There's a different way to practice! Co-hosts JP Box and Erika Holmes describe their respective journeys, detailing what they saw in traditional law practices that made sense and what didn't. After exploring the (often discouraging) current state of the legal market, JP and Erika detail a new type of foundation, the Four Pillars of Modern Representation: empowerment, focus, technology, and value. Find out how to thrive as a modern lawyer while maintaining a healthy work life blend. 

Find out more about: 
JP Box 
Erika Holmes 

Find out more about:

Erika Holmes 

J.P. Box

Part two of our four-part series on Creating a Vision focuses on the professional journeys of four modern lawyers who have answered the question: what is my professional identity? From Alamosa to Denver, from business law to family law, from building a thriving practice to mentoring fellow attorneys, the lawyers featured in this episode just may inspire you on your own journey as well.

Find out more about our guest panelists: 
Lauren Lester 
Kristen Belolan   
J. Ryann Peyton  
James Marshall 

Modern Law is an all-encompassing way of practicing law that provides lawyers and clients empowerment, focus, technology, and value. This series on vision was inspired in part by the current pandemic and the need to figure out new ways to connect and be productive. Join guest Jessica Bednarz as she describes what it means to be client-centric, how to make your practice more customer service oriented, and how to meet your client where they are – perhaps both figuratively and literally. 

Find out more about Jessica Bednarz  

One of the pillars of Modern Law is technology. Join our tech savvy guest attorneys Lauren Lester and Marty Champagne, Jr. as they take us through some technology trends and must haves for the modern lawyer. 

And introducing our question and answer line! Got Questions? Call 303-824-5399 and leave us a voicemail. We'll play your question on the air! 

Find out more about:

Lauren Lester 

Marty Champagne, Jr.

This week the MLR focuses on revolutionizing your billing practices. In this first installment of a three-part series, we tackle the evils of the billable hour. Feel like you're on a treadmill working against your own efficiency instead of having it rewarded? Tired of living your life in six-minute increments? Tired of focusing on the business of law instead of the practice of law? Don’t let the billable hour drive you away from your profession. The billable hour, by its nature, puts attorneys at conflict with their clients. Clients want problems to be solved as quickly as possible, but the billable hour removes a lawyer’s motivation for an expeditious resolution. Well, we are here to tell you that there’s a better way. As Executive Director of The Chicago Bar Foundation, Bob Glaves is responsible for leading and overseeing the CBF’s work that brings Chicago’s legal community together to improve access to justice for people in need and to make the legal system more fair and efficient for everyone. Hear him discuss the pitfalls of the billable hour and the ways out of its trap with hosts Erika Holmes and JP Box.

And look out for our next two installments where we will examine alternate billing models and take a deep dive into unbundling.

Find out more about:

Bob Glaves 

Erika Holmes

JP Box

60% of civil litigants in Colorado appear without representation. By using alternative billing practices, you can tap into this huge market. But does alternative billing work? Is it a profitable model? In a word, yes. Alternative billing may be a lawyer-driven change, but it addresses a client-driven necessity. In this second installment on our three-part series Revolutionizing Your Billing, our friend Bob Glaves from the Chicago Bar Association returns to add to our discussion this week as we tackle new and emerging trends in billing such as unbundled, flat fee, fixed fee, sliding scale, subscription billing, and hybrid models. Get off the billable hour treadmill and discover a better way to run your practice!

Find out more about:

Bob Glaves 

Erika Holmes

JP Box

In the final installment of our three-part series on billing, Erika Holmes and guest host, Lauren Lester, take a deep dive into unbundling. Special guests, Amy Skogerson and Andrea McGinn of Iowa, walk us through the inspiration for their 100% unbundled practice, The Law Shop, and the freedom that unbundled legal services have brought to their clients and the freedom and work-life balance it has brought to them.  

Find out more about:

Erika Holmes

Lauren Lester

Amy Skogerson

Andrea McGinn

Have questions about unbundling, alternative billing, or anything Modern Law? Leave us a message and we'll answer you question on our next episode. 

