In today’s episode we’re sharing a presentation from MaxLawCon 2020. Our originally scheduled MaxLawCon 2020 speaker Sandy Van presented LIVE to the Maximum Lawyer Guild community and today we share her presentation: How Van Law Firm Uses Virtual Assistants in Their Law Firm From Start to Finish.
You can also watch the video here.
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Transcript: “How Van Law Firm Uses Virtual Assistants in Their Law Firm From Start to Finish” w/ Sandy Van 247
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm 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.
Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. Our originally scheduled Max slot con speaker Sandy van, presented live to the maximum lawyer Facebook group. And today we share her talk how van law firm uses virtual assistants in their law firm from start to finish. Let’s get to it.
Sandy Van
Hi, I’m Sandy van from Las Vegas, I have a personal injury firm in Las Vegas. And now actually, Washington just opened that recently, I also open to other firms the last few months. And another company. Also I own a legal support help, which is a virtual assistant company. So we staffed virtual assistants across the country, with law firms and even medical providers. So basically, that’s what I do. You know, I was one of the speakers last year for Max law con, we were named number 398 of one of the fastest growing companies in the country last year. So Inc 5000. So basically it. So what am I talking about? I’m going to talk about how we use virtual assistants in our law firm. So that a lot of people when they’re thinking about using virtual assistants are like, well, what would I use a virtual assistant for, I don’t know, like, I don’t see that person. They’re not physical, they’re physically there, I can’t just go hand things to them. And they just they can’t, they’re stuck at the point where they don’t know what to do with a virtual assistant. So I thought maybe this would give them some ideas, we’re also going to give you like a link to this download, so that you can download a list of everything that our virtual assistants know how to do. So it took us a while to create that list, but it’s nice and pretty. So please go to the link and download that list. So let’s talk about how we use them in our firm. So let’s say a lead comes in, we actually have them zapped and forwarded to everyone’s emails that’s on our intake team. So we’ll get a zap in our slack. And then they also get around their emails. And everybody’s supposed to be logged into that email, there’s like one email that’s just basically for leads. So then everyone on the intake team will be like calling those leads and other like, Yes, I got it, I got a live person on the phone. And then they’ll post certain things about the lead like, oh, the crash happened on July 4, and they’ve been treating, and there’s a lot of damage, or whatever, oh, they sent me pictures of the damage, or oh, they slipped and fell or whatever. And they’ll send us information about it. And then the attorneys will usually jump on and say, Oh, that’s a good case. Or hey, that’s a bad one, or whatever, you know, so then if it’s some a case that we’re going to sign, they’re going to proceed or whatever, sometimes they already know how to proceed, some of our people are pretty advanced. So they they already know how to proceed. And they do a short intake or a long intake, or however they want to do it depending on how much time the client has. And you know, then they’ll get the attorney on the phone. And then we’ll just sign that client up, you know, go over the fee agreement. And then the virtual assistant will create all that the documents that need to be signed, and then send it in, like Vine sign or DocuSign, or whatever they’ll send the fee agreement and the releases in. So the virtual assistants do all that. So we can you know, sometimes I’ve gotten calls in the middle of the night or whatever, because someone’s our intake teams open till about 11 at night. And sometimes I’m really up late. So I’ll get an intake. And I’ll be like, Oh, well this client is their name is Bob Smith, and their date of birth is this and start the fee agreement or whatever, okay, they’re ready to sign. Here’s their email address, here’s a phone number texted to them, I’ll be on the phone waiting for them to get that and go over it with them. So they’ll do all that in person intake because a lot of people want to come in to Las Vegas or office because everything’s very close together. It’s not like cities where things are so far apart, will scan documents will take to the intake, they’ll fill out their paperwork, the intake documents, will scan everything to the virtual assistant to put input to that the data. So you might have like a health insurance card, you might have an auto insurance information or whatever, you might have the traffic accident report or whatever. And we’ll scan all that stuff in, send it to them and they’ll input all of that because there’s a lot of