A small boutique firm originally serving tech and business clients grew into a nationally recognized, regional powerhouse offering a comprehensive set of services in several practice areas.
August 11, 2020 was a hot, sunny day in Richland, WA. The weather was not much different than the day before, or as it turned out, the day after. When thinking of Washington State, you may quite naturally picture rain, towering pines, and steep, slippery Seattle streets. But Richland is not Seattle. Summers in Richland are hot and dry, and the sun rises early. Richland is located about one hundred eighty miles southeast of Seattle, and the climate and mindsets are about one hundred and eighty degrees apart, too. Once you cross the crags of the Cascades the costal moisture dissipates and gives way to brighter, clearer skies, sparser trees, and sage – lots of sage.
Nestled on the only tree-lined Parkway in Richland, Gravis Law’s headquarters was processing the first potential new client (PNC) calls of the day through its dedicated communications team and several attorneys beat the 5:52 am sunrise to the office. Coffee cups steamed and the waiting room was tidied. Although the day started as a seemingly normal one, the coming news would make a big difference to the team of nearly forty attorneys, and dozens more paralegals, clerks, and staff.
Thirty-one years earlier, nearly to the day, Stephen Covey published his best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly-Effective People. In this book, Mr. Covey shares his research, philosophy, and methodology of accomplishing goals by aligning oneself to a grander mission built around universal and timeless principles of character. Scales & Compass founder Rocco Luongo curated these principles and more to help ambitious law firms like Gravis grow rapidly, enter new markets, and open new offices.
Brett Spooner is the founder and chief executive officer of Gravis Law, PLLC. Brett earned his law degree from Gonzaga University School of Law in 2013 after four years working in the legal and tech sector. At Gonzaga, he focused his studies on Business Law and Securities Regulation, working in the Business Law Clinic, and organized joint entrepreneurial and startup efforts across the community. In addition to being a lawyer, Brett enjoys teaching business and law at Launch University, Fuse Accelerator, Washington State University Tri-Cities, and Columbia Basin Community College. Brett’s goal is to solve accessibility issues in law, entrepreneurship, and economic development across the nation.
The message came to Brett as an email shuffled amidst a torrent of client matters, unsolicited offers, and updates on the innumerable details of an expanding law practice. The exact wording is less important than the message, and the message was, “We’ve done it again!”
Inc. 5000 had just published its 2020 “… exclusive guide to America’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs.” This is a list of the top five thousand fastest growing companies in America, based on percent growth. This is no beauty contest. If you want to be on this list, you need to send data to prove it. The Inc 5000 reviewers know that their reputation is on the line and they check your results closely.
Gravis made the list for a second time in as many years. This time climbing to number 174 of 5,000 (96.5%) in the general grouping and more importantly, #1 for Law firms with a 2,267% three-year growth rate. You read that right, two-thousand-plus percent.
Like all serious entrepreneurs, Brett understands the value of strategy, and realizes that truly great law firm growth strategies require a dedicated and talented team to bring them to fruition. Law firms, unlike factories, do not make their profits by selling tangible widgets. To grow a law firm is to grow its talent base, and that talent base needs to be managed. In addition to excellent attorneys, Brett specifically identified the need for more mid-level managers who could achieve the leadership team’s vision.
How did they do it? Gravis decided that help from a strategic consultant made sense, considering the amount of growth they were targeting. The CEO retained Rocco Luongo, the founder of Scales & Compass to help. Rocco is a former engineer, who brings exceptional efficiency, technical expertise, and acumen to every client. Building a smart law firm growth strategy is no different in principle than any other type of strategy, but the specifics are. The leadership team at Gravis desires growth. If a large and growing firm is the desired outcome, it can be achieved more reliability by following an engineered process to optimize a complex system, including one made up of people.
In an executive retreat the owner-operators were guided by Rocco to set a clear Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV). “Gravis Law, PLLC provides accessible world-class legal services to people and communities across the country.” This message, far from the money-grubbing caricatures of the eighties big-law firms like Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe, demonstrates how Gravis embraces a community situated both literally and figuratively in a legal desert.
With the stated goal of growing Gravis Law into a nation-wide practice, and a strong set of Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV) we then selected a target. In this case it was a specific and ambitious annual revenue goal, which if achieved, would represent a massive jump in the firm size, reputation, and impact.
We covered a large table with a wide sheet of butcher block paper and placed a sticky note with the goal written on it at the right edge. With the goal in mind, we took one step backwards and asked, “To achieve this, what would have to happen right before?”
Which practice areas have the best chance at stable law firm revenue growth? Which regions? How many offices would we need? How many attorneys? Where do we allocate paralegal revenue? Incrementally, we worked our way back to the current day and generated a law firm growth strategy with clear milestones, metrics, benefits, and challenges. The partners were ready.
From there the actions were simple, though not easy. Law firms scale up by adding talent, so the path to success came from, and indeed still comes from, hiring and acquiring talent. Some of the hiring growth comes from individual CVs but the majority comes from finding firms with solid books of business and even more solid reputations.
This type of rapid growth leads to the existential question, “If we make these changes, will we have too much or too little work?” Just because you can hire and acquire fast, does not mean you have enough work for everyone. The next step in the strategy was to build an efficient and reliable pipeline of work to keep everyone busy. These strategies mean research, outreach, data, and plenty of work.
Rocco Luongo is a father, husband, business leader, TEDx speaker, and engineer. He has owned, operated, and developed businesses in the US, Europe, and Asia and works extensively helping ambitious lawyers grow their law firms with the goal of improving access to law for everyone.