Corey Parker - How I Built and SOLD My Law Firm

[MUSIC] Welcome to the successful business and practice of law brought to you by Lockwork. Well, for those of you who listen to the show, you know this is a place where we have conversations with lawyers who have achieved outsized success. Those, those lawyers who are building the innovative business models and the lawyers who are simply doing things differently. My name, well, I'm Greg Garmin and I've been a practicing lawyer for 25 years. But I'm also one of the proud co-founders of Lockwork, a company that matches busy attorneys with the virtual associates and freelance lawyers they need to make their firms run better and more profitably. On today's episode, I'm talking with a young entrepreneurial lawyer named Corey Parker. Corey, well, he did something I didn't even know you could do. He set out to build and get this to sell his law firm. And he succeeded. Honestly, I didn't know that was something that could be done. In his story, it's really compelling. Corey is a genuinely good guy and we should keep our eyes on him because he has a vision of what the future of our profession holds. So with no more delay, Corey, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me, Greg. I actually saw your first podcast was the most interesting lawyer in the world. So, you know, I'd like to say I'm in the top 90% of interesting lawyers in maybe Los Angeles County. You know, can't all be Mark Gargos or Robert Shapiro. So, but I'm happy to be here. Well, we won't tell that to Glenn, but maybe we'll just say that Glenn was the most interesting lawyer who had appeared by episode one. But you're going to have to have Glenn run for his money. So, we really are appreciative of you having on the show. You know, as I said in the intro, you've got this fascinating story in that you have had a lot of success as a pretty young lawyer within the niche of a pellet work. But then you've done something that I just didn't even know was a thing, which is you built a law firm and sold it. And we're going to cover that. We'll cover that in a little bit. But, you know, for the audience that doesn't know you perhaps we could just begin with a kind of a little bit about the practice that you've built for yourself since you got out of law school. You know, what is that 10, 12, 13 years ago ish? It becomes longer and longer every year. It makes you go older and older. But, yeah, I mean, I think you, stating, you know, I've never heard of that before. I've never heard of someone selling their law practice. That's kind of been my story from the beginning. Throughout every step of my career, people have said, I've never heard of that before. You're going to start your own law firm and you've only been practicing for a year. I've never heard of that before. You know, you're going to send attorneys to cover for you in criminal defense cases and you're not going to be there personally. I've never heard that before. You know, that is something that I've heard throughout my career because when you try to be a little different and innovate, people say, well, that's not the way that I'm used to seeing things. That's not the way that people do it. You know, and so sometimes you have to push back on those ideas a little bit to see how it goes. You know, you have nothing to lose. And so as far as my career, you know, kind of started out working at the Public Defender's Office when I was in law school still. I knew I wanted to go into criminal defense originally. I was kind of an idealist. Watched a lot of legal dramas, you know, Boston Legal and some of those shows. And I loved the idea of getting up there and giving a theatrical closing argument. You know, and I was never great at drama. I think I wanted to be, but I never really had those chops. But I did think that I kind of had that when it came to the law. And so that was kind of, you know, my ideal version of I'm going to represent only innocent clients or, you know, if the police bungled, you know, I'm going to represent people and expose those, you know, it gets instancies. And you know, initially it kind of my practice started out that way. You know, I started working for the Public Defender's Office and I had a lot of success and I enjoyed going to trial and I quickly transitioned to when I passed the bar working for a private firm that did criminal defense. And so kind of in that process, I was this attorney that I worked for would, you know, was hiring young attorneys like myself. And just to give you an idea, I mean, we're talking my starting salary, there was something like 30,000, right? I mean, I was just so happy to get in the door somewhere and work somewhere, but, you know, that's he would just give us these huge caseloads, felonies and misdemeanors and say, hey, go figure it out, figure out how to do it. And what year was that? So that was back, you know, around 2008, 2009, when I first started practicing and I was working for this attorney named Bradley Johnson, who I feel was, I was fortunate to start working for him because he really knew how to run a business. You know, I look around and I'd see a lot of attorneys, you know, they didn't really, they didn't necessarily even have a logo or a website, you know, or kind of value that part of it. And there was this perception of, well, this isn't a business, you're, we're attorneys, we're a respected profession. You shouldn't, you're not advertising your services in that way. You're just supposed to go out and be a good lawyer and people will talk about you. And to some degree, I agree, but I also feel like generally, you know, the public kind of needs to know who you are. And that's part of the, that's the cornerstone of the show in some ways, which is there's the business of law and the practice of law. And when you can make both of them work, you know, we can do amazing things, but you got to make them both work. So you start out as a criminal defense lawyer, did you know you wanted to be an appellate lawyer because, you know, it's my experience, the friends of mine who went into appellate law, they sort of stumbled into it. They started a firm and they put on these on a bunch of cases and they just sort of found their way to appellate work. Your sounds different and in some ways it sounds much more calculated and with intent. How'd you get there? And maybe even malicious, I don't know, but, you know, it was really kind of segue from criminal defense that I had the opportunity. I kind of befriended a very well known appellate attorney in Seattle, kind of where I started out and where I grew up, where I was in law school and I was just sending letters unsolicited to different lawyers saying, I'd like a job or an internship, I want to learn, you know, can you hire me? You know, Eric, can I do some work for you? And so this very, probably the most known appellate attorney was one of the few attorneys that got back to me and said, yeah, you know, I have some legal writing and research. I could use some help on my campaign, a small amount, would you want to, you know, work with me? And I did. And I really enjoyed it. And I really thought about the prospect of writing and it was different. There was a contrast from criminal defense because in criminal defense, 90% of the time you're working out a plea deal. It's just the nature of the way that the practice works. A lot of times you're client unfortunately is not innocent, you know, in their guilty or at least partially guilty and you're working out a resolution, but you're not really exposing the law or getting into the law. And what I really enjoyed about the appellate