information to do data entry on they’ll open the claim. So we’ll call the little scan it to our people and they’ll open the claim. They’ll send the letter rep. They’ll get the adjusters information and sometimes you’re on the phone for 30 minutes, they’ll do the property damage so they’ll get the cars repaired, totaled out gapped done removed from the tow yard loss of use. So if the client didn’t have rental for a few days or whatever a few weeks, they’ll get that loss of use and diminished value claims and a rental for our clients. We have another group that’s just pulling police reports and doing policy limits. Research ISO reports, doing background checks on clients and defendants opening health insurance subrogation getting that subrogation lien, then they’re reviewing the lien to make sure that it matches up with the meds later on, they’ve set up our Zapier as well, so that we can just press a button and they’re added into our drip campaign. So we use File vine, we can give you a link to file mine if you need it in the software so that we can attribute it to our talk or whatever. But we created something in file line, which is basically a service that is similar to lead docket. So we created our own lead docket. And now we’ve got text campaigns, drip campaigns, everything started with the press of a button. And then we know whether or not to disposition a lead or not, because it’s in that little project. And we’ll be like, oh, yeah, we’ve got five leads that we still have to reach out to, and they’ll just call them until they die, or until they say please don’t call me anymore, hey, they’re ready to sign. So we created our own little thing. And, you know, we can start a project that way, and all that stuff, send stuff via vine sign, in our little project, they will also calendar, the statue limitations, that’s kind of important, they will make sure so now we’ve gotten to the phase where our client is treating, and we want to make sure that the client doesn’t have any gaps in treatment, or doesn’t blow the limits. So they’re watching that they’re running reports for us, they’re saying, hey, better watch this, the limits are getting blown, or, Hey, your client hasn’t been treating, you know, that’s really going to kill a case, they’re auditing our cases, we’ve got people that are just auditing our cases. So we have like team members on one team, and then the second team. And then they’re going through all those cases, to audit specific things like the policy limits whether liability is accepted. Sometimes you get an employee that says that they knew how to case manage, and they may not know how to case manage, they may not be case managing, or maybe the case managed differently at some other firm, but our virtual assistants are reviewing the cases and auditing them to say, hey, you missed this here, you know, and if it becomes a problem, then they’ll reach up to me or someone else, another attorney and say, Hey, I don’t know if this person knows what they’re doing, or this person is not responding, then they let me know, or someone else know management. So let’s say your client is done treating, now we’re gathering the medical records, they’re doing all that for us. They’re going to be drafting the demands for us. And then, you know, they review it in house, the mail it we’ve printed off, we mail it all, or send it off or fax it or whatever they do. It’s not my department, medical summaries. So they do the medical summaries, because sometimes we need that medical summary, because we want to know, if we’re litigating the case, or if we are negotiating, we want to know what happened. Was there gaps or something? Or was there something really bad here? We need to know so they’ll do that medical summary so that we don’t have to go through the attorneys don’t need to spend all the time going through the demand saying what happened while they’re negotiating claims. Okay, so let’s say that this case is great. And we’re settling it now. They’re going to send out the lien verifications to make sure that the balances are correct. They’re going to draft a preliminary disbursement sheet, I look at all the numbers just so I can figure out what reductions to send. So then I’ll put the percentages in and then they’ll send the reductions, they’ll call on the reductions to make sure that they were received and that we get them back. Once it’s done. We’re drafting closing letters. So closing letters to usually the medical provider, sometimes loan companies sometimes it’s what do you call those child support? You know, we’re paying off child support or whatever, for the client, or just sending them a letter saying, Hey, thanks for working for us, ABC, Cairo. And here’s the $2,500 that we owe you check number 1234. And that’s the closing letter. And then there’s something attached to the closing letter that says, Did you receive this because we’ve had people divert checks to we had, I don’t know, I’m guessing that it’s someone that works at a medical facility, because it’s happened to a bunch of