Family Law Attorney (Appleton & Green Bay, WI)

The Sterling Law Story

This will all make more sense to you if you understand the context and how Sterling Law Offices got here.

My name is Jeff Hughes. I started practicing at a small, community law firm in 1997 (McLario, Helm & Bertling, S.C. in Menomonee Falls). My work mainly comprised family, criminal/traffic and miscellaneous civil matters. By the age of 30, I was fortunate to enjoy a high level of success in the courtroom and with clients. My compensation was excellent, and I very much enjoyed my work.

Despite my flourishing legal career, I always had a hankering for building organizations and teams. The idea of building an enduring company/team captured my imagination much more than just building my own individual practice.

I almost always had on-the-side business interests. When I was 25-26 and three years out of law school, I worked a good part of the year at night and weekends starting a dating website that focused on a large and lucrative niche. That was the right idea and right time, but, in retrospect, I didn’t have the ability or maturity to get it done. That business never got going. (Later eHarmony.com did what I envisioned. They executed. I did not.)

I started another business with a partner when I was 28. That business tracked rapidly rising gas prices. It failed.

On the day after my 30th birthday, I started another business. That one failed too.

At the age of 31 I had three failed business experiences. Ugh! (Oh yeah—that painting business I had for three years in college and law school where I worked with my brother . . . that doesn’t count.)

So, at the age of 32, I did the only natural thing I could think of . . . I started another business.

This business was selling satellite TV service for Dish Network over the internet. It worked well—really well. Over the next eight years we grew that business to $23 million in revenue and over 200 employees.

Along the way we also started an ad agency (RocketClicks.com) focused on internet marketing. That business supports Sterling Law today. It has around 25 digital marketers.

Where is Sterling Law going?

So . . . “where is the firm going?” you say. I have come full circle and started a law firm with my long-time colleague Tony.

We have two dominating advantages with the families we serve. We compete directly with the hundreds of small, community law firms in throughout the state that have between 1 and 5 lawyers.

Advantage #1: We are excellent digital marketers—meaning that we know how to speak online to the needs of prospective clients enduring family legal problems. We are built from the ground up to serve them specifically. Clients appreciate this and come to us in large numbers.

Advantage #2: We have deep business savvy honed through years of failures and successes. We have a team whose full time job is to build the business of the law firm to support the attorneys. Most of our competitors do not have the resources to devote to building systems to specifically serve family law clients.

These two abilities give us a crushing edge over other law firms working with family clients. We have plenty of excellent clients and can generate an abundant flow of new clients. We need excellent attorneys that can serve our clients and build their practice.

What will Sterling Law expect of me if I join the team?

We have five major expectations to be on our team:

Core Values

1. Finish with Integrity
   We strive to finish every matter, interaction, engagement, deal, etc. to conclusion with integrity. This means that we should always be able to tell the whole story and not leave out a detail because we are ashamed.
2. Compete with a Warrior Spirit
   We are competitive, and we want to win in everything we do. We can’t always control the outcomes, but we can control our preparation and the intensity of how we compete. We do our best and take pride in the effort.
3. Embrace and Drive Change
   We accept that one of the certainties in life is change. We anticipate change and enact it before we are forced to accept it.
4. Lead by Serving
   The most effective leaders are servants first. We expect everyone on our team to model a spirit of humility and gratitude toward others. It’s only after we serve that we can expect to lead.

What type of person is Sterling Law looking for?

We want people who model or possess the following:

• Authentic integrity
• Warrior spirit
• Servant’s heart
• Coachable attitude
• Constructive spirit of discontent
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Three plus years of practical, in-the-trenches family legal work - OR - five plus years of life experience developing strong empathy skills
• Open to embracing the power of technology

Conversely, we do not want to work with people who have huge egos and who don’t enjoy working with others in a team environment. If you are enamored with titles, expect your own parking space, lack mental toughness, can’t take constructive feedback from a younger person or a non-lawyer, or love “pocket parts” in books, then we are not the place for you.

Conclusion

Sterling Law Offices is focused on serving family law clients. We target clients with a household income of between $60,000 and $250,000.

We are experts in internet marketing and technology. That is one of our competitive advantages. We have already built one sister company to $20+ million. Another sister company is an internet marketing ad agency with approximately 25 people on staff.

Our team is approaching the practice much differently than how law firms have been managed over the past 150 years. The time is right for a sea-change of disruption in the family legal practice.

If you feel that you are capable of these challenges and also have the mental toughness to handle the rewards that come when we conquer them, than we would love to meet you.

Apply Online!

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