The Need For Speed w/ Jim and Tyson 418

In today’s episode, Jim and Tyson chat with one another about the need for speed. They dive into the journey of how fast things are moving these days. If you’ve been looking for a way to speed up things in your firm, check out this episode.

2:47 mastermind prompt

5:24 automated contract

9:16 lawsuits

13:51 speed and processes

17:14 the opposition

21:42 doing the essential tasks

25:05 that’s how you win

Jim’s Hack: Check out the book, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massivel Valuable Companies.

it’s all about moving fast. 

Tyson’s Tip: Joey Vitale offers Trademarks for entrepreneurs; they are his jam! If you have something you need to be trademarked, check out his website.

Watch the podcast here.

Join the Guild: www.maxlawguild.com

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Jim:                  Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson:             And I'm Tyson Mutrux. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim:                  Tyson, I'm excited today. It’s one of our solo episodes. We always have a lot of fun when we sort of riff off each other and maybe have a little bit of conflict and talk about what's going on.

Tyson:             It's funny. I'm working from home this morning. We're just chatting about it. And it's definitely weird. We're texting about today's topic. And my routine was so off that I completely forgot. It's amazing what your brain does, right? I completely forgot about what our topic was from-- we're texting like 30 minutes ago. And I'm working from home so like my whole brain is off. It's just kind of weird, like it's-- because I was sending you a bunch of additional topics and you're like, “You didn't like my idea?” I'm like, “Well, actually, I do like your idea.” I loved your idea. I just completely forgot about it. So, I'm excited to talk about it. I mean, I'm excited to actually be able to talk to you after seeing you in Atlanta, too.

Jim:                  We had a great mastermind. I think everyone who came really got a lot out of it. You know, I sort of let off my session by saying, “You know, this is going to be the only time ever, in the history of the world, that the 12 of US law firm owners are in the same room together for a whole day so let's try to be centered. Let's try to be focused. And let's try to be collaborative.” And I think that that-- to me, that's the whole thing.

I mean, everybody filled out their sheets ahead of time as to what they wanted to talk about. And I told them, I said, “You know, I don't even read those. I think it's good that you did ‘em, but I don't necessarily read them ahead of time just because I want it to be organic.” And I think that people even change between the time that they write their, you know, topic that they want to talk about versus when they actually show up in the room. And we had a lot of people sort of change on the fly, go a little bit deeper and get a little bit more into what's really bothering them.

Tyson:             Yeah. I take a different approach than you. I think the point is the same though. I do read all of them. But those really are not for us. Those are really for the person filling them out, to get them thinking about it so that they're prepared, and you read through them.

But you're right, like half the time, it's not even the same thing. You don't even talk about the same topic or they'll start on that topic and you'll be like, “No. No, no, no. There's something else. We're going down a different path because there's something deeper that we need to address” which those are the ones where you see a lot, a lot of growth. And I love it when people are vulnerable in those because they get a lot of breakthroughs. It's so much fun. I really enjoy it.

Jim:                  I don't usually sort of give the people in the mastermind a prompt, but I did ask two questions that I'm very fond of asking that I ask people all the time. And those are the Dan Sullivan questions and the Jerry Colonna question. The Dan Sullivan question is, “If we were sitting here three years from now, what would have to have happened for you to feel like you make progress towards your goal?” And then, the Jerry Colonna question, which I really, really like is, “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions that I say that I don't want?” So, that's nice because one’s sort of future‑looking and the other one’s sort of backwards looking. And there were even times where I pulled out those questions in the middle of someone's session and, you know, they would be complaining about something in their firm. And I would say, you know, “How did you help contribute to that?” So that's powerful stuff, I think.

Tyson:             Yeah. The complicity is huge because you might say that you want one thing, but your actions are saying something completely different until you change those actions. I mean, for example, let's say you're scanning documents and you definitely should not be scanning documents. I'm just using that as a basic example. Well, then, guess what? Stop scanning documents and make someone else do it in your firm. That's just one example. If you are doing things inside your firm and you don't have to be doing those things, well then you need to stop doing them. It starts with that. So, I think that's a great point.

But let's get into the show, man. Do you want to introduce the topic?

Jim:                  All right. So, I hope that Paulina can pull this off. But I think we need to start off with a little quote from Tom Cruise. And I'll show you how old I am. I was thinking that this quote came from Days of Thunder but it's so famously from your favorite movie, my Maverick, Top Gun. And it's Tom Cruise's line, “I feel the need... the need for speed. Aw!” And I want to talk about speed today because I am constantly trying to find ways to speed things up. Every time that our law firm has moved faster, in every aspect of our firm, we've made more money. So, when we've--

You know, one great example of how we've made more money by speeding things up is by speeding up the contracting process. So, we've sped up, you know, how quickly someone gets to talk to an attorney after being vetted. We've sped up how quickly we can do a contract.

