Hamid Kohan is founder and CEO of Legal Soft, a law practice management company that takes the guesswork out of running your law firm. Learn how Hamid helps law firms improve their marketing and maximize profits by thinking outside of the box on this episode of Taking the Stand podcast.

Full Transcript

Erik Bermudez:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's edition of Taking the Stand, where our mission is to inspire you by inviting VIP guests to understand what success principles they've used to find greater achievement. My name is Erik Bermudez and I'll be your host. Welcome to today's podcast. Okay. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining today's edition of Taking the Stand. We are very excited to have a special guest with us today, Hamid Kohan, the CEO and Founder of Legal Soft Solutions. Hamid, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hamid Kohan:

Sure. Thank you for having me.

Erik Bermudez:

I'm very excited for the discussion. You and I have had a couple of preparation discussions for today, and I think you're going to be able to share a lot of incredible insights, valuable nuggets that will really help legal professionals, but even outside of legal, I think you have some business ideas that can help a lot of people. First and foremost, though, let me go ahead and introduce you. Hamid, I'll go ahead and say that you are absolutely an expert in IT and IT services. You have decades of experience in Silicon Valley. Hamid actually worked with Sun Microsystems, HP, Hitachi, and most significantly spent eight years with Erik Schmidt, who's currently the CEO of Google. I imagine those probably were a lot of years of learning for you, Hamid. If you had to sum up in one word, what that experience was like with Erik, what would that be?

Hamid Kohan:

It was amazing experience, working at the same company with him. He's an amazing person to follow. He's an amazing person as a leader and very knowledgeable in his fields. Obviously, the results shows that he's done amazing thing in our industry.

Erik Bermudez:

He wasn't at Google at that time, obviously, so which company was that at?

Hamid Kohan:

No. Google didn't actually exist at the time. He was one of the vice presidents of software at Sun Metro System, where I was one of the senior managers on the system side of things. We spent a lot of good times together figuring out the next level of technologies and the things that needs to be done, and it was amazing working with him.

Erik Bermudez:

Currently, Hamid, you're the founder and CEO of Legal Soft Solutions and Legal Soft is a partner of Filevines. I know you've helped many of our clients in a number of different ways, and we're going to get into that a little more down the road, but you founded Legal Soft Solutions about four years ago. One of the things that's interesting to me is you're exclusive to legal. You only work with law firms. You only work with lawyers, and help me understand why you made that decision to not go into other verticals. So many IT service companies that I bumped into go outside of legal. Why did you decide to stay within legal only?

Hamid Kohan:

Sure. Coming from a high-tech industry background and all the high-end technologies, and implementations and integrations. When I was exposed to the legal industry, I noticed the huge lack of technology process automation, thinking outside the box and being able to streamline the processes reduced the cost of operation, which a lot of it can be achieved with the processes and technologies. That's why we did the creation of the Legal Soft, not only focusing on the technology, but actually the practice of the law inside and outside of the firm.

Our model was that why would it allow the attorneys to practice law? We can actually practice the business side for them, including any of the IT and the software implementations, marketing, lead generations and making sure that every aspect of the business side is taken care of and it stays current with the latest technologies, and the latest innovations and new ways of generating cases and leads and so forth, and keep a very tight track on how things are happening. What's the status and what's the outcomes? That's how we got exposed into legal industry. Honestly, there is enough challenge in the legal industry, I don't need to look at any other verticals. I think I can do this for the rest of my life and not be 20% done.

Erik Bermudez:

Right. Right. Well, good. Well, again, I appreciate you being with us. It's obvious that you have a very deep background and experience, not only in the legal and in the business components of legal, but then also in technology with your background. I think the connection of those two areas is incredibly valuable. Well, let's go ahead and jump into our agenda today. I'm excited to get into it.

One of the things that really stood out to me as I've worked with you, I've engaged with you as we prepared for this podcast is this notion that you always bring an element of thinking outside the box. Knowing much of your team, I know that you distribute that line of thinking to your team, but that also bleeds out into how you interact with your clients. Thinking outside the box, I imagine that you pose different angles to solutions that maybe they had not had thought of before. I wanted to dive into that a little bit. When you say think outside the box, or if you have a prospect client say that to you, "Hey, Hamid, what do you mean?" What comes to mind? How do you look at that differently, thinking outside the box?

