It’s not a model that fits big firms,” said Jamie Hargrove, a founder of Lexington-based Hargrove Madden LLP, concerning the firm’s plan to become the biggest in the nation by establishing offices in each of the 50 states.
“Historically what’s happened with law firms as they get bigger, they don’t tend to be a 50-state practice. They tend to only be in money centers,” he said.
Established in February of 2011, Hargrove Madden is taking a different approach to law, evolving the legal document “do it yourself” concept offered by the likes of LegalZoom into hargrovemadden.com, an online service that provides state-specific estate planning by actual living, breathing attorneys licensed to practice in each state.
“One of the things that’s similar [between us and LegalZoom] is we recognize the Internet is a fabulous tool to provide economical delivery of legal services,” Hargrove said. “They are a document-only company and we’re a law firm. If you want to get economical estate-planning documents, you’ve got two choices. We’re in 24 states today; we’re moving toward a 50-state model. So by the middle of next year at least we’ll be in all 50 states,” he projected.
The Hargrove Madden site seeks to demystify the details and costs of the estate-planning process by providing a “planning platform” that states: “We recognize the hurdles that come between individuals and legal counsel to execute the important documents that coincide with lifetime decisions. No matter what package you choose, all of your documents will be handled and reviewed by a licensed, Hargrove Madden LLP attorney, and you will only be charged a single, flat fee for documents and services. There are no hidden costs.”
A worksheet is provided to help the client ensure that they have at hand all of the information that will be required to complete a plan.
In a significant boost to the firm’s efforts, the 2012 American Bar Association eLawyering Award was recently presented to Hargrove Madden in Chicago. The national award is annually given to a U.S. law firm to recognize those “pioneering practitioners [that] have found dramatic new ways to communicate and collaborate with clients and other lawyers, produce documents, settle disputes, interact with courts and manage legal knowledge. eLawyering encompasses all the ways in which lawyers can do their work using the Web and associated technologies,” according to the American Bar Association’s website.
“We’re really the first firm of any kind to have plans to be in all 50 states, and the Bar Association kind of recognized that by the award they gave us, which was really two-fold,” Hargrove said. “One, they liked the way we did the multi-state practice, and they liked the ways we dotted our I’s and crossed our T’s on all the ethical issues.”
Because law on a given issue can vary or conflict from state to state, Hargrove Madden needed to recruit lawyers not only licensed to practice in each state but also capable of adapting the firm’s own practices to meet each state’s parameters.
“Every state has their own rules, and so if you want to practice in California, you have to practice like people in California say you’re going to practice. And you’ve got to market only the way they let you market,” he said.
To put together a nationwide team, Hargrove said he recruited people he trusted to staff the administrative side and sought an individual who could guide the shaping of the organization. It would be a new frontier for most attorneys, so making them comfortable with the structure would be key.
Hargrove brought on Jim Walters, charging him with tapping his experience in building national sales forces for Kinkos and Trane.
“While that’s not exactly what we’re doing, we wanted someone who had that kind of background as opposed to a legal background,” he said. “I wanted to find someone out of the industry who understood the concept of a national organization, who understood the need of picking people the right way… [and] understood how you train them.”
Though founders of the young firm, neither Hargrove nor Roger Madden is the managing partner.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to get some really good people like Jim Newberry. I was terribly disappointed when Jim didn’t win re-election for mayor; now it turns out I’m really glad he didn’t,” Hargrove said, jokingly.
The former Lexington mayor had worked with Hargrove previously, co-founding Newberry, Hargrove & Rambicure. “We grew that close to 30 lawyers back in the 1990s,” Hargrove said, “and [my] entrepreneurialism kind of started back in the ’90s.”
As both an attorney and CPA, Hargrove said his mind works using “processes and systems” that are more at home inside an accounting firm versus a law practice. Hargrovemadden.com provides the platform that makes it possible for him to bring his accounting knowledge and experience into the field of law.
“You’ve got technology, you’ve got systems and processes, you’ve got people in place, you’ve got the practice,” he noted. “So now that you’ve got that, why not replicate that and take it to the next level?”
Hargrove said his firm has done that with a “high-touch, high-tech” approach to flat-rate estate-planning done largely online through state-specific menus and questions.
“What we’re trying to do is marry the person on the ground or on the phone or in an email — who is a lawyer — with the technology that keeps drawing that cost down so that not only the wealthy can have estate tax lawyers, but anybody can have it,” he said.
“Part of the process of reducing the cost of legal work,” he said, “is finding out what a lawyer does during the course of the day, how much of that really requires a lawyer and saving that just for the lawyers — because lawyers are expensive.”