JAIMEE HALL
When you're deciding to start up your own firm, you have to decide, do I want to be an entrepreneur? Because most lawyers are thinking of themselves as a lawyer, but when you start up your own firm, you are now officially an entrepreneur and business owner.
SONYA PALMER
Taking a leap to begin your own law firm can be both exciting and terrifying, but with the right support, anything is possible.
JAIMEE HALL
I'm in a lot of conversations, with women lawyers when they're talking about should I start up my own firm? Should I go out on my own or not. And I always start with - don't let the fear keep you from doing the thing that you think you're supposed to do. When your gut tells you to do something and whether everything lines up perfectly or not, sometimes you just have to do it afraid.
SONYA PALMER
According to a recent survey, only 19% of managing partners and us law firms are female. We would like to see that change. Hello and welcome to LawHER the show where we celebrate the trailblazing attorneys and entrepreneurs who are changing the game for women in the legal field. Be inspired by their stories, learn from their mistakes. Look forward to the future that they're helping build for the next generation of women in law. I'm Sonya Palmer, your host and VP of operations at Rankings where we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with SEO. This is LawHER. Jaimee Hall has a vision to revolutionize the legal industry and positively impact the world. Co-founder and CEO of St. Louis based Legal Back Office. She and Sarah Stock solve business development problems for small to mid-sized legal firms from staffing and from efficiency to payroll and tracking billable hours. The duo teaches firms how to grow their client base and increase profitability. Jaimee is an expert in saying yes to the seemingly impossible and has fun while doing it. When we choose to do things afraid and allow ourselves to be uncomfortable, not only do we get to see what we're made of, but we grow in the process. I talked with her about what it really takes to start a law firm, the importance of early goal settings for founding partners and what it means to be a bad-ass boss and an imperfect. Armed with self-taught body of knowledge. Jaimee transformed her theater degree into a position as director of leadership development for a national professional services firm and leader of a 100 plus person back office at a global litigation firm. I wanted to know more about Jaimee's unconventional background. Let's dive in. I went to Emerson college, shout out Emerson in Boston, Massachusetts. And that was my one undergraduate dream school. And I had to audition. They let 50 people in a 2,500 audition. And I was just kinda what, if I get in? I'll take the opportunity, but I'm not likely to get it. I ended up getting accepted and I was like, that's one of those if opportunities that you don't say no to, and I've lived by life saying, trying to just say. It's true as much as possible. And so ended up in theater school kind of leaned more towards the directing aspects of the theater instead of acting. I also did a lot of. I really got introduced to film while I was in my undergrad as well. And really at the end of the day, directing a play is just about leadership, right? You're setting a vision for what you want to achieve, and you've got to get lighting and costumes and makeup and actors and dancers and musicians all on the same page. And you want people to feel something at the end or take away some sort of message. I Really that is leadership. And so I feel like I learned a lot of leadership lessons going through that program. And then what do you do when you get a a theater degree or acting, if you're not going to go into acting? So I went back to school to get my teaching certificate, to teach high school speech and drama would, I didn't end up actually doing, because I got offered a job. Actually setting up an corporate university. It was the perfect blend of by had an event planning background as the directing and bringing everyone together and get them on the same page. And then I had the education of education and the CEO was like, I really. To set up a corporate university where our people can get trained and educated. And it just kept flowing from there. Then I got recruited into the legal industry based on the work that I had done at the healthcare auditing company. And, here I am today, so I ran the business side of a large level law firm and met my business partner now who runs a 12-lawyer firm. And she was like, you know what, this concept of an outsourced business management group for law firms, especially small to midsize ones makes a lot of sense. We should start a company together. And I was like, nice to meet you too. Like literally. It's been pretty serendipitous ever said, so here we are three and a half years later. Did you have any lessons from theater school that prepared you for CEO today?
JAIMEE HALL
Just going to school in a completely different area of the country than where I had grown up really exposed me to just a much more diverse. Population of people in understanding humans that come from different backgrounds was really a life shaping situation, how do you get all these people when these different backgrounds are on the same page? I would have done it the same way all over again. Cause that degree has actually turned out to help me a lot.
SONYA PALMER
Yeah, it's turned out well for you. You got your MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. When did you decide you wanted to go to business school? Where did that fit in? And do you feel that had a large impact on your career?