I mean, I sent out three contracts yesterday because our leads person was sick. And so, I hopped on some leads calls, which I enjoy doing. And I sent out three contracts in about five minutes of time. It's just click, click, clickety, click, and off it goes. And you just can't beat that.

And now, we even moved further down the line. So, at first, we just had an automated contract. And then, we started making it variable so that we could, you know, change out the language. Then, we started putting all the language into a table. And then, we started changing it so that it was all electronic and it was all sent through PandaDoc.

And then, we just moved up the chain to make it faster. So now, when the contract is signed, the invoice is automatically generated in QuickBooks. And then, we even moved up further. Now, they get the automated invoice, and they can pay it with a credit card, and it can store their information for the recurring billing for the rest of the legal fees. So, we keep moving up the chain and keep making things move faster. And that has helped us increase the money and the cash flow.

Tyson:             Yeah.

Here's how much I believe in this, Jim. And I feel comfortable saying this in The Guild because it's being released to The Guild first and then out to the general public. But our one‑phrase strategy, it's the key to making money, and this is a scaling up term, is “strike fast, strike often.” I was texting with Joey this morning. We're going to try to trademark it. So, strike fast, strike often.

Whenever I send out our weekly CEO report, at the bottom of it, I sign it “strike fast, strike often.” We talk about it at every meeting and every quarterly meeting. And we're talking about signing cases, investigating cases, getting insurance, selling cases, leads, communication, demands, lawsuits, discovery, depo’s, trials - strike fast, strike often in each one of those categories. It is absolutely crucial.

We have increased our conversions with our contracts by changing the contract to just two clicks. So, they receive a text message - click, click, and the contract is done, right? It is completely done.

We have increased our conversion by about a third because, I think, you've probably been through this situation where the contract goes out. They can't quite figure it out. They get frustrated with the process. And they, ultimately, just start ignoring your phone calls, right? That happens. We don't have that. It's click, click.

So, those little bitty things, if you can focus on each one of those categories, whatever those little categories are for you, whenever it comes to the process, if you can increase those just little bit - just little bit, by a little bit, and by a little bit, it'll make huge changes for you.

Jim:                  I mean, this is the world we live in now. The world is moving faster. And it's just going to move faster and faster. People are used to signing contracts electronically. People are used to the Amazon experience. And if you're some old fuddy duddy just dragging ass and doing things the old way, because that's how you always did them, I think you're really doing yourself a disservice. This is just sort of bare bones basic stuff. And so, obviously, we can trick it out and make it nicer and make it more interesting and fast but that's-- this is-- we're getting to the place in time where this is what people are starting to expect.

Tyson:             I want to make a point, though, really quick, though, because I think there is some value in going slow in some things because what happens is, if you do the work too quickly, the clients may not value it. So, I will say that you can't be too quick on certain things. And when you're doing things, you need to make sure you're conveying the value even though you're doing it very, very quickly.

So, I do think we do have to be somewhat careful about that because if you buy an estate plan today and it's done by tomorrow. Yeah, that's extremely fast, but I don't know if that's the best value. You know what I mean? Like, what-- I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Because I think that that could be like one of the things where like, “Yeah, you did it but that means like I could’ve done it online myself” or something.

Jim:                  Yeah, for sure. I mean, Adela, back in the day, was so fast with getting forms ready that I was a little bit reluctant giving them back to clients right away just because they thought, “Oh, boy, it must’ve been really easy.” Especially with the lawsuits, we have the lawsuit so tricked out now that, really, a lawsuit preparation and filing, from start to finish, takes about half an hour. But, if we do it the day after they hire us, to your point, it's going to lose that perceived value.

Tyson:             I'm going to do a little sidebar real quick, when it comes to your lawsuits. Are your lawsuits fairly generic? Like, for example, like a car crash is generic but like we put-- I had to put like the roadway direction. We’ve got to put the streets - all that kind of stuff. Are yours more generic than that or are they-- like you've still got to make some tweaks to ‘em?

Jim:                  So, here's basically the variables that go into the lawsuits - the plaintiff's name, their home address, the immigration benefit that they're applying for, their filing date, the efforts they've made to speed up their case, and then maybe different steps in the process. So, probably about 10 to 15 variables. Pretty simple. But, you know, we have different templates for each case type, so that's sort of the biggest variable. And then, after that, the language is all in there and it's just a matter of the template being populated with the person's information.

