Unlocking the Secrets to Fast-Tracking Your Law Firm's Success Through Smart Staffing

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Do you need some help in hiring for your law firm? Are you unsure what roles you need filled? In this podcast episode, Jim and Tyson welcome Brett Trembly, CEO and co-founder of Get Staffed Up. He discusses his new book "24 Months to Freedom: How Modern Law Firms Use Smarter Staffing Solutions to Fast Track Their Way to Success." The book lists seven crucial positions to hire that every law firm needs.

In order to have a successful law firm, you need the right people. You need to have an adequate amount of staff who are skilled in what they do. One of the most important roles to fill is that of an executive assistant. Without an executive assistant, many attorneys take on much more tasks in their day to day schedule. This ultimately takes away from what they need to do. An executive assistant wears many hats in a law firm. The role includes answering phones, preparing documents and bookkeeping. It is a multi-dimensional role that helps keep law firms running.

Many attorneys have a fear of hiring and will stall in getting it done. Sometimes this comes down to money. Brett speaks to not needing tens of thousands of dollars in the bank to hire. As long as there is enough to pay someone for the first 2 weeks, that is when it is time to hire. Hiring someone is not going to cost you money, but it will make you money. It will allow an attorney to focus on the important work, bring in more clients and therefore bring in more money.

Every successful law firm needs to have a full proof intake system, which includes a few different positions. 

➡️ One is a receptionist, who will answer phones and take messages. A receptionist is usually the first person a potential client will interact with, so this individual needs to be very well rounded. Answering the phones in a swift and quick manner is crucial to ensuring that potential clients are provided with what they need. If a firm does not have a receptionist, there is much opportunity to lose out on new clients. 

➡️Hiring an intake specialist is another position that is included in the intake process. This individual will know the process of the law firm in and out and will have some legal knowledge as well. They screen clients to ensure they are the right fit, refer clients to other firms when they are not and will set up  consultations for attorneys. These two positions not only add value to a firm but allow attorneys to focus on the core work.

Brett provides a few tips to help firms hire the right people. One great tip is to give potential candidates practical tests to see if they can not only handle the job but show off their skills and experience. For example, if you are hiring for an intake specialist role, do a quick role play scenario of a client screening call. This way, the candidate can show you in real time how they would handle that situation and what skills they would use to complete a successful call. 

Take a listen to learn more about who to hire and how to hire for a law firm!

Jim's Hack: Have quarterly meetings with each team member to have conversations on a variety of things. This really shows the effort made to keep tabs on employees and discuss important aspects of one’s career, whether it be goals or growth. These conversations also help with understanding what is and isn't working for a firm from the eyes of an employee.

Brett’s Tip: Force yourself to take time off with your family. If you find you are more stressed when you return to work, that means you have more things to work on to address either your stress or your ways of working.

Tyson’s Tip: Have reference checks for hiring new people. They provide additional information that help get the right people in the right roles. It does add a little more time to the hiring process, but it is really worth it in the end.

Episode Highlights:

• 6:30 Hiring an executive assistant
• 10:14 The fear that law firms have when hiring
• 11:27 The misconception of waiting to hire
• 13:23 The importance of hiring a full-time dedicated receptionist
• 20:23 Giving candidates a test

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcripts: Unlocking the Secrets to Fast-Tracking Your Law Firm's Success Through Smart Staffing

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:00:24) - Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Speaker 3 (00:00:27) - And I'm Tyson Metrics. Jimmy you you went deep on that one. It's like you were like doing like your radio.

Speaker 2 (00:00:33) - Announcer voice Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may have heard me in such films as Today We Fight or Tomorrow We Die. It's actually.

Speaker 3 (00:00:40) - You know what? That's actually pretty good for. Pretty darn good. I was. I was thrown off a little bit, so that's pretty good. You should. We should do one episode where you. You were that character and I'll just interview you the entire time. Let's get to our guest. This is a guest we've had on before. It's Brett Trembley. He is the CEO and co-founder of Get Stepped Up. I'm not going to go into the full bio.

