you to that and what drew you to that?

Meghan Freed: So one of the, Ryan had done divorce. So we had bandwidth in Freed McKeen. My first client that got referred to me was, my first divorce client that got referred to me was from a wonderful, very senior lawyer at a big firm in Connecticut. And it was a connection from his work for a corporation, and she was getting divorced.

There's nothing wrong with it. But one of the reasons that I think ultimately I wasn't a fit, although I wouldn't have said it when I was there, is I really love the nuts and bolts of the legal practice of law. That rings my bells. It had never occurred to me that I was actually, and I am about to say this, right, I was not actually interested in emotions associated with clients. I thought, well, it turns out that I was so used to huge dollar amounts with a balance sheet, p and l [00:23:00] impact, that I didn't realize what it was like when you like, truly helped a individual impact their life. And it was like, oh my God, like I am helping this person lead the life that they wanna lead.

I'm not doing it for them, they're doing it for themselves, but it's better with me there. Let's do that all day every day.

Jonathan Hawkins: Now that reminds me I saw one of your LinkedIn posts, it was about being a counselor versus being an advocate, and

Meghan Freed: one had a pretty hot bench.

Jonathan Hawkins: that was, I mean, but that sort of fits in, I think to what you're talking about here, but maybe elaborate on that. What did you mean by that?

The counselor component. And I'm not talking about like get on the couch, right? Tell me your problems. I'm not talking about stepping into the role of an actual mental health professional. I'm talking about counseling people on their legal options, counseling people on the what's realizable legally.

Then the zealous advocacy that you think of, like, you know, in court, in the, at the negotiation table, that comes second. That's the second part of your job. But I also think that doing the counseling, being a counselor to your client is part of being a zealous advocate. And I know it's hard to teach to newer lawyers because they haven't had a lot of clients yet.

Right. And they have some understandable and appropriate nervousness around their hard skills. Right? But the faster we can get to the soft skills, the hard skills are the easy stuff.

Meghan Freed: Like what's our, if we have, I love page limits and litigation, right? Page limits, I think are such a gift to the, especially to the newer lawyer because it's like you have five arguments, which are the best ones and let's, let's allocate time that way. Let's allocate words that way.

Let's allocate time that way. And I think that's it's a, I think back on, on being at big law firms earlier in my career, so like you're a very, very new lawyer in a very big environment. And the number of hours I spent looking for a case that didn't exist on what I now know was like for a footnote.

Jonathan Hawkins: it was, It was that case that the partner was sure existed. I

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: But remember that we were like, how long do I go to prove the negative, right? I don't miss that. I don't, that's hard. Newer lawyers, that's just hard. Your job is hard.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So it we sort of figured out how you got into your niche but then within that you've sort of got, I call it a sub niche or maybe a super niche, however you wanna call it. So, I don't know if it's a primary focus, but you have a big focus on the LGBT community. How did you sort of get down into that

But I'm talking about like the boots on the ground, like ha helping at individual clients. And at the time one of the things we were trying to figure out was how are we going to now that people in same sex relationships are able to get married, but have been long-term partners for 20 years.

So if you have a 20 year relationship and a one year marriage, it's like, but that's a one year marriage, right? So how do we help clients? The reality of their lives match what we're kind of dealing with in terms of an evolving section of the law. So, I'm married to my partner Kristen, my law partner, Kristen.

So happily, my initial niche has become less relevant and you know how sometimes you are happy to be out of business on things. I would be very happy to stay out of business on that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, there. There you go. So let, let's go back to the firm. So you've got the two of you. Who else is with you? Do you, how many lawyers, how many staff? How, how have you sort of

Meghan Freed: There are about 25 of us total, and I think 12 of us are attorneys. So that's kind of the mix. Push in half and half

Jonathan Hawkins: That's a good size firm for a family law firm.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. We're big.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.

Meghan Freed: Big for family law.

Jonathan Hawkins: in Connecticut. I mean, you're not a huge state, are you?