practice is that there has to be some legal conclusion at the end. It's usually not settled or pled. Typically there's going to be an opinion at the end that makes a decision and you have to articulate the law behind it. What I also liked about it was just that I would go into these criminal courts and see mistakes made all the time and no criticism. Myself included, I might have made some mistakes, but these judges have these very lengthy calendars and prosecutors have these huge caseloads and as the public defenders and it's inherent that throughout that process you might miss something with all the different cases that you handle. And early on, you know, I think that I wasn't necessarily maybe the smartest or most scholarly lawyer, but my thing was I can outwork anyone. And that's kind of how I always was kind of learned it from my dad. He was an insurance agent. He would be up early. He would be handing out brochures at different houses, you know, auto home and life and he would just outwork everyone. And that's kind of what he instilled in me is I would just go out there and I would take every case that I could that that would come to me. I mean, it didn't really matter what they could pay. Can you pay $100 a month? Great. I'm taking your case. It didn't matter how far it was. I'd be driving out to Eastern Washington. I mean, I think there might be, I don't know how many counters there are in Washington, but I'm pretty sure I've been to all of them with the exception of two. Now I'm not saying that that's the way you should do things. You know, a lot of times you want to work smarter than harder, but at that point in my career, I was thinking, I just want to get my name out. And I want to burn as much as I can and learn as much as I can and take on as many cases as I can. And so I was driving all over the place, getting to know all these different courts and how they work. So how old were you when you when you put a shingle out to open your own firm? It's honestly scary when I say this, but I think I was 26 going on 27 and I can't believe they even give you a law license at that age. I tell young lawyers all the time that like I barely became competent. Like when the firm I started with made me a partner before that I don't think I knew what I was doing. So you're 26 27. You open up a firm. How much of the work are you initially doing that's a pellet work versus kind of standard criminal work or even some civil work? I would say a very small percentage. I worked for this attorney for a little while just while I was in law school and I really started to like a pellet law, but I didn't think it was something I could get right into. So while I was driving all around Washington State, taking all these different cases and taking them for any amount of money that anybody had, I was referred a case by him and he said, you know, I have a petition for review that would need to go to the Washington Supreme Court. This client wants to hire someone. Would that be something that you'd be interested in? And I said, absolutely, you know, I'd written a couple of appeals and I felt pretty good about my writing ability, but this was a big one. I mean, it was petition for review. This client was sentenced for a long time. And I thought, gosh, I should really take this seriously. So what I did is I was working in this office space with other attorneys and I found this very experienced attorney that had written a lot of appeals. I mean, she probably been practicing for 30 years or so. And I said, look, I'm about to take on this appellate case. Can you help me with this? Can I hire you to help me write this brief? Because I thought, you know, can I write this? I really put this all on myself. I'm a solo attorney. I have some friends that I can bounce things off of, but they're probably not gonna wanna read the whole brief. And this client, you know, at the time, was paying $10,000. And to me, that was huge. I mean, that was a big ticket item. I mean, my gosh, I was doing these DUIs and felonies for a couple thousand bucks. You know, I was just happy to get the work. And so 10,000 was, oh my gosh, I really wanna give this client value and be confident with this. So I walked down the hall and I talked to this attorney and I think I paid her, you know, maybe $4,000 or $5,000 to help write the brief and do the research. And she did a great job. She did a phenomenal job. And so I was honest with the client and told them that I was working with this very experienced attorney, which they were happy with. And that's kind of where the idea blossomed of, you know, I'm not necessarily the person that's gonna give my client the best, the attorney that's gonna give my client the best chance on their case. Sometimes why not find someone that's smarter, that's a better writer, that's more experienced than I am to help handle the work. - Now let me stop you there, 'cause that's a really fascinating story I wanna kind of tear that apart a bit. Is it that you were already thinking of a business model in which you kind of wanna leverage the expertise of someone else, or is it you were kind of more in that panic mode of, you know, I took this case on and I don't really, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing or was it something in between. Like, well, what was your thought process because you clearly stumbled into a business model and we're gonna explore more in a couple of minutes, but how'd that come to be? - I think it was definitely panic mode, probably 98% panic mode, maybe 2% of visionary, what was the problem? But yeah, I think that, and especially the fact that I basically split the fee in half with this other attorney, right? I mean, that's not necessarily a good business that's going to make you profitable as I learned later. But so, yes, it was probably out of panic, but I kind of had a revelation at that point, kind of an aha moment. And the same went for just the criminal defense part of things where if it wasn't a meaningful hearing, if I wasn't going there to actually have a client take a plea or go to trial and they were just getting a continuance, why not send another attorney there? If you're telling the client in advance, that's how it's going to be, why am I gonna drive, you know, two hours to this place when we're just saying your honor, we're asking for a continuance, we have more time to negotiate, et cetera. So, I started to realize, and the people who, I would hire to do these things, were really grateful, you know, they couldn't necessarily start a firm on their own, they weren't necessarily people that were going to go work for a firm or could work for a firm. So, they were just happy to have the opportunity to get work. And I started kind of using as many contract attorneys as I could knowing that, okay, now I can focus on, bringing in the business, I can focus on, you know, doing good work for the clients without, doing everything from the road like the Lincoln lawyer, you know, which is basically like a not a biography when I saw that movie, doing all this work on the road was tough. So, I would say it was out of panic mode, but that was probably the aha moment, the revelation I had of, I don't have to do everything myself. And I should-- - It's not even best, yeah, it's not even best for the client to do it all yourself. - Absolutely, absolutely. - Okay, so that moment happens, you get your revelation of kind of what the business model, you know, will start to look like going forward, you know, how does the firm progress over the next couple of years? - Well, so the next couple of years, I went from not only going everywhere