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good afternoon everyone Welcome to our session on building a Purpose Driven Law Firm I'm your host Neve Pollock I am vice president of legal eclio which means I'm Cleo's lawyer businesses around the world have come to recognize that both Mission and purpose are key components of success a Clio our mission is to transform the legal experience for all and hopefully everyone here today is experiencing a component of that transformation right here at cleocon and if you're not come see me afterwards I'm gonna sort you out as a purpose-driven company Cleo is committed to increasing better access to Justice we're democratizing how legal services are managed and accessed by providing a low barrier affordable cloud-based solution available to all lawyers at Clio we know that customers use their buying power to select providers that match their values and purpose not just with words but also with action and it's no different for law firms clients seek out service providers whose purpose most closely aligns with their own interests so how does one build a purpose-driven law firm well I've been invited I've invited an expert here to tell us I'm I'm very honored to welcome our guest speaker chinwei oh Hanalei chinway is a Content Junkie A Serial entrepreneur an attorney and a founder of ohana light law she's licensed in California New York and New Jersey and her boutique Law Firm provides underestimated creators and entrepreneurs with business and intellectual property Legal Services centering education as a core value of her firm chinway hosts weekly Instagram sessions called the legal lunch hour for her community and she also teaches as an Adjunct professor at USC's gold School of Law through her thought-provoking Blog the content Biz chinway discusses the impacts that content and creativity has on industry and culture in addition to her work as an advocate thought leader and educator she continues to interface with legal practitioners government agencies and institutions focusing on developing the creative sector in Nigeria on the continent of Africa at Large so a very accomplished guest speaker as you can see chinway thank you so much for joining us today and it's over to you thank you so much so before I start I'm going to suggest if you're on the back and they're open seats move up let's pretend like we like each other come on don't be shy all right now I remember when the trailer came out in 2017. it was insane now I wasn't sure if it was going to be a well-funded flop or at a spectacular success but either way I was very excited for black panthers uh Premiere in the theatrical release because it was the first time we had seen an African superhero on the major stage but it got me thinking are there indigenous comic books on the continent of Africa now as I felt like I should know this but I didn't so I hopped on Google did a quick Google search couldn't find a thing so next thing I do hop on Facebook was very surprised to find a group of African comic book publishers who had created a group and you know I hopped in and I asked a couple questions hey you know comic books that have been around for a while are you excited about Black Panther now those really simple maybe naive questions opened Pandora's Box I learned a lot of things like about the challenges around distribution publishing consistencies with Printing and let's not even get started on the issues with copyright trademark and general IP issues on the continent enforcing and protecting your rights what started as a very simple exchange Advanced to an invitation to one of their weekly meetings so I woke up at 3 A.M Pacific Standard Time rolled on to my computer turned on zoom and on the other side was about five or six gentlemen huddled around a tent to keep the sun away from their eyes and they were looking at me through the screen wondering what does this girl all the way in the U.S want to know about our industry what I didn't know was that call and those questions would lead to the launch of Unicon Africa a two-day convention that myself and two other women from the U.S would put on in partnership with this community a business Summit and a traditional convention was the way that we entered this ecosystem to learn deeply about what it meant to create content on the continent of Africa but see before that happened there are a couple of really risky decisions I made for example deciding to plan a convention from seven thousand miles away a to attempt to fundraise for this event with people who Africa has Comics yes we have comics and then finally the riskiest move of all three months before the event as someone who's planned events at the college level understanding that the littlest detail can literally upend an event I realized that we needed boots on the ground not just any boots though our boots so I marched into my supervisor's office knowing full well that I was not about to get leave for three months and quit from the highest paying job I had had as an attorney up until that moment I quit headed out to Lagos Nigeria and spent three months working hand in hand to make this convention work now I tell this story because of the purpose for me in law is really about leveraging my skills and my education to the benefit of this community now you might think well why all the way in Nigeria right there are plenty of creatives here but it's also about impact and the ability to have an impact on our community that probably wouldn't have access to someone like me back home so fast forward a few years we have now a comic book publisher that signed a deal with HBO Max to launch an animated series based off of their graphic novel we have another comic book publisher whose content