At Scales and Compass, we equip ambitious law firms to achieve exceptional growth. Specializing in small and midsize practices, we help firms overcome critical strategic and operational challenges so they can expand efficiently into new markets. Drawing on our founder’s background in engineering, we bring rare technical proficiency, analytical skills, and acumen to every engagement. And we do all this with refreshing approachability and energy. If you’re ready to fast-track your growth, Scales & Compass is guiding today’s law firms to new frontiers of opportunity and performance.
Our systems and team of facilitators and accomplished lawyers are busy growing the new wave of law firm rock stars. We’d love to hear what your plans are and how we could work with you to build them to reality!
We help law firms grow, leverage strengths, gain talent, and clear barriers.
Improving lives by increasing access to law through community-minded and affordable legal services.
We are solution-oriented with a relentless focus on our clients’ success.
My name is Rocco Luongo, the founder, and president of Scales & CompassTM. We specialize in helping small- and mid-size law firms grow quickly, reach new markets and open new offices, whether in brick and mortar, or bits and bytes.
Have you ever struggled to find the time, the focus, the support, the confidence, or the business acumen to grow your firm?
Although I enjoyed working for big and small companies run by other people, it never really satisfied me. I loved the social aspect and the resources . . . when they were there.
You see, at my core, I’m a risk-taker. I believe that my future is what I make it.
Over the years, I proved that the risks I took paid off; not all but most. But one risk I could not see myself taking anymore was allowing my livelihood, and by extension that of my family, to be tied to someone else’s values, priorities, and perspective.
When things were great, they were great. I had gold poured in my pockets, stock options, swanky travel expenses, champagne-breakfasts in the office . . . but for every big win, we had a round of layoffs. For every temporary cut to funding and scope, we saw other cuts become permanent and ingrained in the company’s collective scarcity mindset.
Resigning a high-paying job with a family to provide for would be madness! Even a risk-taker like me was not going to go “all in” and land my family on the street, or without health care, or without retirement funds. I needed a strong enough branch to grab hold of before I let go of the one I had.
Then I asked myself, “How secure is any salary really when I could get laid off any-old-time?” So, I created a plan, prepared carefully, worked judiciously, and built myself the strong branch my family and I needed, and as I shifted my weight to the new opportunity the branch held.
I left the last company I ever “worked for” and started my own. That was in 2009 and I never turned back. You can do this, too.
“How can you possibly coach lawyers? We’re the worst to work with!” is a question I have heard before from clients. You see, I am an engineer. Undergrad in New Hampshire and Masters in Germany. I did not speak German, but I could hear an opportunity knocking so I went because I love a challenge! Engineers are known for being well-educated, professionally licensed, bound by ethical laws, homework-doers, disciplined, linear thinkers, goal-oriented, good with numbers, and finders of evidence-based solutions. If you take out the math, that list describes attorneys, too.
Business Engineering
Civil, biomedical, electrical. When you work for companies creating products for a global market, you become a special kind of engineer – a business engineer. I am a solver of problems that require a positive response from and by people; a truly complex machine!
From my corporate life I knew management, leadership, new product launches, marketing, and business. I was given a team to lead on my first day – and I did not yet speak the language! That turned ok, because I know how to listen, and I genuinely enjoy working with people.
I also knew engineering, and I knew what success looked like. I knew that if I only produced what my two hands could touch, I would forever be limited by my reach, but if I could lead a team to success, then my productivity would only be limited by my mind.
Although I knew business, I did not know exactly what to do to start one of my own. So, I did my research, I formed a network of mentors, and I got started – and I wrote it all down. I tracked how well things worked and pivoted when they did not. I absorbed great ideas from people smarter than me and built those ideas into my systems. Over the decades I accumulated gigabytes of templates, budgets, checklists, and schedules, and with continuous improvement in my DNA, I update them as needed.
These systems, along my team of facilitators and accomplished lawyers are busy growing the new wave of law firm rock stars. We’d love to hear what your plans are and how we could work with you to build them to reality!