around Washington State to every court hearing that I could and taking every client that I could, but I also then decided to move to California, which is a long story involving a woman and you know, it didn't work out, but ended up taking the bar there and passed it thank goodness the first time and started taking criminal defense clients in California. Now, most of my roots and friends and family were in Washington, so I was going back and forth. So now not only am I driving everywhere, but I'm flying and trust me Greg, I didn't have a private jet. This is, you know, Southwest commercial, you know, enjoying the peanuts, just stand by, just going back and forth from California to Washington to different hearings and continue the criminal defense practice. And at a certain point, after doing that for a long time, you know, I got kind of burned out from traveling all the time and kind of realized that I don't need to continue doing things that way. So I started finding coverage attorneys in Washington that again, we're really happy to cover for me. And so what's the percentage of cases at this point in time though? What percentage is kind of traditional trial court criminal work versus a public work? I think even at that point, I probably had, you know, 95% criminal defense, 5% appeals. And so it wasn't until about 2012, 2013, kind of right when I first passed the bar in California and I started dating my now wife, who, you know, I have a two and a half year old with and who was really a big part of my success 'cause she ended up working with me and she has no legal training but she was the best paralegal I ever had. You know, I kind of told her, well, I really like doing these appeals and I, you know, driving everywhere is a little crazy and it's getting a little tiresome and why don't I just start an appeals practice? And, you know, she encouraged it, but you know, when I was talking to other friends and other attorneys, they were kind of like, well, how do you just start an appeals practice? You've been a criminal defense attorney, that's how people know you. How do you just do that? And that kind of goes back to kind of the theme we talked about at the beginning of, and what you said is, I've never heard of that before. You sold a law firm, I've never heard of that before. You're gonna just start an appellate firm and you're a criminal defense attorney. I've never heard of that before, you know? And so that was kind of, I just had in my mind, okay, I'm just going to do this. And I looked around and there weren't a lot of appellate attorneys out there in general that just did that. A lot of appellate attorneys also did litigation or they also did criminal defense and it was just one of the services they offered. But I thought if I can just purely do appellate work, maybe this can be something. So initially I started doing all the drafting, all the briefing myself, and I was using kind of internet marketing and referrals and the same attorney that referred me that first case initially, I said, hey, please, anything overflow, anything where they can't afford you, send them to me, because I'll take all comers still. And that was something I didn't dial into later, of course, is it's not only about making as much revenues, you can be also have to be profitable, you have to be smart, my decision. So throughout my, most of my early career, I didn't have a lot of reserves. I was really operating off my name and account receivables. - Right, so at the end before you sell the firm, what's the percentage of work that's appellate at that point in time? - So at the end, when I sold my firm, 100%, so it was 100% of appellate work, and I probably had close to 200 pending appellate cases by the time I sold the firm. So, okay, so I'm doing the best I can to have some self-discipline to avoid asking those questions until we kind of figure out how this firm works, but how is it that you market a firm like that? Because my expectation is that with kind of a consumer criminal practice, it's a referral based work, or just your name gets out there, and client kind of thing. How do you market an appellate practice? Is it that you're selling to clients, or is it that you're selling to attorneys who need that expertise? - You know, a lot of people told me you should try to sell to attorneys that need that expertise, and I did. I did reach out to a lot of attorneys I knew, and I even did some kind of cold calling, and emailing, and mailing, saying, "Hey, I started this appellate practice, "please refer clients to me." But the reality is there's only so many cases that need to be referred for appeals. A lot of attorneys, especially criminal defense attorneys, they may have one or two a year that they take the trial, and the rest are resolving and settling. So I kind of realized that I couldn't just rely on that. I had to diversify my marketing portfolio, you could say, and so I started just really focusing on SEO, and I had this great website company that did SEO, and I worked for a long time with them on how I wanted the website to look, how I wanted it to feel. I actually told them originally, I wanted to look like the show's suits. Can you guys make that happen? Because again, I was really into legal shows, and by then I was a lot more jaded than I was originally, as far as my idealism and how things were, not like you see on TV or movies when it comes to practicing, but I kind of thought that I would expose this niche that I didn't think really was being explored of just doing SEO for appeals, where if someone needs an appeals lawyer, where do they go? And the reality is a lot of people that are appealing, even now the potential clients that they talk to, they're not a huge fan of their trial council, because their trial council lost. - Well, that's really where I was gonna go with this, which is, boy, I know a couple of appellate lawyers, and their work is probably 100% litigation appellate work, but it's 100% premised upon the trial lawyer bringing them into help them, and my guess was this looked a lot different. My guess is that you were actually targeting the end client who'd had a bad outcome, who was looking for somebody to take it, to sort of redo it. And how does that work with the trial lawyer? Are they cooperative? Do they just turn over their file and kind of say, I'm done with it? Nobody likes to be second-guest. Nobody likes the Monday morning quarterback. - Of course, of course, and that is how I would describe being an appellate attorney, the Monday morning quarterback, and in criminal defense, a lot of the arguments you're making on appeal are ineffective assistance of council. You know, you don't make a lot of friends that way, of course, but I think that a lot of times, you know, the appeal is based only on what's in the record. As you know, I know you handle appeals, and I saw your resume, which is amazing. But even no matter how much insight that trial attorney gives you at the end of the day, you still have to review all those transcripts, and maybe they can point you to something that they thought was notable. But most of the time, when they're done with the case, and it depends on the type of attorney and how, the relationship they have with their client, but a lot of times they just kind of want to be done with the case. And they won't even be willing to file the notice of appeal for their client because they're done. They're not going to go back in their rear view mirror. So as much as I'd like to talk to the trial attorney and get a feel for it, you'd be surprised how little that happens. And then that practically don't really