From Ordinary to Unstoppable: 3 Principles Driving a 30-Year Legal Career - Philip Fornaro - S10E07

19:18Rob:So help is always there when you need it most. It's no wonder Clio consistently receives five-star ratings for its ease of use and top-notch service. If you're ready to leave frustration behind, visit clio.com forward slash UK to learn more and see why Clio continues to be the go-to choice for solicitors across the UK. Now back to the show. It changes the narrative, doesn't it? I think it changes the whole dynamic of the relationship as well. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you've sort of seen around this model when it comes to, you know, the OGC?

19:52Philip Fornaro:So because it's sort of a rare bird, at least here in the United States, most of the outside general counsel comes from really upper middle market and big law. And it's almost like because the size of our clients, most big law would like some of our clients. I shouldn't say that. They might come and try to steal them, but they won't go. They're aligned with us. But the ideology is most of the transactions we have is with big law. And what we notice is that they have the younger attorneys dealing with the transaction and so forth. I think people then, once they get into our model, they realize that they definitely don't need big law.

20:36Philip Fornaro:They don't need the three people billing at the same time. They don't get access to the founder on the phone when they're at their most troubled. And so the misconception is that a smaller firm cannot handle the OGC model, but the smaller firm with the large quality of people like we have or other people have, it's critical is that they're not going to get that level of access or service anywhere. So I think the misconception is just that a misconception.

21:04Rob:And again, it's access to that, that wisdom, those years of experience, that know how, particularly for yourself as well. Like you said that you've blended a whole range of skill sets from legal service, obviously to that entrepreneurial mindset, commercial mindset, and so much more. Did you get, we got to get, we're going to tape that one.

21:19Philip Fornaro:I I think you just sold for an hour a lot. I appreciate that, man. That was awesome. Well said. Well said.

21:26Rob:No, it's a pleasure learning about your journey and meeting fellow business owners that are doing great things, but also visionaries. And I know you have ambitious goals with this as well because your visionary goal is to expand, I think, the sort of outside general counsel model to encompass more top-tier businesses with revenues from$25 million up to$1 billion. So what steps are you actually taking to achieve that goal? And what would be some of your advice to others who probably have big ambitious goals as well?

21:51Philip Fornaro:Yeah, so I'm very, very good at business development and getting clients and so forth. But sometimes I get ahead of that structure. So I've been involved in this group where I'm surrounded by family offices and it's called consortium, private equity, etc. And the ideology is that the ability to get those clients may surpass my ability to support those clients. And it hasn't happened yet. We have absorbed so many clients because clients keep on referring clients. So the ideology is to build the foundation. So we've been very, very in tune with creating very good processes. We've gotten to technology.

22:34Philip Fornaro:We've established a great team. I mean, I would take our team over any team in the world and we have to add on to those teams. So the next step is to sort of continue on and buy law firms in the starting off in the area of Illinois and then expanding to where we serve other clients, Florida, Texas, Arizona, et cetera. So the ideology is that we need to add on the right people to enjoy the infrastructure that we've created so that we can fully support this everywhere in the world.

23:08Rob:I talk a lot about this because I learned this from a keynote from Jack Newton, CEO of Clio. I've read the book, Good to Great, but it's all about momentum and this flywheel. And actually, if you have a business, there's more energy inputs you bid. Maybe it's from acquiring another business. Maybe it's trying a new tool. But all your time, you're putting energy inputs into building momentum for your organization, whatever it might be. And your examples there of what you're doing is basically that, isn't it? You're just contributing to the energy inputs, keeping that momentum. It's spiraling and spiraling and spiraling.

23:38Rob:And as a result of that, you're heading more and more towards your goal. I think the other thing I want to talk about now, which is very important, is cultivating attitude. I remember my first ever basketball coach said to me, Rob, AIE, and I had no idea what it meant. And he just said, look to me and says, attitude is everything. And this was when I was a super young kid. And I've taken that throughout my life, remembering AIE. I almost haven't written on my wall. How do you cultivate and maintain that sort of never give up attitude within your team, especially when clients come in with some really strong, really insurmountable problems.

