Maximum Lawyer

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In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer podcast, host Tyson Matrix speaks with guest Bill Farias about transforming law firm recruiting into a systematic, marketing-driven process. Inspired by Claire Hughes Johnson's book Scaling People, Bill shifted from reactive hiring to building a consistent talent pipeline. 

They discuss treating recruiting like client acquisition, developing a strong talent brand, and using tools like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Monday.com to manage candidates. Bill emphasizes that competitive compensation combined with a strong culture attracts top talent, while speed and clear communication are critical to converting strong candidates into hires.


  • 00:00:46 Inspiration from "Scaling People" 
  • 00:03:32 Building a Consistent Hiring Pipeline
  • 00:06:47 Recruiting Tools and Process Management 
  • 00:08:20 Recruiting as Marketing: What Are You Marketing? 
  • 00:13:03 Tracking and Measuring Recruiting Efforts 
  • 00:15:45 Employer Value Proposition in Recruiting 
  • 00:17:19 Compensation vs. Culture in Recruiting 
  • 00:22:17 Bill emphasizes prioritizing character and drive over experience.
  • 00:25:19 Notes that different roles require different candidate qualities, from reliability to innovation.
  • 00:27:06 Summarizes main lessons: hiring as a scalable system, recruiting as marketing, and the power of culture and brand.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
Bill, it's kind of interesting. Not too long ago, you made this pretty fundamental shift in your thinking. And instead of treating hiring as more like the sporadic need that a lot of law firms do, you began viewing it more as a system similar to, you know, client acquisition. And so it's really kind of that's the reframing that you posted about. I want to start there. So before I read the post, what wasn't working before you made the shift?

What was it that made it finally click for you that recruiting needed to be treated differently?

Bill Farias (00:34)
Well, I don't think it was anything necessarily that wasn't working as much as just coming across this concept in a book called Scaling People.

by Claire Hughes Johnson. She was an executive at Google and Stripe. Really smart lady, ⁓ is pretty much an expert in building and managing teams. And that's where I got this idea from. And so I started thinking of building a team, building a pipeline from this perspective. And I have to say, this is a work in progress. I am still...

I'm actively working on this and there is still a lot of ⁓ work to do, but it is, I think, a helpful framework for me.

Tyson Mutrux (01:20)
Was it a struggle for you to kind of reframe it this way? I know that lot of people struggle with change and was that a struggle just getting the mindset

Bill Farias (01:29)
No, not at all. I actually find it really fascinating because the comparison is a great one and the analogy is a great one. And at the end of the day, it still is marketing. It's just a different type of marketing. So it was actually a pretty kind of smooth fit and transition. And I didn't find it difficult to start to think about it this way and to start to build out the systems accordingly.

Tyson Mutrux (01:57)
All right. And so to get people some context, this was your post was from like October. So it wasn't like a recent post. So you do have a little bit of ⁓ time between the actual episode and when you posted this. So I'm going I'm going to read this ⁓ post and you say for a while I was struggling to find good candidates. Once I started treating it as marketing problem, things got better. Still plenty of work to do in this area. This line from the book, scaling people by Claire Hughes Johnson.

and you put in parentheses, Google Stripe puts it best. Talent acquisition is marketing and sales, what we call growth or performance marketing. You need to invest in your talent brand, lead identification and outreach in order to direct traffic, job views and applicants into your funnel. Then you need to have the means to assess lead quality and optimize conversion. I do think that is a drastically different approach than what most people do. ⁓

When you hear that now that you, when you reposted that, think about what you were doing before and compare what you're doing now versus what you were doing before.

Bill Farias (03:04)
Okay.

So now that you reread it, ⁓ apparently there was more of a struggle than what comes to mind now. And that does make sense. think ⁓ our pipeline is better now. Our systems are better now. And we generally have a stronger culture because of it. I think we've been able to make better hires.

There were the way that I think about this is I think about it as in regular marketing to try to bring on clients, right? You always hear and we experience as business owners that a strong pipeline ⁓ solves a lot of problems. So if your marketing is working, it is way easier to deal with adversity to deal with the issues that come up day in and day out.

in business because you can rely on bringing in these clients, bringing in that revenue and revenue is not the solution to everything. having that money can help you solve a lot of problems more effectively and more efficiently. And so the shift in mindset was instead of being reactive and at least this is how I interpreted it is

at the most fundamental level, instead of being reactive and going out and searching for candidates as the need arises, similar to marketing for clients, it's really important to consistently invest in building that hiring pipeline so that you can have more options and you can operate from a position of leverage rather than need and being reactionary.

