We are honored and excited to announce that Stotler Hayes Group has been selected as a finalist for The Clio Riesman Awards Best Growth Story 2021! Winners will be announced at the Annual Clio Cloud Conference in October. In the meantime, we would like to share our story.
In 2012, former colleagues and close friends Elizabeth (Betsy) Stotler and Kelly Hayes founded Stotler Hayes because they were two lawyer-moms who wanted to work at an innovative distributed law firm that balanced, work, life, and clients. It did not yet exist… so they created it.
When Kelly and Betsy left their respective firms to start their own two-person practice, they had no formal business plan, no seeder loans, and only an idea of what they wanted to create. They did however, have a reputation for excellence, expertise and efficiency. It wasn’t long before their network of clients expanded beyond the capacity of any two-person team. Six months after founding Stotler Hayes, Kelly and Betsy hired their first associate. Since then, the firm has continued to grow and now includes over 45 full-time employees, including 28 attorneys practicing in over 40 states.
Stotler Hayes started, simply, as a concept: a law firm that recognizes its clients as individuals with unique challenges, goals and the potential for great growth. It’s what Kelly and Betsy wanted for themselves – to expand their work and their families, and to flourish, not just at work, but in life. It’s also what they wanted for their clients – health care providers – to grow their clients’ bottom lines and, in doing so, to help their clients’ business’ flourish.
Stotler Hayes is about growth. Growth is not a strategy; it’s a result. It’s a result of all that we put into everything we do each day. It’s what we’re about: growth, change, and betterment.
The firm has reached several accomplishments over the last 8 years including winning an Innovation in Technology Advancement, Adaption or Services award from Grand Strand Technology Council, a podcast with Lawyerist, ranking #63 for the 2018 Law Firm 500 award, receiving the 2019 Diversity & Inclusion Award for NC Lawyers Weekly and most recently being awarded The Greatest Place to Work.
While these milestones have been rewarding, the firm has been faced with challenges especially over the last year and as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
Our clients have been especially impacted by Covid-19. In addition to seeing a reduction in the number of residents moving in and substantial revenue losses, clients’ issues have gotten more complicated due to court delays, Medicaid agency processing delays, problems with discharge, not being able to get in to see residents or have staff take them to bank to spenddown, etc.
Attorneys have had to adapt strategies to account for the delays and develop innovative ways to support clients in these unprecedented times. Our marketing team created a special covid education webinar series education, while the Client Development team began using Clio Grow in order to track prospective clients and create various touchpoints for new clients, creating a better onboarding process and client experience.
Due to the firm’s resilience, we saw an 18% increase in cases and 11% revenue growth compared to 2019. While other companies were seeing decreases, we increased our client base and expanded to cover 7 additional states!