is licensed their content is on Disney plus right now and another publisher who's being represented by one of the largest uh agencies CAA in the world now all that tells me is sure our instincts were right but also there's value in following your purpose so 2020 in the middle of a conv of the pandemic three years after this life-changing experience I start my own practice building a boutique that leverages these skills this education but on my own terms and in the way that I see fit so during this hour we're going to talk about what it means to build a purpose-driven law firm what it looks like what it feels like and from my perspective especially because my practice is client-centered how you Center your client in building this purpose so to introduce myself again my name is chinwell Hanalei or chinwa ohanele as my mother would call me as has already been said I am a Content junkie I watch all things whether International or domestic I'm a Serial entrepreneur I've partnered with people in various Industries to build businesses and most importantly as an IP and business attorney I get to leverage all of those experiences to the benefit of my clients but let's start somewhere that we probably all understand pretty well when I went to law school I didn't think that I would walk out being labeled I figured you know I'm gonna get some skills I'm going to get some clients and we're just gonna you know change the world but when I started my practice the most common thing I heard was wow you're not like a lot of attorneys you know most attorneys are really intimidating and I was like what I really but apparently there's something about lawyers that makes people think about soul-sucking demons who steal your money literally I don't understand it where is our PR like we need to get this fixed because for some reason all people think about are as you can see here the fancy offices with giant desks wood paneled conference rooms and maroon leather chairs I don't have any of those things so you know whoever our suppliers are need to do a better job but this is the image that people think about when they think about lawyers they don't think about people who want to Champion their you know goals and and dreams they think about literally someone who's gonna you know give them a hard time and maybe they're also thinking about Law and Order those moments where you know the witness is crying on the witness stand right that's the image they have of lawyers so I think that part of building a purpose-driven law firm is addressing this particular stereotype because it's one of the biggest barriers that we have to people actually coming to us to speaking to us to reaching out to us before there's a problem because I think that one of the most powerful things we can do is be proactive with the law not always be reactionary especially in my area with IP and business law there are all sorts of things that we can do for clients before they get into trouble and so this I think is a common place to start but then where do we go from there so there are three things that I think that we can do to build Purpose Driven law firms that also Center our clients so the first is communication legalese jargon right this is the stuff that makes us successful at drafting contracts at arguing successfully in court but it sometimes is also the thing that confuses our clients makes it difficult for them to feel at ease to communicate their biggest and most t problems and so this is something that we really need to think about the other thing is supporting non-traditional business owners owners or clients not everyone fits in the traditional box right your client may not come in the way that you anticipate that they'll come but how do you meet them where they are despite their background despite what circumstances they're in and finally anti-bias advocacy as an opportunity for growth I think this is critical especially because if you are seeking to serve diverse communities or serve diverse communities there's a level of work that we need to do as lawyers as advocates to make sure that we can represent our clients regardless of their country their ethnicity their sexual orientation whatever identity they claim we need to figure out how we can best support them and advocate for them so in true content junkie Style I recently finished a show called Vincenzo on Netflix it's a Korean drama I don't know if any of you watch Korean dramas but they have a choke hold on me and I need them to let go so Vincenzo is a story about a Korean immigrant who lived in Italy and he was a lawyer and somehow becomes the consiglier for the mafia and so after he's done some stuff he takes all those skills and goes back to Korea and masquerading as an attorney there he helps this humble group of ragtag shop owners business owners and tenants to save their building and save it from a conglomerate that's trying to take it over and what was really cool about Vincenzo is that at the end of the day he like all lawyers takes all of his his experience all of his skills and applies it to that situation and I think that in the same way how do we become the counselors that our clients need so for me as the consiglier for creatives I meet KJ he is the founder of black food Fridays and during the pandemic you know he decided with all of these black restaurants that are having trouble sustaining their business because a lot of restaurants weren't open they were trying to Pivot to some kind of model where people could do takeout a lot of black businesses were suffering either because people didn't know about them or weren't patronizing them so he started a hashtag as the Millennials will and the Gen Z's will hashtag campaigns right black food Friday so