Sterling Law Offices, S.C.

The Sterling Lawyers Story

Understanding our focus and mission may make more sense if you know how Sterling Lawyers, LLC started.

My name is Jeff Hughes. I started practicing at a small, community law firm in 1997 (McLario, Helm & Bertling, S.C. in Menomonee Falls, WI). I mainly practiced family law and with a little criminal/traffic. By the age of 30, I enjoyed a high level of success in the courtroom and with my practice. My compensation was excellent, and I very much enjoyed my work and my clients.

Despite my flourishing legal career, I always had a drive for entrepreneurship. The idea of building an enduring company/team captured my imagination much more than just building my own individual law practice.

I almost always had on-the-side business interests. When I was 25-26 and three years out of law school, I worked a good part of the year at night and weekends starting a dating website that focused on a large niche. That was the right idea and right time, but, in retrospect, I didn’t have the ability or maturity to get it done. That business never got going. (Later eHarmony.com did what I envisioned. They executed. I did not.)

I started another business with a partner when I was 28. That business reported on rapidly rising gas prices at individual stations. It failed.

On the day after my 30th birthday, I started another business. That one failed too.

At the age of 31 I had three failed business experiences. Ugh! (Oh yeah—that house painting business I had for three years in college and law school where I worked with my brother . . . that doesn’t count.)

So, at the age of 32, I did the natural thing for me . . . I started another business. This business was selling satellite TV service for Dish Network over the internet. It worked well—really well. Over the next eight years we grew that business to $23 million in revenue and over 200 employees.

Along the way we also started an online ad agency, RocketClicks.com. Today, that business helps Sterling Lawyers and another 50 clients or so. It is thriving and growing.

Meanwhile . . . back at the bat cave . . . , my little brain was churning and scheming. I always thought law firms were mostly poorly managed and generally did a crappy job serving clients. I felt I had better ideas for how a law firm should be built around clients’ wants and needs.

In late 2013, I had a gut check. It was a moment where I finally told myself to “shut up and quit whining about how things should be and do something.” So, along with my long-time colleague, Tony Karls, we decided to start Sterling Lawyers.

We officially opened Sterling Lawyers, LLC for new clients on June 22, 2014.

Where is Sterling Lawyers, LLC going?

So . . . “where is Sterling going?” you say. What is your vision?

Answer: We are building the most impactful family law firm on the planet. We strive to be “country mile” better than every other family firm that exists.

Yes. I am putting our goal on the “world wide web” for everyone to see. If we fail in our quest, all our detractors could justifiably laugh and sneer. We are obsessed with providing an amazing experience to clients and being far better than every family law firm. (That is a huge goal because there are some extraordinary family lawyers at other firms.)

We believe every family in America facing a legal crisis should have the opportunity to work with our firm.

I don’t mean to come across as arrogant. It’s just that it’s true. We are better than the other family law firms. The seed has been planted. We are just waiting for the tree to grow.

Our strategy starts with an obsessive focus on clients. Here are some examples of what I mean.

Clients who know the difference HATE hourly fees. Hourly fees totally suck because they put the lawyer and the client on opposite sides. So, we killed the hourly rate. If we can’t serve a client with cost certainty, we don’t do it.
The percentage of pro se family law litigants seems to increase each year. Therefore, we are pioneering concepts in mediation, limited scope coaching, and other virtual services. Most law firms have one or two old-school options for prospective clients. We have many with new ones on the drawing board. In essence, we are creating new services that most clients did not even know they wanted.
We constantly ask and survey our clients to see how we can do better. Almost no firms in family do this. It is time consuming to do, and most lawyers don’t want to know when they stink. Conversely, when you are consumed with serving clients and getting better, we want to know every little way we can improve.
There are a dozen other examples that happen every day internally because every system, every new hire, every new technology, every strategic decision is undertaken with the family law client in mind. We are not distracted with any other type of law.

