Travis Armstrong | What Happens When Lawyers Actually Listen to Their COO

Speaker A: Hi everyone, It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of the Lawyer's Edge podcast. Welcome back for another episode. There is someone in your firm who sees things you don't. They see the operational strain, the succession gaps, the cultural undercurrents that don't make it into the managing partner's inbox. Today's guest is a COO who has been running the operational side of a law firm for nearly 20 years. And as the current president of the association of Legal Administrators, he has a national view of what's happening across firms of every size. In today's episode, we're going to talk about what law firm leaders most need to understand about their own organizations and what it looks like when the partnership between a managing partner and their COO is working the way it should. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the coaching team at the Lawyers Edge, a training and coaching firm which has been focused exclusively, exclusively on lawyers and law firms since 2008. Each member of the Lawyer's Edge coaching team is a, ah, trained, certified and experienced professional coach and either a former practicing attorney or a former law firm marketing and business development professional. Whatever your professional objectives, our uh, coaches can help you achieve your goals more quickly, more easily and with significantly less stress. To get connected with your coach, just email the team@hello helawyersedge.com I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Travis Armstrong. Travis is the Chief operating officer of English, Lucas, Preece and Owsley, also known as Elpo, the largest full service law firm in South Central Kentucky where he has been managing operations of the firm for nearly 20 years. Travis came to legal management by an interesting route. He spent six years in public accounting and then six years as a CFO in the insurance industry before discovering that law firm management was where he wanted to build his career. He holds both a CPA and a Certified Legal Manager designation and is one of the most connected people in the legal management world. As the current president of the association of Legal Administrators, known as the ala. The ALA is the premier international professional association for legal management professionals with members in law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies worldwide. When he's not working, Travis is an avid outdoorsman. He hikes, kayaks and runs and has completed six marathons, which I think tells you something about how he approaches a long term goal. He's also someone who has made mental health and well being in the legal profession a personal priority and we're going to talk about why. Travis, welcome to the Lawyer's edge.

Speaker B: Thank you, Elise. Happy to be here.

Speaker A: I'm delighted to have you. You and I met each other many, many years ago and then had the opportunity to reconnect recently down in Atlanta when we both attended the managing partner forum. And we shared, uh, a small day, as I will say, when we were working with a group of managing partners on what their goals and priorities were going to be for the rest of this year. So I know you have a front row view to what law firm leaders, uh, who are typically lawyers themselves. Right. Started out being lawyers and then got into legal management. You have a front row seat to what they're grappling with. So I'm really excited to talk to you about all of those sorts of things. But I'm curious, first of all, how you got to what you're doing. As I mentioned, you started out as a cpa. You spent time as a CFO in the insurance world, and then you made a deliberate move into legal management nearly 20 years ago. Why? Like, why law firms? What drew you to that world and what has kept you there?

Speaker B: Uh, you know, what drew me here was it was just an interesting opportunity. It was something that I had not done or tried. And, you know, starting out as a cpa, um, I was in the accounting world full time. And when I left public accounting and moved into the corporate world, I really found that I felt anyway, that I had a knack for operations, um, for, you know, managing processes, managing people, and to some extent, managing relationships. And I felt like, you know, maybe that was a bit of a calling. And then this opportunity at the law firm was made available and it, it looked promising. It was a great group of people with a strong foundation in the community and, um, look like, you know, something that, that I should try for a bit. And, and, um, you know, they've continued to grow and prosper through the years, and it's been an enjoyable ride to be part of it, be part of that growth.

Speaker A: In your role over the last 20 years, what have you noticed, if anything, that's different about how law firms typically run than how, for example, you know, an insurance company runs or a CPA firm runs?

Speaker B: The, the rate of change, the pace of change is different. Lawyers, as you know, are very analytical minds. They look at all the angles. They, they try to look, if you're thinking about a chess match, that they're, they're looking three or four moves ahead. And sometimes in other industries, people move more quickly, so they adopt change a little more quickly. Um, at least that was my experience. In the insurance industry and even in public accounting, um, change is always happening. It's how quickly we adapt and adopt it. I think that's the big difference with attorneys and working in law firms.

Speaker A: I also mentioned that you're currently the ALA president. First of all, tell us a little bit about the ALA because obviously you know a lot about it. I know quite a bit about it because of the kind of work I do. Um, and I'm not sure that every lawyer really understands what the ALA is and how knowing about it and having people in their firm involved in it can be of value to them.

