Working Remotely Part 2: How My Virtual Law Firm Works

February 09, 2019 by Galia in lessons, working remotely

So, how does it actually work to run a virtual law firm day to day?

The Client Experience:

A potential client will either find us online or get referred to us, and make initial contact by phone or email or by booking an appointment online with our paralegal/client services director, Mary Lou. If it seems like the person would be a good fit for our firm, we set up a video meeting for them to talk to me. All I need for these meetings is my laptop, a good wifi connection, and a wall that looks professional enough for business meetings. (This wall part has actually been the hardest part of the entire thing.) If they decide to hire us, the rest of the work is done by phone or email.

Because I’m not tied to court appearances, I can do my work whenever and wherever. Very little in business law is a true time-sensitive emergency. And almost everything I do is some combination of thinking and writing, so all I really need is a laptop and some wifi. And sometimes some coffee. (Okay, often some coffee.)

From the client’s perspective, they’re getting the same exact service that they would get from any law firm, plus what we intend to be the additional perks of ease, accessibility, and efficiency because we’re using technology that most other law firms aren’t using yet. The clients are getting the quality but don’t have to pay for the overhead or inefficiencies (think: no rent, no parking, no public transit fees, no gas, no commute, no copy machine rental, phone system, books, file cabinets, storage, furniture, time spent on printing/copies/scanning, and on and on). And clients don’t have to sit in traffic and find parking whenever they want to talk to one of us. If someone prefers a traditional law firm with a traditional office, then they’re not the right client for us anyway, and we’re happy to refer them to someone who might be a better fit.

The Team Experience:

Because we’re not all in an office rubbing shoulders every day, we have to consciously create time to communicate to make sure everyone knows what their priorities are, what next steps are, and also just so they don’t feel completely isolated and alone. We have one all-team meeting once a week to review our client projects and make sure things keep moving. We have another all-team meeting every other week or so to work on non-client projects such as business development, marketing projects, or to do all-staff training. I also have at least one one-on-one meeting with each of them every week to batch questions/answers and check in. All group meetings include some time to talk about non-work things for a few minutes, as well -- we’ll start our staff meetings sharing one good thing that happened or one thing we learned that week -- so we can all continue to learn about each other and keep up the feeling of a true team.

I try to make sure I’m reasonably available to them if they need me, but it’s also a really good practice in making sure all of our procedures are solid, that they have all the information they need in order to do their jobs, and that they know what’s an emergency and what’s not so we can all work as efficiently as possible. Most of our non-meeting communications are done via email unless it’s a true emergency. The goal, whether I’m there in person or not, is to have the law firm depend as little on me as possible, because that would be the mark of a successful practice. That part is a process, but it might even be easier to get there with me gone than if I were there; I’d still have the inclination to try to do everything myself, and there wouldn’t be as much immediate incentive to change it.

Our team is still working really well together, and I won’t speak for them, but my personal impression is that everyone seems happy and invested. If anything, I think it contributes to a shared feeling that we’re doing something new and blazing a trail together.

The virtual law firm also gives me an opportunity to give my employees one benefit that many other companies can’t or won’t: the benefit of being able to control their own lives and schedules, just as I can. I may not be able to give them big bonuses every year (yet!), but what I can do is let them prioritize their own lives amid the work. Everyone has things that come up in life — babies, illnesses, family challenges, or even just routine things like appointments or finding out at the last minute that you’re the one that has to pick the kid up from daycare. My employees are able to work from home and get their own flexible hours to live their lives how they want. And they know that I value their lives outside of work. After that, it’s hard to want to go back to commuting an hour in each direction to sit your butt in a chair for 9 hours straight. It brings me joy to be able to give that to them.

My Days:

I try to work normal hours (9-6ish) on weekdays. I sometimes work nights and weekends, but conversely, sometimes I take days off to travel or spend time with people or be a tourist. The main challenge with doing regular work hours on the road is that, to the people we were staying with, it often looked like we were working too much. From the outside, it seems like we should be on vacation, so even working 9-6 seems like we’re workaholics because people expect us to be relaxing, hanging out, and exploring. For us, we’re just living our lives, working normal hours, and we spend as much time as we can exploring outside of working hours.