JAIMEE HALL
Absolutely. Actually, had my third baby in late 2013. And for a couple of years, then at that point I had really been learning everything about business Just like getting my MBA through Google. It's literally every time I hear, where did, I didn't know, or I do, I needed to accomplish something, but didn't know how to do it. I was just self-learning and just trying to get as many resources as possible Harvard business review. I credit a lot of my organic business knowledge coming from HBR, shout out to HBR. Yeah, it's funny. Like all of my friends, even my peers would read people magazine when traveling on the plane and I'm like pick it up through HBR. I decided I wanted to get my MBA at about early 2014, as just life would have it. You're moving forward in your career. Things get busy, actually didn't end up starting the program until about the same time I was starting Legal Back Office. So started Legal Back Office had a nine month old who was my fourth kid at the time and was like, why not get an MBA at the same? Oh goodness. That's not totally sane and normal.
SONYA PALMER
Okay. Yeah. That's a lot to juggle. Yes. How did you do it?
JAIMEE HALL
Resilience number one. Vision for what I wanted to achieve and last, but certainly not least the incredible support system that I had and have friends, family. even my classmates, I remember actually there were two of us that had infants that were nursing mothers when we first started the program and we used to just like trade off and on the nursing mothers room and we're like, oh, I left you a bottle of water down there. Wash U is culture is absolutely amazing. The professors were amazing. I was in an executive MBA program. These are seasoned professionals, people that are been around for a while and everyone was just incredibly supportive. And I can't under value that support system and getting through that time and how important it was.
SONYA PALMER
Would that be. a piece of advice you would give to anyone considering a similar path to develop a support system and make sure that you have that in place. And then are there any other advice that you would give to someone thinking about juggling all that?
JAIMEE HALL
My first piece of advice, cause I, I have I'm in a lot of conversations, with women lawyers when they're talking about should I start up my own firm? Should I go out on my own or not or I've been on my own for a while? Should I keep doing it? Or should I go back and house like this is constantly the conversation, right? And I always start with the don't let the fear keep you from doing the thing that you think you're supposed to do, right? When you're, when your gut tells you to do something and whether everything lines up perfectly or not, sometimes you just have to do it afraid. Sometimes it's I may not have complete peace or calm about this because it's insane, right? Like it's just an anxiety ridden thing to be doing all those things at once, but I'm going to choose to do it afraid because I believe it's the right thing to do. I would say number one, like when you're making that decision, don't let the fear of the unknown or the fear of the being overwhelmed, keep you from doing it, just do it afraid. And then number two, that support system. I, Give that advice to all lady lawyers, because our industry is particularly challenging for females and it's, getting better and better, but we just have, we have very unique challenges. And when you've got women, other women specifically around you that have been there and that understand, that is incredibly valuable. So whether you're going into. A situation where you are going to be starting a new company or doing big things, or you're just living out and working out your day to day. You can't underestimate the value of that strong support system. And being able to pick up the phone and just make a phone call and talk through things.
SONYA PALMER
I love what you said about doing it afraid. I think sometimes. Allowing yourself to be uncomfortable, not necessarily like fear or anxiety, but just a little uneasy. It's just a really good way to see what you're made of. And what did you say earlier? Something about, I just choose to say yes.
JAIMEE HALL
Yeah. Just choose to say yes, it works. Just do it. I love it. And it's funny, like those, people that are closest to me will ask me a question about, oh, do you want to go do this? Or would you like another glass of wine? And I'm like, always yes. That's what I stayed at. Oh, I just you know me well enough by now. I've always, yes. I like that. Would you like to go on vacation next week randomly because flights are $59. Yes. Yes. Always. Yes. I love it.
SONYA PALMER
Jaimee's tenacity and resilience drove her to create a legal business operations company, but it was community support that allowed her to build while also attending business school and raising four kids. I wanted to know how Jaimee met her co-founder Sarah Stock and what drove them to create Legal Back Office.
JAIMEE HALL
We met through Vistage, which is a national CEO advisory network. And we were in two different groups. But my business coach, he's still, my coach today is fabulous. With you guys, you need to meet Sarah stock. She's doing innovative things. The legal industry we're trying to do innovative things. Innovation in the legal industry is not super common. So I feel like you should know each other. And so he made that introduction. And then we, because of our schedules, we're even able to get together for a few months. So the first time we actually were able to get coffee, literally I'm not even exaggerating. That was the, Hey, what you're doing is pretty cool. I think we could market it. Do you want to start a company together? That's incredible. That's really cool. When you meet those people and there's just that synergy there and there's that, X factor that you're like, yeah.