Speaker B: Sure. Well, Elise, when we last spoke, I was president, um, since, since our last meeting. I'm now the immediate past president, so I've passed the gavel.

Speaker A: Congratulations.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you. It was a wonderful experience. But now I have time to do fun things like this podcast and stuff, spend time with you and others. But the ALA is an association. It's about a 9,000 member, um, group of individuals who work on the non legal side of law firms. They work in the administration or the HR side or sometimes it or marketing. We really encompass all of those different administrative functions that happen in most law firms. And I joined the association. My managing partner, um, when I started here 20 years ago, encouraged me to check it out. And so I did and I joined. And I very quickly found, um, found a supportive group of friends and colleagues who were there just to, you know, answer questions, give some guidance, um, point out potholes or stumbling blocks, whatever you want to call them, so that I didn't have to, you know, stumble in the same way that other firms had, had done. And um, you know, I like to think of it in most law firms, I mean, unless you're a solo practitioner, but most firms, there's more than one attorney. So you have a. At least in my firm here, we have 33 attorneys. If someone has a legal question, they just walk next door to the next attorney and they can bounce ideas off them. Um, the same thing with our paralegal group, paralegals, um, run upon a question or have an issue. They've got people within their, within their four walls that they can go to and ask questions. I didn't have that as a coo. I'm the only one here who does what I do. And so the ALA provided that network of peers who have faced the same questions, they've come across the same issues, fought the same battles. And so it's just been a terrific resource to share ideas and to support one another. And that's really what the ALA is about. It's an international association. We're largely US based, probably, um, 85% US, another 5 to 10% of Canadian members. And then we have 30 plus countries where we have a few members here and there, sometimes from large international firms where it's a member in one of their international offices and sometimes it's a single office in another country where we have members. You know, the ALA provides a lot of resources in terms of education. Um, we have a business partner program where we connect law firm leaders to, you know, companies that sell products and services to law firms, whether it be software or uh, different tools that are used every day in firms. And so we're always able to access that knowledge base to learn what's next, what's hot and coming, and see how we can better support our attorneys in their work.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm going to give a little bit of a shout out to the organization because I think to your point, it's lonely at the top. Right. And so when you're doing a particular kind of job and you don't have peers internally, or even if you do have peers internally, you might all be thinking the same way. And I think, you know, I know I've, I've um, had the opportunity to meet and work with other members of the ala, other leaders in the ala. In fact, I, you and I were just talking about the fact that I've interviewed Amanda Coplas on the podcast before, who is also a former president of the organization and a COO at another firm. But I think it also gives you the opportunity to, as you mentioned, gain new ideas. There's a lot of innovation that goes on and a lot of the uh, the, the people who are members are innovating, but also all those vendors you talked about who are showing up and sharing information with the members are innovating. So I think this is a good opportunity for lawyers to understand that these resources are out there for the people that you employ or even if you're looking to employ someone, if you've never had any kind of legal administrative professional on your team or you're looking for someone else to know that that's kind of where they're hanging out, getting their information and learning from one another. So, so from your vantage point as a 20 year COO of a law firm and uh, now, uh, the former ALA president, what are the biggest opportunities that you see for managing partners to get more value out of their working relationships with their COO or their firm administrator or perhaps other legal administrative Professionals inside the firm. What does it look like when it's working?

Speaker B: It's, it's a, it's a trust relationship. That's the bottom line. It's, it's built on trust. Um, you know, I always think about it in terms of people go to the doctor and they get a diagnosis and they get a treatment plan, and then they don't follow the doctor's advice. Well, if you're not going to follow your physician's advice, get a different physician. And if you're not going to follow your COO's advice, get a different CLO. And that may sound sharp or harsh, but I think it's true. If, if you don't have that relationship of trust where, um, where each party trusts each other to, you know, and their strengths and to, to lead, then, then, then maybe it's not the right fit. And so I just think that's so important in law firms to, uh, you know, trust your leadership, trust the administration, trust the HR director, trust your coo, your cfo. Um, and if you can't do that, then maybe you need to look more at that relationship. So I think that's what it's built on. Um, you know, attorneys don't get the kind of training that in law school that you need to run a business. And law firms, like it or not, are businesses. There's an old school of thought that it's a practice, it's not a business, it's a law practice. But you have all the things that a business has. You have employees, you have payroll, you have AP and accounts receivable and delinquent accounts and, and all those things. And so it really is a business. So trust your business people to run it like a business that allows the attorneys, um, to focus on their strength, which is serving the clients and practicing law, um, carrying the weight there.

