Todd Stanton With Stanton Law

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: 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, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Todd Stanton, Principal and Founder of Stanton Law. Welcome.

Todd Stanton: Hey, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to get caught up for folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Staunton Law? How are you serving folks?

Todd Stanton: Sure. Staunton Law was started in 2011. We have our roots as a management side HR firm, helping small and medium sized businesses with their employment issues. Over the past decade and a half, we have, uh, bolted on several sidecar services to that HR practice. At the core of our of our being with some corporate transactional attorneys, we’ve added a robust litigation department as well, and also have ERISA and trust and estates practice on the side of that as well. So we’ve about a $4 million firm last year. We have 14 attorneys on our staff now about 20 lives all together. So we’re a thriving, thriving business right now.

Lee Kantor: So recently, can you talk a little bit about the Staunton law, Briarwood legal kind of partnership, or I guess you’re calling it a hire acquisition?

Todd Stanton: Yeah. Yeah. A hire acquisition. So, yeah, it’s an interesting story. I met Tyler Henderson. Probably about this time last year in a small firm networking group, and Tyler was building a very successful complex collections practice and helping other attorneys enforce judgments, helping businesses collect. Some old are suing on contract and things of that nature. Tyler is a pretty enterprising young attorney and was really coming up on the cusp of what it looked like to build his own firm, which is, as we know, comes comes with a bunch of baggage on it. When we start talking about the overhead that’s involved with even a small law firm, it’s rather substantial and there’s lots of ownership headaches. I heard Dan Martelle talk about that. People who start their own business often just become the administrator of their own business. And I think that Tyler looked at this and said, I need to grow. I’m kind of at my capacity with what I can do on my own and with my associate. So we started exploring what it would look like for him to merge with with Stanton Law. Um, and, uh, we’re about two months into this now and things are cooking along. He’s opening up new matters every day and using the taking advantage of the overhead that we’ve built and provide as a platform for him to grow his own practice within our within our ecosystem.

Lee Kantor: Is there any advice you can share for other lawyers who might be contemplating something similar? Is there some do’s and don’ts or some trade offs that maybe you didn’t anticipate?

Todd Stanton: I haven’t found the trade offs that I the negative trade offs on this. It is certainly inspiring to have a younger attorney with a pretty pronounced ownership mentality come into the come into the firm and really juice things up. Last week when I got my first new matters, one of my first New Matters reports since he’s been on board. It’s been one of the first times in state law history that somebody has eclipsed me, and the number of new matters that are coming in. So that momentum has been great as far as the things that I think that, uh, people need to look out for, uh, making sure that there is a cultural fit there. Uh, Tyler has, uh, is proving himself to be a good cultural fit here with our core values of ownership mentality and not taking ourselves too seriously. And he brings his dog in. Uh, if this were a if this were a more straight laced shop, I don’t know that it would be, uh, as good of a fit as it is. Uh, I think a lot of times, uh, lawyers in particular get stuck on the revenue side of the ledger and not really looking at the cultural fit. Uh, when they when they bring on a, when they bring on a new partner or another lawyer into the office.

Lee Kantor: So how did you go about kind of contemplating this cultural fit? What were some of the things that would have been like kind of red flags or and that turned out to be green flags, like you mentioned the dog, but were there other things?

Todd Stanton: Yeah. So I mean, I make sure that, uh, I meet Tyler and his family. Uh, he’s got a lovely wife, Allie, and a three year old daughter named Piper. And at Staunton Lauren employee first organization, we make sure that the the the inside of work is or excuse me. The outside of work is just as important as the inside of work. And so making sure that Ali and Piper are comfortable with their, their dads and husbands decision on this was important to me, too. Um, and so as we got to know them and Tyler spent time in the Tyler spent time coming over to the office and getting to know the other folks, it was pretty clear it was going to be a good fit.

Lee Kantor: Now, has there any has there? I know it’s been a short period of time, but do you see like synergies or ways that the dots are being connected. And you know one on one is equaling three rather than two?

Todd Stanton: Uh, well, again, I think that the, the, the revenue numbers are going to, uh, are going to show that pretty quickly. Uh, as we approach into his second month and, uh, start to see how that works. Yes, there’s some synergies there. Um, back to that cultural side. Uh, one of my goals, uh, for Tyler, is to get him to perhaps work a little less. Uh, and I want him to I want him to up the number of rounds he plays on the golf course each year. And so as I as I start to push that out and getting him to spend less time behind his desk and more time outside, whether that’s with Ali and Piper or whether that’s a business development golf with clients, I think we’ll start to see that that materialize as well.

Lee Kantor: So how does it affect the other lawyers on the team?

Todd Stanton: Um, people like results. And, uh, and when in a firm like Staunton Law, the where you have somebody who is originating business and bringing in matters, uh, and bringing in the work, uh, other people like to stay busy, uh, and, you know, managing work life balance and, uh, finding just enough work to do to, to pay the bills, but not enough to be overwhelmed. And, uh, and more than enough to be bored. Uh, I think they appreciate another another rainmaker in the office so far.

