Time Management Tips for Family Law Attorneys with Marco Brown | Episode 141

Don’t be misled, legal practitioners get distracted too! This week, we’re going to be talking about time management for family law attorneys. But for those who aren’t lawyers, there are some handy tips too! Marco Brown is a family law practitioner in Utah, with Brown Family Law and he joins us to share the details of his revolutionary approach to time management and focus during work hours. 

Join us to hear his tips on how to get more billable hours into each day, prioritizing focus and deep work over distraction on a daily basis. Find out how he limits the deluge of emails and calls, and hear what you can expect from others in response to your firm time management boundaries. Marco also describes who he considers ‘time vampires’ in the workplace and offers some actionable steps to avoid their influence. Tune in to hear more today! 

Key Points From This Episode:

• An introduction to today’s guest, Marco Brown. 
• The excessive amount of time that people across industries spend on their phones.
• His trick to build 192 extra billable hours into your year.
• Why there is no such thing as multitasking.
• Why distracted people aren’t happy.
• Tips on how to stop the deluge of emails and calls.
• The implications of checking your emails twice a day.
• Why Marco minimizes team meetings as much as possible.
• Four effective ways to deal with time vampires as an attorney.
• How Marco has created a balance between distraction and focus.
• Marco’s content for law students discussing the business of family law on YouTube.
• An invitation to message Marco to have a free conversation.

What is Divorce at Altitude?

Ryan Kalamaya and Amy Goscha provide tips and recommendations on issues related to divorce, separation, and co-parenting in Colorado. Ryan and Amy are the founding partners of an innovative and ambitious law firm, Kalamaya | Goscha, that pushes the boundaries to discover new frontiers in family law, personal injuries, and criminal defense in Colorado.

To subscribe to Divorce at Altitude, click here and select your favorite podcast player. To subscribe to Kalamaya | Goscha's YouTube channel where many of the episodes will be posted as videos, click here. If you have additional questions or would like to speak to one of our attorneys, give us a call at 970-429-5784 or email us at info@kalamaya.law.

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL ADVICE. CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE OR AREA TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE ON ANY OF THESE ISSUES.

Transcript

Ryan Kalamaya (3s):
Hey everyone. I'm Ryan Kalamaya

Amy Goscha (6s):
And. I'm Amy Goscha

Ryan Kalamaya (8s):
Welcome to the Divorce at Altitude. A Podcast on Colorado. Family Law.

Amy Goscha (13s):
Divorce is not easy. It really sucks. Trust me I know Besides being an experienced divorce attorney, I'm also a Divorce client.

Ryan Kalamaya (20s):
Whether you are someone considering divorce or a fellow family law attorney, listen in for weekly tips and insight into topics related to Divorce co-parenting and Separation in Colorado. Welcome. back to another episode of Divorce Altitude. This is Ryan Kalamaya This week. We're gonna talk about time management and specifically we're gonna be focused on Family, Law Attorneys. But for those that aren't lawyers, bless you. But I think you're gonna be learning some things, some helpful Tips and also You can understand how your Divorce lawyer may or may not be the best fit for you and how You can effectively work with them.

Ryan Kalamaya (1m 5s):
So, let me talk a little bit about our guest. It's Marco Brown. He is a Family Law lawyer in Salt Lake Utah and he grew up in a small village in Alaska called Cold Bay, which is a population of very large 85. He never actually graduated from high school, but he went on to college and eventually graduated with honors from law school. He moved to Utah with his wife and started Brown Family Law with no clients and no network. And he was on the floor of his Honda where his office was and they were in significant student loan debt.

Ryan Kalamaya (1m 46s):
And from then he grew his firm to award-winning status. He won Utah Family Law Attorney of the Year and was voted on by his peers in the Utah Bar as the Family Law attorney of the year. He runs Brown Family Law and grown it to help over 4,000 people go through a Divorce or Family Law situation in Utah. And in his free time, Marco spends most of his time with his wife and three kids. He loves to cook travel, which is usually in Italy. And, we may or may not talk about Italian travel. And for exercise he enjoys walking and lifting heavy things and putting them down.

Ryan Kalamaya (2m 28s):
So Marco, welcome to the show.