SONYA PALMER
Were supposed to do something together yeah. Of it. What problems does Legal Back Office solve for its clients?
JAIMEE HALL
This is going to sound really pretentious all of them.
SONYA PALMER
Oh, wow. No, that's not pretentious at all. That's great.
JAIMEE HALL
Most law firms don't have a problem doing legal work. So they're not solving for that problem. they're constantly dealing with hiring problems, strategy problems, efficiency, problems, technology choices HR, issues like payroll being correct reporting. Understanding are we profitable is not as simple of an answer, right? Like our attorneys is profitable. Our practice area is profitable. Are we making everything we could be making on the bottom line? Are we overstaffed understaffed? We can solve for all of those. Our legal assistant is overwhelmed with the accounting and the legal billing and keeping up with all of our work, outsource it to us, and we actually know how to do it. I feel so bad for these legal assistants across the country, that their legal assistance. And yet they're being asked to be accountants and marketers and HR people, and God love them. They're doing the best they possibly can. But the detriment to them when that's not their skill and their career and the detriment to the firm, having someone function in those roles that doesn't really know what they're doing is huge.
SONYA PALMER
Would you call it legal operations?
JAIMEE HALL
I would call it business operations. We can touch the legal side of things. Like a lot of times the intake process is probably a little bit broken and we can step in and say, okay, let's help you figure out how to make that process smoother. When you've got leads all the way through to becoming clients legal operations, it's typically more about like the case management flow and how you move the cases along. And that's something we don't really touch or get involved in.
SONYA PALMER
I’m operations at Rankings. So this type of stuff fascinates me and how. How like simple systems and processes can make everybody's lives, less stressful, save a ton of money, make people better at their jobs. What's so interesting about it. There's plenty of online AI software programs doing that sort of work payroll. I All these things in and of themselves can be outsourced somewhere for cheep. All the work we do is incredibly custom because every law firm has similar but unique problems. So I'm on a call with a client the other day, and we're just pulling up their billing software. And I just, I know how to use the software. So I just click in a few places and in the partner says, wait, does that say unbilled time, $30,000 from last year? And I was like, yeah. Oh my God, that means we could have billed out $30,000, but we didnt?! And it's one simple, all these time entries were not met. To the, to a matter, right? And it's it adds up over time. It might be one hour, one month or two hours the next month. And those are the types of things that we can really help fill gaps, but that wouldn't have come up without that conversation. So that's why I say we can solve for pretty much anything. And we provide custom service because every client is going to be incredibly unique in what their needs. So we try to approach all work that we do, even with a consulting mindset of how can we help it be better.
SONYA PALMER
So when you have attorneys who were thinking about starting their own firms, what should they be thinking about? What are some of the things they need to get in place?
JAIMEE HALL
I think the number one question that lawyers need to ask themselves, but hardly any of them are, is, are you running to something or are you running away from something. it's pretty common in our industry for lawyers. There's a lot of solo practitioners, for any number of reasons, but I've found that lawyers are typically leaving a big farm because they either don't like the pressure of all the billed hours or they don't like the hierarchy and the unnecessary policies and procedures or. They just don't like the really shitty culture because people are really mean to each other all the time. Or they don't like the, they don't have no autonomy or say the cases or whatever. So that's running away from something. When you're deciding to start up your own firm, you have to decide, do I want to be an entrepreneur? Because most lawyers are thinking of themselves as a lawyer, but when you start up your own firm, you are now officially an entrepreneur and business owner. And so you're going to be trading one set of headaches for another in that, okay. Now you have to figure out how to make payroll. Now you have to figure out how to provide for your employees. Once you have them. I have to deal with employee drama, to deal with collecting you're out on your own, sending out your own bills, collecting on your own bills. So I think the number one decision, which most lawyers don't spend time even thinking about. Am I ready to be an entre and qualified or capable of being an entrepreneur. The other thing is lawyers tend to jump into partnership with each other because they've connected in like in war type scenarios. And when you have those like war wounds with other people your comrades, you're like, okay, let's just do this. We can do so much more together and better together and make more money together, but they don't actually talk about the end goal or the end game. So one of you wants to grow a 50 lawyer firm. And the other one is saying, do we really want to have associates? But they never even had the conversation. Now they're already in professional marital union. It's a lot harder to get divorced professionally. It's easy to start something up, but it's a lot harder to separate. So I always encourage people have those conversations about what the future looks like, both with yourself, your significant other, if you have one and what that impact is going to be on your family and with the people that you're going into partnership. My other biggest piece of advice, if you've already made that decision okay, yes, we're going to start this out. So many firms are starting up without a plan. It's I'm just going to register my business and start billing. If you can take 90 days to just create a plan, a strategy okay, who do we want to be? How do we want to grow? What does it, what is our firm look like three years from now, five years from now? What's the business plan. What's the marketing plan, getting all of their ducks in a row over a three month period. We'll set you up for more success. So you're not just told you're going to be scrambling. So now you're going to be scrambling a little bit less. You can focus on the clients and the billable work right out of the gate. I also say without a plan, you can wake up someday and be somewhere you never wanted to be either your firm's growing far bigger than you wanted it to be. And now you're working constantly and you have no work-life balance or you wake up one day and you don't have enough work. And you're just scrambling just to pay your people or you can pay yourself. And those two things happen without a plan.