need it because you have a record. It's the total record. And so that is interesting. And kind of insightful for how you can find a niche that just I've never really heard of. So let's talk about how it operates. How do you take on a client? Is it hourly? Is it flat fee? What does your structure look like? So I found that-- and I kind of learned this through criminal defense-- that it's all flat fee, partly because I would have high case load. And it's hard to keep the billing on all of them, especially if it's one person shop. But also just because if you were to bill hourly on an appeal, a lot of times it's going to be way higher than the flat fee. And people just can't afford it. And I think that was part of the other reason for the success in that niche is that I made it an affordable service for people. A lot of times, especially in criminal, somebody is convicted and sentenced. They're in prison. Their family's trying to come up with funds for them to appeal. And they can't pay an hourly that's may be $30,000. $40,000 is just not sustainable. And so I would work with people and take a certain amount down. And I mean, as you know, an appeal on average lasts between a year and two years on average. So they would be making payments throughout the case that have them on a monthly payment plan. And so it was kind of hourly billing. And that I was getting consistent revenue every month from each client. But flat fee model seemed to just not only the client prefer it, but it just made it easier to manage everything that I was doing. So it was all flat. I ran this-- I ran pretty good sites from one point in my life. And when I was a managing partner, we brought in a pretty significant note worthy criminal practice that tended to be-- it was very interesting. It was a combination of high end white collar and then capital murder cases of fairly well-to-do defendants. Wow. And I was trying to-- we had this great partner, Dominic. And I was trying to learn the practice once. We have this conversation I asked him, well, why are you doing this on flat fee? Is it supposed to be the hourly that we're used to? And he kind of looked at me. And in a way, I won't do an impression because he's just great personality. He said, Greg, if I lose, they're in jail. How are they going to pay us? So that sort of seems obvious, would you say it that way? It's a great point. Yeah. Yeah. It almost becomes a contingency at that point. Well, the worst possible business model is the contingent hourly fee. Like there's no worst business model for a lawyer to be in and that. Right. Right. OK. So you bring them in. You do a fair volume of cases. So is there kind of an economy of scale? I mean, you made the comment that a lot of these cases are ineffective assistance of counsel. Do you have sort of a brief bank of case law on that point that you can utilize kind of its scale? Yes. I mean, there definitely had a brief bank. And there were a lot of the same issues that would come up, especially on the criminal side. On the civil side, not as much. Usually, it was pretty unique. But I was also doing post-conviction, kind of personal restraint petitions in Washington and habeas petitions in California. So it wasn't always something where you could reinvent the wheel. But where I really had success was kind of starting to contract that workout. Because it's a lot for one person to draft all those briefs and do everything else. It was nice that I wasn't having to travel all the time to court like I was for criminal defense. So I found that my time freed up considerably. Because the oral argument was usually only 10 minutes. And it happens sometimes the case doesn't even have an oral argument, depending on the jurisdiction. So I started working with contract attorneys. And this is how we met. That's how we met. Yeah. Now, I unfortunately had to kind of kiss a lot of frogs before I found a lockler and found your service and not to make it sound like an infomercial. But it really was revolutionary compared to what I was dealing with. I had this attorney that was a brilliant writer, but he charged $5,000 to draft a brief. And a lot of the cases that was about what I was getting for the whole case, or maybe I was getting double that. But it wasn't going to be a profitable model to work with this attorney on every case. And so he would do a great job. But guess how many cases I won with him drafting the briefing? Zero. I mean, with an appeal no matter how well the brief is written, there's no guarantee that you're going to win. And frankly, the winning percentage is maybe around 10%. And I always tell clients that upfront, I'm very ethical about that. And I'll say, look, it's a very low percentage. I understand you don't want to throw in the towel. You want to go for it. And we'll do the best we can with what we have to work with. But the reality is I was working with this attorney, but it wasn't like we were winning cases. And some clients are, but some clients weren't necessarily sophisticated enough to really know the difference between him using some Michaelins perfectly and maybe an attorney that gets it done and writes well and finds the right issues. And so I started-- - We all know that lawyer. What's the value of if it costs twice as much to get from 92% to 98% sort of what's the incremental value for the client? That's all the hard part in this business. - Exactly, that's exactly right. So I started working with a kind of a handful of contract attorneys, but it really wasn't all that profitable at the beginning because they were charging a lot. And then there was a lot of contract attorneys and this was kind of my mistake. I had to kind of internalize on this one that they were delivering me a brief, but it wasn't really done. You know, it was kind of, I still had to do the tables and I still had to make sure the cover page was proper and I still had to fix a lot of mistakes. And so by the time I did all that, you know, I spent hours on it, I might as well have written the brief myself. And so part of what I kind of started including with the direction of the attorneys was, hey, this is the template. You know, this is how you do it. This is what it should look like. These are the court roles to follow. And what was beautiful about Law Clerk is that, you know, I could post all of that up front and the attorneys, you know, kind of could understand that. And they were, and I would say, you know, I really need a ready to file brief. And if that's not something you can produce, totally understand, but I've got to go with someone else. And that resonated and people realized like, part of their fee that they were earning for writing was to have a ready to file brief. The other thing that I think was huge that I learned a lot was with client communication, right? A lot of attorneys will tell you that the hardest part about being an attorney. And frankly, I would say what drove me out of wanting to practice ultimately was having to deal with clients. And don't get me wrong. I've had some great clients. I appreciate a lot of my clients, but gosh, there have been some tough ones that just want to make your life miserable despite how hard you work for them. And my biggest issue was boundaries. Because when I started out, my own law firm, I would tell people, hey, text me anytime. That's where I'm going to separate myself from other attorneys. You can always reach me. I'm always going to get back to you. And so I would be at night texting people back. They'd be texting me at all hours in the morning. My boundaries were not good. And I'd advise any lawyer, get your boundaries firm from