79. The Fixer: From Clerk to CEO (Twice) w/ Jackie Karapetyan

Just 2% of women-owned businesses ever break a million in annual revenue. Jackie Karapetyan has obliterated that statistic. As CEO of a firm with over 2.5 billion in settlements, she scaled JT Legal Group into a legal force. But just as the firm hit cruising altitude, the turbulence hit.

I lost half of my staff that I needed to work on the cases and for the firm to move forward.

In personal injury law, the competition is cutthroat. Staff get poached, revenue dips, reputations on the line. What do you do when the ship you’re flying catches fire in midair and you’re the only one left in the cockpit? This is LawHer where we explore how women in law own power faster and keep it longer.

Powered by Rankings.io. I’m Sonya Palmer. Today, what it looks like to go all in, not just once, but again and again and again. Before she was CEO of a multimillion dollar law firm, Jackie Karapetyan was fielding customer calls with a parent company, The Blender, taking the role by storm. A magic bullet.

How to build a law firm from the ground up starting as a clerk: Why Jackie walked away from executive comfort to start over at the bottom of a law firm—and how it set the stage for everything she’d build next

I joined Capital Brands as a regular customer service sales rep. Within 10 years, I helped the company grow from 25 employees to 500 employees. Was doing everything, from sales to customer service to HR to office manager to product liability. So I’ve done it all.

Jackie doesn’t talk about balance. She talks about momentum. About building power with two kids in tow. About leading a legal empire from the sane hands that packed lunch boxes and built intake scripts. And at the time her children were in school and she was managing hundreds of people and holding it all together.

Comfortable with capital brands already made myself in a position where I was comfortable. Money was good, everything was good. But I kind of feel bored. At this point, I need to do something else.

Jackie wasn’t raised in a courtroom. She was raised in a household built on art, music and deep emotional connection. Her father was a dreamer. Her grandmother Natasha, a business tactician. She made strategy looked graceful and toughness feel kind. That blend, empathy and strategy would shape everything that came next.

I was sitting with my cousin and telling him about where I am with capital brands. And he was at the time in law school, so he was like, “Why don’t you come to law school with me?” So I literally said, “No way.” He’s like, “Why not? Just come for one day. Say no after/ just come and sit with me.” And that was the beginning of going into law school. So then I decided, okay, if I’m going to be in law school, I need to be in the law field.

That meant starting over.

There was a job opening for a clerk position at the firm at JT Legal Group, and it was a new firm. They had started a year ago.

She went in for the interview with a resume that screamed executive. They asked if she understood the position.

They’re like, “It’s a clerk’s position and the pay is going to be much lower.” I said, “That’s okay. I’ll work my way up.”

Just one in 100 women attorneys ever make it from associate to equity partner. Jackie found herself part of a very exclusive club. And she was commanding with strength from the top. The firm was winning and big. Settlements were rolling in. The staff had grown. The systems were humming. Until one day they weren’t.

And here we meet Jackie, where we first met her. At the top of her game. Half of her key staff gone. A body blow. The kind of exodus that makes founders question everything. The systems, the loyalty, even themselves are sure clothing. Even in the aftermath of the fallout and under the weight of more positions than one person can carry, she never faltered or cracked.

I had to rehire, retrain, basically be everything at the firm. From reception to intake to case management, to lean negotiations, to settlements. And it was a good six to eight month period before I was able to bring the firm back to where it was. We lost money. Everything that was difficult happened during that time. But after going through that, I mean it just made me so much stronger. That now I’m more confident that I can handle even more than I thought I could.

It was this season of adversity that earned her title that stuck.

They all have that title, a fixer of everything. There’s no such thing as we can’t do it. People will come to me with the craziest things and they’re frustrated or they’re scared.

Jackie never ran from a broken system. She ran toward it.

And they get no reaction out of me other than I’ll fix it. And I know I’m going to fix it. I’m going to figure it out.

She didn’t just rebuild the firm. She used the collapse to hard wire her values into every department. Jackie built with intention, examining the systems to make them stronger. She drew on her decade of experience Capital Brands for guidance

I do enjoy is to help company grow. To help people grow. To be that helping hand. It’s one of the best feelings for me to have is to be part of a growing company and to be part of that growth. And to be that helping hand that got it there. Or else I get bored. So I need to be creating and I need to be putting my time into good use. That’s how I see it.

