CIO Bulletin

New Law Business Model— Guiding inspired lawyers into a new era

In the last five decades, the legal industry has undergone a significant transformation. What was once a closely-knit profession has now become a global enterprise market worth $1,011 billion in the end of 2021.

While there are various factors behind the remarkable shift in the legal market, the one that has made significant developments in the last few years is legal technology.

Large firms worldwide have invested massively in legal technology solutions in recent years to gain a tremendous competitive advantage. This increase has hastened significantly in recent years due to the coronavirus, which has transitioned to telecommuting environments and maintaining effective communication with customers, making technology essential.

Coaching and mentoring both exist for the same purpose: helping others grow, develop, and reach their full potential. Both coaching and mentoring allow individuals to take responsibility for their personal and career development.

But mentoring and coaching are not just for billionaires and the super successful. New Law Business Model (NLBM) is one of the best companies not only mentoring and coaching lawyers on the entrepreneurial skills they need to build their law practices into thriving businesses, but also providing lawyers with an entirely new way of serving their clients. In a world of technological unemployment, online DIY legal services, and race to the bottom cheap legal, lawyers must find a new way to practice law that serves both them and their clients.

Using a carefully constructed system of coaching, instruction, and ongoing support, NLBM helps lawyers start precisely where they are—whether that’s starting their own law practice right out of law school, working part-time after having children, or growing a million-dollar law firm. NLBM gives lawyers the tools they need to go from law practice to law business, teaches them a relational, heart-centered counseling and service methodology that guides clients to wise legal and financial decisions, and gives the lawyers essential and practical systems necessary to run their law practices, from client experience to marketing to operations to technology.

The following excerpts are from a conversation with Ali Katz, CEO and Founder of New Law Business Model (NLBM)

As a journalist, I find New Law Business Model quite striking. From the emotional branding standpoint, it has that appeal. How did you come up with the brand name? And please tell us about the history so far.

I went to law school to make a difference in the world, but when I went to work at one of the best law firms in the country, I became very disillusioned with the way we were taught to practice law.

The disillusionment got even worse after I hung my own shingle, intending to create a better way.

The traditional law practice model was sucking my life away. I couldn’t truly serve my clients in a meaningful way and also be a great mom to my kids. On top of that, and maybe even worse, I saw that there were major holes in the way I had been taught to handle estate planning for my clients, which would leave my family at risk, even though I had estate planning documents in place.

So I invented a new way of serving my clients, and turned my law practice into a business, using strategies I learned from mentors in other professional service industries I respected. As a result, I was able to build my law practice into a thriving million dollar a year plus business while only needing to go into my office 3 days a week.

We call it New Law Business Model because we teach the new law business model I developed in my own firm to the lawyers we serve. At the core is our Life & Legacy Planning Program to meaningfully serve families and business owners with a high-value, heart-centered counseling-based service that clients are happy to pay well to receive and lawyers who become trusted advisors, allies, and guides to their clients. It’s a true win/win/win for lawyers, clients, and their families.

Once the lawyers learn the New Law Business Model Life & Legacy Planning process, they have the opportunity to become a Personal Family Lawyer. Currently, we have over 350 Personal Family Lawyer firms across the US serving approximately 20,000 families a year to keep their loved ones and businesses out of court and out of conflict.

Q. Can you explain your services in brief?

Law school didn’t train lawyers to use their law degrees to serve clients with a high value, systemizable service, and create a business they love, but we do. Our training teaches lawyers how to provide a meaningful and impactful estate planning experience that we call Life & Legacy Planning. This is critical for both lawyers and their clients because the current estate planning service model is broken for both the lawyers and the families they serve.

In law school and the big law firms, we were taught that estate planning is about using template forms to create wills and trusts using a one-time low fee (or sometimes unfortunately too high fee) transactional model or on an hourly billing model. In either case, that estate plan is going to fail the family when they need it. In almost all cases, the plan won’t be updated; it won’t ensure assets are findable or stay out of the court process; it won’t pre-emptively address future family conflicts; and it won’t ensure kids are properly covered by the estate plan. Worst of all, the lawyers providing these estate planning documents are fighting a losing battle because there is no way to build a thriving business providing estate planning services in this way.

We’ve invented the Life & Legacy Planning model that makes a real difference in the lives of the clients lawyers are serving with the model, and allows lawyers to have a thriving life and business. We teach the Life & Legacy Planning model to the lawyers we serve. Once they learn it, they can become a Personal Family Lawyer and use all of our done for you and done with you services to optimize their law practices, so they can run their businesses as efficiently as possible.

We provide a high-value, heart-centered legal service offering lawyers love to deliver, a client intake and engagement process their prospects and referral sources love, and the absolute confidence to know they can never be replaced by technology or even the lawyer charging far less for wills and trusts via the “cheap legal” model.

Q. Could you tell us about your New Law Business Model Pledge? How does it help entrepreneurial lawyers design a life and law practice they love?

We pledge to help our member lawyers learn our proprietary system for engaging clients for a service their clients will happily pay $4k-$6k, and we will help them work toward achieving a minimum engagement rate of 80% of clients who need their services. Our commitment helps entrepreneurial lawyers build a business that works, delivering a service they love to deliver and get paid well to do it while also serving their clients in a truly meaningful way as a Personal Family Lawyer firm.

Technology has transformed the practice of law. Which are some of the technologies that have helped you to improve your services?

We support our lawyers to use technology to the fullest so they can be as efficient as possible in service to their clients. We’ve created an automation program that many of our lawyers utilize to automate their marketing follow-up, client communications, and client workflow so they can stay focused on educating their communities and serving their clients as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Q. What are your company’s values?

We Rise as a team
Be Badass for the success of our lawyers
Walk the Talk as people with integrity
You Matter as a human
Build Legacy over the long-term

Helping lawyers love their lives and law practices by serving clients with Life & Legacy Planning

Ali Katz is the CEO and Founder of the New Law Business Model (NLBM). She graduated first in her class from Georgetown University Law Center in 1999, as a John M. Olin Law and Economics Fellow, under her prior name, Alexis Martin Neely.

Ali went on to start her law practice and write the bestselling book on legal planning for families, Wear Clean Underwear, and the book, New Law Business Model Revealed. Ali has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and radio and television across the country.

Here's Your Gift of Change.

We'd like to offer you inspiration for building a practice you... and your clients will LOVE in the form of our best-selling Amazon book: The New Law Business Model—Revealed.