So that's the first thing. The second part was the actual building of the systems to field and process these candidates. So just like you would with a client that you're trying to bring into the business, you want to create an awesome experience for a candidate coming in. ⁓

First of all, backing up, you want to be clear about who you are as a business, how you operate so that you attract the right people and you deter people that you don't want applying, right? So you don't want your pipeline clogged up, your hiring pipeline clogged up with people that are just gonna waste your firm's time and you're gonna waste their time. ⁓ So building that pipeline, investing in your

brand and who you are as an operation to attract the right people and then actually building the pipeline to make the process clear, to ensure that you're paying attention to the best candidates, that you are creating an awesome experience for them that's then going to create word of mouth marketing, so to speak, to attract more good candidates and so on and so forth. So that's like at a high, like 30,000 foot level.

how I thought about that post and how I thought about restructuring my systems.

Tyson Mutrux (06:35)
It's such a really good point. I can tell you like when we added Zoho to recruit our arsenal of tools, just the ability to organize all of the leads in one place and actually score them, manage them in one place and then easily convert them into onboarding in one place. It made a massive difference just being able to do that. And that's just one angle of it. And I think that's really interesting that you...

went to that angle because that's probably something that in this discussion, a lot of people probably would have overlooked where like when we talked about, I'm to ask you about recruiting as marketing, that kind of a thing. think most people are going to jump directly to the marketing part of it. Okay. How do I get better leads? How do I get all that kind of stuff? When, and the, the, the most, probably the most overlooked part is the whole process driven part of it where, okay, you've got to have, you have, you have a place to handle your leads.

whether you're something like Pipe Drive or Began or something like that, or you need to have a place to actually handle your leads when it comes to actual candidates. So I think that's a really good point. I do want to shift gears a little bit, because I do want to ask you about the recruiting is marketing part of it. so when we say recruiting is marketing, ⁓ what are you actually marketing? I know what it kind of means, I think, our firm, I wonder what it means to your firm.

I mean, are you talking about the job itself? Are you talking about the firm? Are talking about the culture, something else, all of the above? What is it that you're actually marketing?

Bill Farias (08:08)
So the way that I think about it is that first of all, if I want to attract the best candidates, it's my responsibility to educate the public and the job market about my culture.

Who are we? How do we do work? ⁓ How do we operate? What are we about? And most importantly, what value can we bring to them? Like I have this fundamental belief that to attract and keep the best candidates, it's really important to focus on building and developing the individual.

So I think that businesses that try to employ golden handcuffs type, you know, philosophies and managing approaches can get into trouble because the more you try to grasp on to the candidate and keep the candidate and build your culture around keeping people where they are and avoiding change and transition.

the more likely it is that they will want to leave. Whereas if you focus on doing right by the candidate and helping the candidate develop and creating opportunities for the candidate, I think ironically they're more likely to want to stay. And so it's really about educating the public and the job market on who you are, how you do business, and how you will help the candidate develop.

Tyson Mutrux (09:53)
I think that's a really good point. ⁓ So if we think about ⁓ sort of building a talent funnel and I'll kind of, I'll sort of minimize what a typical funnel is, but if we just kind of break it down to awareness, interest and conversion, where do you think that most law firm owners, like they break down in that process? Is it in the awareness part, making people aware that you've got this position, open all that? ⁓

attracting interest to that position or really in converting them. Like that's kind of like the last part that you were talking about where like actually converting them into from a candidate to an actual employee. ⁓ like where, where do think the breakdown is the awareness part, the interest part, the conversion part? What do you think?

Bill Farias (10:37)
I think there are problems in all three. I think if you ask me to pick one, it's really difficult to do that because you see firms that ⁓ are doing a really good job of ⁓ educating the public on who they are, like regularly posting and talking about what their business is about, how they can help candidates. I think it's harder.

to experience that the next level down in terms of like the actual advertising for the specific positions. I think what's important ⁓ at that step is to be really, really clear again about who you are and what the culture is about, but also what you need for that position, how it benefits the candidate. And it's difficult for me because I'm not paying attention to a lot of the marketing out there for these positions.