Hamid Kohan:

Sure. Coming from the high-tech industry, especially in Silicon Valley, every time we wanted to do something new, we always figure out what is not being done or what the problems are to be able to innovate and create a new solution or new technology, and come up with something completely brand new, just like the whole Silicon Valley is about. When I came to the legal industry, I noticed that the mentality is opposite. It's like let's try to do what everybody else is doing. Nobody's looking for anything new to create, to innovate, to identify. Everybody is basically chasing the bigger firms and say, "Okay, they put up a billboard. Let's put up a billboard." Let's say they did a social media. Let's do a social media. There is very little innovation in thinking outside the box and let's figure out what is that the legal industry is not doing. Let's figure those things out and be first in them, and win so others can follow. This is the complete opposite of that experience working is not to follow, but lead. The leadership comes with innovation, and the new technologies and the new thinking outside the box.

Erik Bermudez:

What's interesting that you mentioned there is that I imagine that a lot of consulting sessions, you sit down with a client and you look at what you want to do, and then look at what your competitors are doing. It's almost, "Hey, let's look at that first and how can we do that, but maybe do it a little bit differently?" Almost copying the the competitor's plans, and it almost sounds like the opposite approach of you and your teams is that you sit down and say, "Let's make a list of everything that you know, or everything that you think has worked in the past or what your competitors are doing to achieve results. Let's put that on a piece of paper." Then the first thing you do is crumble it up and throw it away and say, "Let's do what everyone else is not doing. Let's not just follow what our competitors are doing."

Hamid Kohan:

Exactly. More than half of our conversation is about them stop thinking that way. My competition is doing this, so we need to do it. My competition is buying that billboard, buying that media ad, doing advertisement and let's do that. My concern is not, let's not do that. Let's find a new way, which is more efficient, less expensive and is innovative to do.

Erik Bermudez:

One thing that also came out as we talked about this idea of thinking outside the box is I mentioned, okay, so we all agree that that's important. How do you get there? One thing that you mentioned is crucial for your clients. You work with your clients to have this three to five-year plan. Although, we know that wrenches are thrown in that process. If you say in three years, this'll happen, that's never going to happen, but the idea of just simply thinking in three years ahead, I think forces you and your client to probably have that important discussion and be innovative and think outside the box. You also mentioned a budget plan and some of these ideas, but what other ways do you help your clients think outside the block? Sometimes it's hard to get someone else to do that activity.

Hamid Kohan:

Sure, absolutely. One of the first things that comes to mind. Again, it goes back to the high-tech mentality that we do not do anything without a plan, without a budget, without research. I walked into any law firm from solo practitioner to a large law firm. I said, "What's the plan." "There is no plan." "What's the budget." "There is no budget." "What are we going to create?" "We don't know." Then we start from, okay, we need to have a plan. We need to have a recipe, and we need to have targets to be met. Once we're meeting those targets, we know we're successful. We always adjust everything to meet the targets, but it starts with actually planning. The big discipline is, to me, managing them to the plan, so we stick to the plan. That's number one.

Two, when you say about thinking outside the box, I always ask them, "Is this the practice type that you want to be in? Why are you practicing 15 different things when you can't even handle one practice type?" People are doing personal injury, employment, consumer protection, bankruptcy. You can't. You don't have enough resources. You don't have a plan. I try to narrow them down and get them focused on what their core competency is, and be able to have a budget in place and a plan to grow that practice. Most of the practices that I've been involved in for the past three or four years, they're more than doubled year after year because the discipline comes in place that holds them to that commitment. The discipline is almost like coaching and implementing. We put that in effect with most of the law firm. It doesn't matter if it's a solo practitioner or a larger law firm.

The other part about thinking outside the box, I don't know why... Again, going back to high-tech, there is no boundaries of we only support California or New York. Is it a board wide entire plan that gets supported? Well, the law industry always been restricted because they're licensed to a specific state. There are many ways to expand outside of the state and be able to practice in multiple states. I have implemented it. Shown great results. Instead of thinking outside of your area, outside of your state and outside of your practice area to be able to have that expansion in place.

Erik Bermudez:

That's interesting because almost, it's counterintuitive. I mean, a lot of people think, well in order to increase revenue, I probably need to expand my service lines and offer that. What you're saying is first, let's make sure we specialize. Choose one and become the expert and the best of the world at that one thins and your revenues are going to increase. It sounds like you've had experience in working with clients. It's in the results that that actually happens.

Hamid Kohan:

Oh, absolutely. We have had great success with a lot of practices. Again, from solo to established firms that we have reduced their cost of overhead. Then we have expand their operation outside of this state in the same practice area. I had one firm going from one state and having fully operational in five states with fully-staffed locations in less than a year. It's very doable. Again, you just have to have the mindset, the discipline and the plan in place to get it done.