SONYA PALMER
So the other thing attorneys don't necessarily think about when they go into these things is it's extremely competitive. How do you market yourself? What do you do for marketing? What are some of the things that you've seen that have really been effective for marketing or growing a firm that has just started assuming they have a plan?
JAIMEE HALL
It's so funny. Cause I was going to say a really good marketing plan. One of my biggest criticisms of agencies today is that they're not actually building a strategic marketing plan. It's more of a, okay. Here's a list of services that we can do for you instead of it being rooted in strategy. Okay. So the best agencies to me are saying what are you trying to achieve with your business? How much money? And you're trying to make. How many cases does that mean you need of those like potential people that you're talking to? How many of them usually convert to being a case? So then we can figure out, okay, how many phone calls do you need to be getting in our chats or whatever. Now let's build on a plan that's holistic. And I will say too. I think a lot of people, a lot of lawyers assume ROI on mark. If I just pay someone to do marketing that I should expect my phone to start ringing. And usually that's okay. Now we're going to throw out where to start doing something on social that's a little bit half-assed maybe we push out a blog once a month, but we're going to throw money at a Google ad or throw money at, find law or auto or just a year or whatever. And then you wake up and you've spent 20 grand and you've gotten hardly any. But I always tell them too, marketing is not a button that you push. It's a journey that we all go on together. Yep.
SONYA PALMER
I completely agree. consistency often matters more than how much money you can throw at something. And I don't think they realize that once you put your foot on the pedal, like it has to stay on the pedal. it's still like a production game, that's when eventually the ROI will kick in
JAIMEE HALL
And it's not, it can't be done without them. It's like we, we still have to be partnered together because. Okay. We can be doing everything right. Digitally speaking. But if you're not going to those networking events and talking to other lawyers or meeting with your referral sources like that biz dev component is incredibly important as well because people really care about relationships today. So if they talked to one of your competitors at the happy hour yesterday, and they get your e-blast today, Who are they gonna call? They're gonna call the person that they had drinks with yesterday, not you because they just got the e-blast. So I always like to emphasize that too yes, we can take a lot of the work off your plates. But you're still a partner in this, right? We're on the marketing journey together.
SONYA PALMER
That leads right into my next question, which is you offer resources specific to women, including a program called Beyond Three L: Lady Lawyers Launch focused on empowering women in law. Please tell me all about it
JAIMEE HALL
I started B3 L right before the shutdown the whole goal being, we've got a lot of Facebook groups out there with lady lawyers, empowering each other, asking questions, writing resources, we're getting more in that more and more resources out there, specifically focused on women. I wasn't seeing at the time, any real togetherness, can you see a theme and how much I value togetherness that just the power of having that group of people come together and learn and share. And let loose and just have a lot of freaking fun. It's important, especially in an industry that's already incredibly heavy and challenging. And so our very first B3, our retreat was in Jamaica and it was so amazing. We spent time educating, we gave CLE, but there was a lot of self-reflection time we had one-on-ones you could meet with the CFO to go through your financials. One-on-ones with a counselor one-on-ones with a business coach. This was very personal and custom. That's also very important to me. Then we were scheduled for our second B3L to go to Cabo. Actually the end of this month, you're going to be going in two weeks. And so we're postponing it because of the COVID variant stuff. And Omicron and just fighting to keep people safe. I don't want any. Stuck in Cabo because they test positive.. They're never getting sick or whatever, but to replace that we've been doing a monthly video called us to still get the women together and talk through The theme right now is health it's financial health. Mental health, it's cultural health for your organization. Let's talk through what are you doing to maintain health and these particular areas as a human and individual for your teams and in your business. So every month B3L, we've been posting things on our social media consistently, and we're lady lawyers can join us and join the conversation. And it really is a collaborative conversation.