Building a law firm intake system from scratch that turned JT Legal into a $2.5B fortress of maximum conversions

After surviving the firm’s near collapse, Jackie did more than patch the holes left by each missing staff member. She reinforced the scaffolding of the firm with systems. She turned JT Legal into a fortress.

Coming from a call center and having that experience, it is so important for everything to be tracked in a way where again, no call is missed and no lead is missed and every client gets a call back. That’s how you lose the client. That’s how you get the bar complaints. That’s how you get all of them bad reviews is the communication and things falling through the cracks.

Her focus was on taking the best care of every case that came in. She divided the firm department to ponds, separate teams for each stage of a case. Intake, case management, attorneys negotiations, each one accountable to the next.

You’ll have an intake team that initially takes on the call, signs up the client. Then it gets transferred to the case management. Then when it’s done, to the attorney and lien negotiations and everything else. When it’s in departments like that, then you have a department head, it’s easier to manage.

Just basically manage the department head while the department head manages the team. When you start getting big, it becomes nearly impossible for you to be hands-on with every employee. It would be great, but when you start getting bigger, it’s harder. So it’s easier to have departments with department heads that you can count on, and they’re the ones that are fully in charge.

No call ignored, no intake wasted, no lead lost. JT Legal became a machine with a human soul.

We have a QA, which is quality assurance basically monitoring the calls. Monitoring the leads so that nothing falls through the crack. And I think that’s very important to have coming from a call center background. And a lot of law firms really don’t understand the aspect of it.

And when others tossed out cases they thought had no value, Jackie looked closer.

Deeper questions that can be asked to determine if this case may have value. For example, a lot of intakes won’t take a case on if there’s a gap in treatment, right? However, you may have a client that has a scar, the gap doesn’t have to even treat, and that’s where it could be missed. That’s one example. But there’s a feel I get from cases and it’s something that I will feel, and I’ll hold onto that case, even though nobody wants it. And I’ve had several of those that we’ve got multi-million dollar results in.

How she leads without ego—and why that’s a power move for women law firm owners

Jackie runs a firm with hundreds of cases and millions on the line. Her success comes from knowing when to ask for help and having no ego when you do.

You don’t want your ego to get in the way when you’re in a field like this because you are helping clients that are injured that don’t know better. So it is your job to make sure that you’re doing what’s right for the client. And that comes with bringing the right attorneys in. If I have a case and I know I’m capped at what I can get as a settlement, the firm can.

I will bring in the right people. I will bring in the right attorneys. I will bring in the top skilled attorneys that know how to handle this case. Even if that takes cutting our fees in half. I want to make sure the client is getting the best possible outcome no matter what. And that’s power to me.

She’s built a culture of empathy, not bravado.

If you’re coming in with no empathy, I’m still not interested. I’d rather have you have those core values and someone I can depend on, than have these skills that are great, but you’re not available. You’re not there. You don’t care. Because the skills can be taught. Yes, it’ll take time, but it can be taught.

And that extends to her team.

Once you have a team and they do notice that you have no ego, right? The core values are more important. Then they see that. And that comes with, again, going back to bringing the right people in. You need the right people to get things done the right way. A lot of firms fail to do that. They don’t ask for help when they need it. They don’t bring in the right people when the case really needs the right help. I think that’s where my team sees that there’s no ego. I do what’s right for the client.

She doesn’t lead to be admired. She leads to be useful.

What I would hope is if I’m not in the room, that I can be the mentor that they want around them. The helping hand. For me, if I can help and help people grow, that’s when I feel good. So if they miss me that I’m not there because I’m not there to help them or to help them grow, that’s what I would want.

In a male-dominated field, Jackie found her own way forward. She used what others underestimated. Intuition, discipline and radical empathy, and turned it into fuel.

As a woman running a firm, especially in the personal injury field, it’s male dominated. So already you are out there a little vulnerable because you have all these men. And so you have to just be confident, know the business and what I would say is use the feminine skills that is underestimated to your advantage.

Jackie Karapetyan was raised by artist and anchored by a business-savvy grandmother. She didn’t grow up with courtroom dreams. She grew up with record spinning and a deep respect for people who get things done. She started her career answering phones. She rebuilt her career from clerk to CEO twice.

And she did it with two kids at home. No ego and an intake script that left no call behind. They call her the fixer. What she really built was power that didn’t need to announce itself. This is LawHer where we explore how women in law own power and keep it longer. I’m Sonya Palmer. Thank you for listening.