Sam Mollaei: The AI Advantage: Revolutionizing Legal Practices for 2025 and Beyond

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Sam Mollaei discuss:

• Strategies for scaling and automating a law firm
• Effective time management and focus for professionals
• The role of social media and marketing in client generation
• Utilizing AI and technology for efficiency in legal practice

Key Takeaways:

• To manage time effectively, create a strict schedule using tools like Google Calendar and focus exclusively on high-value activities during concentrated work periods.
• Social media ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are significantly more effective than Google Ads for client acquisition in 2025 due to saturation in the latter.
• A six-point formula for scaling a law firm includes focusing on a single niche, targeting high-value clients ($3,500+), expanding geographically, ensuring healthy cash flow, adjusting fee structures, and prioritizing continuous self-development.
• AI integration, such as automating lead qualification, document collection, and drafting, has become essential for running scalable and efficient law firms.

“You have to create your own rules; if not, other people will make rules for you.” —  Sam Mollaei

Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at steve@fretzin.com with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!

Thank you to our Sponsors!

Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/

Rainmakers Roundtable: https://fretzin.com/lawyer-coaching-and-training/peer-advisory-groups/

Episode References: 

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss: https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307465357

About Sam Mollaei: Sam Mollaei is a visionary legal disruptor, attorney, and Founder of My Legal Academy, where he helps lawyers scale and automate their law firms using cutting-edge marketing, automation, and AI tools.

As the owner of 5 thriving law firms, Sam has helped over 1,260 lawyers grow their practices while reclaiming their time and improving their quality of life. Known for his innovative approach to disrupting the legal industry, Sam is passionate about helping lawyers work smarter, scale faster, and enjoy life. With a mission to empower legal professionals, Sam combines proven strategies with forward-thinking solutions to transform the way law is practiced.

Connect with Sam Mollaei:  

Website: https://mylegalacademy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammollaei/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sam.mollaei/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Before we get to the show, I want to take a moment to do a quick Q and a from Patricia in Chicago, Illinois. All right. My backyard. And she’s asking Steve, what’s your best time savings advice for someone spinning too many plates? Oh, that’s a great quote. Well, no, no attorneys ever had too much on their plate or too spinning too many plates.

That’s for sure. But ultimately what we want to think about here is what are the plates you’re spinning? Some plates are really critical to spin and some plates probably should be laid down and set aside for later. We really need to consider what can we automate? What can we delegate? What should we not be doing at all?

As you guys have heard, a great book to read is called getting things done by David Allen. I checked that out, but ultimately you have a limited amount of time and you want to focus on business development working with your clients, doing great work, and maybe try delegating and discarding the rest of the stuff.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to me at Steve at Fretzin. com. We can talk directly on for everybody. [00:01:00] Enjoy the show. We got a good interview coming up. Take care.

Narrator: You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Branson will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Branson.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin Podcast. I am just so excited to be with you today. You know, there’s a lot of people that I do get excited about and there’s some that I get really excited about and Sam is at the top of the list. He’s just a lightning bolt of energy and passion.

And I think you guys are going to really enjoy that show, the show today, before we jump into the weeds, I want to just remind everybody to check out my above the law articles that are being posted monthly in their small business or small law firm category, writing articles every month, making sure that I’m staying up to date [00:02:00] on what’s going on.

That’s new that I think lawyers want to hear about business development, LinkedIn, marketing, et cetera. So definitely go to above the law. You can either type my name into the. Search category, or you can go to the small firm category anyway, with that all being said welcome to the show, Sam. So good to see you.

Appreciate it. Thank

Sam Mollaei: you

Steve Fretzin: so much, Steve. We’re long overdue. Yeah, we are long overdue. I think you were back on the show in 2022 and I’ve just been raging. I think we’re coming up on 500 shows and two a week and it’s been just amazing, but I’m happy that you’re coming back to share your wisdom with my amazing audience today.

Let’s start off with boy, this really hits home. The quote of the show done is better than perfect. I love it and welcome to the show and, and tell us a little bit about that quote.

Sam Mollaei: It’s the line that I live by fast execution, moving things forward, learning as you go along. And that formula has proved to be not only fruitful for me, but also people that have passed on this kind of mindset to people in my core team, our entire team [00:03:00] of infrastructure with our VAs and our in house.

