Strategies for Expanding Your Practice (2022 Small Firm & Technology Section Program)
8:25 Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:55 Welcome and Introductions
9:00 Legal Matchmaking
Nikki Green, Ave Staffing, Raleigh Julia Taylor, LevLegal LLC, Atlanta, GA
Explore how to find the right match for your firm when it comes to paralegals, entry and lateral levels.
10:30 Break
10:40 What I Learned from Starting Up
Dylan W. Greenwood, Greenwood Law, Winston-Salem Manisha P. Patel, Law Office of Manisha P. Patel PLLC, Greensboro Megan E. Spidell, Spidell Family Law, Greensboro
Hear from a panel of solo/small firm owners as they delve into their journey of starting their own practice and what that means for your as a practitioner.
12:10 Lunch Break
12:55 Compensation Profiles
Molly L. McGrath, Hiring and Empowering LLC, Parker, CO
Review different attorney fee models and learn how to find the best model to fit your practice.
2:55 Break
3:05 Leveraging Technology for Growing and Efficient Law Firms‡
Catherine Sanders Reach, North Carolina Bar Association, Cary Julia Taylor, LevLegal LLC, Atlanta, GA
Take a deep dive into how to use technology in your practice to streamline processes, making you more efficient at helping your clients and how to utilize resources you may not know you have.
4:05 Adjourn
‡ Indicates portion providing Technology Training credit
Description
Whether you are a long time solo/small firm practitioner or just opening up your own firm, it is never too early to begin thinking about ways to expand your practice.
Contributors
Nicole "Nikki" Green
Nicole "Nikki" Green leads Ave Staffing in Raleigh, bringing in years of experience in both recruiting and team building. She is a sought-after staffing strategist for law firms across the country.
Nikki has had years of experience in recruiting before founding Ave Staffing. Since 2016, she has watched her client base blossom from local North Carolina to nationwide. She has been featured in publications such as Attorney at Law Magazine, KNOW, and NALA.
Ave Staffing's "Right Fit" program has been notorious for digging diligently into the personalities of hiring clients. Doing so has allowed Nikki and her team to successfully supply the best candidates for their clients. From company culture to the candidate's skill sets and aspirations - no element is overlooked during the "match-making" process.
Click here for more information about Nikki and Ave Staffing.
Dylan W. Greenwood
Dylan W. Greenwood is the Managing Partner of Greenwood Law in Winston-Salem. He manages a firm of four attorneys in the Triad area focusing primarily on litigation issues.
Dylan started his practice from the ground up in the fall of 2013 and has since been designated as a Super Lawyers "Rising Star" since 2020. Most recently, Dylan has served as the Co-President of the Forsyth County Criminal Defense Trial Lawyers Association. His primary practice areas are state and federal criminal defense.
Dylan is a proud graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law. While at Wake Forest, Dylan served on the Moot Court Board and was elected to the Order of the Barristers.
Molly L. McGrath is the founder of Hiring and Empowering LLC in Parker, CO. Since the late nineties, she has coached, consulted and directed presidents and founders of national organizations and over 4,000 law firms in; executive-level leadership, continuous improvement and team empowerment initiatives to infiltrate new markets, leveraging partner ecosystems and producing profitability.
Molly has 23 years of specific skillset experience in legal CMO marketing, factional CEO, conversation intelligence coaching, team development & empowerment, intraprenuer talent acquisition, Kaizen leadership, root cause analysis, revenue mapping and action-based project management.
Molly is a national podcaster, nationally recognized blogger since 2008, #1 Amazon Best Seller Author; "Speaking Your Truth: Courageous Stories from Inspiring Women", "Intrapreneurs in an Entrepreneur's World – How to Empower Your Employees to Step Up and Lead", "Don't Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Spirit in the Process" and "Speaking your Truth: Courageous Stories from Inspiring Women".
Manisha P. Patel is the managing attorney at the Law Office of Manisha P. Patel PLLC in Greensboro. She is a family law attorney representing clients in various stages of their domestic law matters. She began her legal career practicing with a private law firm before opening the doors to her solo practice in November 2018.
A Virginia native, Manisha graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) with Bachelor's degrees in both economics and history. While enrolled in Virginia Tech, she received recognition at both the state and national levels for distinguished service in student affairs and on-campus student government. She next attended Elon University School of Law, where she was the Vice President of the Women's Law Association and a member of Phi Alpha Delta International Law Fraternity. She identified family law as an area of interest early in her first year of law school and has since dedicated her practice to offering compassion, dedication, and fervent legal support to individuals in emotionally trying seasons of life.