Erik Bermudez:

This leads us to our second segment here, which is you lending us a little bit of knowledge and insight into how you look at the business of law. One thing that you mentioned earlier in terms of Legal Soft is that you and your teams come in and almost take care of the business of law, so that way a lawyer and a case manager, they can work at the top of their license. They should be doing what they went to school for eight years doing. Then you can come in and help them with all the business components, and get that infrastructure solid. If there was one gap that you see most consistently from client to client, to client, what's the largest gap that you typically see when it comes to that business side of a law firm? The second part of that question is what do you do to fix it?

Hamid Kohan:

Okay. The biggest gap is the lack of information to measure the outcome of any of the operation part. If I ask any of my clients, what's your cost of case acquisition for your firm? They have no idea. Then I will say how much are you spending on social media, on the website, on the SEO and so forth and how does that translate into specific cases that I can point out to? They don't know that. Then I ask them, what is your net attorney's fees from the cases and what is your gross margin? The things that typical businesses would monitor in the practice of law is basically retain a client, do the work, get a check, I'm happy. In my industry, that doesn't work.There's always lot more to get, a lot more to be made, a lot more to expand to, if you have the discipline and infrastructure in place to do that.

Erik Bermudez:

Got it. Simple as knowing your numbers, knowing where leads and cases come from.

Hamid Kohan:

Exactly. We track everything to the T. We know the exact cost of case acquisition in the firm. We know the exact overhead distribution. We know the exact net attorneys' fees made from every single client and average it out, and we know what the budget is required to expand the firm from point A to point B.

Erik Bermudez:

Got it. Okay. You've already talked about this a little bit in terms of how Legal Soft helps law firms, but if we dive into that a little bit more, how else or what other ways that you help law firms achieve greater success, whether they're Filevine clients or any law firm for that matter?

Hamid Kohan:

Sure. In a way of the Filevine, since we operate everything about data is one of the best places to collect all the data necessary for us to be able to make intelligent decisions. Filevine is a great tool to be able to collect, monitor and generate those reports that people, like in my team, need to make the adjustments to the practice, and to the processes and increase efficiency and productivity. All comes from data and the data comes from Filevine. That's number one.

Number two is being able to expand, again, outside the box while we're looking at how to expand the true acquiring solo practitioners who are basically exhausted from all of this challenge of running a practice, or the firms that are actually on the way out and wanting to retire, and they want to close shop and retire their practice. All of that is a fair game to be utilized to expand your practice, and we manage and implement all of those areas.

Erik Bermudez:

Got it. Okay. No, that's very, very helpful. I mean, it is all about the data. I think we're entering an era of business where it's becoming more and more data-driven. Now that we have the technology, now that we have the software that's provided the capability to capture that data and oftentimes, we need great coaches, and great mentors and people and companies like yourself that can come in and help those practitioners actually get better by understanding what the data is number one. Then what to do about it, number two.

Hamid Kohan:

Exactly.

Erik Bermudez:

Is there one example of a case study that you're most proud of in terms of working with a law firm that stands out in your mind?

Hamid Kohan:

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of those area was the practice that was [inaudible 00:17:00] established. The managing attorney was essentially very exhausted running the operation. We went in. We broke down the firm into five separate units. We expanded in five location of the state and made them an independent operation as part of one firm with their own specific P&L, and requirements and targets. Now the managing attorney basically spends one to two days a week just doing case reviews for each unit. We manage every unit by numbers only. The number of new cases signed up, number of new referrals, the average settlements, average attorneys' fees, and we expand the firm from location to location with the same mentality. It doesn't all have be one building in one area. Now they're all separate P&L and increased the profitability of the firm by 46% because it also reduced all the overhead that was not necessary.

Erik Bermudez:

That's great. Well, look, appreciate it, Hamid. Thank you so much for joining us on today's show. For anyone interested in connecting with Hamid or the entire Legal Soft Team, feel free to reach out to your Filevine representative or simply email engage@filevine.com. We would be happy to put you in touch with Hamid and his team. Like I said, great partner of Filevines. We've now worked together for quite some time and you've already worked with two to three dozen Filevine clients and helping them with some of the things we've discussed today. From the whole Filevine team, thank you, Hamid, to you and the Legal Soft Solutions team. That's it, everyone, for today's edition of Taking the Stand. We'll talk to you next time on the podcast. Thank you, Hamid.

Hamid Kohan:

Thank you very much, Erik. I appreciate the time.