Team and also are my legal academy members who have been through a program who got over the mentality block overthinking and just getting things done. Just moving on pretty much. Yeah,

Steve Fretzin: they’re perfectionist attorney. We know all about them, don’t we?

Sam Mollaei: We all fall into this trap. So, you know, everybody could learn from it.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I mean, I know I’ve been trying to get lawyers for a while now to just post on LinkedIn post a video, post a written something, just get going, just do it, get on there. Everybody’s on there. And so they just get that analysis paralysis. And eventually when they do finally put up a video or put something up and they realize, Oh, that was not a big deal.

It’s actually, that was quite easy and I can do that again. So it’s just, that’s one of a thousand things that lawyers I think struggle to just get it done, get something out the door without it being perfect. That’s okay.

Sam Mollaei: Sure. And I think a big part of it, Steve is a lot of people just have a vision of how it should look like.

Yeah. [00:04:00] Instead of just being okay with being you and how away your style is. And just accepting who you are. So, you know, it doesn’t have to be a certain way. You don’t necessarily have to start off a certain way. And not everybody’s looking for the perfect formula. The perfect formula is the formula that works for you.

So just, you know, getting over that fear brings it out. That really makes a difference.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I like what you said about also just being authentic. If you’re not comfortable or ever want to be on camera. And we’re telling you to do video. Don’t do video like you can write something. You can do audio.

You can come up with a number of different ways to get something out there that isn’t video. If that’s not your jam. I think that’s fine. Just don’t let it be the reason that you’re making excuses to not get anything out there, especially when you know it’s important to. You know, build your brand. So Hey everybody, Sam Eli is the CEO of My Legal Academy.

And do you want to just, cause you’ve got such a crazy background, would you mind giving us sort of the abbreviated version of where you came from and how you came to be?

Sam Mollaei: So I started [00:05:00] journey and stuck in a law firm questioning my life, like I’m waiting for my bar results. I’m actually dreading being a lawyer past the bar.

Now I’m like, I got to figure these things out. A very long story short, I met somebody who was one year ahead of me, who went and started his own law firm. And the whole mindset was that if he can do it, so can I. And also the second part was realizing that it wasn’t a perfect law firm that he started, but he’s still making money and doing well with it.

And that kind of gave me the push to go start my first law firm. I was always a little bit more social media savvy, marketing savvy. So I kind of leaned into it early. I started focusing on client generation and online marketing and getting to the whole world of Google ads. Then click funnels and sales funnels, Facebook ads.

And I leaned into it as much as possible possible. And I started replicating the success I was getting with each law firm onto the next law firm. Fast forward to last year, I had [00:06:00] seven law firms. I’m either the sole owner or a partners in that was very overwhelming. It was running seven law firms at the same time.

It consolidated down to four. And then Steve was my first time announcing it. I added on two more ever since I consulted, I’m up to six now again, as of yesterday. I think

Steve Fretzin: they call, I think they call it a glutton for punishment. Is that what they call it?

Sam Mollaei: Yeah. And even sometimes I lose count of, you know, how many law firms I’m a part of, but now six law firms and also running my legal academy.

But Steve, my most impressive achievement that I had last year was. I went on a five day vacation to Bahamas just last month and I didn’t bring, not only did I not bring my laptop, I didn’t even work on my phone for five days. My law firms and my legal academy was able to grow continuously, get more clients, increase the revenue, team growing, everything without necessarily me being the bottleneck of the law firms.

And [00:07:00] that’s what made me really happy. I’m like, yes, these systems would do work. I don’t just, you know, talk about it, but actually I live it.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, that’s amazing. And I think. Most attorneys listening, they’re loaded up to their ears with problems and issues with one law firm, let alone six and another business on top.

So you’re going to be the perfect person to sort of step in and really coach the folks listening to the show about what do they need to do to start getting organized in running and scaling a law practice. And let’s start off with talking about why lawyers struggle so dramatically. With this, you know, solo to small firm movement and how to, you know, feel comfortable building something out where they really miss the boat,

Sam Mollaei: not mastering time management, I would say is a good place to start from multiple people are too busy to switch off that brain wavelength to go into planning, strategy, hiring, building, marketing, kind of [00:08:00] mental waves that you need to be able to do that for me, I spent a hundred percent of my time in that department.

