Know that good support staff can be the key to your success. Surround yourself with the best people you can find and treat them well, and when you need a sick day, you’ll know the practice won’t implode in your absence.
Aw school primarily prepares lawyers for the practice of law. But leading or starting a law firm requires so much more than that. It requires the entrepreneurial skills that any CEO would need to run a business; How to manage personnel, how to hire and fire, how to generate leads, how to advertise, how to manage finances, etc. On the business side of law, what does an attorney need to know to create a successful and thriving law practice? To address these questions, we are talking to successful law firm principals who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “5 Things You Need to Create or Lead a Successful Law Firm”.
After graduating with honors from Harvard Law School, Andrew Torrez spent 20 years working for some of the biggest law firms in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., area, then went on to found his own law firm, P. Andrew Torrez, LLC, offering legal services and strategic advice for individuals, startups and established businesses. In 2017, as a public outreach effort, he created the podcast “Opening Arguments” with co-host Thomas Smith to demystify aspects of the law highlighted in the news. Torrez is currently in the process of expanding his practice to include California and is setting up the Opening Arguments Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to help disenfranchised individuals directly harmed by recent and upcoming Supreme Court decisions and provide scholarships for nontraditional law students.
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Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are? Specifically we’d love to hear the story of how you began to lead your practice.
I really became a lawyer by default more than anything. I had the reputation of the “smart kid” in school, and so I just did the things to check the boxes that a smart kid does. I got straight As, I graduated high school at 16, I was the college valedictorian, then it seemed like the next step was going to Harvard Law School. I found myself there without any real idea of what a lawyer does, but I still kept checking the boxes — 15 years at big law firms, “best of” lists, making partner, that sort of thing.
I was a very good lawyer, but at the time, I didn’t really understand that underneath it all, law firms are still a business. So, when my largest client was bought out and their legal business went in-house, I wasn’t prepared for my firm to start asking me about my book of business — a book I didn’t have. I needed to start over in my 30s, but I decided I was going to do it on my own this time.
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I’m a huge fan of mentorship throughout one’s career. None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Who has been your biggest mentor? What was the most valuable lesson you learned from them?
I have had a number of outstanding mentors who have helped me get to where I am, but probably the most interesting was the most unexpected. Six years ago, I was invited as a guest on a podcast to discuss the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The host of that show, Thomas Smith, was a 30-year-old accountant and part-time comedian who had been podcasting as a side gig for a decade. Together we created “Opening Arguments, ” the podcast that explains legal stories in the news for a lay audience. Within six months, Thomas began podcasting full time and “Opening Arguments” became my passion project.
From completing your degree to opening a practice and becoming a business owner, your path was most likely challenging. Can you share a story about one of your greatest struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
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The first year I gave up a big firm partnership and opened my own firm, my take-home pay went down by 90%. I sold my house and my car and worked out of a rented basement. I met clients at Starbucks. I had to develop an entirely new understanding of my identity. I realized that my strength as a lawyer lies in explaining complicated legal issues in a straightforward way. I can use that skill to help people — specifically, to help other small business owners like me navigate the often-confusing legal landscape. I became the most loyal customer that Starbucks ever had, and I kept meeting business owners to listen to their stories and help them with their problems.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
Anthony Bourdain famously quipped that “luck is not a business model.” As lawyers, we’re too often told that the only thing that matters is being a good lawyer. The way you show that is by having the grades and the test scores, belonging to all the right societies, law clubs and professional organizations and making sure to get self-congratulatory accolades from magazines and newspapers no one outside the legal profession will ever read. Don’t get me wrong — I worked hard to get all of those, but then my entire life changed with one unlucky (for me) acquisition of a client. My clients might appreciate the resume on our first meeting, but if I am not serving them, it is worthless. The only thing that matters to them is whether I can explain how I can make their lives better — and then make good on that promise.
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Twice a week, I am the lawyer co-host of the “Opening Arguments” podcast. We started the show in the summer of 2016 to break down legal stories in the news for a non-lawyer audience. Several months later, the entire world changed and “legal stories in the news” took on a much more serious tone. People didn’t just want to understand what an injunction was, they wanted to know if one would be granted to stop the president from banning Muslims from entering the country. It wasn’t just about abstract visions of the “rule of law, ” it was about whether the President of the United States was committing crimes. Our show helped hundreds of thousands of listeners navigate the past six years — a vital service, in my view, because understanding is the predicate of action. I’ve done 606 episodes, and I’ve never missed a single one — not during holidays, vacations, or even when I had COVID — because our listeners write in and tell us how much the show means to them.
Right now, hope is pretty low. People have lost faith in accountability, in the rule of law, in the idea that criminal behavior has consequences. Worse, people look at the institutions that are supposed to protect them and see corrupt hacks that are, at best, hopelessly deadlocked and, at worst, in cahoots with those powerful forces making lives miserable. The fight against “fake news, ” against crazy conspiracy theories, against the rising tide of authoritarianism starts with the rule of law — and, with the podcast, I keep trying to increase our small part in that. To that end, we’re starting the Opening Arguments Foundation to award law school scholarships to nontraditional students who want to help our mission of demystifying the law.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to discussing the business of law. Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your practice and what you focus on?
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My firm is myself and a brilliant young associate, Morgan Stringer. Together, we serve as outsourced general counsel for small businesses. What that means is we sit down with our clients and learn as much as we can about their businesses and identify the ways we can add value, whether that’s implementing practices and procedures, drafting contracts, avoiding future risks and liabilities or navigating regulatory and corporate governance issues. We’ve worked with a variety of businesses, from individual content creators to retail business to tech startups.
You are a successful attorney. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? What unique qualities do you have that others may not? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I think all of these come down to communication for me. First and foremost, I want to listen to my clients. I am not trying to rush my clients off the phone like many lawyers try to do. I’m never going to charge any of my clients for an initial consultation, and the first thing I’m going to ask is, “So, tell me about what it is that you do.” In order to help
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