Speaker 3 (00:01:05) - Brett, what's going on, buddy? Oh, man, a lot.

Speaker 4 (00:01:07) - What isn't going on? How are you guys this morning?

Speaker 2 (00:01:09) - We're great. We're great and we wanted to have you on because we wanted to talk about your new book, which I just downloaded on my Kindle. 24 Months to Freedom How Modern Law Firms Use Smarter Staffing Solutions to Fast Track Their Way to Success. So yeah, Brett's one of the first people to be on the show three times. I don't know that we've had many, three time people. I think the only other one might be John Fisher. But Brett, welcome. And we're excited to talk about Get Staffed Up and your new book.

Speaker 4 (00:01:38) - Awesome. Thanks for having me guys. What an honor to be one of the few three time guests, so let's do it. Happy to chat about whatever we want to do this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:01:46) - So let's talk let's jump right into the book. Okay. So if people want to learn more about you and get staffed up, there's other episodes.

Speaker 3 (00:01:52) - We've talked about that stuff. So I want to jump right into the book. Why the book? Why you write the book?

Speaker 4 (00:01:57) - Yeah, good question. Right. I think you talk so much about your company that you or at least I make this mistake. Like I assume that everybody knows what we do, what we preach. And it's kind of like you get communication fatigue because you guys probably know this. You're out there spreading your message, but your message gets to a few people at a time and new people come along. And I felt like the book was going to be a good way to really solidify what I and we sort of preach in terms of getting out of your own way and not being afraid to hire. As you guys know, you can't do everything yourself. Yes, there's technology in there and there's good systems. You don't need a thousand people to have, you know, a decent business, but you got to delegate and you have to trust people and you have to bring on bandwidth.

Speaker 4 (00:02:49) - It's like, you know, a bus with with one horsepower, it's not going to go very far and you're going to be the one just trying to drive that thing nice and slow. And every time you add a person into your team, you're adding horsepower and you can go faster and faster. And so, yeah, I mean, it was I started the project September of 2022, and if you've written a book, it's just it just takes longer than you want and more effort than you want. And you know, the first draft I wasn't happy with and I went back to, to the drawing board, but I did it myself. You know, this was not a ghostwriter situation. I'm proud of this one. I put in a lot of a lot of effort. And, you know, some people tell you what you want to hear, but I've gotten really good feedback from people that I trust. So I think it's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (00:03:34) - One of the guests we had on early on this show was a guy named Allie Bilson from England, and he said that most entrepreneurs, most businesses or most law firms do not have the capacity to reach the opportunity that's in front of them.

Speaker 2 (00:03:48) - And I think that's that's really true. So Brett, how did you rely on your experience as a person who grew a law firm and then obviously grew get staffed up to be really, really big? How did you draw on that when beginning the process of the book?

Speaker 4 (00:04:02) - Yeah. So I've you know, I didn't put this in the book, right? But I've grown my law firm. We've got anywhere from 10 to 12 attorneys, sometimes based on the week with this attorney market lately and 40 overall staff people you know get staffed up like like you said, is we have almost 200 of our own internal employees now. So it was my my growth journey with a lot of other law firms and how they did it and then working with as get staffed up and helping other people grow their firms. I really started trying to connect dots and, you know, put together, you know, what what is the process that helps make firms grow, you know, logically what what is the best order? So so the book itself goes through seven main positions that a firm needs to hire and in a specific timeline with outcomes.

Speaker 4 (00:04:53) - The caveat is that it's based on, you know, hourly and there's a lot of inserts for like a personal injury firm because there are, of course, parallel. But the idea is that, you know, again, in in order and we talk about, you know, like the type of money you're going to spend and hopefully the type of money that you should make and how much cheaper it is when you do it offshore. And one of the big hangups that most people have is when you go to hire it, it's hard and it takes a lot of training and you're scared to get bad people and they're going to lose those people. And it's really like, where am I going to find the time to train someone the right way to do what I need them to do? And so when you when you do that offshore, it takes so much of the like. When you work with a company like ours, it takes the time and the exhaustion out of the hiring process, and then it takes away the, you know, the expense.