That means I don’t do. Any of the stuff that I don’t necessarily like doing, or I’m not necessarily good at, you know, I don’t do the legal work. I don’t do take care of that by all means. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but just, I just know myself. So instead of what I do is I lean towards what I’m good at and what I enjoy doing.

And then I have trust to be able to hire and have people that can hire for me. And then at the same time, I go either hire or build teams that could create systems, automations, incorporating AI into our practices, things like that on a consistent basis.

Steve Fretzin: And I spend surprisingly a lot of time working with my clients on time management because the issue is going to be, Hey, I don’t have time to go out and develop business and build my law practice.

If I’m, you know, building 3000 hours a year, and if I’m doing all the admin and doing all the marketing and managing everybody, and I’m wearing a dozen hats. So what’s one or two time management [00:09:00] hacks that really made a big difference for you, you know, really being in a position to take ownership of your time

Sam Mollaei: being super selective with my schedule.

So the two tools that I use the most is google calendar for anything that needs to be time blocked and then todoist as my task manager my daily task manager And every day before I start the day, I know it clearly what i’m doing that day And also, I want to make sure that it aligns with what I should be doing, not just necessarily what I need to be doing.

And, you know, everyday, very super selective, so much to a point where I feel bad. Or things to my friends or things that people potentially want to talk throughout the day. I usually have a no policy. I have a kind of no meeting throughout the day kind of policy. If I can combine it somehow, we’re in a group sitting, great.

If we can talk after 5pm, great, let’s do that. If we can talk on the weekends, let’s do that. But my golden hours, which is between about 7. 30am to 8. 15am, I’m cranking out [00:10:00] hardcore on my computer. Then I go drop off my kid at school. Then I go have a nice one hour workout with my trainer. Come back, take a nice shower, come back to my computer by 1030, I get another one hour in right there, go have lunch, and then come back, have another two and a half, three hours after that.

So it comes out to about four or five hours, but those four or five hours are super concentrated, super focused, no distractions, no cell phone notifications, no computer notifications. No one demanding anything of me. And I’m just, you know, doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

Steve Fretzin: Well, I also just am picking up on the power of that focus and the power of saying no.

And I know we want to be nice people. And I know we want to take every meeting and everything that comes our way. There’s a point everybody should get to in their career where they have to be. Hypercritical about the meetings they take and how they spend their time. And I feel like, you know, putting a note on your door that says, do not disturb I’m in, you know, doing brain work or anything you can do to get away from distractors and from things that aren’t productive to your [00:11:00] goal, I think is really critical.

Sam Mollaei: For sure. And you get, you create your own rules. I always say this, like you gotta create your own rules. If not, other people will make rules for you. So you gotta be clear on what you’re, you know, rejecting, eliminating, delegating, automating, all that stuff. If not, then the world will somehow is chaotic will come and kind of put you in where it wants you to, but I’d rather stay in control and be the one who’s selecting those decisions.

Steve Fretzin: So time management, trust me when I tell you, the folks that are listening to this show, they’ve heard me rant about it, rave about it forever, and I’ve been a student of it for so long and teaching it for so long, I feel highly efficient. However, it’s not easy. You have to be a student of the game. What other big mistakes are you seeing lawyers make when they’re trying to grow their law firms?

What can you help them avoid?

Sam Mollaei: The time management is the one piece. The other part is overthinking which we kind of alluded to a little bit earlier. There’s been so many times where I’ve been through this myself, you know, trying to decide between option A and option B. And I had this [00:12:00] epiphany when I would take these option A’s and option B’s to my mentor.

I’m like, which one? And then the first time he’s like, both. Then I came back again next week and I’m like, which one? He’s like, both. And then I stopped asking whether it’d be A or B, and I realized it’s just, there’s no point of trying to be in that decision state, so like, which one should it be? At this point, I have an and kind of mentality, I experiment with pretty much anything I could get my hands on.

Obviously, you know, you take calculated risk, you know, but if it’s a vendor that I’m going to be working with, I’m going to make sure that they’re scoped out, they come for a referral, somebody that I know that’s done a successful with them. But once. You know, I have that on my plate. I am. I am going to move it forward.

