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hi this is Chelsea with West tech review and leading up to our webinar on subscription-based legal services andrew LeGrande founding member of Sparrow law group has been so kind to share its time with us and insights and advice for anyone considering a move or who's recently gotten into offering subscription legal services Andrew and I have known each other for quite some time but Andrew if you could just share a little bit about your background before we get into talking about the actual delivery and how you pull this off sure so my background is I'm here in New Orleans we help business block clients literally exclusively about nothing kind of our work is mostly business transactional buying and selling advice for business owners business startup licensing zoning regulation partnerships operating groups employment all that sort of stuff for your mom-and-pop kind of businesses our clients range from startups with a few grand in capital to businesses that have multi million dollars a year in revenues so I've been doing this for almost seven years a model I've been pursuing really since the beginning of this has been the recurring revenue model the the membership base or the subscription-based model and part of that is its twofold I found that it seems to work better for my clients my business clients in particular they can eat it I start an ongoing basis and there's not always uh so I'm always a thing at the end of the room they need to solve it's not always one problem it's not in a family law environment where they're coming in for a divorce it's not a personal injury where they're trying to get their settlement and get to trial you know you're running a business so it is sure you know recently starting up like there's a lot of different issues that pop up from time to time and so I wanted to figure out how I charged these clients a flat monthly rate that makes it predictable for them and that also creates revenue for me to where I don't have to earn the business each and every month yeah and also you know one of the recurring themes of this conversation is be able to break out of that hour really you know model where clients are only coming to you when something really bad has happened in and I know one of the biggest questions that attorneys asked me when considering a move is how on earth do you prevent your firm from being taken advantage of when you're offering certain services for you know unlimited and then others you know you're tracking the number of documents that you're reviewing our other things how did you go about when you first started getting your head wrapped around the different pricing levels because you guys actually have multiple levels of the program that clients can start in and then crack yes so you said a few things there that are that are worth kind of bring out first she said that people only come to clients or lower clients only come to lawyers after a really bad thing happened and that's actually the number one issue we're trying to solve with our membership problems I find that almost all my business clients who come to me with this with this problem it stems out of one decision that could have been fixed in in 20 or thing in a 20 or 30 minute conversation sometimes it is a big mess and it's taken a while to get there but the vast majority of time they come in with this big problem they say yeah you know I've been doing this for a few years or this is what happened and I didn't have a tourney advise along the way um so like my place the problem is that people are only coming to me with problems but that's not what I want to do then you've lost your business you're out of business you don't know the money to fix the problem that doesn't really benefit either of us and it's not my goal to help you and the business that wasn't working if my goal to help you create a successful business so so trying to fix the idea with clients that don't come to us when the issues are out of control come to us early and often so that way we can guide you so that things don't get to the point of out of control so as far as marketing and explaining it to folks I think that's a big part of it is is that there actually is a reason that it's more beneficial to clients to be on the subscription-based model and in large part the competitive advantage we have right now is a lot of lawyers have a higher area high barrier entry they want a large retainer they want to charge you by the hour but clients just one simple advice so what the membership model does is allows me to set a price range for that easy advice right now we're I think you started out at $49 a month we did that for about six weeks we went up to 69 dollars a month and and now we're going to go up to 95 dollars a month for our base package and what that allows me to do is when a business owner comes in I can offer the $95 a month package to them to give them the advice and have the opportunity to show them why it's valuable as opposed to saying hey give me two grand and I'm gonna charge you four hundred bucks an hour to solve this problem and then they're like well how much I have this question when you mean up to be two grand and four hundred dollars an hour how does that how does that work or even if I didn't answer the retainer owns it's $400 an hour well okay how many hours is that going to be is that 20 bucks or is that $800 you know there's a big range there and that can shift quickly so now when these clients come to us the advantage if the membership gives us is here's one offering we can give you this is it it's it's $95 a month you sign up today you get the 30 minute consultation with the attorney and then you figure out where the issues go from there to your point about firms being concerned about being burned there's kind of a few things there is first I think you also have to accept the fact that there's going to be clients who try to game the system there's gonna be mines I mean just with any other practice right there's gonna be kleine - what discounts is gonna be clients who don't pay there's gonna be clients who's you can tell you can set the expectations in a myriad of different ways but they're gonna have the wrong expectations so getting burned I think in the subscription model is is it's my my intent is that it's I'm going D in such a way that any burning that happens is is worth it with my business based clients but I look at getting burned is you know you're paying even if you buy a 30 minute consultation for the ninety five dollar price really getting my hourly rate it's not any of them earn more per client than that just 95 bucks but if after that consultation you cancel your membership something's wrong you didn't get the wrong advice our relationship wasn't good I didn't urge are you well enough you know I said something that turns you off so I look at as a client earning me is if I if they're a business owner and they want advice and they pay for advice and they give them good advice whereas people who come to me for they've emailed me kind of simple questions in the past that probably one of those I wouldn't have been able to