Todd Stanton With Stanton Law

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by on pay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Todd Stanton and he’s with Stanton Law. Welcome, Todd.

Todd Stanton: [00:00:42] Welcome. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you guys today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to get caught up. What’s happening at Stanton Law? Why don’t you let people know what your specialty is and how you’re serving the folks here?

Todd Stanton: [00:00:55] Sure. So we’re a boutique business side firm. We have 15 attorneys, including litigators, a couple of transactional attorneys, an Orissa specialist doing health and welfare and executive comp. We have a sub practice with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Trust and Estates and Intellectual Property Attorney. So we try to meet the full legal needs on the side of small and medium sized businesses. Our focus is really on trying to keep your business issues from becoming legal problems in the first place. And we have certainly been busy coming out of out of COVID. And as we’re dealing with employee retention issues and the normal slate of employment law problems, it’s a good time to be on the business side of the law.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:44] So now has the pandemic and the advent of all this work from home and this, you know, this hybrid and all this stuff, does that open up the employer for some challenges that maybe they hadn’t thought about if they had never done this before?

Todd Stanton: [00:02:01] Yes, but maybe not for the reason that you think. I think that the 2020 and 2021 really reset a bunch of employee expectations for what for what work was. And while they were forced to be at home, they they found that they could still be productive. A lot of employers found that they could still get productive employees. And now, as we’re moving back to where most folks can, if if it’s required to be at work, some folks are saying, I don’t want to anymore. So I think that that’s part of the great the great resignation that you hear as people figure it out, that they don’t need to be at a 9 to 5 job and don’t want to be able to find a job. And employers are struggling to figure out whether or not they want to be a work from home or a hybrid company. Now, from a from a legal standpoint, that doesn’t change a whole lot. If a company wants their folks to be at home excuse me, to be be in the office, they can certainly require that in most instances. But it’s more of a business problem about whether whether you’re going to be able to recruit and retain solid and productive talent if their expectation is to work from home full or part time. And your expectation is that they they report to work every day. So, yeah, it’s been a it’s been a source of friction, I guess a source of questions from employers. But again, coming at it from a business standpoint than a legal standpoint is probably going to get them more miles than treating it as a pre litigation event.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:42] Now, when the pandemic started and people were kind of forced to work from home, that the expectation was, okay, I got to work from home because I can’t go back into the office. So now when they say, hey, the pandemic is over for us, so you have to come back in and the employee says, Look, I’ve been just as productive here. I mean, I didn’t miss a beat. You know, I don’t want to go back. Is that a renegotiation or is that like. Like, is the employer allowed to just say, well, if you don’t want to come back? I think Elon Musk said, I’m assuming if you’re not here, you’ve resigned like is that is it that simple for from the employer standpoint? They can say something like that.

Todd Stanton: [00:04:24] It can be for for most of the employees. But look, you’ve talked with enough lawyers on your program. You know, there’s no yes or no answer when you’re dealing with an attorney. It’s always going to be. It depends. And in this situation, when when that instance comes up, like I said, in 90% of these cases, yeah, if the boss wants you at work, it doesn’t matter whether you would prefer to work from home. Georgia is a firmly at will state and they can fire you for a good reason. Batteries and no reason at all. And certainly not not reporting to work, as you’re told, is a good reason. That being said, if there is aa1 of several reasons that they are required, you might be entitled to work from home. There’s a law that affects employee employers with 15 or more employees called the Americans with Disabilities Act. And if there is a if the employee has a qualifying disability, they might be entitled to a reasonable accommodation which might entitle them to work from home for a for either a permanent or indefinite period of time. Certainly an intermittent time might be reasonable in those cases.

