From a sole practitioner to a team of 19:
How Good Law QLD grew on LEAP

Sian McNamara started Good Law QLD on her own, working out of a spare bedroom at home. Less than two years later, she leads a team of 19 on the Sunshine Coast, and the firm has helped more than 3,000 people. Sian built Good Law so that clients would feel they were treated as human beings. But looking after 3,000 people that way is a lot to keep track of, and it can’t run on memory alone. LEAP has been there since the spare bedroom, and as the team has grown, it’s where Good Law has standardised the way it works.

Be extremely client-centric

Long before growth was part of the conversation, Sian knew how she wanted clients to feel.

“The way that I wanted Good Law to be was extremely client-centric, where our clients felt like we appreciated that they were human beings,” she says, “and that we were going to provide empathetic, compassionate support through any of the challenges that they had in life.”

“I really did not expect, not even two years in, to be in an actual office and not just a spare bedroom with a ginormous team of people,” Sian says. “It’s just been extraordinary.”

That growth has come through word of mouth. “We always pick up the phone,” Sian says, and the door is open for anyone in the community to drop in for a chat.

Standardise processes for consistency and quality control

“Now that we’ve reached a point where we’ve helped over 3,000 people, it’s pretty hard to keep track of everything just going on pure memory,” Sian says. “We realised that we needed to really standardise processes, so we had that consistency and that quality control.”

In LEAP, that standard lives in the file. Every document, email, file note, time entry and critical date is held against the matter it belongs to, and each practice area has its own matter types and precedents, kept current as legislation changes.

That’s also what helps a new starter pick things up quickly. “Because we’ve got all of that in a centralised location in LEAP, we have that ability to train staff very quickly,” Sian says. “It’s all readily available and accessible.”

“I love that it gives me a rundown of where a file’s up to,” says Maddison Smith, a lawyer at Good Law QLD. “We have a lot of files changing hands all the time, and what LEAP does is it allows us to see what’s been marked off in alignment with our calendars as well, so then we can keep up to date if someone’s away, if we’re needing to assist.”

That record stays with the matter, so picking up a colleague's file doesn’t start with a hunt. LEAP’s Matter Summary can pull together an up-to-date snapshot of any matter in seconds.

The sky’s the limit

Abel Ganesan has been Good Law QLD's Client Success Manager at LEAP from the very start. “What Sian and her team have achieved is incredible,” he says. “It is a testament to her leadership, and LEAP has provided the framework to manage that growth.”

Sian is still a little surprised by where it has landed. “I don’t want world domination,” she says. “I seriously thought it would be me and an admin assistant forever, but things happen differently. So who knows? The sky’s the limit.”

Keeping clients at the centre as the firm grows

With every matter recorded the same way in LEAP, new starters get up to speed quickly and files change hands without anyone chasing answers. That leaves more time for the clients Sian set the firm up to serve. When we filmed, Sian was already planning the next move, potentially expanding Good Law to the building next door.