Marco Brown (2m 30s):
Hey, thanks Ryan. It's great to be here man.

Ryan Kalamaya (2m 32s):
So let's first start with what you have heralded as an easy trick to bill 192 more hours in a year for those lawyers that bill by the hour without spending an additional time in the office. So what is it? What's the trick?

Marco Brown (2m 51s):
Yeah, so this is being efficient and effective with your time by not checking social media. Okay? So the status is that the average person cannot go 30 minutes without checking notices on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, whatever it is, right? But it's about 30 minutes. So if you figure the average attorney works and there is no reason to think that an attorney is different than an average person in this, like absolutely none. I know hundreds and hundreds of Attorneys and believe me when I get on Facebook, And I make a comment. There are tons of other Attorneys making comments back, right? So we're all doing this, so, so there's no reason to think that there were any different, but that means that if the average attorney works eight hours a day, which the average attorney actually does work about eight hours a day, that's, you know, 16 times in a given workday that they're checking social media.

Marco Brown (3m 45s):
Okay? Let's assume I mean let's be generous and say it's two minutes or three minutes each time. It is not, you're spending more time than that, I guarantee it, checking your social media. But 16 times a day, you know, that adds up to serious time. And, I, apologize, I don't have the math in front of me, but I did the math. And I extrapolated it out. And that's a hundred how I came to 192 hours in a year. Like at the very conservative numbers of I think three minutes per check, you come up with about 192 hours in a year that you could otherwise bill. So if you just didn't check social media, you have all of this additional time, right?

Marco Brown (4m 24s):
And that's crazy when you think about the actual number though, that it's probably taking you on the order of five or six minutes each time you check that number goes up, that's gonna hit what, two 50, somewhere around in there. Maybe even more, maybe up to 300 hours in a year, right? And these are just additional hours that you don't have to be in the office. These are hours that You can be with your family. These are hours that You can, you know, go do something that you really love outside of, of being a lawyer, so on and so forth. But that's it. It's that simple. You just don't sit there and check your phone and every 30 minutes and You can bill an extra 200 hours a year.

Ryan Kalamaya (5m 4s):
I love that I mean within my firm. We talk a lot about, we all read Deep Work by Cal Newport. It was kind of a firm and, and actually for those people that can't see, I've got the book over here in the video and it's, it's one of the stack of books. But I think people really underestimate, and this is just in society in general, how much leakage or how much time is spent when they're distracted. Cuz not only just is it the actual time looking at their phone, it's the fact of, or it's the, the time of getting back on track. So when you have the disruption and that's why like the multitasking, it really just is a misnomer cuz it, you're not able to do that.

Ryan Kalamaya (5m 46s):
But Marco, I think you're a hundred percent right in that I don't think people really understand that lawyers can get sucked into this just as easily as they I mean it should resonate with a lot of people and just, just being efficient with their time.

Marco Brown (5m 59s):
Yeah, Cal Newport's book is fantastic. Dan Kennedy's No bs. Time management for Entrepreneurs is utterly fantastic. I have 10 copies of it here, I've read it a few times and that's one of the books I give out to Attorneys. And you're absolutely right. It's not only the time that you spend actually engaged looking at stuff on Instagram, it's the transition back to whatever it was you're doing, right? About 26% of anybody's given day is transition between one task and another task. Okay? So hey, you know, and Dan Kennedy talks about then this in his book, people are distracted at work every three minutes and 42 seconds on average, right?

Marco Brown (6m 39s):
That just means that your entire day is spent spent transitioning. And that is not good. Like you have to isolate yourself and allow yourself to do the work that's actually meaningful stuff. And then when you also think about, and go off on this a little bit, but when you also think about just the level of distraction that social media inculcates in you like literally causes in your brain, right? It just makes it so much harder to concentrate and to do good excellent work as Attorneys. And that's the contract we have with our clients man, is that they pay us a hundred percent for the work we do.

Marco Brown (7m 19s):
At least you should be collecting a hundred percent for the work you do. But they pay us for the work we do And, we do excellent work. And if you're sitting there distracted by social media all day, there's not a chance in the world that you're actually doing excellent work at 400 bucks an hour. You're just screwing your client at that point.

