Ideas in the Wild: Reza Torkzadeh is Standing Up for Independent Law Firms by Helping Lawyers Transform Change Into Opportunity
Research. Trial strategy. Debate. These are the complex areas where lawyers thrive. But when it comes to building a sustainable business, these can’t guarantee success.
Today’s legal landscape is changing. The competition facing independent law firms are large corporations and powerful executives who understand that clients are consumers looking for exceptional service and fast results.
In The Lawyer As CEO, Reza Torkzadeh explores these changes and shows how lawyers can adapt their mindset, develop their employees, and build a customer-focused business. He offers concrete advice about not only how to weather each storm, but how to leverage change so it transforms into opportunity. I recently caught up with Reza to learn more about why he wrote the book and the ideas he shares with readers.
Why did you write this book?
I’m going to predict the future. Within the next 10 years, the chances a law firm can succeed in the legal field will go from unlikely to impossible. Venture capitalists and other stakeholders will get the laws changed in almost every state and then swoop in and buy every firm they can get their hands on.
Once they’ve consolidated their new megafirms, they’ll institute policies to maximize profitability. There will be no heart, no personality, and no individuality in these firms — but there will be immense success.
In the meantime, firms like yours will shrivel up and die. It won’t matter how much you care about your clients or justice or your community. It won’t matter how good a lawyer you are. It will simply become impossible to survive, let alone scale, as you once had hoped.
As things stand, the end seems nigh. But there is hope. The lawyer-run individual firm can still lead our industry — but only if we start building firms fit for this future today.
That’s where this book comes in. If you want to ensure success no matter how big the competition gets, scale isn’t out of reach. You just have to learn how to become a lawyer-CEO. The good news is any lawyer can do it — so long as they care enough to maximize their firm’s potential.
If you truly care about serving your clients, taking care of your community, developing an elite office, and reaching the top of the profession, the ideas in this book will help you achieve that. With them, you can harness the motivations that drive you to be a great lawyer and create a firm that can grow in any future.
What’s an idea you share that really excites you?
During the Euro 2020 soccer tournament, Cristiano Ronaldo — one of the most famous and successful athletes in the history of sports — removed a bottle of Coca-Cola from the desk where he was taking questions and told the whole world to drink water instead. The next day, Coca-Cola’s stock dropped. Within a month, it was back at its original value.
For most companies, having the biggest name in soccer tell people to avoid your company would be a death sentence. But that’s not the case for Coca-Cola because it is one of the few companies with a brand that can weather that bad press. The Coca-Cola brand is so strong, people will continue to drink it even if Ronaldo tells them not to.
This is the case with the best brands across industries — both big brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Amazon; and smaller brands like Got Junk and Roto Rooter. And within this lies the secret to how to break the commodity marketing chain in the law industry, as well. This is the biggest open opportunity in law, and if you run your firm right, you might be able to snatch it before the Wall Street investors get there first.
The key to taking the lead here will be the culture you develop in your firm. If you look at the brands I’ve mentioned, you’ll notice one thing about them: they’re all really good at what they do. A few years ago, McDonald’s tried to cut into Starbucks’ brand by promising better coffee. It didn’t take because everyone already knew that Starbucks had better coffee, and no amount of commercials was going to convince them otherwise.
That doesn’t mean that advertising isn’t important, but when you develop a brand around being the best at what you do, you can become the name in your space. Right now, a big firm is nothing but a name to people. Your firm can be a brand that stands for community, strong culture, and quality legal help. Once you establish that brand, all you have to do is continue to live up to those values.
How will following your advice improve your readers’ lives?
Back in 2012, I left a law firm I’d started five years earlier with a couple partners. That partnership was relatively prosperous, but I quickly found out there was much more to running a law firm than just being good at law. When I decided to venture out on my own, I had no one to reach out to for guidance about how to manage and grow my own law practice.
I’m sure many of the errors that I’ve recorded in this book — and many more that I’ve kept to myself — could have been avoided if I’d had a place where I could get some decent advice. Without help, it was all trial and error — and early on, it mostly came up error.
Wall Street investors are well aware of how independent law firms struggle to compete. Their plan is to exploit those difficulties and capture the entire industry.
I hope this book proves you can thrive without that kind of meddling. I also hope it helps you avoid many of my mistakes. Within these pages, you have the core features of any successful business. If you build your firm around that core, you can scale to compete with anyone.
