The Business Side Of Law: Gary S Freed On 5 Things You Need To Create Or Lead A Successful Law Firm

An Interview With Eric Pines

Respect. You need to have a client’s respect. You can be the best lawyer in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have respect. Respect sometimes comes from saying no to a client. Help the client understand that sometimes “no” isn’t what they want to hear, but it’s in their best interest. If they fire you, it’s a case you shouldn’t be involved in anyway.

Law school primarily prepares lawyers for the practice of law. But leading or starting a law firm requires so much more than that. It requires the entrepreneurial skills that any CEO would need to run a business; How to manage personnel, how to hire and fire, how to generate leads, how to advertise, how to manage finances, etc. On the business side of law, what does an attorney need to know to create a successful and thriving law practice? To address these questions, we are talking to successful law firm principals who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “5 Things You Need To Create Or Lead A Successful Law Firm.”

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Gary S. Freed.

Gary Freed has spent 41 years helping businesses and individuals extract themselves from problem situations efficiently, caringly, and successfully. He takes proactive approaches and out of the box, or what he characterizes as “what box”, thinking and applies them to analyzing exit strategies focused on both the endgame of clients in disputes and achieving an equitable result for the parties involved. He is passionate and aggressive yet professional and ethical and works hard to represent clients who he believes have proper business moral compasses.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are? Specifically, we’d love to hear the story of how you began to lead your practice.

I took an examination in grade school about what career might be suitable for my personality and traits. It revealed that being a lawyer would fit me well. Since then, I have pursued that endeavor. That pursuit started as I grew up as a beach boy on south Long Island and continued through working in Washington, D.C., attending Emory Law School, and running my own practices in large firms. I have come full circle to running my own firm in the latter part of my career because I believe there is more to helping people and businesses in the practice of law than revenue realization, billable hours, and internal competition. We help businesses small and large, and people who are successful or not.

We navigate what can be a legal black hole through dispute resolution. I’m a firm believer in substantiating the bona fides of a potential client’s position — I want to understand the root of the dispute and the integrity and sincerity of the position they want to pursue. This can reveal volumes about their intent. It is very important to have a thorough understanding of their position before engaging with opposing counsel. Many times, people and businesses pursue litigation for the wrong reasons. I try to focus our clients on engaging in dispute resolution for the right reasons. This has proved effective over my career as I have been told many times I care more than most lawyers about my clients and approach things in a radically different way. I strive to achieve a positive and equitable result for both parties, rather than taking a win-at-all-costs approach to a matter.

I’m a huge fan of mentorship throughout one’s career. None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Who has been your biggest mentor? What was the most valuable lesson you learned from them?

The first year and a half of my career I worked for the largest law firm in Long Island before permanently relocating to Atlanta. There were several elderly lawyers at the Long Island firm who took me under their wing and instilled in me the knowledge that there is no easy path to success when practicing law. It is the pursuit toward excellence, rarely achieved, which drives the best attorneys to focus on channeling their talent and intellect in an organized manner to represent and understand a client and their needs. I especially recall how instrumental the attorneys Frank Montfort and Ed Salley were in helping me early in my career.

From completing your degree to opening a practice and becoming a business owner, your path was most likely challenging. Can you share a story about one of your greatest struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?

My father was a war hero. He was a sergeant in Korea and fought for a time on the front lines in a pillbox. He learned to survive at all costs. He always focused on winning and not losing and that clearly has rubbed off on me.

I’m also vertically challenged, as they say, and that presented some complications in my life. I grew up in a Long Island beach community where there were many people with strong personalities who were rather bellicose. You couldn’t be timid in that environment. You had to hold your own.