303 824-5399

In this episode, Erika Holmes and special guest cohost, Lauren Lester, welcome Meranda Vieyra, CEO and Founder of Denver Legal Marketing LLC. With 25 years of experience in the Denver legal market, Meranda specializes in bringing high impact legal marketing to solo and small firms.

As with everything in modern law, marketing is customizable. But that doesn’t mean it should stay exclusively in your wheelhouse. Erika’s philosophy on marketing is go with what feels most natural, but not necessarily what’s most comfortable.

From branding and advertising to building the perfect website and optimizing SEO to identifying your target audience to turning leads into clients, Miranda helps to demystify what marketing looks like for modern lawyers and passes along a few simple ideas to get you started.

Find out more about

Meranda Vieyra

Lauren Lester

Erika Holmes 

Denver Legal Marketing 

Just like everything else in Modern Law, networking isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Modern networking isn’t just about getting clients, it’s about revolutionizing the way we think about making connections and how those connection-making skills can help us become better lawyers and improve the legal profession.

In this episode, we speak to networker extraordinaire, Karen Masciulli, Director of Legal Talent at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Karen realized early that she wanted to use her legal abilities to help people. From the time she graduated law school she has worked in academia, big law, and the government helping connect lawyers with opportunities. Now she gives us a peek into all the many ways to network outside of those awkward happy hours. Listen for tech tips, advice both practical and inventive, and some tricks of the trade for Modern Lawyers.

Karen Masciulli

Lauren Lester

Erika Holmes  

Maybe you’ve heard the myth that in order to ethically represent your client, you must be responsible for their entire case from start to finish. Untrue, says our guest, Jonathan White, Professional Development Counsel and Inventory Counsel at the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. Not only is modern law representation entirely permitted, it is encouraged by the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct. The reality is that not all clients can afford full scope services. Therefore, many argue that, from an access to justice standpoint, perhaps traditional representation is actually the service model that flirts with an ethical gray area. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the Rules of Professional Conduct and explore the many ways Modern Law represents the best of the legal profession.

Jonathan White

Lauren Lester

Erika Holmes  

In this episode we welcome back the amazing JP Box, co-host of this podcast and today’s special guest. JP is a lawyer, entrepreneur, business owner, author, and consultant. That’s a lot of things to be. So how does JP stay sane? Work-life blend.

Work life balance is just that – a balancing act. Invariably pitting one against the other in the pursuit of having it all. Traditionally, employers and employees have been preoccupied with the well-intentioned but misguided attempt to separate life from work. But what if work and life were all blended together into one harmonious ball of twine? This is precisely what JP proposes in his book The Millennial Lawyer: How Your Firm Can Motivate and Retain Young Associates. Work-life blend has become a watchword for millennial workers. It’s about working smarter and, as a result, more productively. And guess what, the pandemic has been a great crash course on how to accomplish this.

To explain what work-life blend looks like, JP and co-host Erika Holmes, break the concept down into five freedoms.

1)    Freedom to decide when and where work happens

2)    Freedom to bring your life into work. (Dog friendly office anybody?)

3)    Freedom to think of a workspace as a living space and vice versa (think about  the Google-fication of workspaces.)

4)    Freedom to work, think, and connect digitally.

5)    The freedom to unplug. Figuratively and literally.

JP Box

Erika Holmes 

In this episode, we take a deep dive into cutting-edge legal technology that is transforming the practice of law. With a special guest co-host and tech thought leader, Karen Safran, we explore the incredible opportunities and efficiencies that avail themselves to today's tech-savvy modern lawyers. In our interview with special guests, Yev Muchnik and Justie Nicol, we hear directly from two modern lawyers who have embraced technological innovation to boost their practices. And, as an added benefit, today's guests can speak "technology" in plain and accessible language that even the most tech-averse practitioner can understand!

Host

JP Box 

For further listening, today's guests recommended the following podcasts: Lawyer Forward, Maximum Lawyer, and Smith.ai Academy.