In addition to our client focus, we are building new technologies that will serve clients in bigger and better ways. Our team is pushing into new media to offer clients more information in easier to consume formats. We are questioning every “that’s how family law is done” statement that we can find.

247legals.com is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy. We value your trust and want you to understand how we collect, use, protect, disclose and otherwise process information about you.

This privacy statement applies to personal information we collect about you, for example when you visit our websites or mobile applications or contact 247legals.com by phone, or when you or the party on the other side of a transaction complete transaction forms or otherwise provide personal information at agent locations or online. We want to ensure you are aware of our practices for collecting, using, protecting disclosing, and otherwise processing personal information, which is information about a person that can be used to identify that person.

What We Collect

The types of personal information we collect depends on the products or services you have requested from us. Personal information we collect can include (i) government identifiers (such as ID, passport number, or driver's license number); (ii) transaction information (such as name and other information about you and the party on the other side of your transaction, transaction number, amount, date sent, and receive data), purchase history, and 247legals.com account information (such as account number, user name, and password); (iii) financial information such as bank account or credit card account information; (iv) contact information such as name, address, telephone number, or email address; and (v) such other personal information as we may collect with your consent or as permitted or required by law.

We collect your personal information directly from you and/or from the party on the other side of your transaction, for example, when you tell us where to send money or who should receive the money; give us your contact information, or show your government-issued ID. Generally, personal information is collected from you on transaction forms, by telephone, or at our websites or mobile applications when you request our products or services, manage your online account(s), or manage your account(s) and preferences. We may also collect information about you from third-party reference sources, vendors, and clearinghouse services as part of our verification processes or otherwise in connection with your use of our products or services.

How We Use It

We use personal information in a number of ways, including (i) for our everyday business purposes such as to process your transactions, maintain your account(s), and manage and administer our business and records, to undertake market research, to prevent fraud, abuse, and other actual and potential prohibited or illegal activities, to meet legal, regulatory, insurance, security and processing requirements, and to respond to court orders and legal investigations, or report to credit bureaus; (ii) for our marketing purposes such as to offer our or our agents' products and services to you, and to tailor offers, coupons, and incentives we believe may be of interest to you; (iii) for joint marketing with other financial companies; (iv) for our affiliates' everyday business purposes; (v) for our affiliates to market to you; (vi) for non-affiliates such as our agents to market to you; and (vii) otherwise with consent or as permitted or required by applicable law.

247legals.com may store personal information on databases in the United Kingdom or other countries for these purposes. As permitted by applicable law, we may merge personal information with public information or other information received from third-party sources to update contact information or to enhance demographic profiles. Personal information will be subject to the laws of the country in which it is located including lawful access requests by government authorities. The laws of these countries (which may include countries outside the European Economic Area) may not have similar data protection laws to the European Economic Area.

How We Disclose It

We may disclose personal information, as described above, to our affiliates and/or our agents to assist us in our business activities for the uses described in "How We Use It", and for other purposes as permitted or required by applicable law and international conventions and treaties. Disclosures permitted or required by law and international conventions and treaties may include cooperation with criminal or government investigations, fraud prevention and detection, and responses to a court order or subpoena. 247legals.com may be required to disclose your personal information to relevant national, state and local law enforcement authorities in the United Kingdom and other countries, which law enforcement authorities may further, disclose the information. If you are a receiver of a transaction, 247legals.com may also disclose your personal information to the sender.

247legals.com may disclose some or all of the personal information to service providers for the purposes of processing requested transactions or to perform business support functions on our behalf, including marketing and similar services. Our agreements with these service providers, who may be located across the globe, contain confidentiality provisions and restrictions on using this information for any other purposes.

If 247legals.com becomes involved in a proposed or actual merger, acquisition or any form of sale of some or all its assets, we may disclose personal information to third parties in connection with the evaluation of the transaction. The surviving company, or the acquiring company in the case of a sale of assets, would have access to personal information that would continue to be subject to this privacy statement.