So it's hard for me to assess how problematic that is for other businesses. ⁓ But I would also guess that not a lot of people in firms are paying attention to the actual management of the pipeline, like what you talked about and what you have going in Zoho. Once these people contact you, how...

quickly are you getting back to them, right? Just like a quality lead in marketing to bring on a client. How quickly are you reaching out to them? Are you acting quickly, especially on the great candidates? How clear are you with the candidate on what the process looks like, what the next steps are, what they can expect? ⁓ So my guess would be that there are issues at every level. ⁓ I pay more attention to kind of the top level because I just...

come across that more. Like I see, for example, Chris Early ⁓ from, he's nearby in Boston. He runs a personal injury firm. He's doing a great job at marketing who he is, who his firm is, like what they're about. And so these are things that I notice on LinkedIn, on social media. But the answer to your question is, I think there are probably issues at all three levels.

Tyson Mutrux (12:50)
I was just looking for his book. had him on not too long ago. it's, think it's on my other desk over there, but yeah, he's doing a really good job of that. You mentioned some of these, how do you think that law firms should start tracking recruiting like they do marketing? Like how, what are some tools they should use or some, some, some metrics they should be focusing on?

Bill Farias (13:12)
mean, we're using just basic project management ⁓ at this point. We use monday.com. We might be switching off of that. But I think at the most basic level, figuring out where these quote leads are coming from, ⁓ having a system for rating these leads, right? So that you can see like what kind of quality is coming in, how many good fits are coming in.

how many people you don't want applying or coming in, then sort of reverse engineering that to figure out where is this going wrong? Is it that the messaging is not clear? Taking a look at the ad, ⁓ know, assessing the content, your messaging, the level of clarity. So that's how I think about it and that's how...

where utilizing the tools at this point is just on a very basic level, a rating, and then reverse engineering to figure out where the issues are and iterating and on and on.

Tyson Mutrux (14:15)
So in your post, you highlighted that quote from Clare Hughes Johnson about a talent brand. And I wonder, what do you think a strong talent brand actually looks like for a law firm that's never really thought about

Bill Farias (14:29)
For a law firm that's never really thought about it, I think at the most...

Tyson Mutrux (14:33)
So if you're like starting from scratch,

so let me kind of rephrase it. Let's, let's say you're starting from scratch. You've never really given any thought to this. How should they look at it when it comes to creating a talent brand?

Bill Farias (14:43)
I think at the most basic level, is ⁓ who you are, ⁓ what your business is about, and how someone joining your team can benefit them. I think at the most basic level, that's what it's about, is this is what this firm is, this is what we're about, this is how we help people. And...

this is how we can help you, this is how it would benefit you to come work with us. I think just starting there at the most basic level ⁓ would be an effective starting point.

Tyson Mutrux (15:21)
Yeah, I, okay. So I, I'm going to tell you a brief story. Whenever I was applying for jobs out of law school and I got offers on for jobs, I probably shouldn't have gotten. And it was like the, my approach was, cause I had a marketing background. My bar, my approach was here's how I will benefit you. Right? So my cover letters were I would take, I would take the job and I would say, okay, I would match my experience to what they needed. And I would, I would explain in my cover letters how I would benefit them. It was really kind of interesting. Now that I'm on the other side of the table.

I am shocked by how many come to our firm and they, we asked them all these questions and they talk about me, me, me, me, me, how, how everything could benefit them. And, but the reverse is true. What you're, what you're saying is absolutely true. We as employers, if we want the talent, we need to, the good ones that come in, the ones that you're interviewing, that you're like, these are good candidates. We need to be able to explain to them how we are going to benefit them. Now in turn.

You should probably be looking for candidates. looking at how they're going to explain how they're going to benefit us. So it's, it's this, it's both sides are marketing, but the, approach that people take, I think it's, it's not the right approach. It's they're looking at how can, how can you benefit me when in reality, if you're really going to truly market this position, I think you're dead on. You should be marketing about how you are going to be benefiting that, that, that, that particular candidate.

Bill Farias (16:43)
Absolutely. And that's what you should be marketing. And what you're talking about, Tyson, in the reverse, when the candidate comes to you and it's all me, me, me.

That's a screening issue, right? Right. We as firm owners need to be aware of that as administrators need to be aware of that and ⁓ to figure out what that means for the hiring process and the strength of the candidate.