Ryan Kalamaya (7m 36s):
I a hundred percent agree And, I think it's one of the, you know, learning lessons of as we go around, you know, if you look back a hundred years people were using leeches, they were bleeding themselves to death. I think that it will be fascinating to look back on our current society with, you know, children, And I have an eight year old or six-year-old, they're not yet into social media, but I've seen clients and the concerns that they have on social media with their children. But really looking back on this time in history and saying, wow, like what were we thinking? Because if you understand the business model of social media, I mean you are the product.

Ryan Kalamaya (8m 16s):
And you know, if you don't understand that and the how sophisticated those companies are in, you know, building out their software to distract you, I mean you're just, you're naive if you know, you think you kind of can hold a candle to mixed metaphors when it comes to, you know, big data and, and social media and what they're doing to you.

Marco Brown (8m 40s):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Their entire business model is that you are distracted by them so they can monetize your time. That's it. That is the game, right? It's just ENTERTAINMENT for the masses. And look, I watch tv, you know, I do ENTERTAINMENT for the masses sort of stuff that I get it. But that has to be self-contained. Like it has to be very, very contained. Otherwise it'll take over your entire life. This is meant to be incredibly addictive and you are the product and they're out to monetize you. So don't, right? You monetize, you charge 400 bucks an hour, you do these things. Don't get monetized by Mark Zuckerberg or, or Elon Musk or any of these other people.

Marco Brown (9m 22s):
Like don't allow that in your own life. Just don't.

Ryan Kalamaya (9m 24s):
Well one of the things you said Marco segues into our next topic and that's how to stop the delusion of emails and calls that keep lawyers from getting work done. And I know there's studies about distraction and just the human condition. And one of the things I think that a lot of it's a hot topic is just client, or not client but attorney happiness and just being satisfied with their work. But when you're dissatisfied just as a human being or distracted rather you're not happy and you're not satisfied, we just as human beings like that flow state and like to be involved. So, you know, can you give some lawyers some Tips on how to stop the deluge of emails and calls?

Marco Brown (10m 7s):
Yeah, this is one of the tough ones, man. I talk with my Attorneys about this all the time cuz they will come in and they'll say, I'm just distracted. And, I can't get things done. And, I say, okay, here's the first thing you do, you shot all of the email off. Okay, you check it twice a day, two times a day, once at noon and once at four, okay? And you give yourself an opportunity at noon to respond to emails and you give yourself an opportunity at four to respond to emails and probably phone calls at that point if you need to make phone calls too. But other than that, you are working, doing deep work, effective work for your clients in an undistracted state, okay? And when you do this, when you shut off emails, you also need to shut off text messages.

Marco Brown (10m 48s):
You really need to shut off your phone in general your smartphone, because those text messages, those things will come through and they will distract you as well. But shut off all of that stuff and focus on your work and that's it. And then give yourself some time twice a day to deal with those emails. Now you will think, you will be convinced, you will convince yourself, you know, tell yourself a story that you will get fired by every client if you do this. That if you're an associate in a law firm and the partner can't get ahold of you, that the partner will fire you and so on and so forth. Nope, you're catastrophizing, you lying to yourself. if you tell the partner in your law firm for example, that you are doing really, really effective work except for two times a day and you will get to him or her during that time, they will be fine with that because you will bill more hours, you will work more effectively, you will serve your clients better, you will make that partner more money and that partner would be an idiot to believe otherwise.

Marco Brown (11m 46s):
They are going to believe that. So you just tell 'em like, this is the way I work my communication schedule. I will get to a, during these two, you know, these two time periods, you'll be absolutely fine. You are not likewise with clients. You're not gonna get clients that fire you because you tell them, look, I block off large amounts of time during the day so I can work on your cases effectively as possible. And that's why I'm not getting back to you in 20 minutes. Okay? You tell clients that and tell them what the value is to the client, they're gonna be fine. They're not gonna fire you, you're just catastrophizing don't, right? Just stop with the email, stop with these things.

Marco Brown (12m 26s):
They will suck up your entire day if you allow them. Check it at 12, check it at four.

