“Allow yourself to think of your law firm as a business”
In this episode Jim and Tyson discuss about whether if it is good or not to run your law firm as a business.
Before introducing today’s topic, our hosts discuss a little about the advantages of making law videos. That will be a topic for upcoming episodes!
The old guard versus the new guard. Some young attorneys still work exclusively on building their skills. That’s great, if you are going to work for somebody. If you are going to build your own firm, you can be the best attorney in the world, but if you don’t have any clients you will not be able to be the best attorney in the world.
What’s the most important part of being an attorney? Get the clients to the door.
Develop business and bring business.
Quickbooks, payroll, hiring… Lots of skills you’ll need to learn if you are going to have staff. And if you won’t learn them, they should be taken care of by an assistant.
Hiring staff: are you good at it? A connected world has it’s advantages, you can outsource stuff virtually. Delegation: take the things that you shouldn’t be doing and give it to the people that should be doing them. Very key to run a successful law firm.
Allow yourself to think of your law firm as a business; develop clients and grow your client base.
Practical advice on bringing in business. Systems. Maximizing. Client retention and obtaining efforts. Go on and listen to it in your car!
Breaking your year into 12 weeks at a time and stop thinking annually. You get more done. Goal Setting.
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
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Transcript: View Your Law Firm as a Business
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Tyson Good to hear from you.
Tyson Mutrux
Good to hear from you. I’m excited.
Jim Hacking
You’ve had some busy weeks, you settled the big case, and you got some things moving. Don’t
Tyson Mutrux
you got a trial win got the mediation that gets settled the case? And well, yeah, it’s been a busy month. So luckily, things are gonna slow down a little bit, hopefully, but not not business wise, but just kind of slow down in general. So I can get some more stuff done. So you’ve been busy to even traveling.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, did some traveling and signed up some new cases. It’s been very interesting. The website has really taken off. I’ve gotten a lot more cases from YouTube, I got hired yesterday, for a couple from North Carolina there you had a decent needs to be appealed. So it’s been pretty exciting. Lots of interesting work around here. I want to
Tyson Mutrux
bring up something when they’ll let you introduce the topic, but something about the videos, you You and I both through them, we think that they’re very valuable. And the topic came up as to you know why Doom and I said part of its getting we had a bunch of leads both of us, I think would do from YouTube videos. But it weeds out clients or someone running partner it weeds out clients, and he’s like, wow. And I said, well, they watch the videos, I tell them what good cases are, what bad cases are. And something that’s also interesting is I get cases that other people turn down. Because for example, one of them is the pay to play statute in Missouri, where there’s certain exceptions, you know, if you don’t have insurance and your auto accident, your recovery can be limited. But there are certain exceptions to that. And I explained the exceptions in one of my videos, and I get so many calls and so many cases from that one video, I’ve got a few of them, those few videos, it’s really incredible how you’re able, it gives you that advantage over other people, but it also weeds out bad cases. So you don’t have to take those phone calls on a regular basis.
Jim Hacking
And sort of piggybacking on that, because this isn’t even our topic for today. But the value I think in the videos too, comes from not having to explain the same things over and over that. If people have watched your videos, they have a good sense of sort of the issues related to their type of case. And, and you’ve already educated them, especially if you put it into an email sequence where once they sort of raise their hand and you start teaching them about their issue, it really helps magnify or multiply yourself so that you don’t have to do it all every single time you meet with somebody
Tyson Mutrux
and I want to make you tell the story about the guy that you met. And he met you for the first time he thought he knew Yeah, I make you tell a story and then introduce the topic.
Jim Hacking
So I really don’t know how you do this. But I really like to go into a console completely cold. I don’t like to have any preconceived notions, I might have a general idea of what the topic is. But like I don’t prepare for it much other than
Tyson Mutrux
we are so opposite on this really are so opposite. Yes. Yeah. So opposite. But anyways, good.
Jim Hacking
I think that’s it sort of tracks our approach to things too. I mean, you’re pretty, you know, type A and, you know, and, and I think I like to sort of just go with the flow and see what happens. But anyway, so I never know what to expect when I walk into an interview. And this particular time I walked in, and this guy jumped up, and he started shaking my hand and he leaned back, and he looked at me and he was like, it’s so interesting to see you live and in person. I said, What do you mean? He said, Oh, he said, Well, I’ve watched about 20 of your videos about asylum, and he had driven from Topeka to hire us. And he wrote us a check on the spot for $8,500 to handle his asylum and deportation case, that video was working for me at night, you know, or when I was working, that’s something that you know, can work 24/7 And, and I think it really helps build rapport with people. And it does that magical thing of getting them to know like, and trust you, they can tell your personality, they can tell your temperament. I’ve had people comment on YouTube, that my videos, some of my videos are a little boring. But you know, I’m about given the information and when the flare sort of go by the wayside.