the beginning because it's not worth it to have to deal with that. So I kind of carried that attitude into appeals where clients are sending me all these letters from prison. They're wanting to set up calls all the time. And so I felt myself spending so much time, answering their questions on things that weren't even part of the record. I mean, I would tell them, look, I understand your arguments are valid, but this isn't part of what's in the transcript. So I can't even use it. There's no way that I could even use this. I agree with you that it's unfair, but these are the rules of appeals. The rules of a fellow procedure don't allow me to include that. So what I started doing is when I would delegate the brief to a law clerk, I would also provide them all of the client questions. So I would say, I would give my client an input form at the beginning and say, please write down anything you think is important. Within reason, anything you want me to read, anything that you think I should weigh in on, but this is going to be your one and only shot to do that. And so I would get all of their feedback. And then along with what I would assign to law clerk, I would provide them, I would provide the writer the questions. And I would say, these are the questions the client asked. This is what they think is important. In addition to drafting the brief, please address these questions or explain why you don't think some of these issues should go into the brief. And they would do that. And they were happy to do it because by the time they wrote the brief, they knew the material very well. So they would come back with the answers to the client. I would provide the client the draft of the brief along with those answers. And usually that was kind of the end of the communication. Unless the client was very unreasonable, they felt like, hey, you did answer my questions. It also kind of covered myself, or if they would ever complain that I wasn't responsive or communicative with them. Here's all this written evidence that I addressed every single one of their questions or comments. So that was a big help in kind of the communication with the client and not having to keep going back and forth with them, but having it all in one fell swoop of communication. Right. So towards the end, before you saw the practice, you're doing hundreds and hundreds of appeals. Are you-- do you have any full-time lawyers working for you or is it all contract labor that people you've gotten comfortable with or how did you staff it? Yeah, it was all contract labor. And that made the most sense because hiring somebody on is, let's say, a briefwriter, it was probably going to be more expensive than just delegating the briefs. Just unless they could write five of them a week, which a lot of them couldn't, it was nice to have different options, kind of have a whole team of 10 people, 12 people, to delegate to because one person would be busy with these three briefs. So let's go to the next person down the line and the next person down the line. And there were some people that just were really good at certain types of briefs that, you know, I had my family law pellet attorney and my civil pellet attorney and criminal. So I kept it all contract, but I was always up front with the client. You know, that, hey, I work with these contract attorneys. They're great. You know, I can give you as much information about them as you want, but they're going to be, you know, assisting with drafting the brief. And the clients usually not only were they happy, you know, not only were they okay with it, but they were pleased with it. Like, oh, great. You know, we're going to have more eyes on this as long as you're up front with them. They were happy with it. So I had, you know, probably, I would say with all the law clerks, I was using 20 lawyers, maybe 20 contract attorneys, maybe more, that I was using on a regular basis. And if everybody was so busy, you know, because I had sent them so much work, then there was always another one on deck that I could post the project and kind of vet that attorney and make sure that they were good and make sure that they had the proper instructions for me. Because I think that's a really important part of it. But yeah, it was just my wife and I on the couch in an apartment, you know, with her being the paralegal and filing the briefs and filing the designations and me, you know, doing the sales and delegating the brief writing work, it was just the two of us doing it all, which seems, you know, insane. And which ultimately led to, you know, us wanting to sell the practice. But yeah, that was all we had. And for all anyone would have known and not that we were ever misleading, but for all anyone would have guessed, it was a large law firm in a brick and mortar place, you know, downtown with tons of attorneys. Because how else could I have done it? But yeah, that was how it was working. And how much of your, how much of your work was coming digitally by SEO or, or kind of other advertising means? I would say probably about 50% was SEO. I would say maybe 20% were referrals from existing clients. Now, I mean, the clients that are in prison, they talk absolutely the clients that are in prison. And initially what I would do is I would go to every prison and I would sit down with the client and I would get to know them and I would give them some of my cards and I would talk about the case with them, which no other attorney did. There was no appellate attorney that would actually physically go to the prison because why would you, you know, economically, it doesn't make sense. They're not paying you per hour. But I would go do it because I wanted to sit down with them and it was sustainable back when I, you know, was single and starting out and all that. So I would go and I'd sit down with them and I'd learn about their case and they started spreading the word about me because no other attorney would do that. No other attorney would take phone calls, kind of the appellate model for most firms. You know, I'm sure there's exceptions, but a lot of firms are like, look, everything's limited to the record. We're going to just draft the best brief we can with our professional judgment. We'll spend it to you after we file it. And that's it. You know, but but these clients were like, hey, he's going to listen to you. He's going to get back to you. I've heard that pitch and it comes off sometimes a little disingenuous and that, you know, they sort of say things like, oh, you know, the appellate court, are we looking at it cold? It's beneficial for us to look at it exactly the same way the appellate court will. I've heard that and it rings hollow to me. So I totally hear what you're saying. It's a convenient excuse. You know, I did not talk to the client or, you know, a lot of times other attorneys wouldn't want to talk to the client's family. You know, they'd say, well, we're only going to talk to the client, but the client's in prison and half the time they can't even call if they want to. So I would, you know, get the clients consent and I would talk to their family members and, you know, people really would spread the word about that because they just, I have one particular client who actually had success with and got a sentence reduced significantly who, you know, really spread the word. I mean, he was referring, he's probably referred me, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say 30 clients. You know, yeah, he just really was giving everyone my card and telling them to call me. And yeah, I mean, I'd say a good portion of the referrals I was getting were from clients