Ryan Kalamaya (12m 34s):
This episode is brought to you by our law firm, Kalamaya, Goscha, Amy, And I describe our law firm as an innovative and ambitious trial team that pushes the boundaries to discover new frontiers in family law, personal injuries and criminal defense in Colorado. We currently have offices in Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Edwards, Denver and Boulder. if you wanna find out more, visit our website Kalamaya dot law. Now back to the show. I think a lot of lawyers, they love just the emailing back and forth in the phone calls, but then when they kind of step back and you ask 'em, okay, what we, what did you accomplish?

Ryan Kalamaya (13m 14s):
It was like, well I sent a lot of email and you know, you feel important, you feel like you're productive. But I'll tell you I mean Marco, we've, in the last six months we've implemented a policy within Kalamaya Goscha where we have quiet hours And we shut off and it's not expected to paralegals for legal assistance for them to receive a response from an attorney before 11:00 AM So you know, we have people on the front lines that answer the phones and they're there and they, you know, if there's an emergency then we have protocols for that. But the Attorneys, it really is kind of fostering a culture of they we need to get some deep work done and at a minimum those, you know, up until 11:00 AM is usually really carved out.

Ryan Kalamaya (14m 3s):
And what we've also leaned into that even more is to, you know, not have any meetings on Mondays because I don't know about you Marco, but I feel like my Monday I get more done on my Monday than the rest of my week maybe combined. And so we've really done away with internal meetings on Mondays and another, you know, thing that we've done that I think has been kind of helpful in that regard is you know, the partners or the supervisors, we have kind of office hours. So in the afternoons we'll have an hour where we have kind of general office hours. So if an associate attorney wants to get in touch with me, they know that I'm gonna be checking my email and doing kind of some shallow work, whether it be kind of catching up on my billing or doing whatever And, we use Microsoft teams but they can just drop in and they know they're not distracting me because that's really my time and it's after lunch.

Ryan Kalamaya (14m 56s):
So things I just kind of look at that time as you know, it's not the time when I'm really as productive. And so we're pretty intentional within our firm, you know about those issues. And, we tell our clients, we let go our paralegals and our assistance at noon on Fridays And, we tell our clients, Hey, it's an exhausting week. We want them to come back fresh. Do not expect a response during that. you know, Friday afternoon, And, I think it's clients, they don't care when the work is, you know, but they just want good quality work And it's to your point of really being thoughtful and people being intentional about how they spend their time.

Marco Brown (15m 38s):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. Now we, I will say that we should all be minimizing meetings as much as humanly possible in law firms because meetings are almost always a complete and total waste. And, we have our meetings Monday through Friday, we have a sales meeting in the morning for 20 minutes where we go over sales and then closing to make sure that we are as good as we possibly can be to acquire clients so we can serve clients, right? so we do that, but that's all like skills-based stuff, right? That's not just getting around talking about things. And then on Friday we have our team meeting where we get together and you know, the entire group is together, And, we can talk about our values constitution a little bit And, we can talk about what you know, what things we want to do to make our colleagues lives better and our clients' lives better.

Marco Brown (16m 24s):
And then we go over, you know, a couple cases as well and get input from the group, right? But other than that, we just minimize meetings as much as possible. And it's the same kind of idea with minimizing the emails and the distractions. A meeting can just be an absolute distraction at which absolutely nothing gets done and that's probably 90% of meetings. So just kill 'em all man. Try to kill all of 'em.

Ryan Kalamaya (16m 48s):
I agree. And we're gonna talk about time vampires, but I also think that especially for clients that are listening to this, it's one of the things that I really value about being in a firm, And I think clients may not understand the collaboration that exists within especially Family Law lawyer or you know, Family Law firms where I can call my partner and talk through an issue and she'll have a different perspective. And I do think that some of those intentional meetings are helpful. Then the other aspect is that you have a younger, or not younger, I shouldn't be kind of age oriented, but less experienced attorney that just needs some supervision.

Ryan Kalamaya (17m 31s):
And a lot of clients, they kind of might just hire the cheapest lawyer and they don't realize that that meeting between a supervising attorney, whether it's build or not, is something that's really valuable for them. And so it's a balancing act between that mentorship and you know, the cohesiveness of a firm versus the total time suck, which I a hundred percent agree exists just a meeting for the sake of meeting. So with that in mind, can you talk a little bit about, you know, the time vampires?