Tyson Mutrux (17:07)
All right. So let's get into a funny, a fun topic. This is one where, I've got strong opinions about both of these things, but okay. When you're comparing, ⁓ Compensation versus culture. Okay. So how do you think culture actually influences recruiting versus compensation? So when you're looking at those two things, compensation culture, how do you factor those in whenever you're recruiting and you're trying to market the firm?

Bill Farias (17:32)
I mean, I think they go hand in hand. mean, everyone knows this is across the country with, especially with inflation up and economic uncertainty. I mean, people need to get paid. And so if you're not competitive in what you're offering, then you're gonna leave some on the table and you're probably not going to hire the best candidates. But I do think that having a strong culture and communicating that and marketing that

effectively can score you wins when you're in those kind of gray areas. So if a candidate has a choice between your firm and another firm and the compensation is at least comparable, if the candidate is confident that what you're offering in terms of culture is a better fit, ⁓ I think based on the research that ⁓ a candidate in that situation

⁓ might even take a little bit of a pay cut or a little bit less money for better culture. So the bottom line is that financial needs still need to be taken care of, but I think having a strong culture just gives you a lot of leverage.

Tyson Mutrux (18:46)
Yeah, I agree. I think for me, you have to be good at both, right? You have to be good at culture. You have to be good at compensation. You have to be both. And we were talking about like filtering out candidates. If your compensation's wrong, the easiest thing to filter out is compensation, right? So if your compensation's off, they're going to filter you out right away. if that's

Yeah, they can do it's harder to research culture, right? So they're going to, they're going to default to the easiest thing to filter out. The easiest thing to filter out is going to be compensation. So if you don't have that on point, you're just not going to have that candidate. So I think that's the reality. So you have to make sure you are, ⁓ you're strong in that area to start, to start with. So, really important. how is, what's the best way for you right now when it comes to generating good candidates, do you have one platform that you prefer over another?

Bill Farias (19:20)
⁓

We're mainly using ⁓ LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is what we found the most helpful. ⁓

So that's what we ⁓ rely on. That's what's brought in the best candidates. ⁓ So I think we still have a little bit of experimenting to do and work to do. I think it also depends on the position. ⁓ But yeah, so far it's been LinkedIn.

Tyson Mutrux (20:07)
Gotcha. I know we use indeed, but the reason why we use indeed, we may use LinkedIn a little bit, but it's, it sinks the best with Rizzo recruit. So they link up. That's why we, that's why we kind of default to indeed. That's, that's our preference. So if anybody ever wonders like why we primarily use indeed, that's why it's, it's comes out to our, our platform that we use.

Bill Farias (20:30)
We use indeed too.

Tyson Mutrux (20:32)
Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those to me is like the default at this point But I know the LinkedIn's really tried to kind of get into that game Where do you think that most firms lose great candidates during the hiring

Bill Farias (20:43)
Where do they lose great candidates?

I think first of all, starting with your copy and being clear, again, about what your culture is about and how you can benefit the individual. ⁓ It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. I think a lot of firms and employers don't operate out of that mentality. I think it's like, hey, we have this available to you. Like apply and...

we'll decide if we're gonna hire you. So I think a lot of opportunity is lost in not putting the time and effort to convey how you can benefit the individual. And that's like more top of funnel stuff, but if you get that right, and of course, like you said, you have to have the compensation right and make sure that you're doing solid like market analysis to figure out what you should be paying. But getting that right will attract

better candidates and more importantly, the right candidates. So I would start there. I would start top of funnel.

Tyson Mutrux (21:51)
All right, let's get, let's have a fun one here. There's a quote from a Salesforce CEO, Mark Benioff, and it's the secret. I want to get your thoughts on this. So I'm to read this quote to you and I'm going to ask your thoughts on, this. The secret to successful hiring is this look for the people who want to change the world. What are your thoughts on that?

Bill Farias (22:12)
that's a great quote.

My philosophy on hiring is that I place much greater emphasis and weight on character and drive than on experience. ⁓ experience means very little to me. Don't get me wrong, it is important. But ⁓ sometimes it's actually a liability in the sense that bringing

someone in who has operated in a different system for a long time and is comfortable with that system can be frustrating. ⁓ It can work, but I think the fresher out of school they are, the greener they are, the easier it is to ⁓ sort of implement them and get them to adopt to your systems and way of doing work. And it goes without saying that.