Speaker 4 (00:05:44) - And I've talked about a lot when your revenue goes up, but so does your overhead. It's kind of like, what's the point? So, you know, just when I put the game plan together and the roadmap and we went back and sort of vetted it, it really makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 (00:05:58) - So I'm glad you did not not go through those positions yet because I wanted to ask you about this, because Jim and I, we have these hot seats in the guild. And one of the number one questions that we get is, okay, where do I start? Like, what's the first position? And I will say, sometimes it's not super easy. It's usually it's easy, but it's not super easy. But I'm really curious, what would you say is that that first hire like where's the where's that number one that you typically see most often?

Speaker 4 (00:06:30) - Okay, So number one, I will die in this hill. The others I've heard very cogent arguments for while, but this should come first.

Speaker 4 (00:06:38) - And you know, with the rest, that depends on what that person wants as a firm owner. And I can explain some of those nuances. But the very, very first one is an executive assistant. Like if you don't have an assistant and you are the assistant and you will have so many things get in the way of doing the actual work of a law firm. These statistics are there and you can check the Clio Reports For years and years back, it's like 1.2 to sometimes 1.5 hours per day that an attorney bills, but they only collect a solo attorney, but they only collect one hour per day. And without you know, it makes so much sense if people would actually track their time, not just their legal time, but their time and what they're doing every day, you'll start to see all the little things that seep in. So this happened with me. It happened with tons of our clients. Somebody the other day said, you know, when I when I hired you guys, that's when I can track the financial success of my law firm.

Speaker 4 (00:07:35) - That's that's the beginning. I shouldn't say hired you guys, but starting to work with us. You cannot get out of your own way because your business needs to survive, right? It needs the phones answered. It needs emails responded to. You're just never going to have time to do all the things yourself. And you know that executive assistant, by the way, can answer your phones. They can they can do some light lifting in other areas. So it's just a really, really great assistant that you must have first.

Speaker 3 (00:08:03) - So it's funny you say that because just the other day Jim and I did a presentation to the big group and the Guild about executive assistants, and Jim made the comment. He said that he could see how the first hire, he could see the executive assistant being the first hire. I wonder why that like, why not just a legal assistant like an executive assistant is more elevated, right? It's a it's a it's a you're looking for a very specific type person. So why why an executive assistant and not some other type of assistant?

Speaker 4 (00:08:36) - Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:08:37) - So if I think we all know plenty of of probably at this point, like 50, 65 year old you know, guy with the one paralegal, he calls him a paralegal. Right. And he's been that way for years, like 20 years. That one person wears so many hats. So you call him whatever you want, Tyson. You can call him a paralegal just to make him feel better. You can call him a legal assistant. You call him a person. But they're doing again, like I said, they're answering the phone. They're preparing some documents to be filed. For example, they're doing the books, They're doing everything. And that essentially is my point. Like, you at least need that one person. Like even if that's all you ever hire. And I don't want to make fun of those people by any means. But you can't do it yourself. Like you've got to get that one other person to take all those things off your plate. So.

Speaker 3 (00:09:27) - So they're not one dimensional.

Speaker 3 (00:09:28) - In other words, then they've got to be, Yeah, they can't be.

Speaker 4 (00:09:31) - Your business has too many needs to have a one dimensional like this person only does this one thing and you're still going to do everything else. You need to get. You need to fill that person's plate with as much as possible just to get out from underneath all those little tasks that are that are getting in your way. And the magical thing that happens is you go from one hour per day to two, right? Simple math 1 to 2 is actually doubling. It's going to double the revenue of your firm. And it sounds like, well, I'll just work hard and let me just do an extra hour per day. Right. But really, that's probably like six, seven, eight productive hours. So where do you find that time You're going to do it in the weekends, In the evenings, like it never appears for you. If you just keep thinking, I'll just work harder. I don't need to hire somebody.