Marco Brown (18m 2s):
Yeah. And let me clarify some before I get get to them. You are exactly right. So what I mean by meeting is when like the entire firm gets together to talk about, you know, this, that or the other. The conferences And, we call 'em conferences. So the conferences or conversations that Attorneys have between themselves talking about cases absolutely completely essential. It's interesting because one thing I've noticed with clients and helped over 4,000 at this point is that they don't like to pay for those conversations, but those conversations are literally the most effective and efficient way to get their case done and you get it done at a very high level. So they don't wanna do that because like, oh you're just sitting around yacking, you know, with Bob, I'm like, I'm not yacking with Bob.

Marco Brown (18m 46s):
Bob is telling me his opinion about your case and how to get it resolved and how to do it effectively, right? Those are the most important conversations that Attorneys have is with other Attorneys talking about a case, talking it through. if you client's out there or you're thinking about hiring an attorney, look, you may want to go with the cheapest person. The cheapest person is almost always a solo that does not have the ability to go do that. To just go walk into somebody else's office and say, Hey look, I don't know how to do this. I need a little bit of help here. Right? What that means for you is that it's not cheap that Solo is gonna have to go figure this stuff out on his own or her own from a book or you know something or Googling it.

Marco Brown (19m 31s):
A lot of 'em just sits there and Google it. But that takes forever, right? It's that institutional knowledge that law firms, especially Family, Law firms contain that make cases and Attorneys really effective and really efficient. And that's why, you know, we only do Family Law here we have 10 Attorneys And. we only do Family Law because we just want that transfer of knowledge to happen as quickly as humanly possible up the chain and down the chain so we can serve our clients. And again, if you cheap out, you're not getting that and you're not gonna get the results you want and you are gonna pay more for them in the end honestly, because there's just gonna be more time spent.

Marco Brown (20m 11s):
So sorry, that's my little ramp. Let's talk about time vampires. you know, time vampires are people in your law firm. I'm gonna switch back from like talking to clients, talking to other Attorneys here. They're people in your law firm that just suck up your time. They come to you, they gossip about, you know, water cooler stuff. They talk about the Bachelor, the Bachelorette or whatever it is. They come talk to you about, you know, the latest thing in their life that happened, just random stories or so on or or lawyers. So they get around and they just talk about war stories all the time, you know, from 10 years ago, every once in a while. That's cool. Like I, I have those conversations with people and is the c e o of the law firm at this point And, I go around and talk to them because I want to get to know them, but time vampires do this constantly, right?

Marco Brown (20m 57s):
And they're not really, they'll say Hey look, I want your opinion on something. But they're not really asking it. They're just telling you a story because they wanna tell you a story. These people suck up your time all the time and they will bleed you dry. That's why they're vampires, right? They will absolutely bleed you dry if you allow them to do it. And you have to tell them no. You just have to say, Nope, I'm gonna slay the time vampires man, this is not gonna happen. And let me give you a kind of a three, four ways to deal with them effectively. The first is to close your door as an attorney. Close the door, lock it, don't open it. The time vampire will come to your door, they will knock on your door and they'll try to come in so they can tell you a story, don't answer it, okay?

Marco Brown (21m 43s):
And there'll be this awkward moment where the time vampire stands outside and you're looking at the door and they're looking at the door at the same time and you don't let them in. And it's really awkward, just deal with the awkwardness, okay? Because eventually they'll go away and then the time vampire will realize when the door is closed, I'm not getting in. So they will go try to suck somebody else dry, but at least it won't be you. Okay? So that's the first way to deal with a time vampire. The second way is to appear very, very busy all the time. Okay? These people are less likely to come to you and interrupt you if you appear very busy, okay? So the busier you appear, the less likely you are to get disturbed.