every Friday when you go to a black owned establishment you take a picture and you hashtag black food Friday and this humble beginnings started kind of a movement and he built a community of people who were interested in supporting black food vendors which was fantastic but then he was like well I'm doing all of these you know things online how do I turn this more into a business that is sustainable and are there things I'm not thinking about and so one of my clients referred him to me because I'd done an impromptu business legal strategy session for them and I was like don't I can't do this anymore and they're like oh no no you you have to they're all sorts of people that need this and so KJ comes to me he's like I really I really need help putting some framework around this thing that I've created and so after four hours on a Saturday which trust me was very long and very exhausting um KJ leaves very excited about the future of black food Friday and these are his words on social media and he said speaking with chinwell Hanalei about black food Friday what black food Fridays can be in five to ten years was worth every single Cent she has left me both excited and frightened confident and overwhelmed the phrase I have to take a fear was used and while it won't make sense outside the friendly confines of our private conversation just know that I'm more excited about the future than I was before today and I already thought that black food Friday was headed in a positive direction how often do our clients leave talking to us speaking to us excited about the future how often do we speak hope into their dreams and vision we have the opportunity to do that if we can think beyond the confines of our traditional legal practice if we take more of a holistic approach to what does this particular legal issue have to do with the rest of your life your business right and so when you think about language it's not just about the language that you use on the contract on the brief or in the courtroom it's also the language that you use with your clients in those meetings in those conversations now I'm not saying that everyone should block off four hours on a Saturday to have a conversation with their clients because maybe that's not your jam but even if it's 15 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes that you spend discussing with your client do you know who your client is do you know what their dreams and hopes are do you know what your project your legal you know solution what impact that's going to have on the rest of what they're doing what they're building that's an opportunity for you to dig a little bit deeper and have impact where you might not otherwise have been able to now when we're talking about non-traditional business owners this can be I mean for me obviously I I deal with business owners but non-traditional clients they don't always come in the packaging you expect but I think the key with these particular clients is that they look at the world in a very different way especially given the fact that law is a very conservative and very traditional field it can be kind of hard to get out of the box right when you go to law school nobody's telling you like go out there and innovate that's not that's not the way that works you know the law is slow and intentionally slow for that reason right you don't want the law changing every five seconds but within the tradition and the stability that we provide we can still make room and make space for people like this right who see the world in a different way so one of my clients afropolitan Nation came to me maybe last year to file a trademark for them and their business is essentially to build a digital Nation for members of the African diaspora now I know nothing about dowels and nfts and those kinds of things so I couldn't tell you the first thing about building a digital Nation but I thought this is a unique concept this is different I haven't seen this before and they were in the middle of you know fundraising and anyone who knows anything about fundraising you want to make sure that most of your assets are locked down so that your investors have a clear idea of what you know they're putting their money into and so it made sense for them to file a trademark and so for them they were busy being Visionaries seeing the world in a different way building things that we may not even see the fruit of for decades but I was busy helping them with today making sure that they owned their trademark and thank goodness we did because very soon after we got a cease and desist from a company that was alleging that they were infringing on their trademark thankfully they were not and uh we'd already filed in the appropriate class and we responded to the cease and this is but what's great about this is they're free to build and build fast and be wild and crazy while I help them build the foundation that allows them to do that and so a couple weeks ago they with one of their investors they rang the New York Stock Exchange Bell to let everyone know that a new nation on behalf of African diaspora is on the way and so in many ways looking to the Future and also looking to the present being able to stand in the unknown with my client providing them the resources that I can to help them bridge that Gap is critical but if I had allowed my confusion about this non-traditional model to sort of have me turn them away who knows what would have happened with their trademark with their brand with the business that they were building right so it was a real honor to work on this particular project now the last piece in the last leg of building a purpose-driven law firm is really around bias and I think that people get a little nervous about bias because