Bringing those experiences and character traits to the practice of law required me to soften my approach as much as I could in 1978 Atlanta, Georgia. I was competitive, aggressive, and passionate but learned that I needed to listen more. I had to understand that there is not just one side to a story. I had to understand the other side of the coin. That led me to develop a saying that “there are three sides to every coin I’ve ever had in my pocket.” Rather than just advocating, I must listen with compassion and understanding, which is something that many folks from New York are not known for or particularly adept at.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts today.” That’s a quote from Franklin Roosevelt that Congressman Norman Lent from Long Island taught me when I worked for him in Washington, D.C. I learned not to fear, not to doubt, but push ahead and believe in yourself. Realize you’re not perfect but always try your best. It’s OK to think about how you could have done things better in the past but remember that the way to survive is to continue to swim upstream.

This is not easy work. What is your primary motivation and drive behind the work that you do?

After 41 years I still believe that helping people is the greatest gratification in the practice of law. It’s not necessarily the law that drives me. It’s not necessarily being brilliant that leads to success. But what is important is letting the client feel vindicated that he or she engaged an attorney to help them and feels better at the end of the matter than at the beginning of the matter.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

I have a case against the Georgia Department of Revenue based on a constitutional challenge to how a tax was imposed on a certain type of business. The trade association for that area of business engaged me. It is our belief that the tax is being applied to a trade group that is not responsible for the worthy goal that underlies the implementation of the tax. The focus of the state is revenue generation for a commission. The state is overlooking the fact that the trade association being taxed is not responsible for the harm the agency is seeking to correct.

In a very different area, I was involved in a large matter where divorce attorneys engaged our firm to help with the investigation and analysis of the international businesses owned by one of the parties in the divorce. With my law partner Tom Grant, I spent two years with forensic accountants unraveling hundreds of companies and bank accounts throughout the world to understand the value of the properties. This was further complicated by the sudden death of our client in the matter. She died in a tragic manner that is being investigated. That brought home to me how fragile life is and how sometimes the folly of litigation should take a back seat to the needs of the person.

Fantastic. Let’s now shift to discussing the business of law. Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your practice and what you focus on?

The nature of my practice is solving and equitably resolving business disputes. This can include many issues such as business divorces, real estate deals and employment disputes. My partner Tom Grant and I are cut from the same cloth. We share the same priorities and passionately engage with clients to truly understand their needs and help them to move forward. We get them to focus on what they need, which ofttimes is different from what they want. Once we have a deep understanding of what the client wants, we develop a creative path to get there. We are thinking well beyond just the mechanics of law.

We believe in alternative dispute resolution and old-fashioned face-to-face communication. That type of hard work is really a lost art in some ways in the legal community.

These days I have also developed an additional practice representing Asian businesses. They can be in China, Korea, or Thailand. To be successful I must understand the cultural distinctions. This newer area of work has been very interesting as well as challenging.

You are a successful attorney. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? What unique qualities do you have that others may not? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The three character traits that I think have been most instrumental in my success are always being honest, caring about my clients, and communicating effectively. This has led me to represent clients that have similar values.

Here’s an example. Fifteen years ago, I represented a large international corporation that was bought out by a private equity group. The new owners changed the focus of the business to pure economic pursuit. That impacted all aspects of this multi-faceted corporation. I realized the moral fiber of the organization had changed. I backed out of the representation when I realized I was being used by to achieve an end that solved economic gain at the expense of integrity and truth. I believe in being true to yourself. Sometimes making an economic gain as an attorney can be inconsistent with the demands of your clientele.

Do you think where you went to school has any bearing on your success? How important is it for a lawyer to go to a top-tier school?

For my undergraduate studies I attended Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, which was a prominent liberal arts school run by the Methodist church. The education at Drew gave me a solid background to pursue higher education and legal training.

I could have attended any of several law schools, but I chose Emory Law School. As it turns out, the Constitutional Law course there used the same book and same outlines I had used in my undergraduate training about the Constitution. This contributed to my high grades in that area, and I realized that I had received an excellent education at Drew which enabled me to excel at Emory.