Speaker 2 (00:10:14) - One of the great things about having a podcast is you get to bring people on who repeat and amplify the kinds of themes that you want to be amplified and. You know, I want to stick with this issue of sort of law firm owners and their obstinance and their stubbornness in making that first hire or second hire. And there are some people who are like, well, when the stars align, when when I have enough cases coming in, when there's enough money, when when I feel like the firm's on solid enough ground and they do all these mental gyrations to keep from actually trying. And I think a lot of the time it does come down to a fear of not having enough money. So could we talk about how I mean, to your point of the guy going from one hour to two, can we talk about where on the spectrum you fall and you recommend because I've always hired with the idea that I'm going to go out and get some more cases and pay for this. This person will pay for themselves.

Speaker 2 (00:11:11) - Like I've been way out on one end of the spectrum, which is higher and then go get the extra business. But other people want to like carry a lot of this work on their shoulders. And then when they feel like I said they have enough, then they'll then they'll offload it.

Speaker 4 (00:11:27) - Yeah. And I mean this with complete respect because I didn't hire for two and a half years because I kept waiting for that magical moment. And that magical moment doesn't just appear on on your lap. You don't just wake up one day and you're checking your operating account, and instead of $8,000, you've got 30. You you will spend ten years trying to build up an amount with which you're comfortable because you don't need 30 to 40 to 50 grand in your operating account to say, well, now I can hire someone because I can pay them for a full year. You just need to figure out how to pay them for the first two weeks. And I saw in fact, last night, Jim, there was a Twitter thread I was reading about, you know, mistakes that people made.

Speaker 4 (00:12:11) - And it was like waiting for that perfect moment. It's and again, when I say I mean this with all due respect, because I was there, I lived it. It's a lack of emotional maturity. And people don't want to hear that. Oh, you know, and people get upset. But you got to I can project on myself when I was doing it. That's okay. Like I'm talking to myself from ten years ago, like grow up, be mature. You only need to pay somebody for the first week and you have that money. 99% of law firms and lawyers have enough business sitting there. It's just inertia. It's waiting, waiting to be kicked into gear unless you've got one case, maybe two, Right? But most of us, there's so much work we're not getting to. The money will be there. That person's not going to cost you money. They're going to make you money because they're going to free up your time and your time and how you spend it is what's preventing you from having more revenue for your firm.

Speaker 3 (00:13:04) - All right. So you talk about these these seven positions that you can fill and you can do it in the next 24 months. I wonder, like after that first hire, right? What's that hire that you think really accelerates things that throws gas on the fire to accelerate the firm? What do you think that position might be? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:13:23) - So the in the book number two position is a full time dedicated receptionist. Now people have we've gone through this a bunch. The caveat here is if somebody truly is like, I just want a really small law firm, I, you know, I have like money from somewhere else. And I it's hard to find those people who aren't lying to themselves like to find that that's real. But if I could only make two hires, I would hire an amazing executive assistant who could answer the phones, do my email and do some other things. And then I would hire a billing clerk or a billing specialist or billing assistant because that's where lawyers we just screw up so bad we don't get our bills out.

Speaker 4 (00:14:02) - We don't get our bills out, we don't track our time correctly. We feel bad because we didn't get our bills out. So then we discount the time. And then when they ask for another discount, we say yes. And then that makes us not want to send the bill again the next time. The average lawyer, maybe you guys have asked one of your guilds, like the average lawyer has over $100,000 in are just sitting there. So like, how do you not have the money? The money is actually sitting there in your. Ah, but we because again, I've been there, I lived it. And every single time that I asked this question in front of a group of five lawyers, somebody has close to 2 or $300,000 in ah, but yet they're thinking about how to get their next case. So for throwing gas on the fire, you can differentiate yourself from your competition. It's like, you know, growing by default because so many businesses and law firms do this a wrong way.