that were in prison because they said other attorneys kind of wouldn't listen to them or or any that. And frankly, not a lot of what they would mention would go into the brief, but at least they felt hurt. At least they felt like a little context. I mean, it is there for when you put together. So, okay, so wait, so 50% of it kind of come in digitally 20, I think percent you said referral. Kind of where's the other component of it? The other component was probably from other attorneys from other criminal defense attorneys or civil attorneys who either they lost the case and they wanted to refer it or they just were, you know, for some reason someone called them, they said, we don't handle appeals, but I know someone who does and I would of course refer the clients to those trial attorneys and, you know, give them advice that they ever needed it and wouldn't charge them anything for it. So I kind of established those relationships, but again, even so, you know, maybe that's two cases a year, you know, from all those different attorneys. So I'm super envious of this business model because you found a way to find your niche in the world that doesn't require sort of big expensive infrastructure, kind of space and tenant improvements and doesn't require kind of a big overhead of staff, but sounds almost infinitely scalable up and down to put it upon what your workflow looks like. That's a lot practice that almost none of us can imagine that's, well, it's just genius and I haven't heard of it before. I appreciate it. I've certainly heard of like the virtual firm with kind of scalable, I mean, scalable associates in the like, we're in that business, you know, I hear about that story all the time, but not the way you did it with kind of a referral of incarcerated clients that's kind of fascinating. So, okay, now, we'll have to talk about since the beginning. What's the moment when which you either say, and what do you say? Do you say, I'm tired, this is exhausting, I kind of want to do it in a different way or do something else, or do you say, I've put this thing together and it's valuable and others will buy it. Like, where does this moment come from where you decide to sell a firm? Well, so again, it was kind of a, you know, I've never heard of that before, moment, you know, and just now it's funny that we're in this pandemic and all of a sudden everyone's virtual, but at the time when I was working virtually, people were like, what are you talking about? You don't have an office? How do you work from your couch? That doesn't make sense. And sure enough, everyone's doing that now. So, I'm glad that, you know, it kind of ended up that way and people are saving on overhead. It does make a lot of sense. And there's, you know, plus and minuses. But the time that I realized was Thanksgiving of 2018. It was Thanksgiving morning and my wife and I had just had our son Luke. He was born May of that year. So he was, you know, a little baby and I was working like crazy, but I wanted to spend time with him and my wife at that time, I mean, gosh, it was so hard for her to work. She had just given birth and she's, you know, when he goes down for a nap, she's coming in and filing briefs and doing designations and, you know, it was a lot for her to do. She didn't really get to have a break. And I would try as much as I could to do the work for her, you know, as much as I could, but there were some things, frankly, that she could do and we could do a whole other podcast on how amazing she was and how I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her doing all that work and how she was really the one that made this firm and the sale happen. But, you know, it was just kind of at a place where I'm like, I'm waking up on Thanksgiving morning. Most people are just relaxing. They're going to go hang out with their families and or, you know, maybe they're going to do that later, but they're going to just relax in the morning. And I had to get right onto my laptop and work and I was getting text messages from clients. And, you know, I thought to myself, like, this isn't normal. You know, I, I don't, I don't love this anymore. And plus, I always kind of had a fear and a stress of the bar, you know, I was always super ethical because I, you know, because I think you should be that way. But I always had this fear that something's going to happen, something's going to go sideways. Despite my best efforts, the bar is going to come in and shut me down. They're going to disbar me. I'm going to get suspended. It's going to be okay. I don't know. That doesn't sound like a rational fear to me. Right. You're, you said like the most ethical appellate lawyer I've ever met. Well, what, what was your worry? You know, I think it was just this, this, this, uh, fear or this paranoia that had been built into me from older attorneys, more experienced attorneys from when I was, when I first started out of just like, you got to be careful. People who, you know, lose their bar license, you got to make sure that you are, you know, dotting all your eyes and crossing all your teeth. And so I just kind of had this concern of like, especially with taking on this many clients, and some of them not being the most normal or rational that, you know, that something like that could happen. It's just, I feel like with other businesses, there are fears. People have economic fears and concerns, but there's always that fear in the back of an attorney's mind. And maybe they're, you know, not as irrational, I guess in that context as I am, but I just kind of always had this concern of like, I could, something could happen. One of these attorneys, or one of these clients could go sideways on me, they could complain and maybe it wouldn't even go anywhere, but I'd have to deal with it, you know, I'd have to try and tell my kids all the time because it, it comes out of my experiences of lawyer, you, you can't reason with crazy, right? And luckily, like, you know, never once in my career was I sued by a client for malpractice, um, you know, oh for, oh for two decades. You know what? I was sued twice by the opposing counsel. I'm sorry, the opposing client wow, malpractice. Uh, one time like the, the opposing client, we settled in, in like a court, court mandated settlement conference, put the settlement on the record, then subsequently sued me for malpractice, the, being the opposing lawyer and suit the judge for false imprisonment. Wow. We're like, comparing him to, to, to go to this little conference. So I understand that weird stuff happens, but stress, the stress of it sounds like it was getting to you. So, okay, so you decide to sell it. I got, I'm going to wrap two questions into one, which is, what are you selling? Are you selling sort of this infrastructure that includes the SEO and like, are you selling a brand or, or are you selling kind of a stream of cases? It sounds more like, you're you're selling a brand and a business process. And then secondarily, and kind of the same question, which is how does this work with the clients? We need to decide to sell your firm. - So yeah, I mean, it was Thanksgiving, and I just realized like, I wanna spend time with my son and not be stressed out all the time. I don't want him to grow up and see me just, always being stressed out, always having to work, always thinking in the back of my mind about something that's due or getting back to some client. I don't wanna have that life forever. And so I was very fortunate that I have a friend, and I'll plug him, his name's Justin Farmer. He's with the company called Private Practice Transitions. And he's based in Washington state and he's going to be expanding to different states. And I mean, he went to my high school, college, and law school. We always kinda stayed in touch. And he was just such an innovative person, and he was working at like a doing legal recruiting. 