Emory was also instrumental in helping to open doors for me in Atlanta. As a Jewish guy from Long Island, having a degree from Emory presented me with an entree to engage with the school’s alumni and it that was very helpful in a city where I didn’t have pre-set contacts. The Emory degree gave me some gravitas that I believe I might have lacked if I had gone to another law school. I had looked at many schools but felt that Atlanta in the late 70s was a city about to bloom and I wanted to be part of it. So, I focused on it and came South. My prognostication about Atlanta came true.

Being a law practitioner and a business owner is a constant balancing act. How do you manage both roles?

It’s becoming more difficult. There is a generational gap between me as a 65-year-old experienced lawyer and younger lawyers freshly minted from law school. Our small firm keeps losing younger lawyers to larger firms that pay exorbitant salaries. In our opinion, we hire top talent and pay them the right way. However, the days of attorneys working for the same firm for a long time has come and gone. Younger attorneys see smaller firms like ours as steppingstones. That does not denigrate the person. It’s just a reality of today’s legal industry.

This will strike many as odd, but recently we hired a person right out of law school who it turned out did not know how to use a regular desk phone. We had to train him. He had only used cell phones and the phones older Americans grew up with were strange to him. I never thought I would have to train someone the basics of a desk phone.

Related to that, technology is different. For the most part, I can’t keep up technologically with the younger attorneys. I do everything on my computer, but the nuances of understanding various programs and the capacities of computerization of a law practice is challenging to me as a supervisor and as a lawyer. So, I believe it is better to focus on what you are very good at and outsource as much as you can to people who are excellent at what they do They can bring their capacities to help the business rather than bringing things in house that you don’t do well.

Can you help articulate the entrepreneurial skills a lawyer needs to run and lead a successful law firm?

Be in essence a farmer and plant seeds. The more seeds you plant the more crops you will reap.

I learned early to be involved in several organizations to meet people of prominence. Some of these people allowed me to engage in matters that were typically viewed as too large or complicated for the firm where I was then employed. I won their confidence through my involvement with the organizations and my interactions with the various members.

Early in my career I learned from a wise person and friend Liane Levitan, that life is about something very simple. Find the common denominator. I’ve never forgotten that. Find out what you have in common when you talk to people. Ask questions about those commonalities. Quick aside: Not only does this help in conversations, but the same approach can also be applied to depositions. This type of dialogue generates more understanding. It demonstrates that you genuinely care and have interest about the other party. From a business development standpoint, when people are comfortable with you and believe you truly care they are more apt to give and refer business to you. You don’t have to ask for the business.

As a business owner you spend most of your time working IN your practice, seeing clients. When and how do you shift to working ON your practice? (Marketing, upgrading systems, growing your practice, etc.) How much time do you spend on the business elements?

Marketing is not a different part of the practice. It is inherent in your practice. I have received referrals from adversaries and judges. It is engrained in the practice of law that it is not just about achieving an end for a client but also realizing to some degree you are on stage in everything you do. Your work, your product, your arguments all are marketing tools not just geared towards success in matters but continued success in the business. I have always tried to have three to five marketing events a week. Lunches, sporting events, boating, social events — anything that gets me in front of people. The ability to communicate outside of work with people is what brings me business.

Can you share some specific, non intuitive insights from your personal experience about how a leader of a law firm should:

Manage personnel: Hire somebody savvier to handle personnel issues. You need a competent office manager — someone who understands people. The talents which help me be a successful lawyer are not always the best talents for managing employees. Delegation is important. You must understand who to delegate what. Don’t do everything. Stay in your lane and do what you do best.

Hire and fire: Hiring takes an objective assessment of a person. I try to bring in other people rather than making decisions by myself. I bring in the office manager, associates, and partners and let them evaluate candidates from their eyes as well as from my eyes. That said, at times I have made bad decisions when going with other’s ideas rather than going with my gut. Being a village, so to speak, can help but sometimes as a leader you just need to make hard decisions who to hire and when to let people go, which is always unpleasant.

Generate leads: Leads come from just being out there and being available. For instance, I recently attended a neighborhood pool party and someone I didn’t know told me that I communicate smoothly with people. It is important to have the ability to talk to people and know when to cut it off when if it’s not working.