SONYA PALMER
As you're working with female attorneys, are you finding anything that is a unique challenge for them specifically?
JAIMEE HALL
Yes. I think that it's pretty consistent that when women have come from a more male dominated, negative culture. I have seen a consistent pendulum swing too far in the other direction. Whereas leaders, we want so badly to have an empowering culture and for people to feel supported and not feel that those negative effects of the terrible cultures. That we've been a part of that we get too much in the friend zone. We're too gracious to patient. We're not great at holding people accountable to performance, and then we suffer those consequences. And I've seen it consistently in women. And not really in men when men go create their own firms, there's a certain element of that. That's how I want to get away from this, like a lack of autonomy, terrible culture, and really the small firm world. I These lawyers are amazing humans. I wrote a blog called Why I love Lawyers and You Should Too. I'm probably the only American here or human period that's ever written a blog, but these small firm lawyers are really incredible people and incredible humans. And. These guys, even that are a part of these small firms are really great humans, but they just haven't let that pendulum swing the other way. So I'm constantly when I'm consulting with our clients talking through the, okay, how can we put better systems in place for accountability? How can we help empower each other with how to have a difficult conversation in a way that honors our values, but still challenges people to step up. So that's the one thing I think I see consistently with women and their struggles.
SONYA PALMER
That's a really big like question and something to like really think about. How do you leave plenty of room for graciousness, to let everybody breathe, take care of themselves while also still like moving the needle forward, like how do we still keep going?
JAIMEE HALL
And I'm challenged with this too. I. I similarly find like parallel paths between me and the law firm owners, what we're doing at 3BL too. But this pandemic has really been tough on humanity and the weight that we've all been feeling. And we've even our “grace-omiters” if you will are, we're allowing I think a lot more than we probably even would have before. So it's even more challenging to how do you balance that? What humans are going through and have been feeling with the fact that we do still have a business to run. I'm just acknowledging that it's not easy. It's not easy at all. And I'm even challenged. It's easier to say, do I say not as I do, right? Yeah.
SONYA PALMER
I love that Jaimee is tackling these issues head on while holding space and acknowledging that life can be really challenging. I wanted her advice on how we can compensate when it feels near impossible to operate at full performance.
JAIMEE HALL
Yeah, and I, my biggest advice is always systems, even though I'm not naturally a systems minded person, you can put systems in place to help compensate for your own lack when it comes in that way. So accountability is our challenge for you. We'll just get automatic one-on-one meetings scheduled that are repeated, meetings and scheduled events with your people. You're going to have a touch base with them for 30 minutes every single week. And you'll automatically have that opportunity to just check in and say, okay, did you get that thing done last week that you're supposed to get done? That takes some emotions out of it. It takes the getting busy and focusing on client work out of it because it's now a cadence. I love that word. Cadence. It's a cadence of accountability.
SONYA PALMER
Yup. Yup. Speaking my language. I completely agree. Systems allow you to make smart decisions when you don't feel like it. You know, when emotions can be clouding things good and bad. I think it's not always necessarily negative, but when you have a process in place, it'll show you what you should do, even when you don't necessarily feel like doing it.
JAIMEE HALL
Think because I came from corporate side of health care before legal. And it was very different in terms of pace and expectations of response. And then a legal industry. We always feel like we have to respond to things right away. Like we we can't take a hot minute and the truth is we can , we can and should not all problems need to be solved in this moment . And if an employee is having an issue or you're having an issue with them or a client's having an issue, and this isn't a hundred percent of the time. Of course, there are things needed to solve my way. Sometimes you can just wait a day. It can wait a day until you're in a better Headspace until you've processed and thought through what the right solution is. And sometimes I think we just react right away out of how we're feeling right then. And if our tendency is to lean towards, oh, it's okay. You didn't get it done. It's fine. Just do it tomorrow, but really it should have been done yesterday. In that moment, we might react out of what's comfortable. Give it a few hours, give it a day and come back. And, that was really supposed to get done in the previous day. Let's talk about why it did it, right? Yeah. Just giving it a minute, give some things a minute.