it can get controversial and it can get touchy and tricky right we never want to feel like we're harming or hurting anyone but at the end of the day self-confrontation is really critical to True advocacy because even I have biases that I need to confront and if I don't confront them they can rear their head when I deal with particular clients and my ability to strongly and clearly advocate for them will be impacted and so if I don't do the work on the inside to make sure that I'm mindful of those things my clients might suffer so what does that look like so one of the clients that I had recently um my practice is largely uh virtual remote practice so most of my client meetings are via zoom and so one day you know I sign on to my zoom and uh really friendly Asian American woman is sitting on the other side of the screen and I'm like okay well you know I'm happy to meet you tell me a little bit about your business and she said well I'm in the finance field but I'm working on a self a sexual health business because I think that it's really important not only for me to work in this space But as an Asian American woman to remove some of the stigma associated with this space I was like okay that's that's I've never seen that before that's great and she says well and also one of my products is going to use cannabis I was like wow okay pushing a lot of envelopes here um and now she's based in California my firm is based in California and so it is legal um but those are two very tricky spaces depending on your background your identity you know and uh your culture and so for me I'm nigerian-american we are very conservative and both of those things are not things that my mother or father have ever talked about in the household all I know is they are off limits you do not do them you are not allowed and so I could have carried some of those perceptions with me into this meeting I could have prejudged my client her business her model and again turned her away or I might not have known how to Pro approach you know uh advocating for her providing quality Legal Services but the first thing I had to think about and ask myself is what is my perception what is my perception of my client and or the business I have to be clear on that I have to know how I feel about that once you surface that right I'm meeting with a client who seeks to set up a sex positive cannabis brand as an Asian American now how do I filter that information what does my brain do with this neutral info that I've just collected right can I recognize possible challenges my client will face due to the interest intersectional nature of her identity and the product that she's developing can I act as an ally through the process without patronizing her and the patronizing is key because our Dynamic I'm the expert right now in the law I have the ability to support and uplift right or I can do something that's less less helpful right I've had several clients who come to me who say oh I went to a law firm with my idea and they told me that's not an invention who would buy that is that really the law firm's role to tell a client whether or not their idea is valuable what if you're not the target market what if you know nothing about that industry right so it's important to think about how I'm filtering this information in a way that is helpful to my client then does my view on the world limit my ability to see or hear my client clearly are there questions I need to ask her and are there questions I need to seek answers to on my own now for diverse communities there are questions that you might get that you're you know it's like Google Google exists right we can all Google things we can all seek information one of the things that I do before I do some of my consultations and I'll I'll just look up the the business see what I can find online so that I'm prepared for that consultation just as much as my client is coming prepared to work with me and so there are some things that we can do in advance of working with and speaking with our clients that take some of the pressure off of them having to explain who they are explain why something matters to them so that we can focus on the vision the impact the business the product the thing that they're so excited about doing and then active participation when all else fails compassion and present engagement opens the door to meaningful attorney-client relationships sometimes you just don't know what to do you just don't know what to say and that's when true and sincere honesty with your client can do wonders you know this is a really interesting business that you have I'm struggling with this I really can you help me understand this a little bit better because I want to be able to provide the best service for you compassion that's really where some of this boils down to now let's say you've done all of these things you've managed your communication you've opened yourself to non-traditional clients and you've checked your bias at the door how do you measure how do you measure this I think we're all very good at reviews you know checking the reviews making sure our clients give you either five stars or you know a paragraph about the the efficacy of your solution and all those things but I think that we could go a little bit deeper and think about the stories I think as human beings we're moved by stories more than we are a five-star review because those stories that your clients tell it's not just for the Internet it's for their friend you know that they're catching up with it's with the person in the checkout line or it's the person that they run into at a conference people like to tell stories and wouldn't you want your clients to tell incredible stories about you and how it is to work with you