The 2024 Game Changers Summit has become known as a large-scale celebration of the accomplishments of the nation’s top law firm owners.

For the second consecutive year, Michael and Jessica Mogill took the stage throughout the two-day Summit to recognize the most committed Crisp Coach members for their incredible transformations and contributions this year.

Winners of these carefully vetted, highly prestigious Crisp Game Changer Awards at each level (ELITE, PREMIER, SELECT, and CrispX) were determined based on the factors that impact a successful business, an influential leader, and a true Firm of the Year: Visionary Leadership, Client Experience, Community Impact, and Firm Culture.

Congratulations to Charles Buist and Nicholas Spetsas of Spetsas Buist for winning the prestigious PREMIER Firm of the Year Award!

Meet the Leaders of Spetsas Buist

For Charles Buist, the desire to become a lawyer was sparked at a young age, when a truly remarkable attorney changed his life during a harrowing family legal battle.

“Whenever I would feel anxiety or stress… I always thought of Jim,” Charles remembers. “He was my hero, and I knew that if we had any chance at all, it was because Jim was fighting for us. He was always there for us… He made me feel like everything was going to be okay, even when the odds were stacked against a good outcome. Ultimately, Jim got the job done.”

When it came time to choose a life path in college, Charles again remembered Jim and the impact that committed lawyer had made on his life.

“I knew I wanted to help people get through hard times, and I remembered what Jim meant to my dad and I,” he says. “Ultimately, I decided that doing what Jim did for my dad and me — fighting against the odds, being there for us, and putting it all on the line — was what I wanted to do for others, so I decided to pursue the law.”

Personal injury law specifically is also personal to Charles. In an earlier childhood experience, a serious car crash caused by their defective vehicle started a chain reaction that ultimately destroyed his family. “My childhood ended before it began, all because a vehicle manufacturer didn’t take proper steps to warn people about an issue,” he recalls. “It was horrible, and none of it would have happened if the vehicle had been safe… These companies value money more than people.”

Nicholas Spetsas, his partner at Spetsas Buist, shares a similar commitment to justice and client advocacy. Nicholas’s expertise and strategic insight have been instrumental in shaping the firm’s direction and success. Together, Charles and Nicholas form a dynamic leadership duo, driven by a shared mission to provide exceptional legal representation and to challenge the inequities of the system.

Spetsas Buist: A Year in Review

Charles and his partner Nicholas Spetsas leveraged their Crisp Coach membership in every area of their firm in 2024, generating massive results along the way. Let’s look at the highlights that earned them PREMIER Firm of the Year.

Visionary Leadership at Spetsas Buist

For Charles and Nick, the shift to understanding the CEO role has made all the difference for leadership at Spetsas Buist.

“Michael helped us to understand that a CEO is really the visionary and that we should make it our goal to hire the right people until our job consists of mainly clarifying our vision and moving our team in that direction,” explains Charles. “This goal is now a part of every decision we make in the business until we get to the point where Nick and I are true CEOs, and the business can survive on its own (day-to-day) without our presence.”

The duo found themselves juggling too much and struggling with time management, so this realization has been powerful to put into action.

“Crisp helped us to identify the areas that we should be focused on. Then, Crisp helped us to figure out what we should not be doing with our time,” Charles continues. “This gave us a clear vision of areas we needed to work on, either by implementing technology to help us become more efficient or by hiring someone to handle the work we should not be spending our time on.”

By putting these concepts into action, Charles and Nick are operating more fully as CEOs focused on their business rather than stuck in the day-to-day operations.

“To date, Nick and I are much more focused and effective. Nick is able to focus on the work he needs to do, and I’m able to focus on the work I need to do,” says Charles. “We’ve done what Crisp has told us to do, and we are becoming more efficient every day.”

Additionally, the pair has honed in on KPIs and developed a set of tasks for every team member so that they have that same clarity in their roles.