Speaker A: I'm often talking to law firm leaders about what is the highest and best use of your time. Right. And we know that lawyers get paid on the billable hour, or at least something that's related to the billable hour, even if you have alternative fee arrangements. Uh, and as you point out, lawyers are not trained properly by law schools to understand how a business runs. So that trust is important. And I think there really are still lawyers, unfortunately, who have a hard time with that trust. Right. Because they're used to sometimes, or at least they think they are. And I say this with love because I am one being the feeling like they're the smartest person in the room, and somehow if they don't know what's going on. It's either, um, it's somehow a commentary on whether they're good at being a lawyer or not, when in fact in many ways it has absolutely nothing to do with your skill. Right. It's just about. Or your smarts. It has to do with your skill. It has to do with whether you actually know what you're doing and you understand how an operation runs. So do you think that your firm was an early adopter of this notion of hiring a coo?

Speaker B: I think for firms our size we were probably an early adopter. Um, I didn't come into the firm with a COO title, it was a firm administrator title. I think when I started we had 18 attorneys, something like that. So we were about half our size, um, currently. But I think the role evolved as we grew and responsibilities grew and the trust relationship was formed. I think all of that contributed to the success and growth of our firm. And, and it really was attorneys doing what they do best, practicing law and letting me do what I do best, which is managing the operations of the firm, um, those relationships and the other uh, director level folks in the firm too, whether that be hr, marketing or finance or all those type functions.

Speaker A: I suspect that the ALA has grown dramatically over the last 20 years, especially given that the legal profession has evolved and has as a profession come to understand the value of these sorts of professionals. But you and I also know that especially in smaller to mid sized law firms, that's sometimes a heavier lift because it can feel scary. It's like, well, I'm going to pay this big salary to somebody. Is it really worth paying that salary to them? I know that you've talked about this recently, you've talked about it publicly that the ALA, the ALA's Future Readiness Advisory Council, released a 2025 membership survey. What are some of the biggest takeaways from that survey? What are people in the legal, uh, operations and legal administration profession telling you and what are you excited about and what are you concerned about when you see those findings?

Speaker B: I'll start with what I'm concerned about. What that study told us was that there are a lot of law firms out there who've not thought about secession planning in terms of the operation of the firm. Many of them have done a decent job of transitioning clients and they've thought about client succession planning, bringing younger associates into projects and work, um, and client facing engagements, but they've not thought about the back office, the operations side. And so many of these firms have, like me, um, 2130 year employees managing the day to day operations of the firm. They don't really have a succession plan and a backup plan for that. So. So I think that's what's scary, or should be scary for a lot of firms is they haven't really thought about and adequately planned for those retirements. So I think that's something that we have to put more emphasis on as an association and we have to talk about it more in our, uh, firm retreats, when we have those. We have to talk about that in our strategic planning sessions, which you and I worked together in strategic planning sessions before. And so I think that's, uh, an emerging problem that we'll have to deal with in many of the firms that we see in member firms of the ala.

Speaker A: I just want to pause there for a second. This is really interesting to me because in the work that I do, I'm talking to lawyers on management committees and, uh, partners, both senior and junior partners, about this idea of succession planning among the lawyers. Because, you know, to your point, you can have clients who have a really great relationship with the senior partner, but if the senior partner decides that, you know, he's now going to retire or he's going to, he wants to go play pickleball, you know, three days a week or whatever it is, is there someone else in the firm who is more junior, um, or is going to be at the firm for longer, who has that relationship so that the client relationship feels sticky, the client doesn't want to leave? I hadn't really considered even myself, uh, the issue that you're raising right now, which is a really good one, and it reminds me of a law firm with whom I worked a couple of years ago, where they were having a really serious problem because I don't know what her title was, but she was a COO or director of Operations or something like that. Um, they weren't particularly thrilled with the relationship that they had with her anymore, but she was it, right? There was nobody else who could even step into her shoes if she walked out the door. It wasn't like there was a junior person who understood all the systems and knew how things ran. So they were in a situation where they had somebody who was doing some really good things. It didn't seem like the relationship was going to continue long term, but they were afraid that the whole house of cards was going to come down in whatever transition looked like for them.