so I think the first place to start is who are you I don't know if there are too many venues or spaces that tell attorneys to ask themselves these kind of questions I think there are other industries that are a little bit more comfortable with you know thinking deeply about Who We Are but for me when I started thinking about what it means to build a purpose-driven law firm you know yeah I'm a Content junkie I'm a Serial entrepreneur sure I run a law firm but I'm also an immigrant I became licensed in all three states before I became a citizen in this country right um and I'm the oldest of five siblings so responsibility matters to me I've had to interface between myself and my parents a lot of times to navigate this new culture and so communication and compassion matter I've learned how to speak my native language again through creativity by reading books written in my native language so I value creativity as a capsule for culture so who are you what are your values then who are your clients right um sometimes we take that for granted because we're really quick to figure out who's going to buy my services who's got the money to pay at the end of the you know quarter or a month who's gonna pay my billables who are my clients but on a deeper level who your clients could matter because how can you fulfill your purpose if you're speaking to the wrong audience my clients are creatives they're people who seek to have an impact in the world with their products their services their content but above all there are people with stories and they're people with stories that I believe in and I want to Advocate on their behalf so it's really important for me to know who my clients are because I will go to the ends of the Earth for them because I believe that deeply in what they are doing and what they're building but if they're not really a great match for me if they're just in it to make money which is fine maybe they're not the ideal client for me so it's important to know who your clients are next where do you place value in your practice now from our practice and I mean I I have this conversation with my team all the time I want my clients to feel like they matter at every stage I want them to feel like they matter not just in general but they matter to us and maybe that's at the expense of our feelings or our egos you know sometimes taking a step back and rethinking how it is my communication my delivery is being seen by my clients but that's our practice value you have to figure out what your practice value is and then finally if your clients were to tell stories about working with you what would they say if you were a fly on the wall at a cocktail party right and you had a client and someone was like oh man I'm dealing with this legal issue what's the story your clients gonna tell if you can't think of one then we can move on to the next which is how do you move Beyond reviews and into true human connection there's no formula for this there's no sort of cookie cutter way to do it we all have different practice areas which have different impact on people's lives so that's sort of the art to building your practice but there have to be ways that you intentionally create space and room for people to truly open themselves to tell you the things that perhaps they wouldn't feel comfortable telling another attorney and what I found in creating that space is that when they do open up and they do tell you these things oftentimes it really makes my job easier because then I know what their motivations are then I know you know if I'm negotiating a contract with the other side I actually know what they care about but if I hadn't created that space I might be off to the left while my client is off to the right and so it's really thinking about how to move intentionally into those spaces for human connection so I know I started this story this session talking about how I wildly left my job and flew out to Nigeria and you know put on a convention and then came back to the States and started this Law Firm but the thing about building a purpose-driven law firm aside from the impact that it has on your clients is the impact it has on you the Fulfillment that it gives you our practice is riddled with people who are unhappy doing their work and I think purpose is one of the ways that we can bring some of that Joy back for me in just the few months that I've started my practice um I'm on this stage sharing my story with you I'm doing a master class on intellectual property in Ivory Coast next month to talk about how intellectual property Frameworks are going to be developed on the continent of Africa if I hadn't taken the leap to chase purpose and to build something that would have impact for my clients I probably wouldn't be doing these things I wouldn't have these stories and some of my clients wouldn't have the enthusiastic Advocate that they have now I wouldn't be going to sleep and waking up with Client Solutions I literally will just like oh thinking about this and then I'll wake up the next morning like oh I have to call this client I thought of another thing but it doesn't feel like a burden to me it doesn't feel like I'm being sucked dry instead it's rejuvenating it's exciting it makes those three grueling years of law school worth it and I think that is the opportunity that we have when we build a purpose-driven law firm to bring the joy and the happiness back to bring true meaning to attorney-client relationships and to helping people bring their Vision to life in whatever practice area that we have thank you thank you chinway that was an incredible session um wow I have a lot of questions we also will open questions to the floor I believe there's someone roaming with a mic so if you have a