Tyson:             Got you. Because we're like 90% of the way there. It's like that additional 10%, that could take some time [inaudible 00:10:06].

Jim:                  That's the biggest difference. The last 10% is the hardest part. It takes the most part. But now you can do it almost without having to do too much thinking. And I appreciate your point. I want to get back to your point about not always going fast.

But what I'm inviting people to do is to have speed glasses. So, at times, put on your speed glasses. You can take them off and do your regular thing. But then, put your speed glasses back on with each aspect of your firm and say to yourself, “How can we optimize this? How can we make this faster? How can we make this experience more pleasant for the client?”

And so, you don't have to speed up everything all the time because there are certainly time for reflection, and deliberateness, and things like that. But if you sit back and say, “Okay. For today, I'm just going to look at my firm, as it exists right now, and I'm just going to like spot check places where things are bottlenecked, or draggy, or slow, or unautomated.” You know, those are the kinds of things that I want people to sort of think about - putting on those speed glasses.

Tyson:             You know, I love that point. This--

I'll make another point. This starts though with making sure that you've got your processes outlined, you know, like from start to finish. That way, you can start to zero in on those things because if you don't know what your processes are-- I know we've harped on this for years, we really have, but it's so, so important. Like you can't-- why does it matter if you've got a really fast contract process, if you don't know what the hell you're doing on the back end?

So, you still have to have all of this basically mapped out. And then, you can then hone in on those different areas because I think what's kind of cool is you've been talking about the lawsuits that you've been doing for a while. That's why I was asking you because it's been at least a couple of years that you had really zeroed in on that area because it was slowing y'all down so much and you're really more of a marketing person. And I thought it was kind of cool whenever you were talking about making that part of the process faster. But you wouldn't have known that if you hadn't really honed in on, ”Okay. What's our process look like?”

So, the first thing, before you do any of this stuff, before you go fast in anything, it's really figuring that part of it out. And it's such a basic thing. And many of you have it done but many of you don't. I’d say more people don't have it done than do have it done, by the way. It's a really, really important stuff.

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Jim:                  You're listening to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Today, it's just Jim and Tyson and we're talking about speed-- speed and processes.

Yeah, I think, there's a real point that you're making there. And I think we talked about this a fair amount in Maximum Law in Minimum Time and that is that there's sort of a lifecycle of systems. So, at first, when you're in sort of stage one of your firm, you know, there are processes. Nobody might know what those processes are. People might have their own processes. They might all be in people's heads. And that’s sort of like a very, very low level of, you know, awareness of what your processes are, you know. And it could be a process about how to mail a packet out, or how to, you know, file a lawsuit, or how to answer discovery. And that might just be the lawyer or the paralegal doing it off the top of their head and improvising each time. That's like the lowest level of systems.

Next level systems might be you record or write down what you do, as you do it, right? And then, you know, as you do that 10 times, then you sort of perfect that written system. And then, once you get to that point, that's where speed kicks in and you say, “Okay. Here's how we do it. Here's how we do it and it's pretty good and we're sort of okay with it.” And then it's like, voom, you know, stage three, stage four. How do we optimize it, maximize it, and hurry it the fuck up?

Tyson:             And we earned our E for the episode. You know, it's really important is that you don't get stuck. Like you don't-- because you spent so much time on something, right, don't get stuck thinking that you’ve got to keep that process. I personally have a bad habit of saying, “We've spent so much time on building this process that we’ve got to stick with it.” Right? We’ve got to stick with it. Sometimes, you’ve got to scrap it.

I just recently-- we're scrapping something really big that we’ve spent a lot of time on perfecting the process, but those are really sunk costs. I'll never get that time back. I'll never get that money back. But we're going to save a lot of time in the future. We're going to save a lot of money in the future.

So, don't get stuck in your ways. Just because you put that much time into it, just because you thought it was amazing whenever you thought it up. If it's not working out the way you wanted it to and if there's a better way, a more cost‑effective way, a faster way, a way that's less stressful for the team, adopt that new thing, right? Make it faster. Don't get stuck in it because you've spent so much time, money, and effort into it.

Jim:                  I think that's a great point.

Another thing, when it comes to speed, that I've really watched you sort of perfect and improve is, you know, obviously, when people are working on a contingency fee, you know, speed is important. And as my old mentor and friend, Dan McMichael, always said, you know, “Delay is the lifeblood of the defense attorney.”