Ultimately, I can do the work anywhere, so it doesn’t make a difference to clients, to my network, to my employees, or to anyone else whether I’m in Oakland or not. And when I do go back to the Bay Area, I plan to still run my law firm this way. It saves me a ton of time (I joke about my strenuous commute from the bedroom to the next room over). I’m much more productive working from home because it’s much easier to set up and protect time for deep, uninterrupted work. And I get to keep my PJ pants on when I’m on video chats. It’s definitely my dream job.

The Results:

I keep a close pulse on the stats of my business, and my business has measurably grown while I’ve been on the road, by every measure.

The truly interesting and funny part is: the things that help my business run well with me remote also are things that help my business in general. They’re also things that help me and my entire team have more flexible, independent lives that keep us happier. Putting our systems and technology and teamwork to the test by me being gone may have actually accelerated our systems and technology and teamwork. It’s a really rewarding experience. For example, if I had stayed home, I probably would have continued to do at least a few in-person client meetings a week, and never would have tested and found out that doing them all online can, and does, work, which saves everyone time, money, and hassle.

So while I do have luck and privileges that gave me a leg up to make this all possible (and I never lose my gratitude for them), I do think that this lifestyle, or at least certain aspects of it, is possible for a lot of people if it’s really something you want to do. In fact, even if all you want to do is stay put, there’s a lot you can do to at least build in more flexibility and efficiency so you can get more done in less time and for cheaper. It does require a lot of discipline and some good tools, but in the end, it’s a lifestyle that, for me, is a pinnacle of fulfillment and adventure.

In Part 3, I’ll go into how we do some of our marketing and networking from the road.

Blog Cabin

February 02, 2019 by Galia in ohio, michigan

After our time in New York, we drove west for Ohio Part One and made sure to arrive with plenty of time to attend Mike’s Granny’s 90th birthday celebration! It was a great time, made especially great because almost all of the huge family was in town to hang out and celebrate. The highlight for me actually came before the party even started: watching the entire family come together to work as a big team and decorate the whole place for the shindig. It was a really heartwarming sight to see.

Before we arrived, I found out that an old work friend of mine whom I knew from California and had moved to Findlay years before, not only still lived in Findlay, but lived in Granny’s old house, which is right next door to Granny and about four houses down from Mike’s parents’ house (where we were staying). So we had insta-friends in Findlay! It felt serendipitous.

After a couple of weeks in Findlay, we made it to our next big stop: Mike’s family’s cabin in Michigan. 50 years ago, Mike’s grandfather (on his mom’s side) bought a small hunting cabin in a remote part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Since then, Grandpa completely converted it, building it into a summer hangout that can comfortably fit the extended family. Everyone on that side of the family has spent a lot of summer weeks there. I was a little nervous to go because I hadn’t been there before and we were going to spend an entire six weeks living and working there. I knew it was fairly rustic, but wasn’t completely sure what to expect.

My main concern was that I’d feel isolated and anxious: the cabin is on an island that you can only get to by boat. There are no vehicles/roads/sidewalks, the water is pumped directly from the lake, the power can be unreliable, and occasionally there’s a storm that’s bad enough to strand you there for short periods. According to basically everyone in the family, the cabin is a place you either love or you hate, and I didn’t know which I’d feel.

My secondary concern was whether I’d be able to effectively work there. There’s no cell service, and (until Mike took up the task) only unreliable and slow internet. My work requires decent internet, particularly for my client video chats. If we weren’t able to get it, we would’ve had to cut the trip short and head back to Ohio, which would have been a huge disappointment.

Despite my fears, we had both been looking forward to a period of quiet, and of staying in one place for a while. It had been a crazy few months, bopping around the East Coast with basically no stopping. It would be nice to be in one place for a little bit longer (relatively speaking).

Turns out my fear of feeling isolated was very far off, not the least because we actually had visitors for most of the time we were there! At different times during the six weeks, we had Mike’s parents, Mike’s uncle and cousins and their kids, Mike’s grandparents, and the friends who live in Granny’s old house. It was a blast.

While we were there, I also had to take two trips to California for work things I couldn’t miss. The entirety of the local airport was one big room with a single gate, and two flights in/out a day on tiny little planes, on which I always felt like we were about to drop out of the sky.

