The LMAF Interview: Katie McMahan

LMAF interviews peek into the lives and minds of some of the most compelling figures in the legal industry. Interviewees answer three questions from each of three categories—savvy, salty, and personal—to reveal unique insights and talents driving our field.

Platform

Katie McMahan

Katie McMahan is many things. High on that list? “Wanna-be cowgirl.” It even says so right on her LinkedIn headline.

It was no surprise, then, that donkeys and horses featured in our conversation. But so did AI as a reason to get out of bed in the morning (no exaggeration), the importance—and clarity—of tying business decisions to values, and, yes, the challenges and opportunities firms grapple with as they compete to recruit and retain talent.

As the founder and managing director of The Lawt, a national legal recruiting agency based in Colorado, Katie has built her business and brand around purpose, direction, and real talk. It’s no wonder she was such a clear choice for this Legal Marketing AF interview.

See Katie's LinkedIn photo carousel for the interview here.

Savvy

What are your clients asking for that you don't see law firms delivering yet? We interview attorneys every day. “What do you want?” “What do you like about your firm?” “What do you not like?” The number one answer is culture fit.

So we took a lot of time at The Lawt to figure out “What is culture?” We've come to realize that it's a set of values that a company reveres, encourages, and promotes. And we're not seeing firms invest in culture. Many firms don't even know what that means. It’s still like, “Well, we can wear jeans to work. We have exposed brick in the office.”

We're not seeing firms invest in culture.

When we really dig into culture, I ask firms, “What are your values? What is a business decision tied to that value?” It's usually deer in headlights.

Yet when we can tie those two things together, and we can point to business decisions that demonstrate a firm’s values, we really impress attorneys we are trying to place. It feels real, it feels authentic. We're not talking about billable benchmarks, work-life balance, hybrid, remote. It's this feel-good, authentic approach to hiring that is missing, and that's what's lacking. Culture, and tying values to it.

What should the legal profession steal from another industry? Wherever law firms can increase their efficiency on project management and embrace having robots write for them, ironically, AI will enable them to have time to be more human. There's so much that law firms can do right now to embrace technology.

Another example is video storytelling. When we first started working with Big Law, we were recording video interviews and sending them to law firms. Hiring leaders could circulate the interviews among their team and save all these partners time. That became organic marketing for us. Firms were asking, “How come we've never seen this before? This is so efficient.” That's an example of how to use videos for process improvement.

In recruitment, I dream of a firm giving me a video, 30 to 60 seconds, “Here's why you should join us.” And those could be client facing! They can be for recruiting. But more video storytelling is the way of the future, and something that will make law firms more relevant.

You said something I want to go back to. Have you seen an example where AI is helping lawyers to be more relatable, or where the efficiency in AI is giving lawyers more room to connect with humans. How's that playing out? I'll give you an example for me that I think applies to lawyers. I wake up more excited to work than I have been maybe in the past five years. We send the same emails every day. You know the corporate speak. I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel. We reach out to lawyers every day and say, “Hey, not sure if you realize this firm is hiring.” Or, “Would you like to talk about your future?” Or, “Let's talk about the market. Let me educate you.”

Those emails are so stock and redundant. With AI, within 30 seconds I have 10 new templates using my voice. It still feels very much me, but it's a refreshed me. It's giving me new ideas. It's freeing me up to talk to more people on the phone. I needed a pick-me-up, a wake-up call, and AI has been the way to do it.

It's also for lawyers. The first draft at pleadings must be like that now. Hopefully that's giving lawyers more time to meet with clients, to meet with partners, to strategize, to go through discovery that they really need to become familiar with before they take or defend a deposition.

That’s a great segue to the next question. What tools do you love using in your day-to-day? I'm not kidding you, AI. I wake up, and whereas I would normally go “All right, let me find a reason to get excited about this,” AI really does that for me.

I will also say Leopard Solutions. It aggregates all open jobs in the market, and you can apply filters. You know, JD year, size of firm, specialty, salary, and so on. That helps us present lawyers with a view of the market and what's out there, customized to their wish list. It also gives us our briefing of the news, so in one stop I can get very familiarized with the market, both on who's hiring, who's merging, and how many jobs are open. It also does a quick snapshot of whether hiring is down or up. It really is effective for someone like me who needs to have a pulse on the market.

Salty

What legal industry or law firm trend bothers you right now, and why? Firms are stuck between rigid policy to protect against liability and catering to each attorney's individual needs. It's really hard to strike a balance right now between the two to be competitive.

We recruit by saying, “We're family friendly. You can choose your path here,” versus a reality of “We have to uphold this policy, we're back to office now. We need to do it uniformly for everybody.” There's confusion there.

This rigid approach feels unnecessary. There is a middle ground somewhere, maybe tiers of employees, where the first tier is fully in office, because they want or need to be, a middle tier is hybrid, and then there’s a fully remote tier.

Some firms are embracing this, and they have formalized, remote programs. In doing that I think you find the middle ground. You show that, “We have this dialed in. We have policy. We feel good about liability. And we get to show prospective employees that we've thought about this. It's well intentioned, and there's something for everybody.” That’s a great recruiting tool, good for retention.

Coming back to culture, it shows how a firm values flexibility and implements that into a business decision.

I love how you tie firm values back to business decisions. That's such a good way to prove out a firm’s rhetoric. Yes. My feet have been held to the fire as a business owner. That's part of why I've been successful helping firms latch onto this idea. People see through you real fast in a small organization if you say you’re values-focused.

For example, something as small as “We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously.” Well, what's a business decision that backs that up? At The Lawt, National Donut Day is a company holiday. Every time I make a decision as a business owner, I am thinking about what value I am promoting and tying that together for my employees, so they can see it's intentional. Everything we do here is intentional. That really builds culture. It's compelling.