Speaker B: Right. They found themselves handcuffed a little bit. Right. Because they hadn't planned and there wasn't some level of cross training within the firm. There wasn't some sort of backup for some of those key functions. That's what it sounds like I'm hearing.

Speaker A: So would those be the two things that you would recommend? One being redundancy, so having somebody else in that department, for lack of a better term, um, who knows what's going on, and then someone who is maybe a senior leader in another department. So I don't know if it's, you know, the COO and the CFO kind of understand each other's roles and all that sort of thing. So that if something weird happens or you find yourself in a position where a change has to be made, that there's a, uh, stopgap measure that can be implemented.

Speaker B: I think that's one component. Another component is having is just having that open relationship where when someone is maybe thinking about retirement in a few years that they can have that conversation and then the firm is then willing to bring someone on earlier. And sure, there is a cost component to that. Um, because you may be paying the retiring COO and the incoming successor, you may be paying a dual salary for a period of time. But on the other hand, there's a cost to doing nothing and there's a cost to, you know, when that person retires and you haven't planned and you're not ready. There's a cost for all the attorney time that gets spent trying to figure things out when they could be billing the client 3, 4, $500 per hour, but yet they're doing administrative tasks like, when is the copier lease up for renewal? You know, um, when is the Microsoft update rollout need to happen and what does that look like? So there's a cost on m that side of doing nothing too.

Speaker A: It's such a good idea. And yet I think it probably happens. To your point, a lot less than would be prudent. In part because I think people are afraid to have these conversations. Maybe the COO is afraid of saying, hey, I might want to retire. I think I want to retire in a couple of years. Because you're afraid of what could happen to the relationship. The lawyers might be afraid to have this conversation because they don't want to suggest to the COO that he or she should be leaving anytime soon. I think these retirement type conversations are hard to have sometimes because you don't want to make somebody feel like they're not valuable to the firm and that, you know, you don't care deeply about them. But to your point, I agree with you that it Makes tremendous sense. And I've mentioned this book on the podcast before called Retirement by Design, which was written by Ida Abbott, who I view as kind of the mother of professional development in the legal profession. As she started aging or becoming more senior or getting towards retirement, she noticed, uh, primarily that her lawyer clients were having a very hard time let. Letting go. And so we know that lawyers are kind of terrible at letting go. But I suspect that, you know, if you've been a COO or a CMO or an HR person for a very long time, it could also be challenging. So what do you think about in terms of having those difficult conversations with people?

Speaker B: Well, I agree, Elise. There's. There's probably some risk, uh, in some firms and some relationships there, there's some risk that if you're the COO and you mentioned, you know, two years, three years, you're thinking about it, there's some risk of maybe feeling like you're being pushed out. Um, maybe the firm may act too soon and likewise, you know, for the law firm, too. But I still think it's worth having the conversation. I think the risk to both parties are greater by operating in a silo and not being open and transparent about those things. And, um, that's just one type of succession plan. That's the one you plan for. Right. There are other things that happen in life and just can't be controlled. And so there needs to be a mechanism for, you know, what do we do if on Monday, you know, the COO is not there or the, uh, director of operations? There has to be some discussion around that, too, and some sort of documented, um, plan and process. And that can be done a lot through the cross training that we mentioned earlier as being one component, as you say it.

Speaker A: It strikes me that it's really part of an administrative professional's job, in a sense, because if you're in charge of the running of the firm, if you're in charge of the systems and the processes, that's gotta be at the top of your list, uh, of things to worry about. You know, let's pretend nothing terrible is happening to somebody. But you suddenly wake up one morning and decide that you wanna run off to an island and live out your dream of kayaking every day. What's going to happen to the firm if you're gone? So that's a really, um, interesting thing that you took out of the survey. What else came out of the survey that was of interest to you and your peers in the organization?

Speaker B: One of the other big things that came out was a lack of mental health, understanding, mental health resources or access to mental health resources. The legal profession is high stakes and we know that lawyers are, have a much higher rate of depression, addiction issues than many other professions. And, and we, and I think that's driven by, and I think the uh, the data and the surveys prove it out that it's driven by, you know, the high stakes component of the practice of law. Um, you're sometimes dealing with bet the farm issues for your clients. Very high stakes clients have high demands and they put that pressure on the attorneys. And if the attorney is not, uh, careful, they can find themselves really boxed in and really isolated, uh, in a way that is detrimental to their mental health. And um, if your, your boss, your managing uh, partner, the senior level leadership in your firm is dealing with a mental health issue, guess what? Everyone else in the firm is dealing with that issue. It's no different than if your spouse or your child has a mental health issue. The whole family is dealing with it. And it translates in the same sort of way within a law firm or any other business for that matter. But we're talking about law firms because of the heightened presence of mental health issues. So that was an interesting find in the survey. Um, people don't feel safe talking about mental health issues within their firm. Even though many firms have, have been progressive and they've got resources available, there's still a stigma attached to it. And, and until that stigma goes away, I think we're always going to have that problem where uh, you know, people sort of keep it quiet, they sweep it under the rug, they try to deal with it on their own and, and, and that just, it doesn't fix itself.