'Cause he realized early on, he didn't wanna practice law. And he started this company where he sells law firms. And even when he started, even when he started it, as much as I respected him, I was like, my gosh, how is that gonna work? How are you gonna sell law firms? Who buys law firms? But man, he was good at it. And he started a successful business himself for this niche of, I guess attorneys who wanted to start their own practice, maybe they had the financial ability or they had the ability to get funding, 'cause part of what he would do is get people SBA funding to buy something that is already working, something that already exists, not start from scratch, already kinda have the name. And so he and I had kept in touch, and he had kinda helped me when I started the appellate practice, he gave me some ideas and consulted with me. And I thought of him, and I sent him an email, I think it was either on Thanksgiving or the day after, and I said, hey, I don't wanna practice anymore. You gotta help me get outta here. Do you think I can sell my practice? Like is that even possible? And I was thinking he was gonna tell me, there's no way, I only sell large law firms, there's no way that this is going to happen. And so he kinda asked, well, what's your revenue? Like how are you doing? And I said, well, usually we're doing over a million a year in revenue. He's like, you're doing, how many people do you have? And I said, it's just my wife and I, and he was shocked. And he said, well, yeah, of course I can sell that. I said, who wouldn't want to firm like that? Most attorneys, he knew or are not doing that kind of revenue, not even close. So he was able to frame it in a way that was honest, but kind of highlighted the strength of it, which was virtual appellate law firm. And a lot of, he framed it in a way, he put it in the bar journal, he, I think, did some online marketing himself. And we had a few people that were kind of interested. There was a guy in New York who was like in his 80s who was thinking of buying it, but he wanted me to still do everything, and that kind of defeated the purpose. Of course, because I wanted out. - It sounds like, yeah, that sounds like the way doctors sell their practices. You sell it to someone else and then stick around. - Right, right, right. So he, yeah, so he understood that I very much that I wanted out and he kind of had all the numbers. You know, he had the revenue and the profit. And so during that time, I was working to make the business even more profitable, right? 'Cause we're selling it. We want the numbers to be as good as they can be. And that's why I really put the pedal to the metal with Law Clerk. I stopped using these kind of more expensive contract attorneys and only used Law Clerk. And he loved using Law Clerk and the eventual owner, I should say, or the buyer, he was actually on Law Clerk himself taking on projects. You know, just some extra work. He was doing legal consulting for Law firms and he was really good at it and telling them how they could grow and how they can improve. And so he probably from, so the firm was listed for sale, I think, in January. And I think around June or July is when the current owner who is a brilliant guy who was kind of just like a love connection from the beginning, who he saw the potential and the value in it. And he loved the fact that it was virtual. That he's based in Michigan. He hasn't set foot in Washington or California, especially since this pandemic started. You know, he hasn't been able to travel. But he kind of saw the value, how much it made every year. You know, the revenue, the profitability, he looked at all those numbers and said, you know, this makes sense. And so he made an offer that was above and beyond what I ever could have imagined. I mean, it, yeah. So not to talk about specifics. Yeah. But what kind of metric do you look at when you sell a offer? Is it, is it a multiple of, of kind of profit? Is it a multiple of revenue? Is it, is it trailing cases? Like, what, how does that negotiation work? Well, there, there is this, and I'm probably going to butcher this term, but the Ibeda, I believe is. Yeah. And, and so, you know, it's kind of like any other business. You know, the seller, the broker rather kind of broke down all of that, you know, the, the revenue, the profitability, the expenses. Another big part of it was the account receivables. Because I had so many of these clients on payment plans, the account receivables were very high. And he stood to gain a lot by coming in and taking over these account receivables and these cases where a lot of the work had already been done. We're, let's say at the reply brief stage, or we're just waiting on oral argument. And the client still has a number of payments to go. So the account receivables was, was a big part of it of what he saw kind of would be the working capital, you know, once he, he purchased it. And then the SBA loan, you know, that he didn't have to just come out of pocket and buy the whole thing. But it was based really on gross revenue, is how it was listed. There's a multiple of Ibeda that that that work? Yes, yeah. And it's a standard. That's a standard business metric. You just, you know, most firms aren't set up. Well, professional services in general aren't really set up for that because you don't necessarily have clients who stick around and, you know, sort of others finishing up stuff. So that's, that's, that's fascinating. And so, so he buys the firm. How do you manage the clients? So, well, that was the tricky part, you know, is, is kind of, I had in my mind kind of again, being the idealist of how things go in the TV and movies. Like when I started criminal defense and thought that would win every case, that he would come on board October of 2019. The sale was done. I'm, my hands are washed. I'm, I'm moving on. Of course, that, that's not even close to the case. You know, he, he, he wanted to make that happen for me as much as he could, but these clients are all, they all know me. They, they all hired me. And so I couldn't just leave. Also, I did want to, I really enjoyed doing business development in sales. That was the part of practicing law that I, that I enjoyed. And if I thought, gosh, if I can do that and not have to worry about the liability part of it that, that scared me so much and that I didn't enjoy and the stress of that. And also just the, you know, economics of running the business, which I didn't love either, this could be a really good gig. And in his mind, he was thinking, well, you know how to bring in clients. And if you just focus on that and nothing else, you know, this could, this could really work. And so he built it into more of a traditional law firm, although it is all virtual. And where we have, you know, paralegals, because my wife, of course, wanted to get out as soon as she could on the sale. And he built it into something amazing. He kind of got more systems in place. He has, you know, uses Cleo and Cleo Grow. And it's more, I would say formal, formalized it as far as how he put all these systems in place. So initially, you know, it was a lot of hustling on my part because I still had to do the work. And I wanted things to be good with him. So I wanted, I wanted him to be successful. And I wanted to continue to work with him. And so I think by both of us being unselfish, him