Tyson Mutrux
I haven’t gotten any the boring comments yet, but I’m sure I will. At some point, I actually avoid the comments section. I don’t like to read the comment section.
Jim Hacking
That’s generally a good idea. But one thing I’ve been noticing with the YouTube videos is that people sort of surprisingly, like people say, and it’s you know, it’s tagged as their Google identifier. It says, like, I’m here out of status, or I’m getting divorced from my wife. I’m like, Dude, why are you putting that on? YouTube? I send them a message and I say you need to take it off there and then they then they text me back. Why do you take that off? And I said, Because you shouldn’t put that out in the public.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s good. That’s good advice. good legal advice. So
Jim Hacking
our topic for today is whether or not it is okay for a lawyer to view their law firm as a business. And I know that you and I both have pretty strong feelings on this topic. I think it’s something that is mildly addressed in law school, I think that when I was in law school, you know, back in the 90s, this was about 10 years after, or maybe 15 years after they started letting lawyers even advertise. And I think that for a long time, many lawyers sort of viewed the operation of a law practice as a nuisance. And that just something that had to be done so that they could get their clients legal work done. But I think that people have really started to view law firms as a business, I think, as someone who operates a company that employs other people, that we have lots to learn from other industries. And I think that you become a better lawyer, when you operate a business in a strong fashion.
Tyson Mutrux
And obviously, there’s, you and I are both going to agree on this, I think, almost 100% of everything that we say on this, but it is really interesting, it’s kind of the old guard versus the new guard. But it’s really still surprising to me, I know a lot of young attorneys that they still they put all of their their eggs in one basket, when I’m talking about, they work exclusively on building their skills, which is great, that’s great if you’re just going to work for somebody. But if you’re going to have your own firm, that’s not good at all for you, because you can be the best attorney in the world. But if you have zero clients, guess what, you have no cases to work on to be the best attorney in the world. So it doesn’t matter how great you are. I may have mentioned this on the podcast before but when I go speak at SLU, and wash you, one of the first questions I ask is what’s the most important part about being an attorney, and you get so many responses, you know, you know, taking care of the clients and making sure you’re ethical and whatever, whatever else, they’ll give a variety of, of answers, but they never say, getting the client through the door, or getting clients or anything like that. And really, it whenever I see the teachers kind of cringe whenever I say it, but whenever I start to explain it, they start to get it because it’s no, the most important thing is getting the clients through the door, because you can’t do anything else, not not a dang thing else without getting them through the door. So you have to get your business side in order, before you can get the legal side in order.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, and we spend a lot of time you and I talking even on this podcast about the need to develop business and bring in business. And I think that’s an important topic that we sort of covered. But I think just talking about the nuts and bolts of you know QuickBooks, and payroll, and hiring, and these are all things that if you’re going to have staff, if you’re going to have support for your team, then you need to learn these skills. And this has been probably the hardest thing for me as a lawyer who opened up my own firm is to learn, you know, I was an arts and science major, I don’t have an MBA, I don’t have a strong management practice, or, you know, skill set. And I’ve really had to sort of grow in this area. And I think there’s something to be said, for getting help, you know, I’ve had a support staff person from the beginning, I’ve had a part time online digital bookkeeper, and that those have all been things that are not my strong suit. And I know that in order for the firm to operate effectively, those things need to be tended to there
Tyson Mutrux
are so many different components to running the business. And you know, bringing in new clients are just one part of it. That’s the thing I think you and I like to talk about the most. But there is the part, you know, there’s there’s actually something I’m going through right now where I’ve got to add another staff member in it is one of the worst things to do. I am so terrible at hiring people not hiring people. But going through this process and narrowing down the people because you go through the resumes and cover letters and everything else. I posted a job yesterday at 8:29am. And by the end of the day, I had 53 people that applied. And so now I got to at some point, I’m probably gonna shut it off, because I’m gonna get so many applicants and actually narrowing it down from the number of applications and resumes and everything down to actually a set of people that you have to interview, and then actually interviewing them and then hiring them. I’m terrible at that process. I don’t know how you are at it. But I’ll be honest with you, I suck at it. And I don’t know how to outsource that. Because you have that you have to interview them or you have to meet them. But I don’t know. If you have any suggestions on how to make that part easier. That’d be great. But I don’t like going to those companies that Robert Half for some reason. I’ve got this deep down just despise companies like that, for some reason. I don’t know why they’re probably good companies, but I’d hate to have to pay someone to then they take a cut of whatever my employee gets. I just don’t like that idea. But why are you terrible at this is just because the last time I had to do this, I didn’t even I didn’t hire one person from the people that I looked through the resumes or went through the interviews. The every one of the people that I interviewed were terrible. I thought I’d done this great job. I had this great system, I thought of narrowing down who would like to I didn’t like and then I interviewed the people and every single one of them was terrible, just terrible. And so I don’t know, I don’t know why I’m bad. It’s just that it’s the breakdown from the Getting them from the applications to the to the interviews. I’m just bad at it.