charge them for those simple questions you know hey I signed this promissory note should I pay it you know a lot of times that maybe is just a 20 or 30 minute conversation with some of the business owners and in the past I was just simply giving that advice away now I with kind of having a low-priced offering I don't have to go for the hourly rate thing I could say hey here's what it is and I've had a few clients who come to me with those simple questions that I give them this offer and they're not willing to if they don't want to buy it you know so I'm happy to let those clients go down the road the next lawyer who's willing to give them the advice for free or just undervalue their services and not charge enough for that oh great so you know very similar to the workshop that we did if you were standing in a room of attorneys of all practice areas whether that's real estate business law state planning what have you what advice would you give them as they are considering the move to get started what's the what's the one thing that you wish you knew before you started putting phrasing up on your website or before you started pitching this to clients for the first time I'd say it's that as lawyers it's important to recognize that we contain a ton of valuable information and I've based our entire membership model around the idea that if you're a member you receive unlimited 30 minute consultations on unique legal issues so anything it might be you know we only handle business law cases but I know enough about divorce law and personal injury law and criminal law to at least talk to a non lawyer for 30 minutes and explain okay this is the situation you're in you know this is some of the basic laws that are involved here you know this is important enough to hire a lawyer this is these are some of the lawyers we recommend if I was in your situation this is how I would look for a lawyer this is how much I might expect to pay for this kind of service you know so all that information is valuable to my clients even when it's not necessarily something that we that we handle you know so I might have a lot of times I am gonna have to make referrals and I'll be honest with them and you know usually a lot of times even after that 30 minute conversation despite the fact that I've told this person that I can't help them completely solve the problem a lot of times they're very thankful for just that short conversation about what the issue is so to me that's kind of II but the pinnacle of my off earning and a lot of other subscription-based offerings is hey you know here's a way that you're one of our members of clients anytime you want you can schedule a 30-minute conversation on any legal topic and even if we can't help you we're probably gonna be able to just as lawyers well we went to law school for issues by figure out what the issue is explains some of the basics about that hurt as much as we know maybe do a little bit of research on the internet or Lexus before him to send a little smarter about it but then also help that person figure out what their next steps are finding help because even today it's if you have a child who's arrested if you have a parent who passes away the Internet's a fire hose right it's a it's a big fire hose of information you don't know to go to a kiosk whereas in a 30 minute conversation with with a lawyer that you trust even if they don't help you it's it's comforting to know okay these are the steps we need to take this is the type of lawyer and this is my friend and there anything or delivery technology or operation prospective you know there's there's a whole lot in terms of pricing scoping the work how you market it to clients how you how you automatically charge it so what I have to say that there's there's I think the biggest they don't apply to all the words is that people want this you know this is this is no one wants to buy legal services by the hour that is not enjoyable to anyone nobody enjoys that at all and a lot of the bit my business owner client I and you might hear this from your friends a lot of times when people call lawyer for advice and it's this short 20 minutes advice of that personal a lot of times say send me a bill please build me charge me for this advice I want the Payette invites you know and a lot of times it's just hard for a lawyer to how do I send you a bill for 20 minutes I mean it's not that hard but it's also kind of a lot of time to you know point two times whatever your honor your rate is I said give no for 80 bucks that's kind of seems like a lot of work reconcile and this that and the other and you know so I think the thing to realize is that not just businesses but consumers of all sorts and any legal practice area people want more access to their lawyer and by changing the nature of how we charge for that I think we can provide more access and we get to a point where like like you mentioned you have clients you don't use it we had a half dozen or so clients sign up in the first week you haven't used it in the past three or four months that we introduced our new pricing plan simply to lock in that I mean they did get a good rate so that was their incentive to sign up they got about fifty percent discount off of your regular rate but you know they think people want access to legal advice and they don't want the free advice they're happy to pay for it when they need it and I think that's kind of the biggest thing for any lawyer to realize this isn't something that clients are gonna push back on is that when it's done right clients are gonna clamoring I would say my business law attorney and if I were located in Louisiana or like Texas like signing up right away because it's that peace of mind I would much rather pay and cable to pick up the phone then wonder if agreement that I'm signing is is about port and instead I think a lot of entrepreneurs just go ahead and sign it and they move right on and they don't expect anything to happen and then when it does it's really costly so and right I can't thank you enough for sharing your thoughts with us and and helping you know motivate everybody who's on the edge about doing subscription legal services or publishing a subscription legal service pricing plan for their firm where can they learn more about your group and all of the wonderful work make sure there are websites para law comm SPER a law calm and on there there's links to all our social media we're pretty active on LinkedIn Twitter Facebook all those but if you go in there you should be able to see kind of how we're offering what we're doing we still gonna don't share necessarily the at least on our website so if you got a spare law slash memberships it's not linked directly from the main page because we like to share that at a particular time in the client process right now but if you go there you can see the different options and now I'm happy to consult or discuss with any other attorneys you know I'm still I'm still working on this model myself so well well you may think I'm an expert I am more than happy to accept feedback constructive criticism and ideas from everyone else thank you to Josie to Garrett [Music]