attorneys. So someone at one of the medical facilities is creating checks under attorneys, checks and stuff. So we wanted to create something that says, Hey, did you receive this and signed off? And is there a balance, you’re paid in full? So we have some kind of confirmation was one of my great ideas that I had. So I created like a, some kind of receipt that they had to go sign and mail back to us. So we try and get those back. So yeah, there’s drafting those closing letters. We mailed them out with the checks. And another thing that they do is they log into our computers from I think it’s like LogMeIn or something, and they input the checks into QuickBooks on our computers and they get them already. So in the morning, we just wake up, get into the office and print all these checks. Next, because it could be a lot of checks. You know, you’re printing police report checks, you’re printing out, let’s say medical record checks or something, or who knows what other checks, but they do all those checks for us. And then we just print them off and mail them. So that saves us a lot of time. They do all of our bookkeeping, the reconcile conciliation and everything to make sure everything bounces, they’ll be calling the provider, like, Hey, did you lose the check? Why isn’t this bouncing, we’re not closing this case out until this balances. If we get dropped on a case, they’re doing the quantum merit liens, we gotta go bill out everything and you know, put in all these, you know, you spent an hour here you spent 15 minutes there or whatever, they’re creating those liens. Nobody likes to bill, we don’t like to Bill, you know, but they’re creating all those liens for us, for us to review to see if we need to, you know, change the wording and stuff like that. Okay, so let’s say the case doesn’t go well. And we need to file suit. They’re drafting our complaints for us. They have several templates for drafting complaints. Our complaints are so specific, I guess, because they created him with Microsoft Word, conditional statements. So there if then statements, if there’s more than one party, then this pops up. If there’s if the plaintiff is a male, it’s going to be he him his throughout the complaint. So they they did some serious coding on things that I don’t even know how to do. I thought one day I learned and they’re like, oh, yeah, this is 200 pages. And I’m like, yeah, no, no, nevermind, I don’t I don’t want to learn, please don’t quit. No, it’s great, because we can just have that complaint drafted. So they have complaints for one party or two people in a vehicle versus one person or one employee or one employee and their employee or and if there’s a DBA. That pops up. So our complaints are really complicated, because they use that if then wording, Microsoft conditional statements, which I don’t know how to do, that you get that things serve for us. If not, they’re drafting our motions for publication, so that we get served, they’re drafting our arbitration exemption. So in Nevada, you know, you have to get a case of exempted if there’s so much in med. So they’re drafting that for us, we just fill in the blanks and stuff like that. They do our initial list of documents and witnesses, witnesses and documents and stuff. So they’re drafting that for us, and we’re reviewing it, and they’re going to do all the bait stamping of the exhibits with that as well once it’s approved, they do our initial discovery for us. So if we’re propounding discovery, they’re drafting it for us. And they might highlight some things like we think that this is normal. You normally ask this, you know, it’s a drunk driving case, you normally ask this or, or whatever, it’s a rare under, we usually ask these things, so they know what to put in there. And then they’ll highlight it if they’re not sure. But it saves us a lot of time. Deposition summaries, miners compromises, they do all that. So our case managers and our paralegals, they’re basically acting like a conductor, you know, like, they’ll say, Okay, I need these three complaints drafted, okay. And then I need this drafted, and then they’re gonna go review, whatever they’d get. So they, it’s like a conveyor belt, you know, okay, this is drafted, this is drafted, I’m gonna come back in two days, or whatever, or day or even the end of the day, and I’m just gonna go review whatever they’ve been doing and tweak it so that we get it files, they can e file for us even. So yep, that’s what that they do there. And the case managers, the same thing, you know, all they need to do is do intakes and speak to clients. They happen when it’s, you know, gets the going gets tough or whatever, and virtual assistant can’t handle it. But we’ve got some virtual assistants that are just case managers, they manage cases for me, you know, I wish I had a few more of those. But it’s great. If I need something set up and fall mine, like I need a letter tweaked or whatever, we changed some law change or I find a typo or something. I can just message them we use Slack and we have a group and