Meghan Freed: No, but mighty,

Jonathan Hawkins: guys go outside of, do do you, do you go

But we had two offices, I think when COVID started and were sort of, functioning in what I would call like the middle of Connecticut. And with COVID everything changed and we started doing a lot of mediation. When courts shut down to try and help people, we'd always done it, but we ramped it up to try and help people who were a little bit stuck.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's awesome. So you said you went [00:32:00] statewide. So how do you do that? Like, you know, you go from, you're in one or two offices and all of a sudden you gotta get the word out there. You know, state and they need to know you. So how did you do that?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, it was COVID. So the internet it was the marketing, first of all, everyone. We had been a firm with remote capabilities. I'm going to toot Ryan McKeen horn, right? So when we started Freed McKean, the tech stack he set us up with at the beginning had always enabled work from home flexibility. So we had other than a few people, I think pretty much everyone was working a combination of remotely and in the office.

And then when we came back after COVID, we found that our clients really largely preferred to continue to meet with us virtually. Not all the meetings, obviously most of court is in person, not all of it, but largely in person. And so our our practice I think evolved with the world and we were well set up to do it.

And so we, speaking of niching down, like basically all of the marketing went into these virtual mediations that we figured out how to do very quickly. And it's like, it was necessity was the mother of invention there. We just needed to keep the lights on and didn't wanna lose our lawyers.

Jonathan Hawkins: So for the marketing, I mean, are you talking about like SEO Google ad stuff or were you, I mean, like what?

And so we were able to reach people. I don't, this marketing strategy I don't think would work exactly the same way right now when we were all stuck.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: But, so yeah, it was a largely webinars, Q&A's, Facebook Lives things like that. And we had a robust presence with all of that previously.

And so it was really about switching the focus from divorce in a general way and other family law issues, obviously, but and redirecting it into a, you know, everyone is seeing on the news that the courts are closed, but there's a way that you can resolve your divorce right now and you don't have to stop.

So that was the, that was what happened back then?

Meghan Freed: it did. That's all true.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you see that

Meghan Freed: Oh yeah. It was terrible. The it was awful. There, there were two parts of it that were awful. And one part that was good, the awful parts were that the houses became a powder keg. There was, that, there was nowhere for that tension to go to. People weren't leaving to go to work, kids weren't leaving to go to school.

They were all in the house. It was just a, just, it ramped up the conflict. The second awful part of it was that there weren't courts there to help resolve it unless there was an emergency situation. So if you think about in family law, there's a big section of things that are urgent but not emergent and we try to keep them from going there.

And I think a lot of people were able to move a happier situation because things came to a head. They got clarity earlier than they would have in a non COVID time. One of the things we see in divorce is the frog in the pot of boiling water. Right. Doesn't know. And we have a lot of conversations with people where if I were able to share them with you you would think.

Jonathan Hawkins: Those were wild times. Wild times. People just aren't gonna believe it, you know?

Meghan Freed: It's none of

Jonathan Hawkins: Spanish flu

Meghan Freed: were doing what you were making, right? We didn't even, what's the Spanish flu? None of us had ever heard of it.

Jonathan Hawkins: exactly. They just wanted to forget, you know?

Meghan Freed: Right. I mean, now I look back on it and I'm like, I mean I, how much bread did I bake? We put it in a wagon, delivered it to neighbors. I mean, it was just, there is no, the living through that time was such a social, cultural, and relationship experiment.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Bizarre. Bizarre.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you mentioned social media. What, What's your stack, what's your social media stack? I, I know you're on LinkedIn cause I follow you, but is that your main social media outlet or do you have others and, and maybe you individually plus the firm.

It was just, oh my gosh. Right. I think people went on there once a year when they changed jobs or something like that, but. I love it now. I find it, I find the there to be some tremendous thought leadership. I learn things on it. I've [00:40:00] made fr friendships and relationships through it. So I, that's my personal favorite for the firm.

The firm is not really, I mean it's on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn, the algorithm doesn't love the companies, right? So it's just too bad 'cause we Freed Marcroft has a lot of value to add to LinkedIn. It's just that no one sees it. So it has to come out of Meghan Freed on LinkedIn, which I'm cool with 'cause I like it.

I listen to podcasts like yours in the car. I, it's an, or it's an auditory thing. It's not, I don't watch. And so it's funny to me that we are having some real success over there in those video driven platforms that I don't naturally watch. And I think that's something that I evolve on as I mature as a law firm owner, that I am not necessarily a person who has the same habits as many of our target clients. And so bringing in folks who are better at different aspects of your firm than you is a really key component. And one of the things that's been great about growing Freed Mark Craft is having access to higher and higher caliber of those folks to onboard. Not that we're not [00:42:00] perfect at it.