Todd Stanton: [00:05:36] Other types of medical leave for either the for the. Or their children or immediate family member might also make it such that being at home is a prudent thing to do. But at the end of the day, when we’re down to where we’re arguing about the walls and whether somebody has the right to work from home and whether they’re entitled to work from home, and the employer has to let them work from home or can make them report to the office. And many instances the battle’s already lost. At that point, the relationship might be broken to the point where things have been said or trust has been broken and that it might not work. Our advice is to try to work this out and find something that’s a win win for both parties. Understanding that if it’s a good employee, you need that work done and making the concession that they get to work from home part or full time might ultimately be the best, best business decision, the best decision for the bottom line, rather than trying to find somebody else out there, as we know, is a pretty tight labor market.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:40] Now, let’s talk a little bit about your back story. I know you came from a large firm and then decided to launch this kind of boutique firm. What was the thinking there of making that transition from kind of the, you know, that traditional I’m going to go to law school working a big firm, become a partner, you know, that you know, we’ve watched enough movies to see that play out, but you decided to kind of pull the ripcord and said, you know what, I’m going to go my own way and I’m going to make this the way that I want it to be.

Todd Stanton: [00:07:07] Yeah, I enjoy telling this story. So you’re right. My trajectory coming, going into the law school and coming out of law school was to work for a big law firm and be a big law partner. Some of that is for the reasons that most people see. I mean, they make a lot of money and for the most part lead a pretty good life. They certainly the paycheck will allow them to do it if they’ve got their other priorities straight. I did that for about nine years through two firms that I really enjoyed. Both of them treated me very well. But as I was looking at what partnership meant at a big law firm and I was asking around what are the qualifications to make partner at the large global firm where I was in 2009 and ten. And finally, a practice group leader, a lovely lady named Elaine Cook told me that I was asking the wrong question. She said, You shouldn’t be asking whether or what it takes to make partner. You should be asking what it takes to develop a practice to make partnership inevitable. And that subtle switch in thinking led me to conclude that all lawyers are self employed, and I was responsible for whether they work for a firm or not. And I was responsible for building my practice and being an employment lawyer in a big firm. I recognized pretty quickly I was going to have a difficult time building that practice in an environment with my contacts.

Todd Stanton: [00:08:34] Most of Stanton Law’s clients, even today, are employers with less than 500 500 employees. Those employers generally cannot afford those, those large law firm rates. And so I was able to decide to say, let me go service these clients with whom I already have these relationships. And and Phil, what I saw was a need. I will say that when I was looking at leaving and I talked to other lawyers who had left the big law firm nest and gone out to either small or solo or nontraditional type firms. When I asked them what they would have done differently in their and they’re leaving every one of them, 12 or 12 said that they would have done it earlier. It is just a different and in my opinion, a more enjoyable way of life to have still have a lot of responsibility, but to have authority and to have autonomy that’s that’s commensurate with that with that responsibility. It’s just a much more liberating way to be for me at least. And whether self employment is for everybody remains to be seen. But I would certainly encourage lawyers who are looking for a better balance between their work life and their their personal life to consider small and small and nontraditional firm life.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:53] But one of the big additions to your your job requirements are leadership. I got to hire. There are certain elements now that everything becomes your problem rather than you’re just kind of a cog in the machine and you can just be heads down and do what you got to do. Has that you know that part of it? Are you enjoying that part of it? Is that something that you’ve been able to, you know, build the team that you wanted to build at the speed you wanted to build it?