So, all in all, not actually very much time alone. Except poor Mike, who was left at the cabin all by himself when I flew to California, and suddenly felt like he was in the beginning of a scary movie and an unfriendly serial killer was going to launch from the pitch black woods, bust through the window, and murder him. (I still don’t know what he thinks I could possibly do if I were there with him, but I don’t envy him having to feel what it’s like to be completely alone in the middle of nowhere.) He did survive.

The other thing I had clearly forgotten about myself is that I do actually really like being alone, so I don’t really know what I was worried about to begin with. Also, Mike rigged up what might have been the best wifi in the Upper Peninsula by installing large antennas on the boat dock to pull in an otherwise-unreachable LTE signal. So work and contact with loved ones was as easy as ever. Fears allayed.

I did end up loving it there. The highlights for me were the sunsets and the butterflies. I made a promise to myself to never miss a sunset (if the sky wasn’t covered in clouds), so every night I’d go out and sit on the dock as the sun went down. They were some of the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever seen.

As for the butterflies, the adventure started right at the beginning of the trip when Mike’s parents were still there with us. His mom pointed out the milkweed plants right outside that were absolutely covered with monarch caterpillars. I spent the next few weeks following all of them, watching them get fatter and then slowly, one by one, building their chrysalises all around the property. Every day I would go out and check on them and see which ones had turned into butterflies. Many of the newly hatched butterflies would still be outside sunning their wings before they could fly away. I even saved a few from waves or spiderwebs. Near the end of the summer, there was one left that I knew would hatch any moment, so I went outside every few hours to check on it. I ended up sitting outside, drinking my coffee and watching her from the moment she cracked open the chrysalis to the moment she flew way. It was magical.

The only thing that did get to me after a while was just that things, understandably, are all harder there. For example, groceries: wait until Monday because the store is closed on Sundays, get in the boat (hopefully the weather is good), start the boat (which is sometimes a challenge), 15 minutes to the public dock which hopefully has spots open, tie up the boat, walk three blocks to pick up the RV, drive four blocks to the grocery store, shop, pack up the RV, drive to the dock, drop off the groceries at the boat, drop off the RV, walk back, boat back, unload the groceries from the boat. It’s an all-afternoon affair. If the weather’s bad, you’re out of luck. Once, we got separated with Mike at the cabin and me on the mainland, and we couldn’t get to each other until a gnarly storm passed a few hours later. It’s definitely a different life.

Sometimes it felt like something broke every day and had to be fixed. The water pump, the clothes dryer, the boat motor. And you can’t just get a handyman to drop by. You either fix it yourself, or wait a week and pay someone to boat over.

Overall, the beauties definitely outweighed the challenges. But I think the challenges would be a lot easier to take for a week or two, instead of six straight.

I also couldn’t help chuckle to myself every time I had a client video chat. If only they knew I was calling in from a cabin on an island in the UP.

When we left the cabin, we stopped at his cousin’s place outside of Traverse City. These were some of the same cousins and kids we spent a few days with at the cabin, and we had an absolute blast with them. Traverse City ended up being one of our favorite towns.

The cabin was a peaceful joy, and it also warmed my heart to see how much the place meant to Mike. It was one of his lifelong dreams to spend an entire summer there, and it was awesome to get the opportunity to at least partly do that, because who knows if we ever will be able to again. Hopefully, we will have many more visits there in the future!

After the cabin and Traverse City, we head back to Findlay, Ohio, where we’ll be for a month!

New York and Beyond

January 12, 2019 by Galia in on the road, new york

Let’s see, where did we leave off…

After our whirlwind May, we spent a few days in San Francisco, mostly working and running San Francisco errands.

Then we got back to New York. I’d like to say things settled down a bit then -- and they did, a little -- but it was still a non-stop go-go-go that was hard to keep up with.

Mike’s brother and sister in law, Zac and Jess, were amazingly kind and let us crash in their New York-sized apartment for a while. We wanted to keep our footprint as small as possible, so I ended up signing up for a coworking space for the month we were in town so we could get out of their hair a little bit while working and not have our stuff explode all over their space.

Nights and weekends we’d hang out together and explore the city. Days, we would all go to work, and Mike and I frequented a local pizza joint enough that we started to feel like locals. And I met up with an old friend from law school whom I hadn’t seen in years, which was an extra treat!

