Elise Buie: Numbers Plus Narrative in Building a Healthier Law Firm

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Elise Buie discuss:

• Using data-driven decision-making to manage and grow a modern law firm
• Redefining work-life integration and employee well-being within professional culture
• Building brand identity and marketing strategies rooted in authenticity and measurable ROI
• Leadership through adaptability, empathy, and alignment between values and performance metrics

Key Takeaways:

• Reframing “billable hours” as “build-on-invoice hours” can close significant financial gaps by ensuring all productive time is accurately tracked and billed.
• Setting clear KPIs for every team member creates transparency, objective performance evaluation, and alignment with organizational values.
• Structured delegation and workflow redesign can reduce working hours without sacrificing productivity, improving overall employee satisfaction.
• Combining quantitative data with qualitative narratives allows leaders to make informed decisions that support both profitability and people.

“If you have good data, I don’t care where my people are. They could be in New Zealand on a black beach, and I know exactly what’s happening.” —  Elise Buie
Unlock the secrets of rainmaking success—join Steve Fretzin and four powerhouse legal experts for Be That Lawyer LIVE on August 27; reserve your spot now at fretzin.com/events.
Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don’t miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/
Thank you to our Sponsors!

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

Legalverse Media: https://legalversemedia.com/
Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let’s make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/
About Elise Buie: Elise Buie, Esq., is a Seattle-based family law attorney and founder of Elise Buie Family Law Group, a law firm devoted to divorce, family law,​ and estate planning. A survivor of Hurricane Katrina, her own divorce, and many dish-filled sinks piled high after lively family dinners with her husband, Doug, and their blended family of six (six!) now-adult children, Elise knows firsthand what it means to juggle work and parenting, finding balance in between, even if it means a lot of late nights. When she’s not advocating for her clients, the best interests of their children, and civility in divorce, you can find her sailing on Puget Sound.
Connect with Elise Buie:

Website: https://www.elisebuiefamilylaw.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-buie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elisebuiefamilylaw