Todd Stanton: [00:10:26] Well, there’s enough is never enough when it comes to that. And a large part of running any business, I suppose, is chasing that overhead. Right. And finding the balance between having enough infrastructure. To generate the revenue and then enough revenue to support the infrastructure and then add more. So have I grown as fast as I would like to? Perhaps not. And certainly some days the crown is heavy, and being the boss of at a law firm and having your name on the door does pose leadership challenges. I like being around the people that we work with. One of my major tenets for both business development and with the firm is we don’t really have a work life and a a home life. We we integrate those very, very well. And so it takes a little bit of the sting out of working hard and working a lot when we’re we’re blending it with the things that we like to do anyway. That, that, that Branson, Richard Branson quote about not having a life, not having a work life and not having a play. Life is a standard around our shop. We also are a why based firm, and our why for Stanton Law is that we build and maintain fulfilling and sustainable lives both in and out of work. Our attorneys are expected to pay attention to their family obligations because they can be better employees. They’re better lawyers when they have a satisfying life outside of the office. And we emphasize that and we live it. And if I’m able to model that, that’s the most persuasive, persuasive leadership that I can I can imagine. And giving those other people space to do the things that interest them while they they make the handsome paycheck serving their clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:18] So now when you make the leap and then Stanton Law is you at the beginning, how did you know? Like did something happen where you’re like, okay, we’re going to be okay. This is going to work out.

Todd Stanton: [00:12:33] I don’t remember an epiphany moment like that. I mean, we’ve made it ten and a half years now. I think we’re over, you know, being self employed and running a business. I don’t know of many people who don’t have that feeling that they’re one month away from foreclosure, even though I know that’s not going to happen. I look at a horrible pal from April and I’m thinking, Oh gosh, even April 20, 22. I say, this is horrible. This is a disaster. But then we turn around and it was a great month and we’re back, right back on track. So I don’t know that there’s ever been a spot where the switch flicks and you say, I’ve made it and we’re in good shape. I know we do good work. And I know that the people at Stanton Law are all pulling together on this. But no, there wasn’t a there wasn’t a flash of light, a burning bush moment where I realized that we had crested the hump and we’re we’re able to put it on cruise control. I will say that another part about that is knowing that you have good clients and servicing them and that they will keep coming back as is really important. We our bills are relatively small compared to the larger law firms and we have lots of repeat clients coming back to us and paying very modest rates for legal services, not because our rates are necessarily that much lower, but because we’re pretty efficient and we want to keep them coming back and having a stable of loyal clients is probably the thing that lets me sleep at night knowing we’re not going to go belly up at any particular time.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:08] Well, I would think that that’s a marker that things are going okay. Another marker might be that when lawyers are saying, hey, Todd, you know, any openings, I would think that’s another marker that that people the right people that fit your culture want to work with you or these are signs that you might be doing something right.

Todd Stanton: [00:14:29] Yeah. Let me give you another example of that one that I’m really pretty proud of. So last summer, one of our I think Amy is a seventh year attorney. She had worked with us as a clerk as a third year at Georgia State Law School. And then she came right with us and became an associate. And she approached me about this time last year and said that she had gotten an offer from another boutique firm that was essentially going to double her compensation. It was going to require more hours, it would require some more structure for her, but that it was her dream job and certainly was going to give her and her husband a cushier income than what she was earning at state law and knew what was coming next. And she surprised me and she said not turned it down. She said, I like what we’re building here at Stanton Law. I believe in what your mission is. I believe in what we’re trying to do together. And so I’ve turned it down. There’s a postscript to that story that I wrote, a very, almost a viral LinkedIn post about that story and how proud I was of it and how happy I was with Amy’s decision.

Todd Stanton: [00:15:41] And about two months later, she came back to me and she said, Todd, I’ve reconsidered and I’ve decided to take that big job now. And I was obviously disappointed. And then the next postscript to that was she worked at that boutique for a week and decided it was not for her and came back to Stanton Law again. So I think that, yes, when you start to see people who are enjoying working with us and then then you see this where they tried something else and realized that that big paycheck comes at a price and that there are other things about work, other things about even being a lawyer that that compensation, a pure paycheck can’t really cover. And that’s what that’s what I’m banking on, is that if we provide happy a place for employers and lawyers to be happy, they’re going to be better lawyers. And ultimately, that’s a that’s going to be a good client retention strategy as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:33] Now, are you finding that this is a trend in in cities around the country where there’s law firms that are taking the tack that you’re taking this kind of entrepreneurial culture that’s attracting certain types of lawyers that want to do a certain type of work in a certain manner, rather than go that kind of classic route, a big firm partner, etc..