Speaker A: There has been so much more talk in the legal profession over the last number of years, maybe 10 years or so when it comes to mental health. I wonder if the mental health resources are more obviously being provided for lawyers and that legal administrative professionals are not feeling the same approach is being applied to them. Do you think that that's true? Do you have any evidence to that? Is it something that you suspect might be the case? Or do you think I'm off base that it, uh, this is true for everybody?

Speaker B: No, I think it's absolutely true. Every state in the US has a lawyer's assistance program where any, anyone who has a JD can go for assistance and it's free. It's paid for by the um, uh, state's allocation of funds. The state government pays for that service. But that doesn't apply to anyone who's working around Those lawyers, working for those lawyers, feeling the wrath sometimes of those lawyers when they're dealing with their own issues. Uh, those folks don't have the same access to those resources. There are maybe two states now in the, uh, in the US that offer their, I'm going to call them, LAP Water Assistance Program, that offer LAP benefits to anyone who works in a firm of lawyers or a legal department or in the judicial system as a clerk, for example, or different things like that. There's only a couple of states that now extend those benefits to those of us who work with day in and out with lawyers.

Speaker A: One of the things that a lot of folks in the legal industry are talking about these days is generational differences. Right. And I do a lot of trainings on generational differences. It's my hope that the younger generations are going to be way better at this than we have been. Uh, so it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity here for organizations like ALA and then also maybe bar associations and, uh, the firms themselves. I suspect the firms themselves, if they're offering resources, they're offering it to everybody in the firm. I don't know if you've heard of, because I can't imagine a law firm saying, oh, we're just offering this to the lawyers. But, you know, that would be absolutely awful. Um, I hope I'm wrong about that. But I can see a situation where, as you say, there's an opportunity for some of these organizations that are only offering it for lawyers. Offer it to everyone.

Speaker B: Right. I think, I think within the firm and corporate legal departments, um, the services are offered to everybody, everyone in the firm, everyone employed, and many times it even extends to employee families. So that is a good step forward. Um, one of the things we've done in ALA is we have started offering a mental health first aid training, uh, certification. It's certification, much like you get certified for CPR or AED training, you get certified for your mental health first aid. And it is, it's a terrific course. It's really designed to help train individuals to spot problems, to spot, um, you know, changes in behavior that might be indicative of a mental health issue that someone is facing and then how to maybe approach that person, point them to resources where they can then seek out help on their own. But, uh, it's been a really well received course. Uh, we, we're offering it twice a year, and each time it's offered, it sells out pretty quickly and we fill up our classroom spots.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. Is this a course that the ALA developed or Are you working in partnership with somebody else to offer it?

Speaker B: Uh, it's just a course that we're working in partnership with another group that, you know, has the expertise, has, uh, the uh, course and the, and the training materials. And we are just offering it uh, to our members. We started doing this really during the COVID pandemic. Um, we started seeing an uptick in people looking for and asking for resources and how do we deal with this? And we have employees who are working out of their home. They're not getting the same level of social interaction that they were accustomed to. Uh, or you know, at the end when we all came back to the offices, you have a number of people who just had this, this fear of getting out and coming back. And a lot of that was just driven by social, uh, anxiety, I guess. I don't know. And so we, we started offering the course and we've been doing it now for three, four years and it's been very well received and it's a good course. I had my mental health first aid certification and it's an issue that's personal to me because I had a dear friend who was a peer, um, an HR director in a large regional firm. And she took her life three or four years ago. And you know, it just, it touches

Speaker A: you, it can't help but touch you. And you know, I'm sorry for your experience. I'm sorry for the people in her life who loved her. I mean, you know, we don't want to see that happen to anyone. Um, you and I are focused primarily on the legal profession. And I think to your point, we need to be paying better attention. I've seen the change and I think you've seen the change too. But it is important for, I think for lawyer leaders, for uh, managing partners and management committee members, practice group leaders, to remember that we're not just dealing with the lawyers and maybe to have their folks take advantage of your program because it sounds really fantastic. So let's talk about some advice for the lawyer leaders in law firms. If you could get the managing partner of every law firm, particularly small and mid sized law firms, because I think you know that world particularly well, to change one thing about how they work with their COO or law firm administrative professionals, what might that be?