they can just change it for me. Or we want to change some buttons or something or dropdowns or workflows. They just change all that for me and file mine. They do create all our zaps, we have a lot of zaps, I don’t know if how many it was maybe it was like 80,000 or something crazy. There’s a lot of zaps. So we save a lot of time every month with those apps. They save all of our faxes, so all our incoming faxes, we get a lot of faxes. They do all of our master intakes esigning getting the client II signed, you know, medical summaries, they do all the pleadings for our mass torts, they do our marketing, they do our Facebook posts or Instagram posts, they create websites for me. They created two websites this week for me, you know, the one that you guys will be seeing when you go to that link. And they created another website because I created another company three days ago, you know, marketing materials. If I need brochures or anything done, I have a real estate company as well. I sell sometimes $3 million worth of real estate a month. So Oh, you know, they’re creating all my marketing materials might just listed or whatever Facebook posts and things like that listing presentations, they’re they’re creating all that clipart you need to find clipart for the buttons for your websites, they’re doing that they’re creating banners for the websites, Shopify sites for me Click Funnels sites, drip campaigns, they just create the content I tweak when I’m on my treadmill, and that kind of thing. They know how to do Adobe Photoshop, they do all of our human resources. So they run payroll for me, I really hated that when I was a solo. So I used to do it. Now they just send me a sheet into does this look right to their bonuses look, right? Did they do this many intakes and, you know, they get bonuses for intakes that they do after hours on the weekends, and Review Bonuses and stuff like that. So I just look at it. And I’m like, Yeah, okay, talk to Samantha about her overtime, or whatever, or did you miss something here, they’ll do all of our payroll for us. They’ll do all the hiring, they’re interviewing, they are checking references, they are doing background checks, they are going through, we may get so many resumes, and they’re reviewing those resumes to see which ones we need to look at and which ones we don’t. They’re onboarding them. So when you onboard a new employee, you gotta set their emails, faxes, logins, phones, all that stuff. And they’re setting all that up for me. You know, when they’re terminating them, they need to go do their final paycheck that day, and they need to lock them out of everything. We’re like, Okay, we’re gonna fire Samantha, and they get all that ready and done. Unemployment Claims, I have an unemployment claim, they’re gathering evidence for me and drafting that great little statement, they actually created a report that you can just press a button, and I got my Unemployment Claims done, they actually created a workflow for me and a project for me in file mine for human resources. So I can put my stuff in there. So we can put like, what their passwords are, and their personal information and everything that we got, like the background, check the resume and all that stuff. If they’d been written up, it’s in there, whatever we’ve given them if we’ve been if we’ve, you know, sent them home with the computer and a ScanSnap. And we need that back. We’ve got that stuff in the human resources, part of our file buying administration, they’re running reports for us. So we have several reports. Like I want to know if cases aren’t moving, like how many cases need to be countered, how many cases are in settlement phase? Why aren’t they getting settled? If there’s gaps in treatment, I’m seeing that bunch of things like that. So they’re running a bunch of reports for us, they purchase our office supplies, we tell them what we need, they go find it for us scheduling, they do all my scheduling, they do the office scheduling, you know, depots and all that stuff, scheduling is a really hard job to find. I lose schedulers on left and right sometimes, yes, we don’t have that issue. They’re very grateful for working. So yeah, they do my personal scheduling. And for the office litigation and stuff, standard operating procedures, a lot of people do not have standard operating procedures, we have a ton. All I need to do is have them download Skype or WhatsApp. And we can just speak what they’re supposed to do, like, Okay, I need a receptionist standard operating procedure, they need to go make sure that my office is clean, that I have intakes printed out for the people that come in with pens, I want intakes in every single file and every single intake room we have, like for intake rooms, make sure that the coffee is set up or whatever. So I’ll just record that. And then I’ll have them transcribe it and someone will clean it up or whatever. I’ve written books this way. I’m trying to write a book right now. And I’ll just voice record what I think. And they’ll change the writer for me.