Jim Hacking
You know, I have often thought that hiring and I don’t wanna spend too much time just on hiring. But I’ve often thought that hiring is sort of a crapshoot, you know, there are times where you meet people, and you think they’re going to be total rockstars. But they just happen to be good at doing interviews, you know. And so I always try to hire for optimistic people who have had to overcome things who have bent towards dealing well with the public and sort of a positive attitude, and who want to win and hustle. Those are sort of the things that I look for. But you’re right, it’s hard to find all that or to suss all that out during the interview process or the hiring process,
Tyson Mutrux
right? You’re talking about just payroll handling payroll, you’re talking about, and you’re there’s the inner interviewing process, obviously, there’s the day to day operations of just receiving money and depositing the bank account, stuff like that. There’s all the tax documents that you have to make sure you secure and put the right place and give you your account. And there’s just so many different components to it. You’re juggling so many balls. And I think that’s something that you and I have discovered over time is, it’s something you kind of hinted at when it comes to the payroll and handling the money is having a bookkeeper of a virtual bookkeeper, I don’t I haven’t gotten to that point yet. But there are certain things that you can just some people call outsourcing, virtual assistants, whatever, that can help ease that pain because it is a pain for attorneys. Yeah, I
Jim Hacking
mean, that’s the great thing about living in this connected world. I mean, you use all kinds of outsource stuff. And there’s lots of aspects to running a law practice that you can do, virtually or with assistance from people that you don’t necessarily have to hire as a full time employee.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and honestly, I think a big part of that came from being in the military for me, because it’s it’s really about delegation, you know what I mean? It’s about taking the things that you probably should not be doing and giving them to the people that should be doing them. And then kind of spreading out the things that need to be done in a way. So it’s a lot of it’s just delegation. I think we talked about another podcast, there’s more to that. There’s the automation, there’s the elimination part of it, there’s also the delegation, but a lot of the stuff that absolutely has to be done, you don’t have to do as the attorney is just delegating it out. That’s very key. I mean, I’m big on automation. I think I’m better on automation than you are. But that’s the stuff that’s the release easy, simple stuff. What’s the delegation, I think the most important part of just getting those things off of your desk, giving them to someone else that’s capable of doing them. It’s key.
Jim Hacking
That’s funny that you brought up the military because my wife, Amani sat through your talk with Chris Feeny this year, and when she came home, she, I have to say, was impressed by what you said. And she talked about how would you like systems? And she said, Well, of course, you know, he’s in the military. So you know, I think, I think that you do have a good mindset towards that
Tyson Mutrux
we’re made up of our backgrounds, and our backgrounds really kind of define us in a way and they make us who we are. And so it’s, it’s something that I picked up, and I’ve used, and I like, and so it’s, I mean, the systems are just important, in general, I think anybody can can benefit from using systems. We can probably expand upon systems at some other time. But what are the some of the big pain points that you’ve gotten just running the business? Well, luckily, at
Jim Hacking
the present time, I have a lot of good support staff. So everyone on our team, we’re all sort of on the same page and have a good positive group. So that’s really been a positive. I guess one of the hard things lately is just keeping track of all the cases and keeping our clients happy. I did like go to clients last week. And maybe that’s a topic for next week is, you know, when to part ways with the client, I remember at
Tyson Mutrux
the earliest possible point, the answer to that,
Jim Hacking
you and I went yeah. And we can talk about not only letting go of them, but not hiring them or not allowing them to hire you in the first place. You and I have been to the Missouri small, firm and solo conference many times. And I’ll never forget that I went to a session one time, it was the most packed session I’ve ever seen, it was how to ethically fire your client. So I think that’d be an interesting topic. But so those are, you know, trying to identify and assess clients in their cases at the outset, that’s been something that we’ve sort of been working on here. Trying to avoid mistakes is always something that we’re trying to, you know, because with us, we’re always trying to make cases go faster. And we learn and we we learn from one case and try to use the information that we learn about how the immigration service or the state department handles things. We try to improve it for the clients behind and that sort of happened this week. When you
Tyson Mutrux
filter whatever calls coming in, you actually filter them more than I think I do you you have your staff they before it gets to you. It’s whittled down to a pretty good case, isn’t it?