I don’t wait on any decisions. I move things moving forward quickly. And again, that kind of speed to execution is really key to make sure that you’re not falling behind.

Steve Fretzin: Maybe delegating some of the upfront research and work on a particular decision and that it’s sort of handed to you with. Information that allows you to make a quick decision [00:13:00] as a part of it

Sam Mollaei: to the yes or yes, usually very hard for me now, you know, to say no, unless you have a very convincing proof that it’s not really going to work out.

Steve Fretzin: Got it. Right. So we’ve covered time management as a learn skill. We’ve covered the power of saying no, we’ve covered some things that are important. For lawyers, what’s a practical strategy tool that lawyers can use to start to consider how to scale their business. There are solo, they want to get that first employee.

They want to start realizing, you know, the most revenue they can with the least overhead.

Sam Mollaei: So there’s a thousand different ways to generate clients pretty much these days and over time, I leaned into the 80, 20 per day principle to try to figure out that one thing. That one tool, that one source, that one vendor, that one thing that would give me the most of the results.

And over time I’ve been through so many different client sources and different things. I’ve been able to consolidate all that information and the experience to tell you that social media ads is by far my humble [00:14:00] opinion. the best source for getting clients. And I know a lot of people lean into that different styles, you know, some people are killing it with organics and people kill it with SEO, things like that.

But my challenge is, you know, I’ll put it out there and I’ll put a share with the world. I’ll challenge anybody to come and just bring a random practice type or whatever that is and give us a 30 day challenge and say, Sam, I want to see how many clients can you generate for us? Versus anything else that you can do.

And I know I’ll be able to do that in a much higher chance of success, almost at a hundred percent chance of success as weird as it sounds, Steve. Just a matter of time until I figure it out, whether it be one day or a couple of days, but it’s proven the only nuance is you’ve got to know what you’re doing, got to know how it works to be able to run social media ads.

And by the way, when I say social media ads, let me be very explicit. This is Facebook, Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube ads, essentially. And I don’t say Google ads as part of this because Google ads is. The most saturated competitive space, a place that could be, but these other platforms, blue oceans, [00:15:00] big markets, blue you know, big opportunities there that have huge opportunity for lawyers in 2025 and going forward to do really, really well.

Steve Fretzin: Wow. Okay. With proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm rankings. io prides itself on proof, not promises mentality. The best firms hire Rankings. io when they want rankings traffic in cases other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases, and schedule a free consultation at Rankings.

io today. Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. Man, I thought I was a good marketer, but maybe not. Lawyers have been approaching me asking What’s the Rainmakers Roundtable? Well, I tell them this is a special place created exclusively for rainmaking lawyers to continue their journey of prosperity. Our program is unique as every member has A significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year.

Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk [00:16:00] shop with America’s top rainmakers, please go to my website Fretzin.com and apply for membership today. So it’s really lawyers that are, you know, getting successful on social media. But what about, I mean, there’s look, there’s B2C and there’s B2B.

We’ve got an audience of. Folks that are looking for consumers. And then we’ve got a whole other segment of our audience that’s looking for, you know, general counsels folks like that, where are they hanging out? Is it on Instagram and Facebook or is it on LinkedIn? I mean, how do we reach the people that are the big time decision makers for M and A transactions or big time litigation?

Sam Mollaei: For sure. For most of the legal markets, 80 percent of it is going to be B2C, but for the 10 to 20 percent that are, that need that are B2B then yes, sometimes then LinkedIn. I just say it might be a better source or old emails might be another good source. But yeah, but even you’d be surprised even b2b’s.

There’s still a lot of good decision makers that are all on social media. So wherever, you [00:17:00] know, we’re business owners ourselves, we’re a business, we spend a lot of time on meta. So, yeah, you’d be surprised even B2B, it will work really well with social media. I mean, I see

Steve Fretzin: a lot of ads on Instagram. I scroll through Instagram and try to find.