Speaker B: I would tell them to take a good, honest look at their culture, listen to the things that they're saying in the workplace and how they're leading. Look at how they're leading. Uh, for example, going back to mental health. We talked about that. It's an issue that's pretty dear to me. And you mentioned generational changes earlier. There's a generation in the workforce, uh, when you talk about people being under stress and working long hours, there's a generation that would say, well, when I was a young lawyer, I did this. You just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, those sorts of things. If you're hearing those things in your firm, in your workplace, that's a culture problem. And it's not, it's not helping to solve the mental health issues that we're all uh, seeing more prevalent. So my advice would be look and listen to your culture, see what's uh, prevalent, what your leaders are doing, how they're conducting themselves. Uh, it's not the same workforce that they um, that they had, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, even 10 years ago. And uh, you're right, the younger, younger uh, generation is far more open to counseling and, and services like that, mental health services. They're much more focused on their own well being and having more of a work life balance and, and things that um, things that were okay in the workplace, things that you, you might say to um, a young associate 30 years ago don't land the same way that they do now in terms of being supportive of that mental health well being. And, and I always say, you know, we talk about mental health, we're never going to get there until it's just health care. When we have to qualify it as mental health care or mental health well being, we're not there yet because it's really just healthcare. It's just we're taking care of a different part of our bodies.

Speaker A: It's such a great point. We tend to think, I think societally speaking, we tend to think of physical health care as well. If something happens, you know, it's not your fault, we can help you fix it. And then somehow if something's going on for you mentally, well, it must be for these reasons, you know, you couldn't hack it or you know, you're just, you're not a strong enough person or whatever. And while as you say, those things are changing, I love this idea that it's simply healthcare is what it is. Some of the most senior lawyers still view this as well. I can't really be worried about people's mental health. Right. I've got to get the time billed and we've got to get the clients taken care of. And I think at least, um, and I'm curious as to whether you agree with me that this is A profitability issue. This is a talent retention issue. We know that talent retention, or lack thereof, can be extremely expensive. And so I think that even if a lawyer who is a good person is still not completely convinced that we should do this for moral and ethical and human and humane reasons, I think there's a business case for it.

Speaker B: I agree, I agree. And in the same way that, um, an employee who has physical health concerns is not as productive if they're focused on and dealing with those issues, the, uh, same thing translates to mental health. They're not going to be as productive, they're not going to be as happy. They're probably not going to, um, stay with the firm m as long as they might otherwise if they weren't dealing with whatever that mental health issue is.

Speaker A: Uh, right. Especially if they're not being supported.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: Travis, as we end our time here together today, there's a question I want to ask you that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to building a genuinely healthy and well run law firm, not just profitable, but healthy, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you but you think is important for law firm leaders to hear?

Speaker B: I, uh, think it's important to listen to your leadership, trust your leadership, whether that's, you know, dealing with operational type issues or like we've discussed a lot on the, on the podcast today, uh, mental health issues. Listen to your leadership, um, trust their guidance. And you know, if they, if they tell you that something's off, not going right, not going in the right direction, uh, listen to their ideas and follow that guidance and make incremental changes to get things back headed in the right direction. I think it's just so critical for success in a law firm to always be tuned in. And the attorneys can't be tuned into every single thing they're focused on. The client demands M and that should be their primary focus. And so to those law firm leaders, um, on the attorney side, I would say listen to your administrative staff, um, trust their judgment and follow their guidance.

Speaker A: I love that. And sometimes I think, Travis, that means for lawyer leaders is being willing to put your ego aside. Right? Because sometimes you're going to hear something you don't want to hear or find out something that you thought you should have known and you didn't. Um, and I think that sometimes that can be challenging, but to your point, it's critical, it's worthwhile, and it is going to lead to building a tremendously healthy and well run law firm. So thank you so much for being here. Travis. I always love talking to you. I always get really great nuggets. So thanks for being here today.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me. Elyse. It's always a pleasure to see you and chat. I enjoyed it very much.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm going to thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.