Becca Eberhart
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Sandy Van
They’ve also done our marketing for us like designing our presentations. They’ll find email addresses for me, you know make me money. So I wanted to find a bunch of attorneys, I told them to go find a bunch of attorneys for me. So they set up a list so that I could find custom create custom audiences in Facebook and target attorneys. They send out appreciation gifts, they do research on LinkedIn for us. Now, the other thing that’s great about them is that you can build them out, let’s say you billing out paralegals or legal assistants at $150 An hour or hire them, you know, 15 bucks or ours range from like, 15 to $35 an hour and then build them out. They clean out our email addresses my email stuff, they do all that. And let’s see what else they’ve done some stuff for me, that’s just crazy. They did my PPP for me, the PPP forgiveness, I’ve applied for several bars, they’ve done all that for me, and I just looked at the screenshots and say, Yeah, that’s right, or, Hey, you know, call, so and so school, the William school Boyd, you know, William S. Boyd School of Law and go get me my transcripts or whatever, go order a certificate of you know, that I was an awesome attorney, and I have nothing against me. They’ve done my travel arrangements for me. I make them order my shoes and my clothes. They do a lot of phone calls for us. They can interview witnesses, they can go over discovery responses with witnesses, you know, they call other attorneys jails, they call clients to remind them of things, medical providers adjusters, see if liability is accepted, things like that, you know, there’s a lot of great benefits to using our virtual assistants, because they’ve already been in our firm. They’ve been there for a while. And they know a lot of things about our firms. So you’ve cut down the learning curve, like how is it done in Sandy’s firm? Or whatever? Or the even if it’s not our firm, they don’t share things, but at least they have like knowledge, like, oh, yeah, you know, I use this great program called, you know, Snagit, or whatever. And that’s how we created this, or whatever, or, What’s a good program for this? Well, you know, what, that’s the best program we used at this firm, or whatever. And you should really use that because that’s great for you. So they’ll cut down a lot of the learning curve. And they’re just collaborative, because there’s a lot of them, we have a lot of vas, it’s, I think we have maybe 150 of them. And they work in a lot of other firms to not just my firm, but I have multiple businesses. So you just shouldn’t be doing a lot of the tasks that you should you’re doing. I don’t know why people do certain things. Like I sit there, and I’m like, oh, yeah, not doing it, you’re gonna have someone else do it. We just did my malpractice insurance. And they asked me how many hours I work in the office, I’d say it’s probably five hours a week on my law firm. I’m usually doing a lot of fun things. So creating things like this, you know, things like that. Or maybe your staff doesn’t want to do certain things, your staff shouldn’t be typing up discovery things, or they shouldn’t be saving faxes, you know, and you can scale up or down as you need, you can go hire another one tomorrow. Or if you only have 15 hours of work, you just hire them for the 15 hours and you get dropped a bunch of discovery, you just get a few more virtual assistants. It’s really hard to hire, you know. So it’s great to have people that already know what they’re doing and no have to know how to operate a computer even you know, some I’ve heard some of those people my first go around. So do you have any questions? We have
Becca Eberhart
plenty of questions, which is very exciting. So I’m going to start from the top here. Ash asks, does Microsoft conditional statements integrate with file vine doc? Jen? Yes. Okay. All right. Alex asked Do you know if the docs are coated with if then statements direct in Microsoft Word or through another software? Like law ja, woodpecker, etc.
Sandy Van
No, it’s true. Miko Microsoft Word and actually, let me go back to ashes statement. What was his question? Again? does it integrate with file vine?
Becca Eberhart
So ash had asked does Microsoft conditional statements integrate with file vine doc Jen? Okay, I’m gonna
Sandy Van
go ask them afterwards, Microsoft conditional, because I don’t do any of the coding. I did learn. And then I realized as much as fun and Zen it was providing me I shouldn’t be doing it. Because if I built $500 an hour, and I probably got more than $500 an hour, they’ll tell you that I don’t work very much in the law firm. And I make a lot of money. Does my shop integrate, does it What was the question again? Does Microsoft conditional statements
Becca Eberhart
integrate with file buying doc Jen?
Sandy Van
Okay. That is a question. Okay, I will make sure with them because I don’t do any of that stuff. Okay. Next question.
Becca Eberhart
Yeah. So Jen asked, how many cases can your case manager handle a lot,
Sandy Van
we have them broken down into two team, because we’ve just been screwed over by so many people. They’ll say that they know what to do. And I’m like, what was what were you case manager of just police reports at your old law office. So we just have two teams now. And then we have junior people underneath them until we know that they know what they’re doing. And then we send them off on their own. And actually, we’re creating a product soon. So that we will, we’ll we’ll tell you about that later.