Something funny or something educational, and sometimes I hear, Hey, lawyers, are you dot, dot, dot, dot, and they go into the routine about, Hey, lawyers, are you problem solution? Call me. Is that sort of like the hot thing to do right now? Is that, Hey, lawyers, or that, Hey, CPAs or hey business owners, are you, I mean, I’m, I’m just following the trends that I’m seeing coming up and popping up on a regular basis.

Sam Mollaei: In the past year to two years, there’s been a, a influx in a wave of lot of kind of, I call ’em kind of wannabe marketers. People usually comes, I know, I usually know what it is. It’s just somebody who creates a course that teaches certain types of people to market. And that course tells them to go run social media ads to do that, and they all follow the [00:18:00] same recipe and they all sound the same.

But the issue is they become good at running those types of ads, but they don’t have enough experience to know the nuances of running actual law firm ads to actually get law firm clients. A lot of marketers just basically just say, Hey, let me generate you clients the same way that I got you. But I’ve learned over time, there’s a lot of nuances when somebody who’s in a practice type, let’s just say who’s been running immigration law ads for four years.

That data that comes back, the nuances, the changes, the things that you need to know over time. Those are the people that do really, that have the really good ROIs and that do well. So, I would lean towards moving older contractors or vendors that have been doing it for some time versus these generic random ones that you happen to see on.

If you know, if it’s your first time hearing about them, probably not a good sign. You know, you want to make sure to get somebody who’s proven. Yeah. For at least 5, 10, 15 years, the longer the better. To make sure that you increase your, that chance.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I love that. I really think it’s so important, [00:19:00] whether it’s business development, marketing, operations, finance.

That you really find people that are highly vetted, highly validated, have a track record of a success. There’s just a lot of people coming to market and I want them to be successful. I want them to make money and help people because that’s what they want to do. You know, they also can’t pretend that they are going to 10 X or 100 X your business because they put it on their LinkedIn headline.

You know, or because they do a, Hey, lawyers add, I think we need to really think about like, I have all of my perspective clients attend my class that I teach so they can sort of audit it. I have them speak to my clients. I insist that they speak with my clients to know that what I’m going to be working with them on, we’ll get them similar results to what many of my clients get.

So. They’re coming in with their eyes wide open. And I think that differentiates me from a lot of the up and comer, like for example, coaches who just hung a shingle cause they, you know, got to half a million dollars and think that they can now teach people to get to a half a million [00:20:00] dollars.

Sam Mollaei: Don’t be the guinea pig experience really, really, really matters.

And I think as I grew up, I realized the value of experience, you know working with vendors who’ve been there for some time, older. More sophisticated vendors usually also pans out more likely for it to pan out. Also very specific questions that always ask is how many current how many clients do you currently have?

How many clients do you currently have that are in my practice type? What are their budgets? You know, what are you new for them? What’s the result you’re getting for them? What’s the cost per acquisition? You know, if they can’t answer those questions and it’s not very clear, it’s not top of mind for them, then those are kind of early warning signs that they probably don’t have what it takes to be able to grow with you.

Steve Fretzin: I would, I’m going to amend something that we just talked about a little bit. I think if you’re new at business development, coaching, marketing, something, or new ish, and you feel like you’ve got some skills, but you don’t have any clients. I would find some guinea pigs, but I would charge them guinea pig dollars.

I would say, look, I’m going to work with you. Normally I’m thinking 10 grand, but I’m going to do it for a thousand because I want to help, you know, get my name out there. I want to [00:21:00] show success through you. Are you willing to be my guinea pig? So I think that there’s a, but don’t fake it, charge the 10 grand.

And then when they’re unhappy, you know, wonder why they’re unhappy. The other thing I wanted to ask you is like. There are lawyers that have specific types of clients that they should be going after and maybe they’re going out too big of a net, whether it’s more too many social media channels or too many types of clients.

What’s the importance of finding the buyer persona and then finding the marketing channel that matches up and mirrors up with what their buyer persona is?

Sam Mollaei: It’s fundamental and I’ll give away a bunch of secret sauces in the next five minutes.

Steve Fretzin: Fantastic. I was hoping you would. I’ll take barbecue and sweet and sour, please.

Sam Mollaei: So for anybody, you know, trying to either figure this out or has been struggling or feel like they haven’t got it down, make sure that you try to check off as many of these checkboxes as possible. Ideally all six. Number one, are you focusing on one specific niche or practice type? Steve, I’ve seen, you know, a lot of lawyers still to this [00:22:00] day that are running multiple practices at the same time.