working to kind of get me out of what I hated doing and me really hustling for him and doing what I didn't really like to do, but knowing it was going to be short lived, made us successful. Neither of us were greedy. We both were invested in the firm doing well. And, you know, now about, you know, over a year later, I'm still believing in not involved in some of these cases that are kind of coming to an end. We're at the tail end of them. But we, you know, put out an announcement ethically that I had sold the firm. And here's going to be the new attorney's hand-learned case. I'm still going to be in the background. I'm still going to, you know, I'm going to make sure to hand it off properly. A lot of clients weren't happy about that, but they stayed with us. Once I kind of reassured them, it would be taken care of. So, yeah, that's kind of where we are today. >> To prime the specifics, but so did the deal come with like an urn out? Like a traditional kind of urn out that you to see in a traditional business sale? >> You know, what I love about this owner, he described it. And I, you know, I don't know if this is the best terminology for podcasts, but the broker kind of asked them, like, so do you want to do kind of an urn out? Because some of the owners that we had talked to before, the potential buyers were talking about an urn out. And he goes, an urn out. He's like, no, that's a dick move. I wouldn't do an urn out. You know? >> That's good. >> And that's good. >> Yeah, he's very laid back. He's been around. He doesn't take it himself too seriously or anything too seriously. And that's why, like, we work so well. He's just, is always the first to kind of crack a joke and make light of things. He, you know, takes what he does seriously, but he's a funny guy. And you met him briefly, I think, in the meeting that we had. He's just a really, really good guy. One of the best I've ever met. And so, yeah, he realized that if I had to do an urn out, I probably wasn't going to be happy. I probably wasn't going to want to continue working with him. You know, and it just, he, he, he, he's one of those people that realizes, like, if everyone in his organization is happy, they don't feel like they're being micromanaged, they're going to work. You know, they're going to work hard for you. And that's the case. I mean, I feel very indebted to him because he helped me get out of this, this practice in this situation I didn't want to be in. And I want to work hard for him. And, you know, it's been really great. You said something that, I might be reading too much into it. But you said something that seemed pretty insightful to me, which is, you said you were sticking around to do marketing and sales. I don't remember the exact phrase you used, but I think you said business development sales. - Yes. - Yeah. 99% of lawyers in the world call that rain making. And why I thought it felt insightful was that you just look at the business of law different than most anybody I've met in a kind of refreshing way. And you look at the traditional concept of being a rain maker in a different way. Like I can just tell from the words you use that you just approach it different. And I think law needs more of that. But you're cut from a bit of a different cloth than some of your contemporaries. And I think it's great. I think it's insightful. But kind of last question, where does law go from here and how do you fit in it? 'Cause the story you told is inspirational, but what are you gonna do? How are, what's your future? You're clearly too young to retire, but I'm sure there's some on your horizon. - Yeah, I really enjoy what I'm doing with the firm now. He's branded it from the law office of Cory Parker, my name, to the Appellate Law firm. And I think it's a great name, 'cause it's very clear what we do, where we do appeals. And that's what we do all day every day. It's the Appellate Law firm. And I really enjoy doing the rain making it, as you would say, but the business development in sales, because I believe that the attorneys I'm handing it off to are great. I know that they're great briefwriters. I know that it's going to be taken care of. I still have an eye on everything and how it's going to work. So I'm kind of doing what I enjoy without having to do the parts that I don't enjoy. And it's benefiting the new owner, because he's not having to worry about bringing revenue in, because I'm doing it for him. That's a piece of firms that a lot of attorney struggle with is how do you bring in revenue while also doing good work on your client's cases and communicating. So he's kind of segmented everything. Every role in the firm, including a client communications attorney, attorney that just talks to the clients, which I thought was a brilliant move on his part, so that the briefwriters don't have to worry about that part, because that's a different skill set. So as far as moving forward, I mean, my ideal situation would be to continue in this role in perpetuity. I hope that the new owner is going to have success, and he has had success. The last year has been very successful with the way that he's running everything. And I enjoy seeing how he puts the pieces together. And he involves me in a lot of those decisions, which is great. And so yeah, I think in a perfect world, if I could continue doing this and growing the firm, and maybe have a sales or business development team under me, which again, sounds crazy to most attorneys. Like, well, what do you mean? I mean, how can you have a sales team at a firm? This isn't, we're not selling cars. We're selling legal services, but that's the reality. And it's not like we're tricking people into hiring us. We provide a good service. And I feel confident in selling the service. And so it's kind of getting away from that stigma of sales and business development in the practice of law that it's OK, as long as you're not ripping clients off, if you're doing good work for clients, and you're advertising the service in an ethical way, there's nothing wrong with that. So yeah, my perfect world, and I think that the new owner feels the same, is that we work together in perpetuity, doing what we enjoy doing. And everyone that he hires, he really wants them to do what they enjoy. If somebody's miserable doing something, they're not going to usually be good at it, or they're going to burn out fast. And so yeah, I'd like to be a part of the appellate law firm until I retire. Well, Corey, this is a super inspiring story. I remember when I first heard about you, a guy at Law Quirk came to my office and he said, hey, you need to hear about this guy, Corey, he just sold his firm. And I shook my head and he said, what? That doesn't happen. And he's like, no, no, he really did. And I said, do you mean like he transferred it to somebody else? And he's like, no, no, he sold it. And I said to him, oh, I don't think that's a thing. And then I heard about you and met you. And I think what you're doing is really, in some ways, the future of law, and that you're focused on the business, but doing it in a highly ethically focused fashion. Thanks for coming on today and sharing your story. And I am certain that we're not done hearing what you're up to and how you're going to change things as you continue on. So Corey, thanks again so much for joining us. Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Greg. And hopefully I moved up to maybe the top 50% of most interesting lawyers, instead of the top 90% after this podcast. This is the most interesting legal story I've come across. We'll talk soon, man. Thanks for having me, Greg. [MUSIC PLAYING]