We continue to learn. But I have learned a lot. If you had told me five years ago, maybe that's not good in, in TikTok life, if you had told me three years ago when I had heard of TikTok that Freed Marcroft was going to be on it, I would've thought that you were nuts. But I was wrong.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I am still not on TikTok, but it's interesting, the thing about the video, so I was, you know, everybody, you gotta do video, gotta do video. I was like, I gotta Do video. But my clients are lawyers. So, I went on LinkedIn and I just said, look. Before I spend all this time and money and energy trying to create these videos, do you guys even watch videos? would you watch a long form video? And, and the, from the lawyer folks, overwhelmingly, they're like, I don't watch videos. I'd rather just read it. Or

Meghan Freed: So we're just, it's just a lawyer thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: I don't know. But

Meghan Freed: Oh,

Jonathan Hawkins: it definitely, I think it depends on your audience. Now, they did say if it's a how to video, like how do you change a tire?

Meghan Freed: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: you do whatever? They're

Meghan Freed: right. Because I need the visual of what thing to twist, right? Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. But they're like, but if you're just explaining a concept, like I'd rather just read it. And I was thinking, huh, okay. So then that's when I said, all right, I'm not gonna spend too much time on videos. At least not now, but

Meghan Freed: Yeah, maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just normal, like maybe I'm normal for a lawyer. I that I like a transcript. Oh, Oh, I'll, a thing I will do, I will watch a video with a closed cap with the captioning on and the volume off if I must. Right. If there's no, if there's nothing to read, I'll do that, but

Jonathan Hawkins: That, that's my mode. Yeah. Because it's like, or if I see a video that they're like, sound up. I'm like I, I just save it and then hopefully remember to watch it later.

Meghan Freed: I know. Oh, I can't do the sound up. I'm not in a place where I can put the sound on.

Jonathan Hawkins: The judge might not like

That's not my, like when I talk on the phone, it is a speaker phone pacing situation. That's the how I get my steps in.

Jonathan Hawkins: well, it's like now my kids, they got the damn earbuds in all the time. I mean, they're carrying on a conversation with you and there's like one end, I'm like, are you, listen,

Meghan Freed: I know.

Jonathan Hawkins: what? You

Meghan Freed: But also, I don't know any of the cues. Like I don't know how to like mute anything. I really am like I put them in, I take them out. That is my functionality.

Meghan Freed: It did really. There was a period there where it was great.

Jonathan Hawkins: So. Good.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. But I do think that like the conversation has gone to LinkedIn and, you know, you are still fighting some boring posts,

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

But I think that's where the interesting conversations are happening. And I also like them happening. I like lawyer LinkedIn, but I also like the sort of input of the professionals packed around the lawyers too, right? Like whatever is happening on accountant twi accountant, LinkedIn, when it crosses over with the lawyers is really interesting too.

So that cross pollination I think has been great. And I've actually tried video on LinkedIn and it's so weird. So I know that it might be moving there. I'm interested in how that shakes out further to your point, but I know they're pushing it, but I don't think the algorithm likes it yet.

Jonathan Hawkins: We will see. Yeah. We'll see. That shakes out. I mean, every, every platform has its own little personality and, sure it's meant to be. They're gonna try it. We'll see.

Meghan Freed: Yeah, we'll see.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. So we do it at stages of the case. So we try to get a pulse of how the client is feeling, and you could do it monthly. That would be a fine, you know, way to do it. We do it at certain key. We have our cases. Structured into phases so that people understand sort of where they are and where they're going, and our communications to them.

Like even, I'm not even talking, we aren't even at a deposition yet. I'm talking about gathering three years of bank statements and tax returns and what the heck I live with them and why? Like, whatever it's frustrating for folks. I get it that it's frustrating. So I like to know how they're doing and what I am, what I am like to know is both a 30,000 foot view of how we're doing and a micro view of how we're doing. I wanna know are there things that we could be en mass for all of our clients doing better in a way that gives them a better experience? Can we learn from people's pain points? [00:49:00] I also wanna make sure, of course, that individual clients are fine.