Becca Eberhart
Okay. All right. Good on that one? Yeah. Good on that one. Perfect. So Michael, he asked about pricing. So I think from his perspective, what would he be looking at to pay for a VA,
Sandy Van
they are $15 an hour with our company up to $35 an hour, depending on if you’re doing Microsoft conditional statements and drop downs and fall on and you want to like, create your full file mine, and we actually sell our file mine. So some people just buy our file mine, which I think is a steal, they should just buy our file mine. Because, yeah, it’s it’s a steal. You know, and I think that sometimes people are like, I know, you can definitely find your own VAs somewhere else, just like you could go hiring off of Craigslist for 10 bucks an hour. But our bas know, our processes I’ve had attorneys asked me to fly down to they’re like to fly down to California and like, Okay, so for me to fly out to California to just consult with you. Like if I was the McKinsey of law firms, I would charge a lot of money, because why would I want to do for my firm, right? I would rather go, you know, use all that stuff. If I was making the same amount of money, I’d rather go spend my time bettering my firm. And for that amount of money, I think that it’s better just to have one of our season virtual assistants or whatever, do crazy things in your firm. You know what I mean? Instead of hiring someone else, but it’s $15 to $35 an hour based on, like, if we don’t have a lot of people, like we don’t have that many people that doctrine, you know what I mean? It’s a really specific thing. So we may charge more for that. So I don’t have to pay for FICA you don’t have to pay for overtime. You don’t have to pay for work comp, you know, you want to pay for desk space or office equipment. They have all that we pay for their benefits. They have all that and you can have them 24/7 That’s one of the great things that we have, because I can beat out any other firm, because I have 24/7 service.
Becca Eberhart
Perfect. Michael always also asked, would he be working with one specific VA? Or could it be one of several?
Sandy Van
So I had that question asked yesterday, you usually have like one coordinator person, and they kind of spearhead and they may like see what you need. And then they’ll find someone that is more specific for what you need. So you’re like, oh, I need someone just to do this, you know, medical records and save my faxes or demand letters or whatever. So they’ll find one person for that. But then if you ask for something that’s specific, they will may bring on someone for that. So let’s say you’re like, like one of them knows how to do Excel pivot tables, which is like way cool, like crazy pivot tables with colors that add up on different pages. And that may be a different VA, like you don’t ask me to go design your stuff. You know, I can’t design anything. And I can’t even remember I lose checks all the time. It’s actually pretty funny. They’re like, they’ll be like, can you bring me checks and I’ll forget because I go back and forth from our Las Vegas office to our Washington office. And I can’t remember anything like that. I forget to deposit checks. It’s It’s really bad.
Becca Eberhart
All right, so Russell then asks, Where the VAs are based? Are they US based or foreign based? Or both?
Sandy Van
There’d be no way that we could offered you for $15 an hour for if they’re a US based because I do not go and try and find people and train them so that I can give them to you at cost. So they are formed based they are based out of South America we have them in think Mexico, wherever that Pablo Escobar is from it’s all I can remember. I don’t remember what country that is. And then I think it’s Argentina or something like that. ZIL, Philippines. India.
Becca Eberhart
Awesome. Alex asked Are your SOPs in jest? Word or are they using some other software for documenting or website based wiki?
Sandy Van
They are in Word. So we created another company. We just kind of finalized it today ish. We didn’t even finish it’s not done yet. So if you go on there, there might be that many projects products. We created a company called legal principles.com Not totally done because my People, my staff eat asleep. But you can actually go in there and download and buy certain things. So it’s like an Etsy for things. So, you know, if you wanted a checklist or whatever, you could possibly buy it in there. So we do sell our SOPs, because it might have taken me $15 An hour times four hours. One of them I did it myself, I sat there who was so pissed off, and nobody had done it. So the settlement disbursement checklist I did myself. So that is a really expensive checklist. So yeah, our SOPs are in Tetra tetra.co. And I liked it, I know you can go create your own Wikipedia, and I looked at it and I don’t know something I liked about it. I stayed on tetra, it’s really expensive. It’s more expensive than creating one on like a WordPress. I think our affiliate link is Vann law in caps. So the A en la W in caps, but you can always use tetra, and it’s pretty cool. You can organize it in there, and you can create videos, and you can create pictures. So because you have to know that people listen, learn different ways. So some people learn by video, so we created some videos, and then some people like oh no, I have no time for this freaking video. Like if you if you put a video like you know how you guys create videos on your site, I won’t watch any of your videos. But if you have the thing on the bottom and you transcribe it, because sometimes I’m like falling asleep, and I’m like, this is going to be too loud and wake me up. So I will not watch a video but I have them transcribed things all the time. So yeah, they transcribe it and they create a checklist. Or they’ll create screenshots because some people learn that way. You know how the auditory people or whatever, visual people, so we have checklists that are just written step by step pictures, and then videos. And then you can also enclose the checklist in there. So you can attach the checklist in there in Word or PDF. So we have it in there. We do have tracheal not sure if we’ll stick with cranial. But yeah, we do have cranial as well.
