Alvaro Navarro Sotillos, editor of The Impact Lawyers Magazine, had the pleasure to conduct a phone interview with Julie Savarino. Savarino holds an MBA and a JD, is a licensed attorney and best-selling author. Over her career, she has built an international reputation as a results-generating and award-winning expert in business and client development for law firms, lawyers and other professional services providers and firms. Savarino successfully served as an in-house business development executive for Grant Thornton, Dickinson Wright and Butzel Long. She is one of the highest-rated speakers, trainers and coaches in the legal industry. She also designed and taught the first law school courses on client relations and development. Savarino is the author of the book 'Survive & Thrive Post-Pandemic: A Guidebook for Legal & Professional Services Providers', a #1 New Release on Amazon. She is also the author of the raved-about, best-selling book, 'Master-Level Business and Client Development Activity Checklists for Lawyers, Law Firms and Other Professional Services Providers'; and 'Perfect Your Pitch for Lawyers'.

When the crisis hit in early March I immediately wanted to help because I often help people in all aspects of my life. So, I volunteered to help at a local hospital, but they did not end up needing me because we ended up flattening the curve, so we did not need the field hospital anymore. I had a lot more time on my hands and I thought to myself how else can I help people? How else can I help? What can I do? What can I do with my knowledge? I thought so many lawyers, law firms and so many other professionals are going to be struggling and wondering what they should be doing next. So, for two months I worked relentlessly, and I wrote this book (225 pages).

At the same time, I wanted to help a major charity that is assisting with the global coronavirus crisis. I identified GlovalGiving, which is one of the highest rated international charities in the world, and I decided to give a percentage of the proceeds to that charity. 

There are two purposes of writing the book: one was to help charity and the other was to help lawyers and law firms during and after this crisis.

 I am a licensed, yet non-practising lawyer, but I have always been in business development and client relations for accounting firms, lawyers and law firms, so I have a 30-year track record of successfully helping law firms and lawyers. 

In this new book, I reviewed my vast archives and have complied some great information I have accumulated over the years that can help any firm or lawyer – whether it is a senior lawyer, an upcoming lawyer, or a partner struggling as he has to adapt and retool his practice for this new environment. So, this guidebook is appropriate for every lawyer and for every law firm.

The whole range. I wrote it specifically to be helpful to individual lawyers and firms. So, this book is for any lawyer interested in figuring out what they want to do next, and any lawyer interested in improving themselves to be able to survive and do better in this environment. I also wrote It for any law firm, including for major firms, for individuals’ small firms, midsize firms, boutiques, solos, and other firms. I included many proven techniques and best practices from the full range in the legal profession, including law firm clients.

All law firms - whether a solo practitioner or a major firm - are cash-based businesses. That means there are no retained earnings. So, there is no nothing to fall back. All expenses and costs are particularly important to control because cash is king in all law firms. The biggest concern is controlling costs and in making investments that are mission critical and most strategic, those that will be the most effective at driving growth and development going forward. Asking: Is the money and time being invested in the most productive way? That is the number one thing. 

We all must invest. The question is how, and the problem is there is a lot of investments that law firms and lawyers are making that are not optimal.

The book contains a lot of details and how to figure out what are those optimal investments are, and how to optimize the investments you are remaking, but more importantly it describes ways to save costs. The three biggest costs any law firms are space, talent, and technology, each of those three largest costs has the potential to save money.

For example, many firms have realized that lots of their employees are even more productive working remotely. Some employees are not comfortable working remotely, so there is a balance, and the question is can they save on office space and rent payments by having more people working remotely and maybe doing work share arrangements?

There is many in the book, but one that really struck me was what a Canadian lawyer did. He is actually a mediator. When coronavirus hit, he had never done any type mediation online at all. He was always doing his job at someone’s office. He realized very quickly that he needed to pivot, and fast. So, he quickly created a plan to identify a user-friendly platform to be secure so he could continue to conduct his mediations. 

He drafted a comprehensive mediation protocol that he sent to his clients. He also created a video and posted it on YouTube to let his clients know how he was going to proceed with mediation online and what his clients needed to know. He sent all this to his clients early in the crisis. Reacting so fast allowed him to continue completing mediations in March and he got 10 new ones (as of the time I interviewed him for my book). That is a great example of a success story.

The most important thing is to evaluate your use of time and how you can optimize your own use of time because we only each have 24 hours in a day and are already overwhelmed. The question becomes what you can do that is going to make the most strategic sense to leverage your current efforts and your time and get more results from what you are doing and plan to do.

The main keys to surviving and thriving in life are to know how to make every effort to be able to spend the majority of your time doing what you are best at, and what you are enjoying the most, so use of time is huge to success. 

The second most relevant thing is to pay more attention to really what is the most important. The book explains the fact that all lawyers and businesspeople sell solutions to people, whether they are individuals or corporations. We need to focus more on people in terms of our clients, our employees, our stakeholders, communities, and vendors in a more conscious and organized manner.

The last main thing to survive and thrive is how important it is to reassess your strategies and tactics regularly not just once a year. As we have seen from this pandemic, change occurs very quickly and the need to adapt, and adjust, and pivot fast is very important. We all need to be ready to adapt faster in the future.