Todd Stanton: [00:16:57] Yeah, I think that nontraditional firms is how well shorthand that are certainly gaining steam. I owe a lot to Mark Taylor and Joe English at Taylor English, both of whom I had good relationships with before before starting Stanton Law. Not only by helping me have ideas and supporting the supporting the effort, but by really plowing a lot of ground and making corporate clients much more comfortable with with nontraditional firms, with lawyers who are more entrepreneurial. Leaving the. Even though the big Midtown model, Joe and Mark did a lot of a lot of work pioneering that. And I would submit that a lot of nontraditional firms in one way, shape or form had a model adapted off of what what Mark and Joe came up with. Stan does to some extent. And then there’s the other, the purely virtual firms. Fisher Boyles jumps to mind there, who offer a lot of the benefits of self employment for very low overhead. They don’t provide necessarily all the same lawyer services or benefits that a brick and mortar shop does. But it is certainly the case that having an alternative to a 1920 100 billable hour year is is attractive to to my peers, as well as a younger generation that would want something more out of a legal career than 40 years behind a desk in a in a gold watch on the way out.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:35] Now are the clients typically the folks that just can’t afford the big firms? Or are you getting some of these larger clients that are saying, you know what, let’s give some of our business to these nontraditional practices?

Todd Stanton: [00:18:49] I like this question, too. So among the big, big corporate clients that the joke around our place is that no one ever got hired. No one ever no general counsel ever got fired for hiring King Spalding. So if if there’s a company litigation, if there is an enormous transaction, certainly a marquee and a branded name with the very good and smart lawyers at reputed law firms is the safe bet. Right. And larger companies are not going to be certainly not as fee sensitive as as groups with less than 500 folks. We have been able to crack into larger companies, several large companies here in Atlanta. We count among our clients, but we usually do niche work for them. We we respond to HR complaints for one for one large company. We respond to third party subpoenas for another large client. We do internal investigations for another. So we don’t necessarily get the the company pieces coming out of that large out of those large companies. But there’s a place for us and we in our in our margins can still generate good or our rates can still generate good revenue, and we’ll still able to keep our overhead low and generate good margins. But I’d be I’d be lying if I said that our bread and butter was not much smaller. Companies from the 250 and down is where our our bread and butter is. And those groups, in most instances, do not have the the legal resources, the legal budget, in order to pay those large firm rates. That’s true. And they need somebody who is a little bit more closer to their PNL than somebody who sits in the midtown office tower. So that’s where I think that being an entrepreneurial law firm, being business owners ourselves, certainly helps speak the language of our smaller clients who generate probably about 80% of our revenue comes from clients with less than 300 employees.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:53] So if there is a business out there with less than 300 employees that wants to learn more about what you have to offer or maybe engage you in conversation, what is the website?

Todd Stanton: [00:21:05] Yeah, we are at Stanton Law LLC and Stanton LLC and that selecting a lawyer process. We’re in the middle of a LinkedIn campaign with that to interview lots of lawyers and find a fit. Don’t, don’t, please don’t pick it just on rate either too high or too low. Finding somebody whose approach matches with yours, whose advice you genuinely trust and understand from where they’re coming. That’s the most important part about finding an attorney and a counselor with whom you’re going to hopefully have a long standing business relationship. So it all fits for some. But if you’re interested in a hard nosed litigator, maybe that’s not maybe that’s not us. Maybe there’s another boutique that goes goes a little bit harder charging. You’re more interested in the business aspects of it and solving problems rather than picking fights. That’s more our speed. So I would encourage people to look at that, to certainly give us a try and kick our tires. But don’t don’t just interview us. Find the right fit for your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:09] Choose wisely.

Todd Stanton: [00:22:11] Choose wisely.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:12] Well, Todd, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Todd Stanton: [00:22:17] I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:19] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Atlanta Business Radio.