Becca Eberhart
Awesome. Julie asked two questions. The first one was do they create PowerPoints for mediations or trials?
Sandy Van
I haven’t ever done a trial. Well hold on 10 years ago, once I remember not sleeping that whole week. I guess they could they didn’t mind. So if you go to that site, so we are going to post it. I gave it to you. Do you have it? Remember, I messaged it to you?
Becca Eberhart
Yes, I will post that link as well. Okay, so it’s
Sandy Van
legal support help.com forward slash, free task list, I think free task list. Yep. Legal Support help.com forward slash free task lists, you can actually download the task list. And it is in a PowerPoint. And they created that PowerPoint for me. And they like hand designed that PowerPoint for me because we went to a really cool site, I forget what it’s called. But it’s like free slides to go or something or slides go. And they’re like all these like Google presentations that you can have for free. But on the very back, it says, you downloaded this off of slides go you’d have to do an attribution to them. And you got to PDF it because there’ll be pissed off if you sell their slides and also stuff. So I was like, You know what, just create our own. So they actually had created every element on that slide for me. So they do some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. So I’ve never done trial. No, absolutely.
Becca Eberhart
So Julie also asked how much supervision do the VAs need?
Sandy Van
They don’t need much supervision. If you are you got to be very specific with what you’re going to tell them. Like sometimes I even when we have new attorneys, we give them their own little VA like their own little paralegal VA. I’ll sit in the channel for a little bit. And I’m like, No, you can’t say that because they don’t understand what you’re doing. And they’re going to E file that stuff. And you really want an E serve. Okay, make sure you say specifically what you’re thinking. One time I said flying fish, you know, as a euphemism, right. Like Sandy, we have no client and flying fish. So you have to be very specific with them. If so, if you’re specific, they will follow directions pretty well. What I normally do is I create a Skype chat or a chat with them or a WhatsApp and I just record what I’m because I don’t have time to go on phone with them. So I just leave a message and I click this is what my idea is, I need you to create me a site that does this, I want this this and this and or whatever or even on our blogs. I’ll just say I want you to specifically say the word repossession in there when we did like a blog on bankruptcy so we created a bankruptcy firm as well in the last three months and you know, I have to be very specific in my how to explain it to them and then they don’t need much supervision. And you can always say hey, come back to me in a day and show me what you got to see if you’re going down the rabbit hole wrong rabbit hole or if you’re on track
Becca Eberhart
perfect Yeah, I think that’s a great tip being specific. So Michael then asked if you could expand a little bit about Zapier and he didn’t ask a specific question, but you did mention quite a large amount of zaps. Do you kind of want to touch on?
Sandy Van
Oh, yeah. Okay, I will. Oh, let me get Zapier lists. zap your list, please. Okay, so yeah, Microsoft conditional statements do they integrate with fall bind doctrine? Yes. And fusion conditional statements. Also Excel and Word. That’s all they told me. So hopefully that answers your question. Ash Zapier, we can zap leads over because I don’t want the attorneys to know where I get my leads from because I don’t need them to go open shop and then go advertise at the same places that I advertise that and then compete against me, you know, I don’t want case managers to do that. I don’t want attorneys to do that. So we zap all of the leads over but then I have a specific group that knows about it, like the VAs know about it, and then some of my case managers have been round with me a long enough time. And one of the attorneys knows, because I trust them enough to not take my trade secrets and leave and then buy ads from the same place. So um, you know, because there might be like a second delay. So they zap all that stuff over, we don’t have a lead. If I’m an answering service call, they’ll zap that over. If I’m doing e filing, they’ll zap e filing in certain e file. I don’t need every e filing. But like I want to know when a case is answered because I need to go start on Well, I don’t need to but other people need to start on things they might need to go do an arbitration exemption or they may need to go start on discovery or who knows what they need to do. You know, so there’s like, if there’s a motion oh, we need to answer that motion. So that’s a great thing because then you can check at the end of the week like my my discovery clerk, my discovery paralegal, you checks up the weekend, like, did I get all the things because it’s all been zapped, all the important stuff spins up. So Zapier is an API or something. And it basically makes if then statements with programs, I think, so I don’t do any of it. We have like three people that do Zapier, but you can have it communicate with certain things. So you can have it communicate with like our Excel spreadsheets, so all the KPIs so if a case is settled, it will zap in there and say, This is how much it’s settled for this was the percentage This is the date that it’s settled for. And this is how much you made, and how much the client made and all that stuff. So it was zap that in there. It was, oh, look nice, gave me a list. That should be a class in itself. Let me see if there’s another one in here. If a case gets dropped, I want to know why. Because I want to know what’s going on. So they actually zap that to me. I don’t remember crap. So I have calendar reminders. And they those zap to me. So that reminds me everywhere. Yeah, lots of stuff. How to hashtags in foul line. This zap something to put stuff into my LastPass I guess, because I don’t want to put stuff in. I’m that lazy that I don’t want to put stuff into my password keeper. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.