Jim Hacking
I don’t think I ever talked on the phone Tyson. I really I mean, you’ve you’ve eliminated that completely. I think I talked on the phone. I probably make two phone calls a day. You know, unless it’s like a Skype new client console, which I likened to, you know, someone come in the office. I really don’t have random phone calls. I do a lot by email and my clients don’t necessarily expect me to call them back? I usually, you know, it takes a lot to get through to me on the phone,
Tyson Mutrux
I can always get through, I’ve got the secret, bad phone line. Yeah, you do,
Jim Hacking
hey, I want to bring this talk back to something that started off at the beginning. And that is this idea of giving ourselves permission to run it like a law firm, or to run our law firm like a business. And I think that’s a really key concept. And we sort of glossed over and said, Ah, it’s old school versus new school. But I think I think it’s different than that. I think it’s more than that. I think that you and I talk to a lot of lawyers. And a lot of them spend a lot of their time working on their cases, and in their business, in their law firm moving cases. And I think that, because of those three years that you have pounded in your head, that you’re a professional, you’re an attorney, you’re a member of the bar, I think that there really has to be a mindset shift away from this sort of theoretical academic idea of the law, and that the attorneys who are able to accept that and understand that that’s an important aspect of practicing law, that there is the the legal skills in the litigation are the other processing of the type of legal matters is one thing, but I think that it’s almost like a muscle or a skill that needs to be developed. And I think that starts with allowing yourself to do it and to acknowledge that that’s a skill. What do you think about that?
Tyson Mutrux
I think there’s a lot of truth to it. And it’s interesting, because it’s a multi layered, so it’s not only attorneys as a profession, but just from our focus groups, I can tell you, our masterminds a man, that we would talk to these attorneys, they would say, Well, I’m different because I do trusts, you know, I so my practice area is different from personal injury. So it’s got to be different. And we have to do things different. But I think you’re right is an industry as a whole. But then even once we get past that layer, it’s hard to get through these attorneys that it is still a business, even if they want to say now I do something different. My practice area is different, we have to do it this way. We can’t run it like a business. So you have to break through multiple layers to get through to people. And you’re right, it’s got to be a mindset shift. I think that’s true in a lot of things. What we do in general has been running a business is just changing your mindset on things. But really getting past the, you know, this is an academic profession where you know, we got to focus on the law primarily and all that I think you’re right, I think you gotta get past that and change your mindset. And I think you probably prior to running your firm, and wherever you worked for firm before, I think you were probably more in that other mindset, wouldn’t you say?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, for sure.
Tyson Mutrux
I don’t think I’ve ever been in that mindset. So I’m just curious what it took to get from there to where you are now?
Jim Hacking
Well, I mean, I think that one, one big part of it is not wanting to be dependent on other attorneys for your legal work. And, you know, that’s sort of where it started with me is that I loved the guys that I worked with, they were very good. But we had a limited number of clients. And I was worried that if something ever happened to those clients that in my mind, the only safety was having my own client base. And so I didn’t want to be 55 or older trying to develop clients for the first time. So I think that, you know, it’s a learning curve. You know, there’s a lot to learn when you go out on your own. But I think that it does definitely start with that idea of, you know, it’s okay to make money as a lawyer, it’s okay to make a lot of money as a lawyer, it’s a roller coaster, and you got to have the stomach for it. And you gotta be it’s not for everybody. I definitely think it’s not for everybody. I think that the kind of people that we’re trying to reach with this podcast and with the masterminds and the other thing we do is to try to identify those attorneys who, who get what we’re saying, who understand, you know, that it doesn’t have to be, you know, a drudgery, it doesn’t have to be scary, it doesn’t have to be done in solitude, you know, owning your own firm, especially if you’re the only attorney, you know, it can be a pretty lonely place, and to have a place for other lawyers to get together with like minded people who view it as a business who are optimistic and who see opportunities in you know, my son is starting high school. And there’s a book that I might have talked about on here called mindset. And they talk about having an open mind and a closed mind. And I think that the, you know, I’m different my, that would never work in my practice area. That’s a closed mindset and what we’re looking for people with open minds open with all the possibilities that are out there. I think there really is no cap on what any attorney can do. And when it comes to business, I think that the only limitations are those that we place upon ourselves and that if we’re not moving forward, we’re stagnant and I really encourage people to sort of get this message to stay with us and reach out to us and, you know, sort of join us on this adventure. You and I’ve started a while back towards, you know, building something real and big and fun and exciting.
