Transcript:
So, I think the strengths of Burch & Cracchiolo number one are the people, no question about it. We treat everybody who walks in our door, employee or client, almost as family. And we have all sorts of internal discussions where we listen to everybody who's got an idea about what might make the firm a better place. So, whether it's a brand new employee who's been there a day or whether it's somebody who's been there 40 plus years, and there are lots of us who've been there our entire careers – lawyers, staff, administrative – we try to keep everybody under the family umbrella and listen to them. I think we are great listeners, and we implement creative ideas, and we're always looking for more.
My personal leadership style, I'm lucky because I follow in the footsteps of Dan Cracchiolo who ran the firm for years and years and years, my partner Ed Bull who ran the firm for 15 years, and now I've had the opportunity the last four or five years. I think all of us have the common thread of just being good listeners. Somebody's got to make a decision, and we make decisions and have for essentially the last 20 years in a group fashion. You know we have a 100 plus or minus employees. It's not 100 people making a decision, but 100 people invited to give their input, and then a smaller group makes a decision. But I think management, not just myself, but all senior management are great listeners. And I think listening is probably the hardest skill to adapt when managing.
I think the source of our firm's impact on the community is the individuals. Again, our staff have lots of passions outside of the firm – volunteer activities – and nobody's shy about sharing them. And we are not shy about inviting people to share with us what their passions are in a volunteer role throughout the community. So, if we have a legal assistant who's been involved in a, I don't know, a volunteer softball league of some type that supports kids whose parents or whose families can't financially support them and they come to us with an idea, we try to be there for it. And so, whether it's an idea of mine or a social responsibility of mine or a social focus of myself or whether it's somebody else in the office, we listen to all of them. And we try to, you can't do everything, but we try to do as many as we can in some sort of supportive capacity, whether financial or even more important, giving of time.
I think that our people stay at the firm because of some of the things I was saying a few minutes ago. We integrate everybody into it. It is not a top-down mentality; it's a group think mentality we have. We have lots of staff meetings where we solicit input, we share information with young lawyers, including financial information about the firm, how the firm operates, we share that with young lawyers.
I don't think other firms necessarily do that. The point of that is, I think we try to let everybody take ownership so that it's not just, you know, you've got management and you've got the rest. Everybody has a piece of ownership in our firm and I think people also realize that longevity at a place is not always financially driven. I think we take great financial care of our people. I think we have wonderful benefit programs, but it's the intangibles that keep people there. It's that family atmosphere that I think makes a difference. People want to come to work. You know, COVID was rough on us because we couldn't be there collectively, and there's a lot of social day-to-day interaction at the firm. You know, people having lunch together, they've become friends, and I think that cohesion is about the personality of the firm that you can't just, it's hard to build it, but you know it when you see it.
The number one thing that we're most proud of is what we were just talking about, and that is when people come to us to work at our firm, they don't leave. That sends the loudest possible message, and that's not something in the last two or three or four years. That goes back 30-40 years. We have a whole bunch of lawyers who spent their entire career there. We have a whole bunch of staff, to me, which is even more important, a whole bunch of staff who spent their entire career there. And I think seeing these same people, even though we're all graying together, seeing these same people every day, that's what I'm most proud of. And I think the reason that is the case are the things we've been talking about, including what we do in the community. And our clients are the same way. Our clients come and they don't leave because they become part of this family environment. They feel it. They can see it when we interact with one another professionally, and the client watches how we treat the person at the front desk. The client appreciates that.