Choice and Consent

247legals.com will not use, disclose or otherwise process personal information about you in ways incompatible with the ones described above without informing you and offering you a choice as provided for by applicable law. You may choose whether to receive direct marketing offers from 247legals.com. To the extent that applicable law requires express consent or "opt-in" for the collection and use of certain types of personal information, 247legals.com will maintain processes and procedures to ensure such information is collected with express consent. In any event, each promotional email message we send you will also contain instructions on how to unsubscribe.

When you provide us with personal information about a third party, you warrant that you have the consent of that individual to provide us that personal information.

You may withdraw your consent to our use and disclosure of personal information at any time, subject to contractual and legal restrictions. You may send an e-mail to 247legals.com, or logon to our websites and update your account(s). Note that if you withdraw your consent to certain uses of your personal information, we may no longer be able to provide certain of our products or services. Note also that where we have provided or are providing services to you, your consent will be valid for so long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this privacy statement or otherwise at the time of collection, and you may not be permitted to withdraw consent to certain necessary uses and disclosures (for example, maintaining reasonable business and transaction records).

Accuracy and Access

247legals.com wants to ensure that the information we collect and use about you is accurate for its intended purpose and therefore we have processes to help maintain the accuracy of the personal information we collect. You can request access to your personal information or help us maintain accurate records by informing us of changes or modifications to your personal information by email or logging on to our website to review and correct information about yourself.

We will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access or enabling you to make corrections. 247legals.com will retain personal information only for the time period needed for business purposes or as required by law and will securely destroy such information thereafter.

Data Security

247legals.com uses physical, technical, and administrative security measures to protect against loss, misuse, and alteration of personal information under our control. 247legals.com uses industry-standard practices and security measures to safeguard such personal information we collect.

Access to personal information is restricted to employees and service providers who need to have access to that information as described in this privacy statement, in accordance with applicable laws. Our service providers are required to observe standards for the security; collection; use and sharing of personal information, and to comply with applicable law.

Preventing Identity Theft

Please do not send confidential personal information such as passport numbers, government identification numbers, or account numbers to 247legals.com via an unsecured email message. You may send personal confidential information to 247legals.com via posted mail, phone, or using the "Contact Us" link available on our website. Do not be misled by emails that appear to be from us and ask for personal information. If you receive a suspicious email requesting your personal information, please forward the email immediately to 247legals.com.

Browsing

When you use our websites, we automatically collect certain standard technical information. Examples of this standard type of information include the type of Internet browser you use, the files you requested, the domain name and country from which you request information. We use this type of technical information to improve our website, to make our website function correctly, and to better understand how visitors use our website. As part of our efforts to protect consumers from fraud, this information is also used to authenticate users to the website, if necessary.

Cookies

Please see 247legals.com 's Cookie Policy

External Websites

Our websites may be linked to or from third-party websites. 247legals.com is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of websites that are linked to or from our websites.

Use by Children

247legals.com websites are not intended for use by minors. 247legals.com will not knowingly collect personal information from or market to children without the consent of a parent or legal guardian.

Change in Privacy Statement

At 247legals.com your trust is one of our most important assets. To improve your overall 247legals.com experience, the services provided on our websites may change at any time without prior notice. We will continually work to protect the privacy of our consumers and regularly review our privacy policies. As a result, this Privacy Statement may change from time to time in the future. This website will always contain the most current privacy statement. You agree to revisit this page regularly and your continued use of the 247legals.com website and services indicate your acceptance of the changes.

Contacting 247legals.com

Should you have further questions regarding our privacy statement, about how your personal information is used, or about how to exercise your right of access, rectification, or objection as per applicable law, you can contact us directly at the address below, and we will handle your request:

International House
24 Holborn Viaduct,
City of London EC1A 2BN
Phone: +44 203 086 8000

Sterling Law Offices, S.C.

About Sterling Law Offices, S.C.

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The Sterling Lawyers Story

Where is Sterling Lawyers, LLC going?

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