Clients of mine introduced me to my wife. She is from China and our life partnership has opened doors with the Chinese community. I believe I have earned their respect as someone who is not prejudiced and takes all people as equals and tries to understand their culture and business needs.

Advertise: I am a walking advertisement. You don’t need to buy advertising. Maybe big firms with big budgets think it’s important. We just don’t throw money at ads. We help some philanthropic, educational, or charitable groups by taking out ads in programs and such, but that is driven by trying to help that group, not only generate business.

Manage finances: We outsource our accounting and bookkeeping. We have engaged professionals with small practices who work closely with us on budgeting, revenue generation, receivables, and more. I also use programs to see rate realization by each attorney. I want to know what’s being written off. Our practice is overwhelming hours based but we are not driven by the hours. We are driven by getting the work done efficiently and as perfectly as possible. Clients oftentimes comment how well the attorneys have performed. Clients are savvy and know when lawyers have not been efficient and will let you know. I still give clients discounts and not only if they are displeased by something. I look at every bill and if I think things were not done correctly, for instance someone went down a rabbit hole for research, I will proactively give a courtesy discount which pleases clients. We have very few billing issues as a result.

Ok, thank you. Here is the main question of our interview about the business side of law. What are your 5 Things An Attorney Needs To Know In Order To Create A Successful And Thriving Law Practice.

1. Pursuit of excellence. Understand you can’t always achieve excellence, but never give up and don’t compromise on your work or ethics. This has led to referrals from judges.
2. Integrity. Be true to yourself. Take clients that have similar values and weed out those clients who you come to realize do not. You get your reputation from not only how you advocate but for whom you advocate. We advocate aggressively and if we represent someone who is not reputable it could taint our image.
3. Communication. You want open communications with clients and through various platforms. But set some boundaries. Communications on weekends and nights should be reserved only for emergencies. But you must be accessible to your clients.
4. Trust. Clients have to trust you so that they know that whatever they tell you will not go further. They want to know that your heart is in the right place. When you take on the right client who knows that you believe in them, it gives that client a good feeling about you and your firm. Here’s an example: Many years ago, a fatal plane crash led to a settlement for the family of a professional athlete who died in the crash. I was hired to handle the Estates only. When I saw the announced wrongful death amounts, I knew something was not right. I contacted the mother of the family, explained to her why I thought this, and she hired me to undo the settlement. Fortunately, I was able to do that and get much more money for the family.
5. Respect. You need to have a client’s respect. You can be the best lawyer in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have respect. Respect sometimes comes from saying no to a client. Help the client understand that sometimes “no” isn’t what they want to hear, but it’s in their best interest. If they fire you, it’s a case you shouldn’t be involved in anyway.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would love to see judges chastise lawyers for mistruths and gamesmanship. I would advocate for that. I asked a judge once why he didn’t charge lawyers for contempt of court when they lied to him. He said if he charged all lawyers for contempt who lie to him, he would never get reelected. That’s a sad commentary on the profession.

If I was king of the forest, I would have a discovery master to ferret out the many misdeeds that can occur during that phase. The master would help to ensure that people are not hiding or destroying evidence. The master can help to tamp down the lying that takes place under oath.

I see the legal profession going down a dangerous path in lock step with our nation’s politics. Lying is not only widely accepted in some circles, but also encouraged.

A famous dictator once said the bigger lie the better purpose served. That seems to be the modus operandi of many lawyers today. They act as If you say it enough it must be true. If judges don’t take time to ferret out and demand the truth, then justice in America is becoming an oxymoron. It’s a sad comment. There are many great judges. There are also some who aren’t so great. That needs to change. We need more consistency in our judiciary in policing lawyers who are less than wholesome. You will find clients often find attorneys who fit their integrity scale. That is why Tom and I focus on clients with wholesome and ethical practices. They are the types of companies we stay focused on and they in turn are our believers.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

www.freedgrant.com

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!

About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.

While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.

Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.

Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.