Marco Brown (22m 23s):
The third is when a time vampire comes up and asks, Hey, do you have a minute? Because that's almost always how they start these conversations. You say, Nope, I apologize, I'm really busy right now and I'm only addressing nine or 10 problems, is what you're gonna tell me a nine or 10 problem? And it never is. And they'll say, well no. And you say, okay cool, let's talk about this tomorrow at four o'clock. Is that okay And, we got five minutes. You can come to my office, And, we can talk through this, right? And then they will say, okay, and then they will go somewhere else. You do that enough times and they will just stop coming up and asking you, do you have a minute? Or they'll figure out that they need to come to your office at four o'clock so they can talk to you for five minutes, right?

Marco Brown (23m 3s):
So that's another way to do it. And then the other is to shut down your firm's internal communication tools, slack, email, whatever it is, and just don't check 'em because time vampires can get through to you on different medium. So you know, if you don't talk to 'em, they may just go to Slack, which is our internal communication tool and start like slacking you messages, but just turn all that stuff off. Okay? So you've physically isolated yourself from time vampires and then electronically isolated yourself. If none of that works, then you go to the nuclear option, which is you're just not there at all. Like you literally aren't, aren't in the office and you just go to the Starbucks to work or something or something like that.

Marco Brown (23m 44s):
But that's really the nuclear option. So those are the really effective ways to deal with time vampires. And depending on how many you have in your law firm, it can save you boatloads of time.

Ryan Kalamaya (23m 55s):
Yep. I was thinking as you were talking about closing doors, you know, because our firm is a hybrid, so we go into the office, we try to go in the office together on Tuesdays and it's more for the mentorship, especially for the younger Attorneys or less experienced Attorneys. But you know, so we try to be intentional, but a lot of times we're working at home as we're recording this at my home office. And so when I want to get work done, really kind of thoughtful deep work, I'm at home. But I also will get stir crazy. I mean you're in a tie in a suit as we record this Marco and I mean like I'm not in sweatpants, but if you're in sweatpants for five days a week, you know, you start getting kind of a little stir crazy.

Ryan Kalamaya (24m 38s):
And so it's kind of a mix and something that we've struggled with. But for us we have a teams, we use Microsoft Teams, we have a water cooler channel, and on Thursdays I ask, what are people's weekend plans? And, I find that it's in that controlled environment where you have this mix. Because I mean we are not all cyborgs, we can't just all bill. It is human nature. I mean you want to have that cohesiveness in a firm. But it's also your point is well taken about the time, you know, vampires, they can just suck up, you know, all your time. And so it's being kind of thoughtful in mixing that within a firm. And, I think it depends on the firm's structure and culture that really, you know, you need to be kind of concerned about or thoughtful about.

Marco Brown (25m 26s):
Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And you're totally right. We are not robots, right? We need to be able to interact with each other. One of the great things about having a law firm and, and kind of the way I've done this, so I worked for a big firm in New Mexico, it was actually too isolating. Like no one talked to each other. And I just hated the culture, hated it. I left at one point. I didn't smile for like three months, the last three months that I worked there. And I told myself, man, if I ever own a law firm, I'm gonna like the people I work with, And I own the law firm. So I get to hire people that I actually enjoy. And, I do I really like them? And I like going and talking with them.

Marco Brown (26m 5s):
But it has to be, like you said, contained like we have Slack, you know, we use Slack And, we have what we call a random crap channel. So it's literally just whatever random crap we want to talk about. you know, we put jokes on there and memes and whatever else and that's kind of cool. But at the same time, you know, that has to be a very limited amount of your day. Otherwise you know, you're not seeing your family, right? And you're not effective for your clients. So yeah, you need to balance that out. But the balance that I've found among most Attorneys in most especially smaller law firms, is like way skewed toward the distraction.

Ryan Kalamaya (26m 45s):
Yeah. We have one-on-ones that are half an hour once a week with a manager versus their kind of report. So you know, for me as a managing attorney, I'm meeting with, you know, many of our associate Attorneys, but there's an agenda of the, you know, the first 10 minutes is for the attorney to kind of tell me whatever they want and like I've got a big F on my forehead cuz I can fire anyone and everyone knows it like I'm the boss, right? And so I always am like, what's going on? And they want to tell me whatever it is. And then the second set of 10 minutes is really for me to kind of address whatever may be on my mind.