And there's two sides to that, right? One is, are we Freed Marcroft living up to our commitments to clients who aren't going to find what we deliver valuable? And the earlier we identify that. Before someone's really upset or things are really dissident, the easier it is to either course correct and get back on the same page, explain what they were confused about, et cetera, or help them smoothly transition to a firm that might work in a more traditional way or whatever their concept is of how they want it, their relationship with their lawyer to look.

From a question that feels neutral and not like you're pointing a finger at your paralegal, right? Then actually telling your lawyer you're concerned about something or you didn't understand something or why she said something. So it does get a lot we used to ask, but we get a lot more information.

Jonathan Hawkins: Think it's a, a great point you brought up too. If you do it early and often, it does give you the ability to course correct or cut ties and hopefully avoid the pissed off review or bark complain or whatever that might come if you don't do it soon enough and you wait till the end and they're like, I've been pissed this whole time.

Meghan Freed: Yeah. And we really wish we had known. Right. And so yeah I could tilt it windmills and be aggravated that people don't tell us when there's something they don't like, or I can find out a different way to ask and use it to ask them. Right. That's one of the things I think that it's understandable for lawyers to be frustrated when clients don't share that information.

So fine, let's let humans be humans and just figure out a way to ask them that people are more comfortable with.

Jonathan Hawkins: So this is really interesting to me. So, some of the logistics, let's talk about that. So, you sort of touched on it, but how do you roll this out to your team and say that we're about to do this, guys watch out. I mean, you know, how do you I get them on board, or I mean, or basically tell 'em it's gonna happen and then the sort of follow up is, you know, what's the response been from both internally and then from your clients?

And so we explained that we, in order for happiness to matter, we need to know if there is happiness. And so we're gonna start measuring happiness. And we also explained what I shared with you, that this is a three-way thing, right? One is we're gonna figure out how we can do better to not have clients experience stress, right?

So we explained why we were doing it and I think because we took the time in a full day to go through that. That it went well. I will tell you that not everyone is with the firm now. That was with the firm when we launched it. And I think that a sort of, I'm not shocked by that. And I'm sure that there were other reasons involved.

But I think that NPS worked that way too, that

So it's like, it's part of the gig now and people embrace it. One of the things that is an idiosyncrasy, maybe just of our NPS platform is that we can't sometimes people hit a 0 when they mean a 10 or a 1 when they mean a 10, whatever the lowest is, they hit the lowest when they mean the highest.

And when we ask 'em, you know, oh geez, we're so sorry that, you know, you're, we're not living up to what we had committed to. Often they're mortified that they hit the wrong number. Right. Well, that conversation is a great conversation too. I love that. And so everyone knows to not get, we have a standard that this is our standard that everyone has to meet or exceed.

It's designed to be a tool that we all use together to improve.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great point. And you know, change is always scary and something like that where you might feel exposed, can be even scarier.

Meghan Freed: Yeah.

Meghan Freed: yeah. We're not done over here. So one of the things we were in a we run scaling up in our law firm and we were at a leadership team scaling up meeting our last, for Q3 planning. And I said, I'm sick of this problem. I wanna have a new problem. So I think that's interesting. At this particular stage of growth, it's like I see so many things that I want to get the opportunity to really dial in. And in order to do that, I have to let go of some of the things that aren't a hundred percent dialed in yet. And when I think of the future, it's like I [00:58:00] want a better, even more pristine version of what we're doing now that impacts who we're serving even better and serves more people to that level.

I don't particularly to do that taking up the problem opportunity of expanding to a different state. I know like a lot of other law firms that are sort of at our general size. That's kind of one of the things that they're interested in opening up another practice area, expanding out of their home state or their home county in, larger states in Connecticut.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. I love it. I think that's a good, a good vision to have. So Meghan, thanks for coming on. This has been great. This is really some good stuff you've dropped for us today. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find you?

Meghan Freed: Yeah, so I mean I really am on LinkedIn constantly, so LinkedIn would be great. But also I'm available. My email address is my first name, Meghan, which my parents snuck an h into @freedmarcroft is my email, and then we are basically everywhere online if you would like to reach out. I am very open and love other lawyers, so I'd love to chat.

Meghan Freed: Thank you, Jonathan.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We'll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.