Born and raised in Danville, VA, Manisha has always been close to her family and is the first attorney in her family. Manisha decided to pursue a legal career at the young age of fourteen while working on an 8th grade research project on the constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States.
In her free time, Manisha enjoys running and has completed nine half marathons and a number of smaller races throughout the country and Canada. She is also enthusiastic about her Virginia Tech Hokies and loves spending time with her adopted rescue dog, a pug chihuahua mix, Rusty M. Patel.
Catherine Sanders Reach is Director for the Center for Practice Management at the North Carolina Bar Association, providing practice technology and management assistance to lawyers and legal professionals. Formerly she was Director, Law Practice Management and Technology for the Chicago Bar Association and the Director at the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center.
Prior to her work at the NCBA, CBA and ABA she worked in library and information science environments for a number of years, working at Ross and Hardies as a librarian. She received a master's degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa in 1997.
Catherine's professional activities include articles published in Law Practice magazine, Law Technology News and GPSolo Magazine, as well as numerous other publications. She has given presentations on the use of technology in law firms for national bar conferences, state and local bar associations and organizations such as the National Association of Bar Council and the Association of American Law Schools. In 2011 she was selected to be one of the inaugural Fastcase 50, celebrating fifty innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the field of law and in 2013 became a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. She served on the ABA TECHSHOW Board from 2007-2009, 2014-2016 and is co-vice chair in 2019.
Megan E. Spidell is the founder of Spidell Family Law in Greensboro. She began her practice in Kernersville representing clients in family and criminal court. In 2013, she moved to Dummit Fradin where she continued to practice family law, criminal law and social security disability in the Greensboro and High Point offices. In 2019, Megan made the decision to open her own firm practicing family law, criminal law and estate planning in Greensboro and Spidell Family Law began.
Megan has been honored as a the National Trial Lawyers: Top 100 (2014), Super Lawyers Rising Star (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), North Carolina Legal Elite (2017), and AVVO Client's Choice Award. She is a member of the Guilford Inn of Courts, the Greensboro Bar Association (Young Lawyers Section and Family Law Section), the Catawba College Alumni Board of Directors, volunteers with the Elon University School of Law Preceptor Program and is the 2018 and 2019 President of the Piedmont Triad Women Attorneys (a chapter of the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys)
Megan is licensed in North Carolina, where she practices regularly in District and Superior Courts in numerous local counties. She is also licensed in Federal Court, in the United States Middle District of North Carolina
Megan grew up in Salisbury, where most of her family still resides. She is a graduate of Catawba College and Elon University School of Law. Since graduating law school, Megan has dedicated much of her practice to family law- focusing on separation, custody, adoption, divorce, and financial issues.
Julia Taylor is the owner and managing paralegal of LevLegal LLC in Atlanta, GA, and one of the Co-Founders of Hirics LLC. Although LevLegal started out as a virtual paralegal business, it has quickly turned into a one stop shop for attorneys and law firms looking to start up or reinvent their practices. Julia and her team now provide Virtual Firm Administrator/Business Manager, Virtual CFO/bookkeeping, operations/software consulting, and staff training for law firm clients nationwide.
Julia dedicates her time to helping her clients streamline office processes, train staff, reduce overhead and properly outsource their needs so that they can focus more on actually practicing law. She also manages a team of dedicated and experienced paralegals who serve LevLegal clients in various practice areas throughout the country.
In her capacity as co-owner of Hirics, a nationwide recruiting firm that has broken the traditional recruiting model, Julia helps her law firm clients find top talent from file clerks to lateral partners by leveraging technology, building intimate relationships with decision makers and reducing recruiting fees so that recruiting is a service available to law firms of all sizes and revenue levels.
Pegeen Turner is a Legal Technology Consultant and President of Legal Cloud Technology in Raleigh. She has worked with attorneys and their technology both inside and outside of law firms for more than 20 years.
Now, as a consultant and president of Legal Cloud Technology, Pegeen helps firms integrate new technology into their practices and helps firms update and use their existing technology better. Her firm concentrates on cloud-based technology and moving attorneys and firms toward cloud-based technology. She is also a co-founder of a technology product called myFirmData, a custom reporting tool that integrates with Clio, the leading cloud-based practice management system.
Pegeen earned her B.B.A. degree in International Business from James Madison University.