It’s very hard these days in 1025 to be able to do marketing when you’re you know, putting yourself out there that you also, that you do estate planning and immigration and criminal defense. So it was just to make sure that you’re a single focus kind of practice type. Number two, very important. Make sure that your value, your client has a value minimum of 3, 500 or more.

I found that if you have clients that are worth less than that, usually there is going to be a cost to marketing for anything. And there’s a cost of marketing just to give some kind of ballpark estimate. Is it going to be anywhere from 300 to say 1, 500. So if you have a 1, 500 service. And it’s going to cost you 1, 000 or 500 to 1, 000 to generate that client.

It’s not going to leave in any money for you to be able to take that profit, throw it back into marketing. So a good kind of threshold is you need to be built up the value to be at least 3, 500 or more. Number three, what is your geographical location that you’re reaching? A lot of times that I’ve [00:23:00] found a lot of lawyers just target just the city.

I can only take on clients in my city or county. They may have worked before, but because of The advent of online and online marketing, you know, it’s becomes easier and easier to go create a website and do marketing, build up a Google My Business. It’s just not gonna, it’s not enough of a market for you to only be focused on a single city or geographic.

So ideally, multi, you know, multi county, ideally minimum. State basis, and if we can somehow also expand to a federal or multi state, that’s where the real kind of money is made. Number four is collection, basically your cash flow. I found that a lot of lawyers, let’s say SSD, big class actions, certain types of cases that are like, takes two or three years to monetize these types of cases.

Well, you already have, you know, your 10, 15 years, your system’s already built for that, and you can afford that all means amazing. Great. Go at it. [00:24:00] A lot of times, you know, even if you have you signing up, because it’s a number of clients, but your cashflow is not keeping up with it, it’s very, very, very hard to get to grow.

So make sure to align either, you know, be kind of get creative with that, you know, with timeline, sometimes you may need to, my mentor calls is shaking the tree, you know, getting through the clients faster, you know, settling faster and, you know, getting through this quickly. But that is key. Number four, make sure that you’re optimizing your legal fee structures.

You know, the whole thing about hourly rates versus flat fees, sorting that out. I’m sure that’s been discussed. And number six I think the most important is you, your schedule, your commitment, and your constant development. You’re the only common denominator across this entire thing called life. So whether it be the market or everything we’ve talked about, you know, even if you have all these five or strict marks, but you, you’re not committed, [00:25:00] you don’t have a good schedule and you know, you’re not constantly developing yourself.

Forget about it. You know, there’s no point of even getting through the first five things. So, and I quickly went through this, but I found that, you know, if we really want to do well, check off all six and you’d be, you know, having your best year yet.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. That’s all really, really important stuff. I’m, I’m so happy you shared those six points.

Cause I know people are sitting like I am jotting down, you know, what you’re, what you’re saying and every one of them should resonate that they’re as critical as the next, right? You don’t have cash, right? You’re stuck, right? If you don’t have your pricing, right? I mean, I’ve got lawyers coming at me. In business development and they’re, you know, 50, a hundred dollars or more underneath market.

And I’m just like, you need to start sending out some emails because this is over. Like you got to get with it. You’re, you know, a 10, 15 year seasoned veteran and you’re charging things that, you know, second years are charging. It’s not appropriate. And tell your clients how lucky they are. And that [00:26:00] luck has ended, but you’re not going to jack them up a hundred bucks, but you’ll jack them up 25 or 50 a year.

For a period of time, and they’ll be thrilled, you know,

Sam Mollaei: and Steve, usually whenever I share these things, I know people’s brains, like there’s always limiting beliefs and there’s always objections, reasons why the things that I shared parts of it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t work for you, but a lot of this whole things, but I kind of try to be very raw and just give the idealistic kind of place.

And usually this idealistic. Discovery that I share is where people eventually end up. And the only question is how soon are you going to act on this knowledge that I just shared with you? Because eventually, yes, maybe it doesn’t work for you now, but if you’re going to be again, questioning it five years later, 10 years later, until you make some of these change, some changes, you’re still going to be in the same place that you will be.