Ryan Kalamaya (27m 28s):
And then the last 10 minutes or the third set of 10 minutes is kind of talking about the future. But having that agenda and having that time and sticking to it, I think allows us to address if someone, if their grandfather is sick and they might need to leave, that is an appropriate conversation for work. But, and if they want to talk about how awful the Denver Broncos, like I could go on for hours about that. But if you have an intentional 30 minutes and you really stick to it, it's a mix of really getting into that And I think that being again thoughtful about it, which I don't think a lot of lawyers, at least the firm that I was at before and I've worked in larger firms, And I agree.

Ryan Kalamaya (28m 16s):
It can be so incredibly isolating, especially coming out of Covid. I mean, one of my friends worked for a big Denver law firm and he said that, yeah, they just were like, go home, we'll see you in a couple years when this pandemic is over. And that is not, you know, if a lawyer is not supported, they're not doing good work. And so it's, I think it's a mix, you know, how do you balance that? But the time vampires, they can come back and haunt you and You can just spend your whole time just gabbing.

Marco Brown (28m 45s):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's funny that you talk about the one-on-ones. I do the same thing. So I spend half an hour with each of my Attorneys every week if they're not part of the executive team because I don't, you know, as a CEO I spend 90, 95% of my time now bringing in opportunities and bringing in clients so we can serve them, right? So I don't interact with my team as much as I want. So I do the one-on-ones as well, kind of, you know, the same agenda sort of system. But I always make, you know, five or 10 minutes of that just yaking about whatever they want. We're gonna talk about their kids, we're gonna talk about guns, we're gonna talk about books, we're gonna talk about kind of, you know, whatever. And that is really helpful. But again, like you said, it's self-contained, right? It's that idea that it's not gonna metastasize and pick up your entire day.

Ryan Kalamaya (29m 29s):
Well Marco, I think it's, you know, great that you're so thoughtful about this. I think a lot of people listening to this, you know, that our Family Law lawyers, they may hopefully have kind of been pushed in kind of what you're saying. So for those that may wanna learn more about what You can kind of offer and are there any other resources or things that where they could find out more information about you?

Marco Brown (29m 54s):
Yeah, You can go to my YouTube channel. I try to put some good content on there and you know, probably the best place though is LinkedIn. So go to LinkedIn and follow me. I really do try to put out good content. I put out a lot of content for law students and try to teach them kind of the business of law and how law actually functions and how to serve clients and how to make more money and so on. But I put out, you know, any of that stuff is gonna be applicable to my colleagues that are Attorneys as well. And then, you know, I always say this, I don't do pro bono in the sense that I don't take on like more Divorce cases cuz I've done 4,000 plus. I don't need to. What I want to do is I want to help my colleagues, my attorney colleagues, to live better lives and build better law firms because you know, we spend eight to 10 hours a day at our law firm on average.

Marco Brown (30m 45s):
And if it's run poorly and you're not making enough money, your life sucks. Just no matter what else is happening in your life, you're spending so much time in a broken system that your life sucks. And I went through that, I went through that for 5, 6, 7 years and it was really difficult and almost cost me everything, right? And, I. Don't wanna see that happen to my colleagues. So, you know, go to LinkedIn, happy to help you however you want, but also like message me if you have a problem. if you need to talk through kind of what you need to fix in your law firm, And I to make it better. Cool, let's have a conversation. And, we'll do that absolutely for free because I just want to help my colleagues live better lives.

Ryan Kalamaya (31m 23s):
Well I appreciate the message and the insight. Marco, And I. Imagine we could keep on talking more and more about running a law firm, but I am respectful of, you know, I don't wanna be a time vampire. So until next time, thanks for joining us on v Altitude. Thanks for joining us.

Marco Brown (31m 42s):
Thanks

Ryan Kalamaya (31m 43s):
Hey, everyone. This is Ryan again. Thank You for joining us on Divorce at Altitude. if you found our Tips insight or discussion helpful, please tell a friend about this podcast. For show notes, additional resources or links mentioned on today's episode, visit Divorce at Altitude dot com. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen in. Many of our Episodes are also posted on YouTube. You can also find Amy And me at Kalamaya.law or 970-315-2365. That's K A L A M A Y A.law