It's very difficult to teach drive and motivation and ambition. I don't think it can be taught. So when I hear that quote, that's what I think of is that drive and the want is way more important than the experience.

Tyson Mutrux (23:33)
Your answer is way more charitable than what mine would be. I'll just say that. I think you got it's great answer. think you're spot on. I think whenever I hear a quote like this, think it kind of react, it ignores the reality of the world that we're living in to some extent. Because like if I sit around and wait for candidates, they're only looking to change the world. Okay. I'm going to narrow my talent pool to such a small amount of people that is absurd. I'm going to ignore people that would be a really good culture fit. They would be great at the job. ⁓

that align with our vision. Sometimes we focus on the wrong things. It's easy for a CEO that's running this massive company to say something like this, who's probably not been in the trenches for a decade or more. ⁓ I guess my whole point is, the reason why want to ask you about this is because, and I think your answer is completely spot on and I loved it.

we should clip it and repost it because it's amazing. It's like, don't try to find the perfect candidate, right? It's not about finding the perfect candidates. It's about finding the perfect candidate for your position and your firm that aligns with your firm. That's what really matters. there's no real, like the perfect candidate for my firm is not going be the same perfect candidate for your firm. They're completely different needs, completely different cultures and everything else.

That's why I want to bring that up. It was kind of a loaded question. I kind of set you up a little bit, it's just one of those ones I want to ask.

Bill Farias (25:06)
No, think that's,

I think that makes perfect sense. And I think it does depend on the position as well, right? There are some positions where you're gonna need somebody to come in and just get the work done and be reliable. And then there are certain positions at your firm where you want thinkers and people who are gonna be.

working on what's next and improving and iterating. So it also depends on the position.

Tyson Mutrux (25:31)
Absolutely. ⁓ All right, so let's, we got a couple minutes. I want to ask you a couple more questions. I am curious. This more of a curiosity thing for me to ask you because people talk about this a lot. So time from application to hiring. Roughly how long does it take for your hiring process to start and end?

Bill Farias (25:53)
so it depends on the quality of the candidates that are coming in. ⁓ since we've implemented some changes, ⁓ that, that, that process has, ⁓ been faster. So we've been able to do it between the time like the candidate applies and hire. ⁓ I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I recall a couple pretty recently that happened relatively quickly. I would say within like a couple of weeks.

And I think the bottom line is the stronger the candidate, the faster you need to move because you don't want to lose them. So that's the bottom line is you need to prioritize that. You need to build the system so that you bring them along faster so that you engage in the key activities in the hiring process faster, assess faster. So overall you need to increase speed so that when the quality candidates come in, you're ready to.

do the work necessary to bring them on board, to hire them and bring them on board.

Tyson Mutrux (26:55)
All right. So I, when I read your post, I kind of had like three takeaways from him. Okay. ⁓ and, let me know if I'm missing anything, but it really is hiring is not an event. It's, more of a system. ⁓ and, and systems are something you can scale. that's, that's, that's number one. number two, ⁓ if you treat recruiting more like marketing, ⁓ I think you can create more predictability. ⁓ you're, don't have, you have less chaos and you have more predictability.

That's number two. And then number three, culture and brand, I'd say, are your biggest competitive advantages in attracting talent. I think that to me, it's a no-brainer, but am I missing anything or does that encapsulate the main takeaway, is what you said.

Bill Farias (27:40)
No, it absolutely does. And it goes back to the point that I brought up earlier on, which is all of this is focused on building and maintaining a strong and healthy pipeline for marketing, just like you want marketing for people to join your team, just like you want that in marketing to bring on clients. So I think you're spot on.

Tyson Mutrux (28:02)
All right, Bill, if people want to reach out to you and pick your brain on how to improve their hiring process, what's the best way of getting a hold of you?

Bill Farias (28:10)
They can email me befarius at Fariasfamilylaw.com. ⁓ on all the main platforms ⁓ at Fariasfamilylaw at Bill Farias. So feel free to reach out.

Tyson Mutrux (28:22)
this is great. Really appreciate coming on. And I think that a lot of people that are listening to this are going to get something from this. Hopefully this will change a lot of mindsets and shift the way that they start to hire. I think it can make a massive impact on them. So thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it.