The first-half-of-NY adventures included: a trip to MOMA, hot dogs, pickles, amazing Italian pizza at Santa Panza, bagels, Chinese food, vegan baked goods, getting lost on public transit, highlight dinner at Brooklyn Crab, the Artists and Fleas market, Smorgasburg, and watching Isle of Dogs at the Alamo.

After only a week and half in Brooklyn, we had to sever our New York time for some more travel.

Mike flew to Ohio to help build a dock and un-winterize his family’s cabin for the summer. I took the opportunity to fly down to New Orleans, where I met up with my amazing friend Andrea, so we could check out wedding venues for a few days. (Like seriously, who flies across the country to look at wedding venues with you? Amazing.) We, of course, also made a fun trip of it, and I gave her no choice but to let me drag her around town making her eat all the things and listen to all the music. After that, I flew back to Atlanta for a few days to hang out with my brother’s family.

Mike and I met back up in Baltimore, to pick up the RV, which is when we discovered it had been broken into (which you’ve already read about). We spent a fun day exploring Philadelphia on our way back to New York. (TL;DR: The liberty bell was underwhelming; the philly cheesesteaks were good but not amazing; the Mutter museum was a highlight and surprisingly creepy; the general feel of the city was neat.)

To spare Zac and Jess a multi-week Burden of Us (and to not have to figure out what to do with an RV in New York), we booked a really nice RV park right on the waterfront in New Jersey, and camped out there for another week and a half. We’d go into Brooklyn to hang out, and we all had a really fun day in Manhattan, eating Katz’s deli, hanging out at the park, and seeing Avenue Q. Another highlight was a wacky adventure getting hot pot and rolled ice cream in Chinatown.

One highlight of our time there was a day trip to Rockaway, NJ, to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousin whom I hadn’t seen in a really long time. I hadn’t even met my cousin’s kids before that! It was amazing how quickly we all just felt so comfortable, and how much fun we had for every moment we were together. They really embraced Mike into the family, which gave me the serious warm fuzzies. And the highlight was probably picking up the kids from school with the RV without them knowing in advance, and then taking them all for rides around the neighborhood. A definite highlight of the whole trip! And, yet again, another very meaningful reminder of what this trip is giving us.

New York itself was an adventure. Of course, the highlight was just getting to spend so much time with Zac and Jess. Normally, we get to see them hours at a time for holidays. It’s a funny thing, and a special privilege, to be able to spend time with family members as an adult. Once you grow up and move away, it can be hard to shed the shadows of who you were before, and it can be hard to update the old rules of your relationship to fit the people each of you turned into. It was neat to see the brothers get to spend a bunch of time together. And of course it was also really enjoyable for me to be the outsider coming in and finally getting a chance to really know my future brother and sister in law.

They did an awesome job of showing us around New York. Though I do have to admit that, while fun and interesting to visit, Mike and I agreed that it wasn’t a place we’d want to live. There are just so many people, and it takes forever to get anywhere, and everyone sounds angry even when they’re not. That said, it was a cool experience to be there for three weeks, knowing that we probably wouldn’t have spent such a chunk of time there any other time in our lives.

As always, our time in New York felt too short, and we felt like we could have used so much more time to hang out and bond. But alas, we had to keep moving.

Our next big stop is the family cabin, but on our way, we stopped in:

Hamden, Connecticut: to spend a couple of days with another cousin I hadn’t seen in years. Again, this ended up being one of the surprise highlights of our trip. We had a blast! Our first visit with a family with teenage kids, we got to try on that lifestyle for a moment, and it was really fun and loving and hilarious.

Boston, Massachusetts: to meet up with Mike’s high school friend, Harper, and successfully beat the record time at a local escape room together. He also took us on a whirlwind walking tour of the city which was super fun.

Rochester, New York: to visit one of my best friends from law school whom I hadn’t seen in six years. Rochester was adorable, his daughter was even more adorable, and it’s so fun to catch up with their whole family. If we hadn’t had the opportunity to stop there, who knows the next time I would have been able to see them.

Findlay, Ohio: to stay with Mike’s parents for two weeks, and attend Granny’s 90th birthday! Most of Mike’s family was in town, so we got to reconnect with them all and I got to meet some of them for the first time. A good precursor to our longer visits with each of them, coming up soon.

Once we hit Findlay, things finally start to settle back into normal. At least, “normal” for us these days!