If you don’t make any actions, so have that in mind, even though it doesn’t feel good, you know, to get, it’s just, it’s inevitable, you know, we [00:27:00] don’t, you know, this is, this is the game. So we got to figure out the game and play the game basically,

Steve Fretzin: but I think we’re going back to the beginning. Done is better than perfect, right?

None of what you just said is going to happen perfectly, but when you get it done, there’s going to be a lot of benefit to, to what you find at the end of that rainbow. Let’s wrap up with our game changing book. This is one that’s been brought up on the show a number of times and I’m, I’m, I’m happy you’re bringing it up, but I would love to get your take on it cause it sounds like you may follow the rules to this, the four hour work week.

Tell us about that book. That’s not really what it means, right?

Sam Mollaei: How’d you know that it was, do you define a book for me, Steve?

Steve Fretzin: I just, you know, took a wild guess. You’re more like the Ford four hour work day, but I get that. It’s like, it’s trying to give people an understanding of the efficiencies that are needed in order to be successful.

And you can’t just wing it and you just can’t, you know, throw everything up against the wall. So talk us through a little bit why that book is so valuable.

Sam Mollaei: I read the book, Tim Ferriss 4 Hour Workweek book, early in my career. I [00:28:00] think it was like my first year as a lawyer. And it opened up my eyes to first, like, the virtual model.

Basically running my law firm from anywhere, which now it’s just, back then it was like, crazy, what? The second part was scaling. Scaling was basically for your business. To grow and exponentially without you necessarily doing more work or doing significantly more work. So, you know, very little, very minimal input for big output.

And the third kind of thing that it exposed me to was automations. You know, things for business and nothing in the book, I think it put into the realm of dropshipping and then I try to apply the dropshipping model to a law firm model, you know, how can a law firm be automated and or the work to be done, but I’m necessarily me doing the work and I started as soon as I could learn these concepts, I started applying it to my law firm.

Like these rules sound amazing. This is like the optimal. idealistic, you know, law firm that I would like to have. So let me try to abide [00:29:00] these rules. And, you know, it’s still to this day, these rules are not broken. You know, I’m still virtual, still, you know, living, you know, working from my office bedroom, still a lot of audit, a lot of animations in play, and it’s fully scalable.

Because as I built something and I grow something, I hand it off. It’s doing its thing and I’m able to move on to the next law firm and do, you know, rinse and repeat.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. It’s impossible, Sam, to do what you’re doing without all of that. It just is. There’s no way someone’s running six, seven, eight businesses.

Without automations, without delegation, without having proven processes in place. So kudos to you and just so happy that you were able to come on the show and share your wisdom and really add a lot of value to the folks listening. We had to wrap up with our wonderful sponsors, the LawHer podcast. You guys are going to want to check that out.

And of course, Rankings IO, our friend, Chris Dry over there and a phenomenal what he does. Sam, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more about this, My Legal Academy, what are the best digits. [00:30:00]

Sam Mollaei: Just go on YouTube or Google, our favorite search bars and search either my name Samuel or search my legal Academy.

I lead with value. I lead with what I’m good at, which is sharing and giving first. And then over time, you’d be like, Oh, this kid actually maybe knows something or not. And then we do have a program called My Legal Academy that helps lawyers grow their firm, scale their firm. We have a focus on AI this year.

There’s a lot of AI stuff that I do. I have AI that texts leads, gets them qualified, gets them signed up. We’re using AI to collect documents. We’re using AI to draft documents. And now in 2025, we’re bringing all those AI things that I’m currently doing. And we’re we’re having AI implementers come and set up the same systems for law firm owners.

So, yeah, go to mylegalacademy. com and book a call to speak to us. Awesome.

Steve Fretzin: Thank you so much for being on the show, sharing your wisdom. I just can’t tell you how, how much I admire what you’ve accomplished and I was just so happy to get you back on the show to get all that, you know, all that [00:31:00] information out to my audience.

So thanks again, man. Appreciate it.

Sam Mollaei: Appreciate you Steve.

Steve Fretzin: And thank you everybody for spending some time with Sam and I today on the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. Here every week, twice a week to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well.

We’ll talk again very soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business. Development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode check out today’s show notes