SONYA PALMER
We work with lawyers, They're so great to work with. And just as we've started the podcast, getting to talk to women who are starting their own firms or thinking about starting their own firms, it's been amazing. Let's talk about, in addition to all of this, you also have a personal brand and blog. Why did you choose to build this out? And you have four pillars of your brand bad-ass boss, the good life, modern day, mommy and imperfect human. Tell us about them. .
JAIMEE HALL
It's interesting how this all came up because people have been telling me for a while Hey, like you thought about ever thought about writing a book and I hear it. So consistently then about I don't know, a year and a half ago, our marketing team started noticing that when I would share something personally on LinkedIn or social, and then they would re-share it. It would always blow up. So there was something about me, my voice personally, that really was resonating with people, but it's not necessarily going to be received in the same way or nor does it make sense for that to be shared, as a Legal Back Office piece of content. And so they were like, maybe you should think about building out this personal brand. And mother's day of last year, it all started really a year ago, like little over a year ago, November. That's really where it all started building the site, getting the photos, start writing the content. And I went through a personal brand exercise to determine like, what are the things that like make me, but also the things that people, when I share it resonates with them. And I think, women in leadership, the bad-ass boss. Men and walking around what each way to you for a very long time proud of themselves. And we always feel like we have to diminish our value because we want to recognize the team. But I, and I've been criticized frankly, by people saying, if you have to call yourself a bad ass boss, then you're probably arent one and I'm like, no, I am, I'm a bad ass boss. And I can say that, but I'm also imperfect because I'm a human, so if you look at the content, there's far more content on imperfect human, any of the other areas. It's because I'm always reflecting on, things could be doing better. And but I also think, that balances, no, I'm a mom. I can't get out of being a mom., I have four kids and that consumes a lot of my life and I love it. And it shapes who I am. But I also think I have a very different approach to motherhood. Cussing I've had this whole conversation, is about cussing. I'm like, I don't care if you cuss, I care more about the intent behind the words that you use. So if you say to someone gets the fuck outta here versus, you know what fuck, Two totally different meaning I could not use the F word and I could say to someone, I hate you send some, it hates not a customer. Is it? Maybe it should be. I'm just saying most of society would look at me and say, oh my God, you cuss in front of your kids. You want your kids. But I just have a different way. So that's the modern day, mommy. And at the end of the day, I also, I've been saying this for years. If it ain't fun, it ain't worth doing, because we've got enough heavy stuff in life that we have to take care of. And so pop me a good bottle of bubbly and give me some great food. And I am happy as a clam and I love to cook too. So I like to try new recipes and the good life is more about Me being able to share the things that I think are really quite a start also started a ladies brunch group here in St. Louis. It's a big one for five years. And it's the third, Sunday of every month. And I started it because I wanted to make friends. I moved to the central west end. I wanted to make girlfriends that were in the city. And I'm in the city. Now, if you can't tell, it's hearing the siren go by to the vet. I'm an ER, I'm on the 13th floor, urban living. I have to show you the view out my window right now. And here we are five years later and we've got branch actually coming up this coming Sunday and we already have 15 people. Oh So it's just, and it's been incredible these ladies and how much they learn from each other. And one person might be having a rough day and they're just in tears the whole time. And we're there. And what's really important is that community and that togetherness. And mimosa.
SONYA PALMER
I might crash your brunch next time I'm in St. Louis!
JAIMEE HALL
Don't crash. It. You're invited. I'll send you the link. So we have a Facebook group actually for the branch too. And when I first started it, it was so selfish. I like brunch. I liked the mimosas and I want to make friends. So I'm gonna start a brunch so that I can get some friends. And if I ended up being there by my. I still haven't lost. I've got brunch and the mimosas . And it's grown over time. There are times when we have to have a county brunch and a city branch cause there's too many of us. And I was like, how cool would that be to have a national ladies, brunch group that the third Sunday. Women get together to empower each other and be there for each other and share some great food and me most. So we have a Facebook group for the brunch and that's incredible, and women encourage each other throughout the month. And it's really cool. So I love incredible women. Empowering women is so important and you've come from several generations that really didn't do that very well. And I think it's our responsibility for our children to show them about our way.