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elisebuiefamilylawgroup/

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: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin and no surprise, this is the Be That Lawyer podcast. This is what you’ve come to listen to. Hopefully you’re checking out our videos on YouTube and also you’ve already purchased the book Be That Lawyer 101 Top Rainmaker Secrets to Growing a Successful Law Practice.
Steve: [00:00:16] It’s a bestseller, 50 plus five star reviews. We are rocking and rolling with that. And you guys know what this is all about. We’re helping you be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker twice a week, every single week, forever and ever. I just try to find talent anywhere I can and sometimes just goodness rains down on me and I end up with someone like Elise who’s hanging out in the wings. How you doing?
Elise: [00:00:39] Great. How are you?
Steve: [00:00:40] Good. I’m doing really well. Are we gonna get into our New Orleans roots together, or no?
Elise: [00:00:45] We’ll see where it takes us.
Steve: [00:00:47] Let’s see where it takes us.
Steve: [00:00:48] I’ve got a lovely family down in New Orleans. When I go down to visit them, the first thing I do is take off my watch. There is no time, and if we’re having dinner at seven, plan for ten. It’s just never gonna go the way you want it to, but it’ll always be good.
Steve: [00:01:07] So that’s
Elise: [00:01:08] Have an amazing dinner. Let’s be serious.
Steve: [00:01:11] The crawfish boils and the crab boil and the things that they do. They’re second. I’ve never had a four hour dinner where you just sit around and eat for four hours, but that’s what they do. We go along with it. Let’s jump in right away and get to our quote of the show.
Steve: [00:01:24] This one you and I found together and we immediately knew it was the right one for this show. “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” That’s attributed to Edwards Deming. I guess it was his business mantra. Welcome to the show and tell us why you loved that quote, right when you heard it.
Elise: [00:01:42] I am all about the data. Otherwise you get into all these emotions. I don’t want all the emotions. Bring me the numbers. Let’s talk about the numbers, and if we’re gonna have to talk about emotions, we’re doing that later over fried chicken and beer, not when we’re making a decision.
Steve: [00:02:00] Yeah. Base it on the data. That’s the thing. I’m one of these people who love everybody. I’ll have an assistant and I’ll hold onto the assistant six months longer when the data’s all telling me, go, this is not working. This is not someone that you should hold onto.
Steve: [00:02:18] And I just have a heart. Then you end up six months of regrets.
Elise: [00:02:23] Oh, do we all know that? I think every one of us has tried to rehabilitate or we’re like, we’ll try this different. I’m sure it’ll work now. Old data gives us the real deal and it’s, oh, okay.
Elise: [00:02:40] My 12th idea didn’t work either.
Steve: [00:02:43] And I don’t think lawyers traditionally are fans of math and data and that type of detail. Tell me if I’m wrong. Most lawyers, I think it’s language, it’s problem solving, it’s arguing. It’s things like that that really make people passionate about the law.
Elise: [00:03:00] As a young person, I loved math. I went to college to be a biomedical engineer. That was what I was gonna do. I got so into calculus, I was in semester four of some type of crazy derivative calculus. I realized I was at the end of this blonde brain when it came to calculus and I thought maybe I’m not gonna be a biomedical engineer.
Elise: [00:03:23] I was like, yeah, change this. If you did, then you’d end up in IP. That’s where they end up. These engineers. Everybody, you’ve got such a treat in store for you today. Elise Bowie is the CEO and founder of Elise Bowie Family Law. I think we originally met through Anita Ventre.
Steve: [00:03:38] Is that possible?
Elise: [00:03:39] I think it is. Yes. Anita? Yeah. She’s one of my favorite people.
Steve: [00:03:41] Oh. She was a teacher for me years ago at one of those Nita family law trial advocacy programs. Wow. Does she have some skills?
Steve: [00:03:50] Yeah, she’s a powerhouse here in Chicago, everybody. She’s been on the show. She’s in my book over my shoulder. She’s been in one of my rainmaker round tables for years. She’s just an incredible lawyer, an incredible person. I just can’t say enough great things about her. But this is not about Anita. This is about you and your brain. Tell everybody a little bit about your background, how you came to be.
Elise: [00:04:13] I messed up in calculus, so it ended up we got that far. Went to law school, was in New Orleans, graduated, ended up in insurance defense litigation for years, then quit and stayed home. I was enjoying my four little children at the time and doing the thing.
Elise: [00:04:31] Then Hurricane Katrina hit and off we went on our wild country adventure, moving to Georgia, then Minnesota, and then finally out here to Seattle. I started a firm out here in Seattle in 2015. I didn’t know a soul. Just came out here and worked as a contract attorney for a while.
Elise: [00:04:50] Then started my own firm. For about 10 years I’ve been growing and doing this out here. It’s been a wild adventure. To say the least, you go from just you to whatever we have now, 40-ish people.
Steve: [00:05:05] What are some of the lessons and hard knocks that not only you have found in your search for greatness and growing a law firm, but other lawyers? What are you seeing out there, where the struggles are in developing a sustainable, successful law practice?
Elise: [00:05:23] Not using the data.
Steve: [00:05:25] Not okay. So we’re right back where we started.
Elise: [00:05:28] It’s really true though, not understanding, one, what their numbers are, and two, what story those numbers are telling you. In so many billable hourly firms, there is such a leaky bucket of what is happening. For me, every month, every week, I would look at these things. I was always like, okay, this person says they’re doing this, Clio says this, but then the numbers do not add up.