Speaker 4 (00:14:52) - But by having a professional intake process where your phone's not answer by reception company. And again, I've got friends in the business, you guys do too. I still use reception company for overflow and backup, but it's hard with those companies because they have so much turnover. To have somebody answer your phone that knows how to say your name, that knows where you are. People aren't dumb. They know when your phone is being answered by reception company and it creates an automatic impression of small firm, not a lot of business, you know, inexpensive. Not very good. That's just a fact. Think about calling a doctor and you know, their phone is not answered in a professional manner by somebody who knows what that's going on. You're not going to that doctor. Absolutely not. Number two in the book is the receptionist. That receptionist will free up a lot of time that you had sort of thrown onto your your executive assistant. And they will help you not flush money down the toilet when you're out there.

Speaker 4 (00:15:47) - Marketing, networking only to have it all go away because the reception company doesn't answer your phone the right way, doesn't take the message the right way, or, you know, another firm gets back to them within five minutes, which I think we all know The five minute rule. If you don't have some, it doesn't have to be you, but somebody from your office speak to a potential client within the first five minutes, your chances of landing that client go down by 90%.

Speaker 2 (00:16:10) - You're listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today, successful lawyer, staffing company guru and author of the new book, 24 Months of Freedom is Brett Trembly. And Brett, that lets us segue right into my favorite way of pouring gas on the fire, which is intake. And I love this line from your book. I just spun down the book and this is what came up to me. Your intake specialist is not your receptionist. Many attorneys don't understand this difference or why both are necessary. Please listen to me in bold.

Speaker 2 (00:16:42) - Both are necessary. Go for it.

Speaker 4 (00:16:46) - I've got a friend with a marketing company who calls it the golden toilet. Like you're going to go spend all this money on everybody wants. I need better SEO and I need better PPC. And. And then you're going to drive leads and your website looks like, you know, trying to think of a nice word for podcast. It doesn't look good. Your phone's not answering the right way or, you know, the receptionist is trying to like, Oh, let me get the attorney on the phone for you. You're just flushing money down the toilet because you don't have a proper intake system, a proper intake system. And I go through this in the book and I think it's a, you know, in some anecdotal fashion and pretty easy to read fashion. This is not like a textbook by any means, but people expect the phone to be answered by a receptionist and then patched over to someone else at the firm who knows what the heck they're talking about. Somebody with an elevated status.

Speaker 4 (00:17:34) - That person should not be the lawyer. If a consumer can get a lawyer on the phone. But just a quick phone call, that consumer thinks, again, not a lot of business. This person's cheap. It's the same exact thing as a doctor and you can't look at it from your point of view. Well, I'm a great lawyer. Everybody should know that when I'm on the phone with them. Absolutely not. Consumers just can't get that. You're no different than everybody else unless you have an intake system that's differentiates yourself. So the intake coordinator specialist, what are you going to call them? Their job is to screen out the wrong types of clients, to make referrals to your friends so that you're keeping your referral business without you having to get on the phone when it's the wrong type of client for you, like you do family law and you get someone who needs business, etcetera. And then for the people that the marketing has worked and the right people are coming in to set that consultation. So when the lawyer shows up that day for the consultation via zoom in person, doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (00:18:32) - They've been briefed, but they've spent about 15 minutes prior to the consultation instead of hours and hours on the phone trying to set their own consultations. When I Jim, when I had my first intake specialist and I showed up to my very first consultation that I hadn't been on the phone or done the confirmation emails or call to make sure that, you know, the day before that we were still on. It was night and day. It was a different firm at that point and I knew it. And it was one of the best feelings I've ever had. And that is the point. And I agree with you because I think this is what you said. That's the point where my firm really took off financially because I wasn't losing all these people whom I was getting through marketing and through referrals with a really poor intake system. It's amazing the amount of clients that firms are losing, not having a proper intake system. It's really mind blowing.

Speaker 3 (00:19:23) - All right. So we we've invested at our firm a lot of time and effort in our hiring process.

Speaker 3 (00:19:29) - And I will say I'll just say it. I think most lawyers suck at hiring people like that. They do a really bad job. They don't put a lot of time into it. And I know that this is something you all have thought about quite a bit and I know that get staffed up can help up with that quite a bit as well. But I was wondering if you have any tips or advice for people or tools that might help people when it comes to hiring?

