[ 00:00:01,080 ]Let’s go!

[ 00:00:22,830 ]Welcome into Behind the Brand Podcast. I’m Adam Hayes. To my right is my co-host, Bob Payton. In the middle is our guest, Randall Clow with Clow Legal. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Thanks for wearing your good pants. That’s right. Inside. Happy to oblige. So behind the podcast, insider knowledge. My my big boy, yeah there we go, I like that big boy lawyer pants, yeah. So you haven’t always been an attorney. What were you before you were an attorney? 10 years in marketing and advertising as a graphic designer. Okay. Yes. This is a story. Were you in the field at the time of like? paper and cool colors and print presses and that kind of time or was it already into the digital design era so one of one of the interesting things about that part of my life is i went to college The first year it stopped being commercial art.

[ 00:01:25,700 ]and became graphic design. So I got a degree in graphic design, not commercial art. And then I graduated. In the first year. that they The year before they. put computers. Into the program. Okay Was it Mac or PC at that time? That’s a good clue. They were Macs. Okay. Yeah, new Macs, right? And then do you remember the software— the first like design software you worked in was it like Corel Draw? Okay. So Quark, Core, okay, Express. We had all of the Adobe platforms. I don’t think Freehand was Adobe. We had Illustrator, we had Photoshop. So we had all of the tools. It just wasn’t part of the degree or the education— they didn’t. They had that time. They didn’t expect you to do anything with it.

[ 00:02:24,700 ]It was just here’s the stuff if you want to try. Right? Okay. Which meant that I graduated from college without knowing how to put together a website. Okay. So this was like 1960? No. It was 71. Well, funny that same. He hides his age well. Which year did we go to the moon? Of Jesus. It was 71, wasn’t it? No, it was before that. 67? It was in the 60s. Alright. So. Roughly when was it? So my career started kind of at the end of paper and commercial art dying, the beginning, certainly the end of printing presses had gone. Um, And then we were into computers and computer arts for creation. And so you’re weaving and bobbing along in your career and all of a sudden something— a light lightning bolt hits you and you go, you know what?

[ 00:03:27,000 ]I think I want to practice law. Tell us about that. Tell that story because you told it to me. Okay. So. I’m going to say that there was a A-seed planted in high school. Okay, that I completely disregarded, because I was the kid of parents who got uh their degree after, like, they dropped out of high school and they got then they went back and got their equivalent degree. Everybody in my family worked in the factory, so college was not an expectation. The seed was planted, and there was just no world where it made sense that I could be an attorney. So. Who was it that played? It was a senior year. Government class with a teacher, Mrs. Denny. Who liked to speak in generalities. She she would make very thank you.

[ 00:04:30,860 ]Broad statements. Which were based on a lot of assumptions. And I just, I was already like ready to speak more precisely than that. I don’t know. I kind of made a habit of catching her in them, and she just one day I had just sort of corrected her in a sense, and she just looked me square in the eye. And said, ‘Like pause.’ Everybody’s quiet. Have you ever thought about being a lawyer? They’re like, ‘Well, no, but now maybe.’ And just didn’t say anything else. She just let it sit. Let it sit. And I’m like. ‘Sorry.’ So yeah, I just, I just dismissed that. 10 years of marketing and advertising. I’m finally after 10. Years sitting down with clients, I’m listening to the pain point they’re telling me.

[ 00:05:32,440 ]You know what what they need? And then we’re going back, and we’re envisioning things, and we put together an ad campaign, and then we bring it back to them, and then you just see their face light up. This is exactly what we were talking about. This will help us. That. That was. That was my crack. I needed that. I wanted that over and over. I got really um disinterested in going back to the computer and making the the art to support it, but you were really good at the strategy and the concept. Yes, I wanted to be the problem solver. I just wanted to do that. So you turned yourself into a creative director. Yeah, I had the fancy title—Assistant Creative Director. I was at that job for one year.

[ 00:06:19,310 ]Um, We had just done a large RFP. We didn’t get the the job. Same week. My agency lost its biggest client. Same week, I lost my job. Wow. That was a busy week. I was a low-hanging fruit. I thought we had a bad week this week. So we had partnered with another agency for that. RFP. I called him up. I took him out to lunch. We spent an hour at lunch. The first half hour, I’m just pouring my heart out. I’m like, ‘Look, you’ve done all of this great stuff. You’re a bigger agency. I kind of want your job. Can we do a mentor-mentee thing?’ The next half hour, he tells me how long he had hated that job. Wow. Secret— a little secret.