Elise: [00:05:59] So we created this system. My little blonde brain, I was like, we are not gonna call these billable hours anymore. We call them “build on invoice” hours because there was this leaky bucket that was happening. Attorneys would either discount their time, or not put things on bills that they decided were non-billable. If that attorney has agreed to do 1200 hours a year of billable hourly work, that means 1200 hours at their normal billable rate are going on to invoices.
Elise: [00:06:44] If they want to cut and do whatever, that’s on your time over your 1200 hours. Build on invoice. A lot of firms look at collections, but in my mind that is not fair because the collection part is on me. If I do not have the processes in place to do collections, the attorney should not suffer for that.
Elise: [00:07:09] But the build on invoice is 100% in the attorney’s control. That, for our firm, literally plugged an $800,000 leaky bucket.
Steve: [00:07:22] Wow.
Elise: [00:07:23] And it was wild, the difference when we started doing this.
Steve: [00:07:28] You’re coming in with a firecracker and blowing some minds right now because there are people listening who run firms that don’t have that specific mindset and system in place and their leaky buckets are leaking. I appreciate that so much.
Elise: [00:07:41] That to me is the thing. I have such a heart for attorneys and what they’re doing because so much of what we do, so many of us go into this work because we’re trying to help people. You do not become a criminal attorney because you’re some capitalistic extraordinaire. You’re literally trying to keep our democracy in the forefront of what you’re doing every day. You see these attorneys that are just bleeding finances and they are struggling and they’re working 60, 70 hours a week, and they’re earning less than they would earn doing their job somewhere else.
Steve: [00:08:20] Let’s not stop there. I think we’re on a roll right now and I’d love to hear what are some of the other things that you’re looking at from a standpoint of data and metrics that are helping you to be successful and profitable that maybe lawyers are missing?
Elise: [00:08:33] The build on invoice is one, and then also really digging into the metrics in every part of your firm. Intake has its own metrics. Marketing has its own metrics. The client experience has its own metrics. Being able to determine in your team, what is your team’s satisfaction with their work? What is their trust level in the firm? Are you getting pulse surveys from your team so that you are building up a culture that is accessible, kind if kind is one of your values, but whatever your values are, really making sure that you are practicing your values through your data.
Elise: [00:09:17] For us, we have KPIs, so every person in the firm has KPIs that we look at so we can objectively look at people’s performance. It’s not one of those feeling things, or not one of those “we think this person is doing well.” We can actually track how they are doing and whether they’re performing and how that aligns with our culture.
Steve: [00:09:49] And what about marketing? People are spending thousands, tens of thousands, even more, a hundred thousands in some instances on marketing. I’ve had a lot of marketing people on here that say, “Hey, follow the data.” But do you have a system for how you’re tracking your marketing and your budgeting and how it’s feeding back to ROI?
Elise: [00:10:08] Marketing is such an interesting area. We are a very weird firm in this regard. We have a low marketing budget. I just got back from a marketing conference and we are substantially low. We do 5% of our gross revenue towards marketing, and we keep that very tight because we do track the ROI on it. But also, this is where I think it’s important for people to understand the difference between brand marketing and positioning versus digital marketing, paid ads and things.
Elise: [00:10:41] If you have developed a solid brand or are developing a solid brand where you are across all things from an organic standpoint and you’ve developed thought leadership in areas and you have done what you can do to really maximize referral marketing, then when you bring in the digital marketing on top of it, maybe you’ve maxed out or plateaued your organic reach and you need to do some more. That is all kind of playing in an ecosystem together.
Elise: [00:11:16] If I go and spend a certain amount of dollars on paid ads, I am going to get a different ROI than somebody who is paying those exact same dollars, but without the developed brand.
Steve: [00:11:35] I feel like what you’re saying is the brand marketing and the relationship marketing is like you’ve made this cake and then if you happen to throw digital on top of it, you ice the cake. Otherwise, you just have a puddle of icing. Maybe not the best analogy, but I think you’re right because if you’re just an anomaly and then trying to flood the market with ads, but without the brand and without the validation and all the different pieces that go into it, it’s not going to work.
Steve: [00:12:03] If you type Steve Fretzin into Google and you go 60, 70, 80 pages deep, and I’m still there, I’m not saying anyone would ever do that. My point is you create the content, you create the brand, you work at it, and then if you do digital on top, the likelihood that it’s going to play out is even enhanced.
Elise: [00:12:23] Absolutely. There’s so much now with AI as far as how are people showing up. Your brand and all that development really plays into that part of this as well. At the conference I just went to, it was interesting because they had tracked through their data how little things are still coming through AI. It’s still coming through Google and through the normal channels. It was interesting to see Reddit as being such a powerful channel of marketing and that’s all thought leadership, around where things are coming from.
Elise: [00:12:59] For me, marketing is strongly related to my values and I think being able to verbalize, talk about, and get out there about your values is such a powerful way to develop a brand. The rest of the marketing engine can go with that and really help boost it.