SONYA PALMER
Yeah. I feel like we're. To be able to do exactly that to just, everything is set up for success for us right now to just do better. Women, empowering women. It means a better world for all of us, but we cannot build all of the time. I wanted to know what Jaimee does to decompress so she can show up as her best self every day.
JAIMEE HALL
I like baths and I have one of those little trays. All my friends got me that goes across the bath. And it's funny. I got really overwhelmed one day last week. And when I can sit, like I can get in the bath and be different hour and beat for me and actually be working on my laptop and I'm incredibly productive and I was getting overwhelmed and my inbox is insane. I've got to get it cleaned up. And actually the ops manager at Legal Back Office says to me, Jim, go run yourself a bath, get a glass of wine, bring your laptop and just knock that shit out. And I was like, you're right. That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to try it, figure out what works for you. I like to go for a walk in the park too. Like I lived very close to forest park, or if you live anywhere where you can just get outside and breathe fresh air, sometimes just taking a loop and I can be gone only 20 minutes and just go take a loop, which I'm probably going to do that today. Cause it's so nicein St. Louis today taking. I'll have my phone with me, but I'm not looking at my email. I'm just walking in breathing and processing. And decompression to me also comes in the form of friendship. It really does. I'm a people person, I'm an extrovert by nature. But I really love being around people and people that love me. And to me, that's decompression, like being able to be around people who I know, accept and love me even through my imperfections and we might be just hooting and hollering and laughing and having a good time and drinking wine, or one of us might be going through a really hard time and we're crying and drinking vodka. We always say when one of our girlfriends is going through a really hard time, there's nothing to handle a vodka solve. And being with her and being with your friends. Of course, I really think like this theme of, people we were made for people, even if you're an introvert, one of my best friends is an introvert. She has seen even more over the last couple of years, how having really good girlfriends has impacted her life for the positive and humans need other humans to be as successful as we possibly can.
SONYA PALMER
Yeah, I introvert, but I think I, I thankfully learned that didn't mean that I needed to avoid people. It just meant that they exhausted me. So I love to spend time with people. I can be very outgoing. I just then need to chill. I need to rest.
JAIMEE HALL
You need to rest up. I wanted to say one more thing too, because I think it's important is that, when you're dealing with something I think a lot of lady lawyers, we're hustlers, right? I And I'm not a lawyer I'm on the business side, but like women in leadership we're hustling, we're problem solvers. We're resourceful, we're resilient. We know how to get shit done. So it's not always our first inclination to ask others for help or to ask others how they would solve the same problem. And so we can like rush into things. And another thing that I've done is when I'm stuck on something, I'll call up any number of 10 different women and say, I've got this issue. How would you solve it? And it's something about those conversations always helps inspire a better thought or a better idea, and we don't have to do it all. Whoever said that we don't have to do it all alone when you've got other business owner friends, and I'm not talking about just a networking group, there are plenty of those out there. I'm talking about people that, know where the skeletons are buried in my life. They love me regardless of those skeletons and I can call them up and say, I've got this problem. How would you solve it? And really get a raw honest truth out of them, of how they would solve it. So utilizing that power in the brain trust and having so many different minds on a problem and not feeling like we have to solve things on our own has helped me a ton over the last few years, especially when you're starting a company that there really wasn't one out there. There wasn't a model. There was definitely, wasn't a model being shared. I knew starting up a McDonald's franchise, so you're constantly pivoting and solving problems that you didn't even know existed yesterday.
SONYA PALMER
Women tend to take on the lion share of burdens in life and in business. I love Jaimee's guiding principle of "togetherness". She is a great reminder that we do not have to do any of this alone. Call someone, ask for help, or even just advice. Unburden yourself, hold space for others, collaborate to make good ideas great, and build the world of your dreams. A huge, thank you to Jaimee Hall for sharing her story and unbelievable insights with us today. I had a ton of fun interviewing her. You have been listening to LawHer with me, Sonya Palmer. If you found this content insightful, inspiring, or just made you smile, please share this episode with the trailblazer in your life. For more about Jaimee Hall check out our show notes, and while you're there, please leave us a review or a five star rating. It really goes a long way for others to discover this. And I'll see you next week on LawHER or will shed light on how another of the brightest and boldest women in the legal industry climbed to the top of their field.