What do you wish that lawyers, candidates, or recruiters would stop asking for, and why?

Transcripts and cover letters. Please. The cover letters, I mean, they're obviously written with AI.

Cover letters just bug me.

Honestly, I don't even know who's talking to me sometimes when I get a thank-you note. Sometimes I wonder, “Wow, that's the best thank-you note I've ever seen. Did they really write it?”

But cover letters just bug me, and they waste time, in my opinion. And then transcripts. This is a broader, controversial subject when it comes to hiring attorneys. How much do we value pedigree and grades over practical experience, ambition, and work ethic? I've seen plenty of Ivy League lawyers fall very flat for firms and not survive. Academic drive does not always translate to performance.

How many firms are still asking for transcripts? I think all of them. The boutiques, the smaller firms, they don't have that rigid policy all the time, but Big Law, we can't present a candidate without the transcripts. It's a placeholder. Even for the most senior lateral partner, we say, “Okay, we need your transcripts from 30 years ago.” They are like, “Are you kidding?”

What's your go-to excuse to avoid a meeting? I don't need an excuse. I never need an excuse. It's just the truth. And that truth ranges from “I have more important priorities,” and the priorities could be talking to you, taking care of my dad, or feeding my donkeys. In that moment, I have to decide what really warrants my very valuable time. Sometimes that means pivoting. I do my best to plan for that, to not make anyone feel disrespected or to not value their time. But it's usually one of those things I didn't plan, and I have to pivot my priorities.

I love what you posted on LinkedIn about treating your calendar as your budget. We often go out to buy something, then decide at the last minute not to buy right now. But are we nearly as good with saying, at the last minute, “I'm not going to spend my time there, it’s not worth it?” We’re not. Absolutely. I took a masterclass in habits and maximizing your time. And I realized, if the most important things to us are family, and friends outside of work, that doesn't make it on my calendar. Jogging, walking, therapy. My work calendar has all these very important phone calls, yet I realized I wasn't actually scheduling some of the things that matter the most to me.

Again, as a business owner, or a lawyer when you're billing time, you really have to be judicious about who you share your time with and what you're doing with that time. So I decided I want to be able to look at my calendar and see the things that matter most to me, the things that drive revenue and the things that enrich my life and showcase my values.

Personal

What advice would you give your younger self? Oh, Katie, take care of your skin. Slap on some sunscreen. Do not go fake and bake. I wish I could undo that.

And then the most important nugget I've gotten from therapy that applies to every area—parenting, talking to lawyers, working my job, whatever—is it’s okay for people to be upset. It is okay. It is important. It's not yours to absorb. It is theirs.

I often want to fix things. I thought for a long time, as a people-pleaser, I was doing right by employees. But it really screws up expectations and dynamics. I think if I was more comfortable allowing people to be upset, I'd be better off all around. I wish I could have learned that earlier.

What is something that a mentor gave or taught you, without which you might not be here now? I’ll share two practical bits of advice that have been little game changers in the day-to-day. My husband said, very kindly, “Button up your stories.” Whether it's a dinner party or a business happy hour, get to the point, keep people interested, and then move out. Get in and get out.

That's so important for interviews. It's so important for credibility. So that is something I work on every single day.

You can't tell a horse that you're not scared.

The other is, I once worked for a construction consultant who was an expert witness. I was writing website copy for him, and he said, “This is trite, it's awful!” That’s when I realized that filler words not only goof up your writing, but that you lose credibility.

I've also realized that trite writing represents something going on internally. Do you not know what you're talking about? Do you not believe in what you're talking about? It reminds me of when a resume says, “I'm deep. I'm very detail oriented.” It's like, if you have to say it . . . . Don’t embellish when you don't need to.

Where is your happy place, and why? My barn. I'm probably supposed to say, like, time with my daughter and my husband. But truly, my Zen, my church, my happy place is my barn, with my donkeys and horses, and 140-pound livestock guardian dog, who's just a big marshmallow. You can't lie to them. You can't tell a horse that you're not scared, and you can't tell donkeys who are very suspicious of everything that you are confident, if you are not.

There's no manipulation. You have to come as you are. They teach you so much about energy and—this sounds so cliché—but how to be a leader. You don't have to say much. Good leaders don't talk a lot. You know they're confident, and they have good energy, and people trust them. So it's therapy, and it's good for me. It's like a mirror as well.

What do you mean, “it's like a mirror?” I'll give you an example. One day I decided to let the mini-donkeys and the horse hang out. They've never done that, and that's scary, because a horse is 1,200 pounds and the mini-donkeys are quite smaller. And I was panicked about it. I let them out, and it was chaos. They were mirroring my energy. It was like I manifested it.

The next day I tried it again, and I was in a completely different place. I visualized how it was going to go again. I hate how I sound. It's very cliché.  But I'm telling you, it's true with animals, and it went very well. They mirror my energy.

Bonus Question

LMAF invites every guest to answer one question they weren’t asked but wish they had been.

I love your bonus question. I wouldn't have seen that coming in a hundred years. I can't wait to hear what you say. Why is this Q&A important? I have fought marketing for so long because I mistook it for phony representation. I have separated it from who we are and what we do. Unfortunately, it's taken me 15 years to set aside ego, to set aside what I think it means to do business with people, and just realize it's doing life with people.

These conversations are just that. It’s people sharing what they've learned, being who they are. “Legal Marketing AF.” It doesn't get more real than that. It makes my point that what I was afraid of, which was being phony, and being a corporate version of myself, is really not what it is at all to be in marketing. It's doing this and learning from each other, and then sharing that value. As you said, a lawyer who's good at marketing is just thinking of their audience. We're very like-minded in that. We want to offer people value. So Legal Marketing AF. That's why it's important. It's real.