It is not uncommon for a law firm to go through a season where things get difficult, even those a part of Entrepreneurial Attorney Nation.
A season of rebuilding. A season of retraction. A season where the owner has to regroup and decide what comes next. So… What do you do about it?
I want to share with you what four attorneys, just like you, decided to do.
Each of them had a period of growth. Each of them had a period of retraction or regrouping. And each of them had to make a decision before they were able to take off and grow again.
These four attorneys were the finalists for our Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year award at our Partners Club event in Charlotte.
Their peers voted on their presentations to determine the 2025 winner. Spoiler alert: Humberto Rivera won the 2025 Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year.
These finalists had to be vulnerable about where they were in 2024. And in each case, the story followed a similar pattern… Growth. Retraction. Growth again.
That is the part I want you to see because law firm growth does not always happen in a straight line. Sometimes the period that feels like a setback is actually the period that reveals what has to change.
Nicole Reeves-Lavallee had 18 employees leave her firm, most of them connected to intake and entry-level roles. That kind of turnover could have stalled the entire machine. Instead of continuing to guess her way through the problem, she brought in someone with real experience building teams, rebuilt the intake process, and created a stronger foundation for growth.
James Hausen had a key attorney leave, and that departure took roughly a third of his employees with it. Because so much responsibility had been placed on one person, James was pulled back into the operation almost immediately. Rather than retreating, he rallied the team, redistributed responsibilities, reduced key-person risk, hired again, and rebuilt the systems so the firm could keep growing.
Humberto Rivera (winner) was one day away from going to work for another law firm. After years of fighting to break through, he was close to deciding the business would not work. Instead, he made one decision to get help, changed his pricing, changed how he was getting paid, created more profit, and used that profit to invest in replacing himself and growing the firm.
Kotanga Wright, after winning Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year 2024, entered a season where her firm took a step backward. But that step back was not wasted. She used that period to rebuild the firm’s systems, strengthen the tech stack, lean into AI, and create the structure needed to manage the next level of growth.
Different hardships used as the rebuilding point.