question please raise your hand and if we don't find the mic just shout it out but I'm going to start because I've got a lot of questions so chinway where did you learn what it means to be a lawyer like we've clearly seen your passion and your your intellect your skills I mean heading to the Ivory Coast to help the continents Forum intellectual property laws like that's definitely a first I've heard that's super impressive so congratulations but tell us a little bit about like where did you learn what it means to be a lawyer so the funny thing is I didn't learn what it meant to be a lawyer I learned how you shouldn't be a lawyer ah okay please tell us we all want to hear um so as I mentioned I'm an immigrant and I basically I think I just became a citizen two months ago have after being in this country since I was three years old and so you might wonder like what how that's 30 years right well the truth is going through the immigration system unfortunately my parents you know being immigrants is a very vulnerable position because you rely very heavily on your legal um uh representation right most times you may not understand not only the language enough to advocate for yourself but even the legal system is very unique it's unfamiliar and I just watched my family go from attorney to attorney who didn't really care about what they were going through they had five young children that they were trying to you know raise in this country and they were just being mishandled getting bad advice being told oh fly to this country this uh this uh State file here and always having to like go to court and just stand at you know to show oh here are their five kids and I just felt like what is this performance that we're doing and at the end of the day no one can tell us when this is going to end when will this be resolved when will we fix this right and it wasn't until I got to college and I started really listening to the proceedings that I realized some of these lawyers don't actually care they're not doing that much work on this file and ultimately my mother ended up getting her citizenship without an attorney and had to represent herself before Immigration Court and I ended up being left out which is part of the reason that I got mine so late because the attorney who handled my case was supposed to have me as a derivative of my mother's and on the final petition I was dropped off and so I now had to figure out now mind you I finished law school at this point like I'm done with law school and someone's telling me Oh yeah we're not exactly sure where your file is we don't know what's going on um maybe you can represent yourself I was like really okay sure my First Act is a you know law school graduate is figuring out how to fix my immigration case and so I think that was what really stuck with me the fact that nobody was that invested in us and in our story yeah and what we had to go through to get here and stay here um so yeah that's incredible I'm also an immigrant and did my own immigration paperwork so we're joint survivors there you and me you can get through immigration you can tackle literally anything so that's a great story how do you think you show up as a lawyer that doesn't fall into the traditional mold like we've seen your passion we've learned a little bit about your path but I think we can default into just lawyer ease lawyer speak and what we've learned from your experiences that the connection is the key so what are the tips you would give us to not to fall back into that lawyer speak mode um how can we be more like YouTube I think honestly I just I try to think if my okay so don't take this to the extreme but I kind of treat my clients like friends so I just I'm genuinely curious about them I ask questions and um I listen very carefully and I think that's it's so sad but I I feel like a lot of um my clients are surprised by my genuine interest and the fact that I'll remember things about them like oh you know you're you mentioned that your daughter her birthday was last week how was that something that simple can really change the dynamic um with your clients and it's really I don't know I think it comes down to being curious about people and just taking the time to listen carefully and another way that you can do it is you know make notes after you finish a consultation if you learn something about your client that speaks to who they are as a person jot it down in their client file you can always have it there so that you can reference it another thing is be genuine one of my clients was having a really tough time during um covid and their family member got sick and we sent a care package it's like that's normal someone is having a tough time you send them something to say that you know you hope they're doing well and you'd be surprised how far that went because for them they were like wow you care about me as a human being I'm so happy that I'm working with someone like you so they're not really Grand things they're just little things that I think each and every one of us would appreciate if someone were to do for us absolutely I can totally relate I have an unusual name I'm from Ireland and it's very easy to get it wrong and occasionally there'll be someone who will say to me I looked up your name and I know how to pronounce it and it's that little moment of human connection where I feel this person has invested in me and I'm going to remember that gesture so I think what you're hitting on like those are the moments where we feel that connection I love it okay tell me more about your legal origin story like what made you want to be a lawyer we learned about your process of going having to represent as an immigrant but how did you go from that experience to running your