[ 00:07:05,760 ]So naturally, I’m a little bit deflated, but I’m also a little bit bullheaded. So I’m like, okay, well, that’s you. I think I’d love that job. I gave it two more months of looking, which was over 10 years. Had just been a series of two or three-year stints. Sure. And I was. I was done. I just. I didn’t. It felt like a rat race. It felt like I was just going to get another job for one or two years. And I was not interested. So I. I just walked away. I went back to all of the personality tests to figure out what you’re supposed to do in their world. And my top 10 list, after a decade, had not changed. The first one. Was a landscape designer, photographer, interior designer.

[ 00:07:56,650 ]Graphic designer. Photography. You name it. I’m just no. No. No. No. Until I get down to number seven, which was attorney. And you’re like, ‘Huh?’ This is Denny. Or did you just kind of go, ‘Huh?’ I mean, at that point, at that point, so there was, in that 10 years job stints, there was a point where I was out of a job for seven months and bullheaded at that point. I’m like, ‘This is what I went to school for. This is what I’m supposed to do.’ It’ll eventually happen. Lots of people would have just pulled up, pulled up 10 sticks and left. Right then, right then. Um, at that point, which would be about four years prior. Um, for whatever reason, that lawyer had circled back in my head.

[ 00:08:48,370 ]I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t investigate it. I didn’t go talk to lawyers to figure out what they actually do. Um, but it—you just percolated. And then. Once I got to that point where I said, ‘I’m done, I’m walking away from this.’ Lawyer showed up. It was the seed. It was the percolated. And now it’s like. Do something. So what did that look like though? What did that look like to suddenly just say, ‘Did you start to explore the LSAT’ or what was the next step really? So. We’re well now we’re out of the Stone Age. We have computers. The big book we can easily do some searches online and figure out what that process is. Reach out through family friends, find some attorneys, and go interview.

[ 00:09:36,790 ]Figure out what it is they really do. In my family, you only hired an attorney because you needed a divorce. Right. So I didn’t really understand the full scope of law of a lawyer’s job, until I looked into it. And then once I did, there was. It was just something that. That clicked perfectly. That I now know. Because I can now look back on my past and I can talk. Clearly and succinctly about that problem solving. There was something in the research process that told me. That I could be that. The subject matter expert. That I could be the problem solver. And that made sense. So I didn’t. I didn’t think it was gonna be as good as it has been. Hmm. But I really felt strongly that it was going to be.

[ 00:10:32,670 ]A great next step. And I just jumped. And I remember the last time we had talked about this several years ago. That you found there was art in law. That phrase stuck with me. When you said it, when we probably even first met. And I thought that was just really a neat way to put it, right? There’s, you know, people. Maybe the average citizen, I don’t know who, as law is law, it’s all black and white. You just do this. Well, there’s a whole spectrum. Of not just opportunity, but types of law, how you approach law. You know, all those kinds of things. I always remember having that conversation with you, which was really neat. 100%. It’s creative problem solving. Yeah. You just happen to have this toolkit. If you can.

[ 00:11:23,160 ]Think. outside of a box, which is all they ever tell you to do and the creative world is just think differently, be different. If you can do that, then you have an opportunity, a chance to bring something into view that that person or those persons hadn’t considered before. Anytime you can make more pie. Awesome. Right. You can take two people that are just completely in at odds. At odds. Introduce well. What if that? And that makes your world better and your world better. So there’s a lot of room for that. Nice. So what’s your focus area now? And how long have you been practicing? So 13 years. I got out of law school when the shingles started. And um, St— started something like a threshold lawyer.

[ 00:12:30,620 ]I took a whole lot of what walked over the threshold. But one by one, I was just ruling things out. I took one criminal law matter and never again. It took one probate matter. Never again. It just didn’t speak to me if it just felt. Foreign if it felt like factory work. Yeah. I just. Tried it and I moved on. So by elimination, I get down to a point where, about five years in, six years in, I’m pretty sure family law is not where it’s at. Um, so I start dropping those things off and then. When I look at what I really enjoy. Um, It’s business. Very tightly focused on cradle to grave, small business services, owner, operator. Uh, 15, 20 million or less, 50 employees or less.

[ 00:13:31,870 ]And it’s it’s closely held, so it’s working with an owner, private owner, family businesses. Absolutely. Yep. All the way to transaction and exit. So Hopefully. Yeah. That the practice that I’m building. Over time. Um, I’m 13 years in, I expect to be doing this at least as many more. So I’m looking at about a 25-year run. Um, I want to leave behind a law practice that serves those businesses cradle to grave. And at the grave, consideration. Is able to keep that small business in our community, keep that small business turning. By helping them transition to new ownership. Nice. In the meantime, if you know, they. The— Owning a business is what they were always meant to do. And three years in, they want to go buy another business and then they want to go buy another business and they outgrow me. So I’m happy to help with that. Yeah. Thanks. Awesome. Let’s go!