Steve: [00:13:22] Is there data in ROI that you can find in your team, whether it’s people delegating work down to paralegals, associates, and admin, and keeping the rainmakers rainmaking like you, and making sure that your lawyers are fully functioning on the high-level work?
Elise: [00:13:37] A hundred percent. That is the fun of running a law firm. We actually created, last year, a thing called “30 is the new 40,” which put that into place in a way where it applies to hourly employees, not attorneys, because it’s looked at differently. But like paralegals, let’s say they were working 40 hours a week, they all had their KPIs. We’re big into having good life-work integration, and I thought, there is a way I can give these people back 10 hours a week. We need to take their KPIs and teach them how to delegate this work down so that anything that’s non-billable admin, we’re delegating it down.
Elise: [00:14:18] Now I have paralegals who work 30 hours a week, get paid for 40, and they are hitting the exact same KPIs. The paralegals are delegating to legal assistants or we’re automating things. Sometimes you have to look at your workflow and realize some things are just noise, not moving any needles. We did a whole beta test of this “30 is the new 40” with a paralegal in our office, met with her weekly, got her feedback, and brought her down systematically from 40 to 30 hours over about a six-month period. It’s pretty powerful to get 10 hours back in your life.
Steve: [00:15:54] Every lawyer listening is salivating at hearing about how they get 10 hours a week back in their life. In some instances, I have people track their day and identify the hour or two a day that is being wasted, and if they take advantage of it, they can get an extra week a month. But not everybody does that, and not everybody is interested in trying to go deep and figure it out.
Steve: [00:16:13] I’m curious how you can be data-driven. It’s not that there isn’t emotion, but you’re trying to take the emotion out of it. Does that create a stronger value system and stronger culture, or has that been challenging? Because you think if you’re just looking at data, that seems colder than warmer from a standpoint of building a strong culture, but I’m assuming it’s the opposite for you.
Elise: [00:16:40] I look at it as numbers plus narrative. We talk about our data clearly as our numbers, and then we need the narrative that matches that. For example, if I want to talk to an attorney who maybe is not hitting their billable goals, I’m going to bring the data, and that data is shared with that attorney daily, weekly. There’s no mystery or surprise. In that conversation, I want to know what is their narrative? What is happening in their life right now that could be impacting this? What can we do to support them in whatever is going on? Is this a long-term problem, a month-long problem, a quarter problem? We have a choose-your-own-adventure model where people come in and tell us what they’re going to bill a year.
Elise: [00:17:24] How do I know what they want to bill in a year? I’ve got people who’ve got four kids, three kids, no kids—they might have completely different needs. We do not have any set standard billable hour. People tell us what they want to bill, we tell them what we’ll pay them, and if they need to make changes along the way, they just say, “I need a change.” If they need to go up, go down, whatever, we make those adjustments. The data allows us to be more nimble and actually meet people where they are.
Steve: [00:17:48] I love that. I don’t think that’s what most firms are doing, right? The billable requirements are super high, there’s lack of flexibility, their prices keep going up, it’s harder and harder to get business. It sounds like you’ve got something really cooking here that is moving along with the times.
Elise: [00:18:32] Yeah, definitely. We are definitely different. When I was at this marketing conference, I sat on a panel with two other attorneys and I was in the middle of these two other attorneys. Every time we would talk, I’d be like, “Okay, here I am saying something weird again,” because I realize we do things weird. We’re very innovative and so focused on life-work integration. Being a mom, divorcing myself, being a single mom, getting married, having this blended family of six kids—I couldn’t have some rigid life. I had to go to lacrosse, football, climbing, rowing. I was all over the place and I very much know what it’s like, especially for women who are juggling all the things. They just don’t need to be sitting in some office at some set hour every day doing the things—they can get their work done.
Elise: [00:19:28] I think because of our data, it allows the remoteness of our firm to work so well. A lot of owners are like, “How am I going to know what people are doing?” If you have good data, I don’t care where my people are—they could be in New Zealand on a black beach, and I know exactly what’s happening.
Steve: [00:19:47] Amazing. As you continue to leverage data and incorporate values into the firm, how does that impact your ability to scale? How have you scaled, and give everybody a little bit of a flavor of how this allows you to scale.
Elise: [00:20:07] For one, it’s interesting—everyone focuses on scaling and I have to tell you, I go through periods. There are times that we are scaling and there are times that I’m like, “Oh no, we are doing no scaling. We are correcting things, or we are digging in and fixing something or creating something that we really need to create.” We have not had a linear up-into-the-scaling thing. We’ve gone from probably right at a million in 2019 to a little over 6 million, and that’s been up, down, and around. I had one year, 2023 I think, where I literally called it my year of peace. I pulled us back down because we had scaled a lot, but there are some things that are broken that need to be fixed. So, we’re going to pull down and fix. I look at scaling in terms of the health of the firm, both financially and people-wise. How is the health of my people? With getting into politics, people are struggling just in the world right now. There’s a lot going on, so we’re really leaning into that right now—what do we need to do to make sure we are meeting our people where they all are?