own practice [Music] um so I'll tell you that I was pretty sure that I was going to work for someone for the rest of my life I really had zero interest in starting my practice I was actually trying to make a pivot so I'd started while I was in law school helping out a digital magazine restructure their business and was fascinated by the process and I was like oh this is interesting and I'd taken a digital media in the law and a bunch of intellectual property classes in law school so I pretty much knew that if I was going to be a lawyer I wanted to do that kind of law and then I graduated and I needed and I needed a job and so I took the first job that I got which was in workers compensation defense side which was like if entertainment is all the way over here workers comp is all the way over here right so you you sort of like take the job that you know picks you and you start doing the stuff and you was like oh man this is this is not it I'm Shuffling Monopoly money and I'm making all these arguments on behalf of a client that I'm not really passionate about and then covid happened and during the pandemic a couple of things made a made it really important for me to reevaluate my legal trajectory one is there was a lot of uproar and social commentary around uh George Floyd um and that was a really challenging time because I think collectively we were processing something but I think individually each person had to sort of process that for themselves as well and then another thing that happened in October of 2021 I believe is in Nigeria there was protests against SARS which is a special unit of the police that was abusing their power and they were targeting largely young Nigerians and in October there was a protest near the bridge and the government has its views on what happened but a number of people lost their lives that day and I remember sitting in the office which happened to be wood paneled and just feeling very lost and wondering is this really what my life is meant for representing insurance companies in administrative proceedings or should I really be doing the thing that I feel has been put on my heart which is to support these entrepreneurs who literally have the ability to change the world I strongly believe in private Enterprise and as someone who comes from a country that struggles with infrastructure and government and all those things I mean there are a lot of African countries that rely on private Enterprise to lift a number of people out of unemployment um and so at that time I didn't know what to do so I I went to a Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house in Atlanta the whole family was there and my my siblings most of my family's in health care so my parents are nurses my sister is going to be a doctor one of my other sisters is a nurse it's just me and my brother who are like weirdos he's an engineer and so I'm telling my siblings I'm like you guys are so lucky all you have to do is graduate mom and dad can get you a job me I don't know anyone you know this thing that I want to do nobody can help me and my dad looks me Square in the face and says do you want to start your own Law Firm now to qualify this my father is a very conservative Nigerian man who believes very strongly in pensions and working like 20 years for a company and retiring and so for him to ask me do you want to start a law firm was like the heavens had parted and like light was shining on me and I was like yeah I kind of do and he said okay then do it and so that November is when I made the decision to quit my job and by January of the following year I started my practice so that's really how I ended up doing this thing that I never thought I would do wow so it's multiple steps in the journey so you have your practice now been running I think a lot of people may find their own purpose hopefully after your inspiring session but how do you attract like-minded people into your firm such that you know they continue with that vision and don't delve into the lawyeries so how do you do that um I think that some of it is you being clear on the practice that you want to build and I think it's hard in the beginning because any practice that you're starting it I had this conversation with someone yesterday it's kind of like a kid like you have a child and you name it but then it's going to grow into who it wants to become right um and so right now sure my practice has a name and it has a vision but it's also kind of a collaboration between me my team my clients and where I started is certainly not where I am even today this work that I'm doing in you know intellectual property with the Continental piece is I never in a million years thought that I'd be doing that right but it's going to spaces with like where like-minded people are having conversations being passionate I think that there's maybe a little bit of a stigma associated with passionate lawyers and I think that that's that's wrong we should be passionate about what we believe in and when you're passionate those people who are passionate about those things they'll resonate with that and you draw those people in I can't tell you the number of times that I'm geeking out about like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or like one random intellectual property thing and someone's like you too and all of a sudden that becomes like my new bestie and I think that those are the kinds of things we need to be willing to allow ourselves to have full human experiences as well those are great ways to connect with people who believe in the same things you do they're out there yeah they're out there yeah yeah that's excellent I want to give the audience the chance to ask questions um we have a mic at the back but you're