Tyson Mutrux
Can I say something else to obviously someone else get over your ego. Now you kind of have in general, there’s one person in particular, but this is a, this is a common problem. He does DWIs. And I’d probably consider him a legal purist. And we talked about automation once and he said, I can’t do the accent, do DWIs Well, I also do not anymore, but I was doing DWIs. And I automated the vast majority of the DWI process. It’s just as simple with pleadings, phone calls, all that kind of stuff, tasks, it was automated. And it’s like, I’m different. Because you know, I’m a legal purist, I focus on the law and I’ll get over
Jim Hacking
your ego. You get over on legal artistry. That’s what the viewers,
Tyson Mutrux
get over it. Get over yourself. It’s, you’re not that great. Okay, you’re still running a business is the most important part is running the actual firm running the business. So that’s a big part of it.
Jim Hacking
Alright, brother, we’re out of time, we’re going to have to do our hackings hack and Tyson’s tip,
Tyson Mutrux
I go for your hat because I think my tip is going to be applicable to today. So go ahead.
Jim Hacking
So my hat comes from our friend, Jim Manning. It’s a book that he recommended to me that he read, and it’s called The Ultimate Sales Machine by guy named Chet Holmes. Now, I really don’t like the title. I don’t like the title at all. I think it’s sort of cheesy and salesy, and just I don’t know, it just sounds sort of over the top. But, man, there is more practical advice on bringing in business than any book I’ve ever read. It’s all about systems. It’s all about maximizing, you know, client retention efforts and client obtaining efforts. It’s just a fantastic book. I haven’t listened to it in the car. I’m just about finished with it. And I really think you know, you and Jim and I have our weekly meeting, I really think that we could just, if we could implement 75% of what’s in that book in each of our companies, I think we would be lights out so far ahead of everybody else. It really like packages, all the good advice that I’ve been hearing for the last five years into one concise book, that’s really
Tyson Mutrux
good. And I’ve never read books, I’ve always kind of found him to be kind of cheesy and corny. And so I so you’re saying it’s good, though. You like it?
Jim Hacking
It’s Chet Holmes. Yeah. He’s he passed away from leukemia a couple years ago. And the audio book is great. And I’ve watched some of his speeches since then. The dude is phenomenal. It was his
Tyson Mutrux
partner or its foreign partner. He had a partner, I can’t think of his name.
Jim Hacking
He worked for this guy named Charlie Munger, who was partners with Warren Buffett. And so he that’s sort of how he became famous is really just, I think he took six or seven of Charlie Munger businesses and made them all multimillion dollar businesses within like, a year or two. He’s just phenomenal. That’s incredible.
Tyson Mutrux
Mine is either I get this from you or John Fisher, I don’t know which one recommended this, but it’s great. It’s the 12 week year, it’s by Brian Moran and Michael Ludington. It’s a very good book, it’s breaking your basically your year into 12 weeks at a time, and they get you to get away from the whole idea of annual thinking. It’s really about breaking things down, you get so much more done in those 12 weeks. It’s about goal setting. There’s a lot of different things to it, but it’s a really good book. I don’t know if you’ve read it or not. But
Jim Hacking
no, that wasn’t for me, it must have been John. So we’re gonna finish this one. I’ll read that one.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s really great. It’s it’s, I actually, I adopted some of John’s goal setting approaches. And it was based upon the 12 week year. And so then I read the book. And it really is great. It really simplifies things. And it really makes a lot of sense because it talks about the idea of setting all these big goals and being a year and then by November, you’re rushed to get them done. And some of them you just push away because you know, there’s no way you’re gonna get them completed by December. And then you have this big push again in January, but you don’t get them done. And so it’s just a bad way of doing things and they get you to not even think about the whole annual thinking part of it.
Jim Hacking
That sounds great brother. Alright, so if you liked our podcast, please give us a review on iTunes. It really helps to help us spread the word and if you know any other lawyers, or people working in the legal industry who would enjoy your podcast, please pass it along. Tyson will talk to you next week. Sounds good. Thanks, boss. Hey guys.