Steve: [00:20:57] I think checking in on wellness and checking in on, like I was talking to a client who we just met and he was telling me he’s feeling a bit down and it’s affecting his business development and all that. I just asked a few questions and sure enough, there are some issues with his son and his son’s not sleeping, he’s not sleeping, and so if you’re not sleeping or eating right or exercising or there’s something that just isn’t going on—the politics of the world and the way the world is going—there’s a lot of stressors.
Steve: [00:21:46] I get that. I think that may be just another point to make: check in with your people. Don’t just be the business side and the data side. There’s the human side of “How are you doing today? What’s going on with you? What can I do for you?”
Elise: [00:22:01] I think it’s the numbers plus the narrative.
Steve: [00:22:04] Numbers plus the narrative.
Steve: [00:22:05] That’s the theme of the show. The numbers plus the narrative is really it. You must say that a lot. That might be their quote of the show. I do. Now we’ve got another quote of the show, but I love that because I think you’re right on.
Elise: [00:22:18] Without the narrative, you are missing a huge part of the puzzle. You have to be able to meet people because, like it or not, as a business owner, every single human in your business is dealing with some wild stuff. It doesn’t matter who they are, what position they have, where they’re from, what their politics are—none of that matters. Everybody’s got stuff going on. If you do not dig in and actually care, fundamentally care…
Steve: [00:22:55] I love it. So I think we’re not going to end there, but we’re going to end here. And that is: what’s Elise’s big mistake?
Elise: [00:23:02] Oh my gosh, yeah, that’s right. I would say my big mistake, big, dates back, was actually deciding to quit my job as a lawyer, stay home. My husband and I at the time—he’s my ex-husband now—it was a real struggle and I think we felt like competition almost. He’s an attorney and it just wasn’t going well. So I’m like, “I’m just going to quit. I’m going to stay home. You go be the lawyer, you do all the things and I’ll just homeschool four children, it’ll be fine.” That was not my wisest move. However, many years later, 10 years later into that, I was like, “Now we need a divorce. Now I haven’t worked for a decade and I’ve got no money.” I literally had to take all that, flip it all around.
Elise: [00:23:32] Wow. And then I was like, “Oh, I got kids looming for college and I don’t have a college fund.” So I started the firm solely with the intent that I was paying for those four kids to go to college. That’s crazy. Taking that mistake I made of just thinking I was somehow going to solve a marriage problem by doing what I was doing—it did not work. I’ve had to rebuild later, but I’ve gained so much insight because of it. I actually said to my current husband, “I owe such a debt of gratitude to my ex-husband that all that happened, because I never, ever would’ve gotten where I am today without that. I would’ve just stayed in a typical law firm model.”
Steve: [00:24:21] Yeah, I totally get what you’re saying. That’s why, with kids today, my wife and I want our son to not have any struggles. We want everything to be easy and I have to stop us and say, “No, he needs to have that problem.” He needs to figure out that he’s going to get pneumonia from a cough because he didn’t go to the doctor early enough or whatever. You can’t bulldoze. In our lives, it’s what ends up defining us as who we become—off the challenges and even our world today.
Steve: [00:24:49] My hope is, other than it blowing up, that we end up stronger as a country, for example, because we’re divided and because there’s so much craziness going on. That’s what I hope happens and I think that’s what happens to a lot of people that go through tough things. They come out the other end stronger. Really great.
Steve: [00:25:10] Let’s take a moment to thank our wonderful sponsors: Rankings.io—if you’re doing great branding and you’re going to need the paid stuff, the social, the SEO, the pay-per-click, all the juice, and especially for the UPI folks, you’re going to want to check out Rankings.io. We’ve got the LawHer podcast with Sonya, crushing it for women. And of course, Legal Verse Media if you want to get some international flair in your daily web feed, then check them out.
Steve: [00:25:32] Elise, people want to network with you, meet you, they want to send work your way. In your part of the world, what are the best ways for them to reach you?
Elise: [00:25:49] On social media, they can reach out or my email, which I’m sure you could put in the show notes or something. It’ll all be in the show notes. We’re in Seattle. Our family law firm is in Seattle, Washington. That would be the best way and I really appreciate your time today.
Steve: [00:26:39] This was great for both, from my perspective, amazing. By the way, just a quick thing about Seattle—I was there a number of years ago. The pop culture museum, amazing.
Elise: [00:26:49] Oh yeah.
Steve: [00:26:50] Amazing. They had a thing on Pearl Jam. I’m a big Pearl Jam guy, and oh, and Macklemore. It was so good, so deep on the band. Really enjoyed that. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom. There are so many things from numbers plus the narrative and talking about data and KPIs. Not just the data, but it’s important—all this great stuff that I know lawyers are taking in and maybe making some better decisions about how they run things.
Steve: [00:27:15] Thank you.
Elise: [00:27:17] Awesome. Yeah, it was great seeing you.
Steve: [00:27:19] Yeah, great seeing you as well. Thank you everybody for hanging out with Elise and I for about 30 minutes plus. Listen, take everything we said, dissect it, use it for how you can use it, and my goal is that you become organized and strategic and tactical in how you do it. Use your data and be that lawyer, everybody—confident, organized, a skilled rainmaker. Take care, be safe, be well. We will talk again very soon.
Steve: [00:27:37] And use your data and be that lawyer, everybody—confident, organized, a skilled rainmaker. Take care, be safe, be well. We will talk again very soon.