right at the front so maybe just yeah project I have I have it and says you know operate traction and EOS and I I'm familiar with all this management 's about um and I'm trying to figure out my team about I want I want an indicator that we can number or a data point because that is what I'm that's what I started my term for but I don't know how to go from here to there do you have any ideas what comes to mind is something that I think other Industries do a lot which is they interview their they do like in-depth interviews of their customers or they do focus groups something that happens by accident for me is you know when I'm talking to my clients again this is probably a function of the early stage of my firm but I let them talk and so sometimes in sort of asking them questions whether it's about my services or whatever I don't I don't have a clear like oh how have my services changed you but I may check in right I might just do a check-in and say hey I'm just you know I want to see how you're doing how's everything going and sometimes people will give you the information you're looking for without you directly poking at it if you give them the space to talk I think the challenge in our industry is our billables like you really it's tough honestly because if you think about human interaction the most meaningful interactions you might have don't necessarily happen within 0.6.5 1.2 right they happen organically and there have to be opportunities that you create so that those organic nuggets can come through and so it could also be you take a couple of your clients out to lunch or dinner right and you just like allow them to share a little bit about what's been going on um but yeah I think it's tough to measure because it really takes creating space and not necessarily having a tick which is why my suggestion is the stories right and oftentimes if you get a referral that's another way to catch the story because sometimes I will hear the story from someone who's referred to me they'd be like oh yeah I was you know doing this and the other thing and I was talking to one of your clients and they shared this thing that happened I was like oh okay that's good to know they didn't tell me that but they told you so thank you right so that's those are two things I would I would say if you can create um whether it's dinners lunches something like that that has a little bit more space with certain clients maybe those that you've worked with for a longer period of time to sort of share you know what working with you has meant to them and then also digging a little bit deeper when you get referrals to hear what it was about what they heard that made them say hey I want to talk to this attorney just got a few more minutes any other questions from the audience just raise your hand there's a mic or just shout out if the mic doesn't make it anyway can you hear me yeah over here so I'm actually a Cleo employee I'm asking a question on behalf of someone who's attending virtually so this question's from Anna she said I love the idea of intentionality but is it a really difficult concept to have a team aligned with when there's no real and defined purpose how can we bring a better understanding of these Concepts to our firms that's a great question and it's something that I'm actually I had to deal with one of uh with my Legal Assistant like last month so one of the pieces of our practice is the way that we communicate it's intentionally very friendly and even when there's conflict we try to find a way to communicate it to the client so that it isn't um aggressive because I think lawyers are seen to be naturally aggressive and so there was an exchange between my legal assistant and a a couple of clients that I I saw because I was cc'd in it and I at reading it I was like this is aggressive and so I immediately responded to that email string and I said you know my apologies if the tone was off this is actually what we intended to communicate in this email and then I asked my Legal Assistant to make some time on my calendar so that I could have a conversation with her now instead of launching into you know our core values are x y and z I first said are you okay is there anything going on are you stressed out because I know you to be someone who's compassionate and who communicates positively and so this seems off and so in the way that I communicate with my team I have to model what it is I want them to do if I turn around and yell at her because of the email because she's too aggressive what am I modeling right and I think that that is really important because sometimes I've worked in in law firms where support staff has not been supported and they're now supposed to extend this perception of the firm that oh we're friendly we're wonderful we're warm but if I don't do that if I don't model it as the managing partner and the founder well then what are we actually doing sure you can have procedures in place you can have template emails that sort of give the staff a sense of how to do that but it's not truly felt right if they don't feel like that's how the firm is operating internally so some of it is modeling and then some of it is putting down the processes and procedures to make it easier for them to communicate that way I hope that was helpful good question unfortunately we're at time which is a disappointment but if you have any more questions I don't know if you've got time to stick around yeah yeah I'd be happy you'll be here for the whole conference so thank you so much for uh this session it was incredibly inspiring and uh good luck with uh your purpose I'm sure you'll be very successful over the years and I hope you come back to cleocon in the future thank you so much it's a pleasure thank you