Lee Kantor: Now, why do you think that over the years, it was difficult to find another rainmaker just through hiring or just through normal practices.

Todd Stanton: I that’s a great question. Um, I think that, uh, I think that too many lawyers come out of law school focused on being very good, substantive lawyers. And I think that those are table stakes to having a successful practice. But I think a lot of lawyers come late to the game about having to develop their their book. Um, when, when I was, uh, exploring what it looked like to be a partner at Big Law, uh, I was, uh, asking, what does it take to make partner? How do I make this? Well, how many hours do I need to Bill? How many, uh, cases do I need to supervise? And a mentor of mine named Elaine Cook kind of reframed the question. She said you’re asking it wrong. She said. Instead of asking what it takes to make partner, you need to ask yourself what it takes to build a practice, to make partnership inevitable. Um, and I think that the switch flipped for me, that all lawyers are self employed. And I think that and we have to develop our own practice in order to in order to thrive. And I think that lots of more traditional lawyers, particularly in big law, but could be anywhere, tend to get in a service oriented mentality, uh, and, and want to do the work of the clients and don’t necessarily want to go develop the work themselves. I mean, sales has a bad reputation and lots of aspects and no worse than in in the legal realm. Uh, nobody wants to be seen as a as a salesperson. So we try to focus it more on relationship and business development going hand in hand. And I don’t think that lawyers necessarily are focused on that. And it’s it’s a bit of a risk to come over to a, to a smaller shop when you can instead be down on a nice office with a good art collection in midtown, you know.

Lee Kantor: So how do you recommend for that lawyer that says, okay, I want to be the person that brings in business? What are some do’s and don’ts? Some some advice for that person to become the rainmaker that you think that it takes in order to be successful and build out a career?

Todd Stanton: I mean, there’s lots of ways that you traditional lawyers can go about building a successful book. They can specialize, they can work for a huge firm with a good brand recognition. Um, they can they can become the go to person for a particular topic. Uh, my business development mentor, a gentleman named Steve Sunshine out of Bryan Caves California office. He preached a more authentic way or a way of authenticity in order to develop business. Um, I go about doing the things I like to do with my with people who have shared passions for me. Uh, that is, uh, that is golf and that is, uh, hiking with my dog. And when I find other people who, uh, enjoy those things, we go do those things together. Uh, and as we’re talking about things other than legal work, relationships form. And once they get to trust me in those other aspects, then the the business comes about. And I would suggest that the sooner, uh, newer attorneys can get started on that, the better. The old axiom about the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. Um, getting started developing those relationships and letting people in to see not just what kind of lawyer you are, but what kind of person you are, uh, is the key to the key to building a successful, successful book.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website?

Todd Stanton: Uh, we’re at Stanton Law LLC. Com s t a n t o n l w.com. Uh, we we specialize in making sure that we don’t turn, uh, legal or business problems into legal issues. Uh, before it’s time. Right. We try to give practical, ROI based, bottom line oriented advice and keep people out of trouble.

Lee Kantor: So what what is the problem that a firm is having right before they should be calling Stanton Law?

Todd Stanton: I’ll tell you, the the thing that we’ve been seeing a lot more recently is restrictive covenant issues both on the, the, the, uh, business that is losing an employee who has signed a restrictive covenant and going to a competitor. Uh, we see it on the competitor who’s trying to hire that employee, and we, uh, we get it from the employee who’s kind of stuck in the middle. He’s got a contract that says he can’t go somewhere, but he really needs the the career advancement. Um, and we have a pretty unique, uh, way of looking at that restrictive covenant issue from any of those, uh, legs on that three legged stool there. Um, so if you’ve got a restrictive covenant issue that’s stuck in your craw, please let us know if you’ve got some outstanding are. Tyler would love to talk to you about whether or not there’s a way to maybe get some of those dollars in the door. Um, and certainly just about any employment issue on the on under the sun, if you’ve got a 5% of your employees causing you 95% of your problems, we’d love to. We’d love to see whether or not we can. We can mitigate those for you.

Lee Kantor: Now, uh, is your work industry agnostic or do you have a sweet spot in certain industries?

Todd Stanton: I get that question a lot. Employment work in particular is industry agnostic. I mean, if you tell me what kind of employment problem you have, I can generally tell you what department they’re coming from, right. Somebody’s hands in the hot tub. That’s a that’s a sales organization. Somebody with somebody in the who’s got trouble drawing, uh, interpersonal problems. That’s probably an engineer whose lines are too straight. But no, I we’ve we’ve decided that we we are better serviced, uh, better serving our clients with a practical approach rather than focusing on one particular silo.

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

Todd Stanton: You bet. Thank you. Lee, I always appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

Lee Kantor: All right, this Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.