24:12Philip Fornaro:Yeah. I mean, it's just you take the bull by the horn, so to speak. You understand it. You listen. I mean, it's funny is that people have the client comes in and they'll have all the questions ready for the client. And they're asking the questions. I typically, you know, despite today talking a lot here, I typically go ahead and I let them tell their story, understand them, understand where their problems are. Because guess what? After a period of time, you will understand where their pain point is. And it'll be really, really surprising. They think their pain point is A, when it's actually B.

24:52And when they hear it for the first time, it's like, oh my God, that is my problem.

24:58Philip Fornaro:Why doesn't anybody ever tell me that before? So I think that's the most important part of that is listening.

25:07Rob:I agree. And I think it's the age old cliche, isn't it? Don't hire lawyers and tell them what to do. You hire lawyers because they know the right questions to ask. And then they can tell you what to do on the back of asking those questions like you just articulated right there. Okay. Again, we've been touching on relationships sort of throughout this conversation. But you talk a lot about building and enduring relationships. both with your clients, but also strategic partners. So can you talk about a partnership that surprised you or turned out to be particularly valuable as a bit of an example for our listeners?

25:39Philip Fornaro:So it's funny. I have so many relationships. It is a tough question is which one surprised me? Yeah, I guess. I guess in retrospect, there's a couple. But, you know, the relationship with my father, you know, which is, I mean, fathers and sons, you know, there's there's always that. that a little bit of tension throughout relationships. Maybe not. Maybe that's just the Italian way. I mean, now you have an Italian wife. I'm sure you've seen it. Oh, yes. So the ideology is that in sort of retrospect, you know, all the struggles and so forth is what I learned over that time. And when I reflect back and when I do my podcast, it's pretty funny as I talk about my dad a lot because of the fact that that partnership sort of shaped how I operated, you know, and he's a little bit tough.

26:28Philip Fornaro:In recent times, the outside general counsel model, what's surprising is how much my clients and our law firm, how we interact on a friend and almost like familial level. And it surprises me that most attorneys say, oh, I'm not friends with my clients or I don't want to be friends with my clients. This is business. And I think the shocking thing is the fact that they're some of my best friends now and I keep on making more.

26:57Rob:And that's really beautiful to hear. And I think the other thing is, you know, it's human connection, isn't it? You know, people ultimately are looking for a connection in business. And, you know, if you're connecting with your clients, the likelihood is, you know, relationships, friendships, all of that good stuff is going to flourish from that. And I love that you talk about your father. And, you know, that's where you've got lots of inspiration. He's been a mentor and he's probably pushed you. And you probably had some interesting challenges over the years. because I talk very openly about my late grandfather, who was a lawyer over here in the UK, who built one of the most successful firms outside of any major city here.

27:29Rob:And he was a real inspiration for me. And one of the things he said to me just around the dinner table one Sunday, which has stuck with me in entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurship is hard. He said, laddie, person who never made a mistake never existed. That's right. I think if you remember that, particularly when you make tons of mistakes throughout your career, just remember that at the end of the day, you're not the only person to have done that. And as you said, if you keep that positive energy and that attitude, you'll find a way to keep going. Okay, now I want to talk about tech because you mentioned AI and you've got some strong views, which I was agreeing with actually in terms of AI and the work that it can do.

28:02Rob:And I think we have to understand that technology is coming in. This is value pyramid. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, an insurer. Technology is coming in and it's filling up this pyramid. And you as a service provider need to stay ahead of that pyramid with AI coming in, which is still at very much the dial-up stage of the internet to ensure that you have relevancy and can actually be valuable to your client. So for you, what makes your firm a next generation firm in terms of the technology that you're utilizing and how has it transformed your client experiences, if at all?

28:33Philip Fornaro:I think the biggest thing for attorneys to be thinking about is the next thing. And obviously, when I first started, I'm a lot younger than you, Rob, is that there wasn't a out of the box solution for like a Clio, for example, that didn't exist. I remember that I mapped out a process and I was building it. I built a portal in my data drive on my hard drive. We had a huge, this is a funny story. If you have a couple of minutes, can I tell the story? Please. We love stories. All right. So it was my first big deal. At the time, it was a big deal. I think it was a$10 million purchase, right? Back in the day, it's like, oh, my God, I got a$10 million purchase.