Speaker 4 (00:19:52) - Yeah, I would love to hear some rapid fire stuff. Resumes are overrated. Smart people can fudge a resume and make them make them sound better and look better. I barely look at resumes, you know, get staffed up. Our hiring system is a lot more in depth now than the one at my law firm, but it's based off the system I set up at the law firm years ago because, like, I just poured myself into hiring systems and doing it the right way to build a really good team. There's a theory that if you're going to hire a lead guitarist for your band.

Speaker 4 (00:20:23) - What would you do? Would you? Would you ask them who their favorite guitarist is, like in an interview? Or would you hand them a guitar and let them play? And it's the same thing when you're hiring a paralegal and had three candidates. Two of them were being really recommended by a hiring company. And the third I found organically. So the last thing I did is I gave each one of them a test. I just turned the laptop around with a pleading that needed to be fixed and I really didn't know who to hire before then. They all sounded good and two of them stared at the computer. There were paralegal candidates with paralegal experience. They just stared at the computer like they had never they had no idea what they were doing. The third one, like before I could finish, just started attacking the keyboard and I was like, That was such a powerful moment. And she's still with us as our office manager. She was just a fantastic hire. It would have been it would have set me back 6 to 9 months if I had made the wrong hire.

Speaker 4 (00:21:17) - And that's what that's a bad hire is do right. Because then you got to start all over. You got to place the ads. You got to start everything over. So always be recruiting is, you know, have a page in your website which promotes your firm in your core values and the team and use that to to constantly reach out. Like if you don't think you're ready to hire, just keep feelers, keep keep irons in the fire so that you have built a pipeline of potential people that you're looking to work with. You know, even when we're not ready to hire a new attorney, we've got several that were talking to that have told us, hey, you know, I may be looking to make a move someday so so we can be ahead of the curve there. Those are you know, when I was hiring for a marketing position, one of the fun things we would do is we would put out the ad and then we would say, you know, send us an email with their name spelled backwards and why you want the job, but your name has to be spelled backwards in the subject line.

Speaker 4 (00:22:11) - So if we got 50 applications, only about four of them, five of them maybe would do it right. So we deleted all those 45 and we just saved ourselves all the time from somebody who couldn't follow directions. And then with the five that did it the right way, we sent back a quiz with nine questions, some of them written, and one of them said, Take a video of why you want this job and send it to us. So we got to see someone's energy. And if they were fun or if they were dynamic because this was again, for a marketing coordinator position before we wasted time on resumes and interviews, you know, we found a really good person that way. So this is a fun topic for me. I really care about this and I have lots of little tips and tricks on how to hire. So, you know, I hope those help they do.

Speaker 2 (00:22:54) - They're real helpful. And Bret, I wanted to just hit on the the last part of the book, which is sort of the lawyer lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (00:23:01) - Why why we're doing all these things, why we need these seven roles filled. What's the end game, What's what is it that you want for the people that read the book or listen to this podcast to to have as their goal?

Speaker 4 (00:23:13) - Interesting you put it, what do I want? I don't want anything that someone else doesn't want, right? I would like I would like some epiphanies. You know, I spent a lot of time in the first two chapters. Jim, really nailing home what we talked about a second ago, which is you don't need to wait to hire, you need to do it now. You're losing money every second of every day that you're not hiring. Getting people past those mental blocks is like just something I spent a lot of time on. But the liberated lawyer lifestyle, that just means that, like, what do you what do you want out of life? What do you want to do? And being honest with ourselves is really difficult because when we have a firm that's grossing $100,000, it's hard to say, I want a house in Maui and I want a house in Montana because that's so far from what we can possibly conceive that it seems really sort of pompous to to say those things.