Becca Eberhart
Awesome. All right. Russell said, Do you have Cleo coders or just file by?
Sandy Van
I believe we have clear coders Let me see. Over coders, do we have the Oh coders? Okay, next question.
Becca Eberhart
Michael asked, can they learn the their specific software that they already have?
Sandy Van
They have. So if you go down to that free task list, so legal support, help forge slash free task lists, there’s probably 100 different programs that they know how to use. They just learned active campaign this week. Because I was like, guess what? I’m presenting I forgot. You need to learn this. So yeah, they do that. Clio smoke ball, practice Panther, feel world grow, Cool World and grow. Yeah, they know a lot of programs. There’s another one. I don’t remember what that one’s called. But they worked in that one to lead docket they know.
Becca Eberhart
Lots of programs, awesome. Afsaneh asked, is there a way to work with the VA directly instead of going through a site like Upwork because when you go through a site, you have to create a job fill in all the details, which is time consuming? Where can I find a VA that I can just directly reach out to?
Sandy Van
You can find them through us if you are going to go through a company like that you can always find them on like online jobs.ph I think there are some Facebook sites, even Facebook groups where you can find vas, you’d have to train them yourself. That kind of thing. You know, but you get one VA with us. Unless it’s something like really complicated that needs another VA because no man knows everything.
Becca Eberhart
Yes. So Oh, Michael asked, Can they do interrogatory responses?
Sandy Van
They somewhat do be somewhat can they type, they at least type up the template for you. And then they can kind of fill it out. Some of them actually call the client and fill it in for them. And then I think they’ve got like a list of objections, common objections that they know, because they’ve just been trained to do that. Because who likes doing discovery?
Becca Eberhart
Absolutely. Michael said smart advocate question, Mark. It wasn’t really a question. You know what he’s talking about there?
Sandy Van
Yeah, he’s talking about a software when I see. I don’t know if we’ve worked with smart advocate. I know, there’s one that confuses me. I always think of this one and that one? Yes. They do have clear coders.
Becca Eberhart
Perfect. Michael was asking, do they know smart advocate? That’s what he was asking.
Sandy Van
They do not know smart advocate. Okay. They could learn that they do not know smart African.
Becca Eberhart
Sure. All right, that was the end of the questions that I’m seeing so far. Do you have anything else in closing?
Sandy Van
Hmm, well, our website is Dan legal support help.com. You can get the free task list that we spent a lot of time developing for slash free Tesla’s dot com. Feel free to go visit our other site. But it’s not done yet. We just kind of started throwing stuff up today. That’s a little principals.com.
Becca Eberhart
Perfect. And I know that they can head to the website. I’m gonna post that link right after we get off the live here. But if somebody wanted to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that? They can find
Sandy Van
them Facebook message me. Perfect. Oh, one other thing is, so my legal printables. I do want to see if there’s other attorneys that want to go sell and CO license their stuff.
Becca Eberhart
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And for that, just send you a Facebook message as well. Yeah.
Sandy Van
So let’s say you’ve got like, I created this like, motion for attorneys fees, or something that took me like, because I’m really slow. It took me like all week to show and it was probably overkill. But it was like the one time I decided to go take on a case because I like you know, I should learn how to do this. And I was like, no, never again, not doing it. So like if you’ve got some amazing motion that you want to sell or checklists or something, then let’s throw it up there.