29:14Philip Fornaro:They're going to figure out I'm a fake. So I said, we had all these attorneys. It was the lender's attorneys. It was the other attorneys. It was big law. So they had three or four attorneys. They had staff. We had staff. The first week, I think I got 1 ,000 emails. And I go, I'm not doing this anymore. I go, if you want to interact with me, and I work with my tech guy, and I said, let's make a portal. He goes, what's a portal? I go, I don't know. We do this for internal stuff. Why can't we do this externally? And he goes, yeah, that's cool. And I go, so it's like the precursor to Box and Clio and all this other stuff.

29:54Philip Fornaro:It was this ideology is that I have this portal, and I told his attorneys, and I said, hey, if you want to communicate or send documents, put it into the portal. because the lender documents and the seller documents and the buyer documents, everybody has their own checklist, but they're all the same documents. They're just packaged in a different way. So it worked. And I go, oh, my God, this is great. I wonder if – I go, maybe I should stop being a lawyer. Maybe I should do the portal. And then Dropbox, Box, Google Docs, they all come out. And I go, ah, that's all right. We'll get into it. So I think the first thing is every attorney, if they don't have a CRM like Clio, I know Clio has some sort of document review or document storage, but a document cloud-based where you can be anywhere in the world and you work on it, making sure you have e-signature, making sure the experience for clients is seamless.

30:47Philip Fornaro:So it would always be, oh, I need my EIN document. I said, well, it's in box. Don't worry. Oh, I'm at a lender. Oh, it's in box. Don't worry. All these things that go through the process of making it. So then it goes back to the next stage. And we tried it out. And I'll give a pump to LegalSifter because we were learning about them in 2018. It was an AI solution. And then now we start seeing that commoditizing documents and getting into AI is the next step. So what I do every single day is I do something else on AI, OpenAI, you know, or, you know, ChatGPT or something or one of the other ones.

31:27Philip Fornaro:I'll sit and I will just play with it. checklists for a meeting, teaching moments, pitch decks, asking it. And the way I use AI on a daily basis is I put it open on a screen next to me, and I ask it questions, strategic questions. I go, here are the two situations. What would you do? And I use it as like a bounce-off idea. So I have a subject matter expert. You know, I don't believe it 100%. And then lastly, I know I'm talking too long here, But the last part of this is the ideology of hiring. And I'm in the process of hiring an AI expert to come into our firm to bring it because it's not just chat GPT.

32:10Philip Fornaro:There's so many ways to streamline your processes, so many ways to use AI to benefit you as a lawyer, to systematize it so that you're giving not only good quality work to your clients in a more rapid fashion, but you're doing it a little cheaper, which also will differentiate you in the future.

32:31Rob:I love all of that. And what you're ultimately doing is removing friction. And as a result of that, you know, it's a more fluid, it's a much easier process, it's more efficient, client satisfaction goes up, all of that good stuff as a result of you reducing friction, because ultimately, you want fusion rather than confusion with your clients. And so if you can really marry that up, which is absolutely what you're doing and doubling down. The results show. Okay. Now I know other things that you're passionate about is giving back. So I want to talk now about your community and charity work, because besides running a law firm, being very, very busy and having lots of things to do, you are heavily invested in giving back to community and charity work.

33:11Rob:So what causes are most important to you and why?

33:14Philip Fornaro:Got it. Before I do it, you don't have like any trademark on remove friction and fusion instead of confusion.

33:21Rob:to do no no you're you're welcome to use you're welcome to take you synthesize my thoughts so well that's why i asked so all right no my pleasure so i'd love to know because i know you are you

33:31Philip Fornaro:know philanthropy is important yeah yeah yeah so so we i started probably right right along the time period where i moved uh here to lagrange illinois is is that i i mean it was always helpful to the community but then i sort of dove in one of my good friends uh steve jazinski said he said hey why don't you jump in and, you know, join the business association? So I said, okay, what's the business association? And they said, and then they, he said, no, come in. You'll enjoy it. It's like sort of a, the local businesses. And it was, it was so empowering to, to be in the room with all these small businesses.