“By providing our team with a clear vision, we can be better leaders, and the response has been great,” Charles shares. “Right now, everyone knows exactly what they need to do, and they know where we’re going as a business. We have Crisp to thank for that.”

Client Experience at Spetsas Buist

From the leadership level to the client-facing level, the firm’s involvement with Crisp has continued to trickle down in powerful ways.

“Crisp has helped us to identify areas of improvement, which has allowed us to improve our processes and provide better customer service and get our clients better results,” says Charles.

As part of their Crisp Coach membership, Spetsas Buist was able to bring an expert Crisp Trainer right to their office to facilitate a Client Experience Optimization Onsite Training that made a huge impact.

“During that training, we honed in on our goal to provide exceptional service and the pain points associated with providing this level of service to our clients,” reflects Charles. “We identified issues that are common to most, if not all, of our cases, and we came up with a plan to address these issues. Namely, we determined that we need automatic updates to go out to our clients every time a client is moved into the next stage in their case.”

Within a few weeks, the Spetsas Buist team implemented a software program that automatically updates their clients with detailed descriptions of their case status, streamlining a previous operational inefficiency with call volume while leveling up the personalized service clients receive from the firm.

This is just one example of the many ways Charles and Nicholas are transforming their client experience with Crisp’s guidance!

Community Impact at Spetsas Buist

Charles and Nicholas credit the information, resources, and connections they’ve gained through their Crisp Coach membership with their bottom-line business growth.

They then credit that growth with the ability to serve their community (and the legal industry) at a higher level.

“Since starting our business, we’ve been dedicated to changing the way people look at personal injury lawyers,” explains Charles. “They think of PI attorneys as frauds that are only out for money. By helping people and going the extra mile, we have literally had clients tell us that we’re different (in a good way).”

Firm Culture at Spetsas Buist

Charles and Nick believe that if their people are happy to be at work, that positive energy will be reflected in the work they do, effectively converting more leads to clients and fostering stronger relationships with the clients they serve.

“Crisp helped us to focus on our culture and get a clear goal for what we were trying to achieve. Crisp also helped us build a path to this goal by getting us to look at where we are and where we want to be and coming up with an approach that will get us there,” Charles elaborates.

This path has involved a unique strategy: developing key performance indicators (KPIs) that truly motivate and reward each team member in a meaningful way.

“Although many KPIs will be standard across a given position at the firm, we’ve worked to develop a more customized approach so that our staff and attorneys can focus on the work they enjoy doing,” explains Charles. “We don’t want to force our employees into a box because that will inevitably lead to dissatisfaction… We want to take the time to understand our employees so that we can help them to feel valued. In turn, our goal is that our employees will make our clients feel valued.”

Final Thoughts

The value of Spetsas Buist’s PREMIER membership goes well beyond business growth.

“You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Crisp has provided us access to a group of people that we value and care about,” reflects Charles. “We care about our coaches. We care about the Crisp team, and we care about the friends we’ve made.”

This game changer emphasizes that he and his partner have made several close, fantastic friends through Crisp because of the shared ethos in the carefully-vetted program.

“Crisp puts us in a room with a bunch of people that are obsessed with improving themselves. We all have at least one major thing in common. As a result, we’ve made close friends and great business contacts,” he continues.

Spetsas Buist has reaped the rewards of these contacts in numerous ways, referring cases to fellow members, receiving referrals from fellow members, and collaborating with fellow members. Notably, one relationship Charles and Nicholas have forged with a fellow Crisp Coach member has resulted in a $1.3 million verdict on a case they tried together and a $1 million settlement on another.

Professionally and (perhaps more importantly) personally, the impact has been immense.

“I’ve been less stressed out. I’ve been a better father. I’ve been able to sleep better. All these things impact me on a deep personal level,” Charles concludes. “Knowing that you have coaches on your side and people there to support you gives you security. When you’re not alone in a journey, the bad times are not that bad.”