Speaker 4 (00:24:06) - But admitting to yourself, you know, I want, you know, a big family with kids, vacations in the summers, that's important or not, like whatever you want because some people want to stay single and travel the world or not have kids and travel. But the liberated lawyer lifestyle, getting to that point and then you get to figure it out, you know, do you want to start hiring a ton of attorneys? Do you do you want to systematize and have a more volume, you know, virtual practice? Do you want to start, you know, joining up with other firms and trying to be a big firm, whatever, whatever it is people want to do, it's hard to make decisions and be honest with yourself when you're so stressed about money and you have no time. So getting these positions filled gives yourself enough horsepower to move the bus at a good pace, and then you get to decide, Is that bus going to Chicago? Is it going to LA? Is it going overseas? What's it going to be painting like? What kind of what kind of atmosphere is, you know, and the bus is the metaphor for the business.

Speaker 4 (00:25:05) - Like, what's our mission? Where are we going and what do I want to do with it? Am I done or do I want to keep growing it just nearly impossible to make those fair decisions to yourself and your family when you you can't even think about it because you've got 50 emails to get to and deadlines that are passing.

Speaker 3 (00:25:21) - I love it. I hate to. In this episode. But we are we are at time. There's just so much value in this episode. Brett I hope people go back and relisten to this because this is this is fantastic, but I'm going to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone, join us in the big Facebook group. I'm pretty sure Brett's in the big Facebook group. There's a lot of great information being shared on an hourly basis there. So join us there If you want a more high level conversation, join us in the Guild. Go to Max Law Guild. Com And will you please leave us a five star review. We we would love for you to leave us a five star review If you're getting anything out of this podcast or this episode, it helps spread the love to other law firm owners just like you.

Speaker 3 (00:26:02) - Jimmy, what is your tip or your hack of the week?

Speaker 2 (00:26:06) - For a variety of reasons. Our leadership team made the decision to meet quarterly with each team member, so the 60 people that we have on our team have been divided up among the five of us, and we are all starting those conversations. They are proving very beneficial for two main reasons. One is that you're building up that emotional bank account by meeting with your team member and just having that connection because, you know, we're 3 or 4 steps away from the front line people and them seeing that you're taking the time to even if it's just one hour a month or one hour a quarter to talk to them, it makes a big, big impression on them. And they've been so far very appreciative of that. The other thing is, when you're that far removed from the day to day, you're just not going to hear about the things that aren't working. And these could be small things or big things, and it just gives you sort of a fast track to hear what's going on, what life is like for them in their role, and what we can do, big or small, to make it better for them.

Speaker 3 (00:27:08) - Love it. Very good stuff, Jimbo. All right, Brett, you you. Now, since you're this is the third time you've been on here. You know, you guys give us a tip or your hack of the week. So what you got for us?

Speaker 4 (00:27:19) - Oh, man, I'm reticent to to say delegate your way to freedom. Let's go with this. You know, force yourself to take a week with your family and see what it does for your for your life, for your your well-being. If you're more stressed than than when you left, then, you know, you got things to work on.

Speaker 3 (00:27:38) - Oh, that's I think that's a good one. I think that's a different way to look at things. So that's pretty good. Mine. So I want to come up with one that was in line with what we were going to ask you about. So my tip is like in our hiring process and we got this from top grading is, is having reference calls. So reference checks for our for job candidates and we have them schedule them so they have the contact, the the the person, the reference and then they schedule it for us and then we call them during that time.

Speaker 3 (00:28:09) - And it is we get a lot of great information from from those reference calls. They're very, very effective. Is it more time consuming? Does it does it extend out the hiring process? Yes, but very much worth it on our part. So that is my tip of the week.

Speaker 4 (00:28:23) - I with you, Tyson, totally agree with you on the reference checks is it's a step not to be skipped.

Speaker 3 (00:28:29) - Perfect. I'm glad you agree with that. I was wondering what your thoughts were on that. So fantastic. But like I said, Bret, really valuable episode. I got a lot of a lot from it and hopefully other people did as well. But thank you so much for coming on for the trifecta.

Speaker 4 (00:28:42) - Appreciate it. Awesome guys. Have a good one. Thanks for having me, buddy.

Speaker 2 (00:28:45) - Bye, guys.

Speaker 3 (00:28:45) - Thank you. See you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:28:49) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.