34:04Philip Fornaro:They're all trying, they're trying to learn this and that. And, you know, it was a small business at the time. So it was kind of nice to do it. It became the president got really embraced in the community, met the community leaders and anybody that ever does this will it will pay itself back a hundred times or a thousand times because now you're in various events various things and you're giving back and and it's you don't understand when you give with all your heart without not having any any expectation of anything in return how much people's eyes light up they're so happy and that's enough.

34:41Philip Fornaro:You know, people go, Oh, a little tit for tat, this and that's like, no, you're giving. So as a result, when I met all these community leaders, they all had that same mindset. So what happened is that they brought me into their charities, you know, the, the legacy guild, the H foundation beds plus, you know, there, there, there's so many that we've sort of given back to. And it's, it's great because these are part of your people. Then you, you find that if you find your people, every, the world is a great place.

35:13Rob:I absolutely agree. And that's why I'm, I'm a really big advocate of community and, you know, you will find your, your tribe. And I love that, you know, this work matters to you as well. And I can genuinely hear it in, in, in your voice as well. And I guess that probably leads nicely onto something that I'm passionate about, which is, which is legacy ultimately in terms of how you would like to be remembered. What would you like your legacy to be as the managing attorney if not at all. Yeah.

35:36Philip Fornaro:So it's funny as I think about that question, it's, I I'm always in the moment and thinking about the future, but not thinking about how it, how, how I view it. So I appreciate the question. So I think the most important thing that I want to be remembered for is, is the fact that I connected a lot of people together. I made people's lives better. And most importantly, I think the word is important is that I impacted them and that they were better off by our relationship. And if, if for our law and myself, if we can be that person or that group that, that people can look back on and say, yeah, I was, I was better because of that relationship.

36:20Philip Fornaro:I would be ecstatic.

36:23Rob:And that just hits me really there because it's so true and it's, it's well documented and it's not what you do for people. It's how you make them feel. And that's the impact isn't it that that sort of feeling did you really light them up did you have a positive impact on them did you maybe change a situation around for you that impacted them to go on and do great things because they'll always remember that and it's been a been a wonderful discussion phil really enjoyed learning from you exchanging views we have a lot of mutual obviously respect for one another and before i let you go what would be your final piece of advice for those interested in learning more about the outside general counsel model because i know you're exceptionally passionate about this and have big goals.

36:58Philip Fornaro:I think that you look holistically and look at your pain points. And I'd encourage people to write down what's their pain points with their business? What's their pain point with their legal counsel? What's driving them crazy about their other professionals? Review it and then just call us. And I always like to say this. I, someone the other day said, Hey, you know, will you look at our documents? How much is it? And I go, well, nothing. I just want to look at it and see if I can help you in any way. If I can't say, well, that's weird. You know, someone just told me it would cost$10 ,000 to look at our documents.

37:37Philip Fornaro:So the ideology is just to try it. And if it's not us, if we're not, not your person, not your group, just talk to it. And if attorney says, no, I don't want to look at your documents to understand how to help you on a holistic level, then they're not the people that you should be going to. Interview many, many attorneys before you get to the last one you choose. So I think just try it out and understand and see if this is for you. And I think there's no way it's not because I would never go to an attorney myself unless they were part of an OGC model.

38:11Rob:I love that. And I just love everything that you've shared today. And with that, with our listeners hopefully agreeing with you and wanting to know more about indeed your career or indeed Fennaro Law, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles. We'll also include them with this episode for you too.

38:28Philip Fornaro:Yeah, so definitely LinkedIn. That tells the story a little bit better than our website. We're in website transition, but the first couple of pages of our website, FennaroLaw.com talks about it. But if you want to know about us and if you want to hear how we impact and talk to people, It's our podcast at lbmpodcast.com. And that's, we're having a good time. You know, we're not as powerful as you, Rob Hanna, but we're giving you some good chase here.

38:54Rob:Absolutely. And look, collaboration is domination. I think the more shows, the more education and what you're doing is fantastic. And I love the sound of your show and hopefully we'll do some more collaborations in the future. But for now, thank you so much, Phil, for joining us today. It's an absolute pleasure hosting you on the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. Wishing you lots of continued success with your own career, indeed, entrepreneurial pursuits. But for now, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord.

39:28Rob:Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There's a link to join our community there. Over and out.