So, you know, you've really done a lot of good work to move your firm forward to speed up your cases and you're cognizant of, you know, “Is this case taking too long and is it slowing us down?” And so, you know, case completion, I often think, “What if every lawyer only got paid when the benefit was received?” Whatever the benefit is. Instead of, you know, some get paid up front or on a payment plan. You know, what if everybody worked on a contingency fee, what systems would they change? How much faster would they go if they didn't get paid to the very end?

Tyson:             Yeah, it is a really good point. I think the cases would go a lot faster, generally, in the entire profession. No doubt in my mind. I mean, insurance companies, they do the opposite-- I'll just say the opposition. The opposition does play on that. Like when you want something, the other side, that doesn't want to give that something, delay is their friend. And so, that's why we break all these things down. And I know that-- it's not that I know these things off the top my head. I know these because we've written them down. We talk about them in these quarterly meetings.

The strike fast strike often - citing the cases, investigating the cases, insurance, selling the cases, leads, communication, demands, lawsuits, discovery, depo’s, and trials - all those different categories. Like, if you're fast and each one of those categories, it does not matter if your trial takes a long time to get to. You’ve done all those other things, you've got them on the backfoot. That is where you've got that advantage, right? Going fast.

And if you do personal injury, right? If you can just, this week, focus on one of those things - making that faster. And then the week after that, another one of the categories. And then, the week after that, another one of those categories. Keep doing that. You are going to be on offense. Especially on the plaintiff’s side, you always want to be on offense. You don't want to be on defense.

And it can be, when you're going against some of these bigger firms, it can be easy to go on defense, right, because they've got more money than you. They can spend more money than you. But if you can perfect those processes and be faster, you're going to-- it's going to be hard to lose, really. And you can do-- it doesn't matter if it's personal injury, criminal defense, whatever it is. If you can get faster, you are going to have the advantage.

Jim:                  I just think about back when I still handled a few PI cases and, you know, we didn't have very good systems at all. And, specifically, I remember how much I hated two things that you've really sped up and perfected and those are medical records and written discovery. And if you just think about the difference between the approach you have now versus the approach of a lot of attorneys which is just, “Oh, the records will get here when they get here. And oh, yeah, we probably need to hit them up a little bit more often. And oh, you know, we'll get written discovery done. You know, we’ve got 30 days so why not, you know? And we can always get an extension, you know. It's not like that other attorney, he’s not a jerk. He’ll give me the extension.” That's where you're losing. That's where you're not optimizing. And that's where your speed is hurting you.

Tyson:             Oh, man. You're so right. Yeah.

Now, we have-- we have certain protocols. We have certain standards. We actually have written timelines for when-- so, discovery comes in. The client has to be contacted within a certain number of days. The discovery has to be sent to them within a certain number of days. We've got to have a draft completed, I think, within 14 days. And then, we've got to have that-- we have a phone call with the client, I think, within 17 days. I don't remember off the top my head. And then, the signing - we've got the signing scheduled for 21 days, after that initial receipt. We've got 30 days in Missouri, so that gives us enough of a buffer.

We don't like to ask for those extensions. There's times where you do because it's hard to get the client in a room and have them sign off on the interrogatories but it's extremely rare.

When it was just me, it was very, very common for me to ask for that extension because we didn't have all that in place. But now, it's like-- and I also don't do any of the written discovery now which also was a huge logjam. So, yeah, having that stuff in place. And people take it very, very seriously, so they don't want to miss any of those deadlines. They take it personally if they missed one of those deadlines. So, yeah, it is night and day from what it was before and what it is now.

Jim:                  I remember, back in the old days - I think it was Craig Goldenfarb, but it was one of the bigger plaintiffs’ attorneys who-- like if you didn't get your discovery done on time, like the boss found out about it, like that's what I'm talking about making it a priority. But, you know, changing gears just a little bit, I think I'm prepared to say that 80% or 90% of law firm problems are that they aren't going fast enough and that they don't have enough people on their team to allow them to go fast enough. I mean, you and I have talked to lots of law firm owners who, I think, are just way too lackadaisical, way too casual, and not having that real sense of urgency. I think there's got to be a sense of urgency in growth and in improving. And I think that that's sort of-- that has to come from somewhere and it probably has to come from the owner.

Tyson:             Yeah. Other than that, one thing I said about going too fast, you know, that way, the clients, you know, see the value. Like, other than that one thing, I don't know of one benefit-- unless you're on the defense side, right? If you are doing what most of us do, you know, criminal defense, personal-- although-- I guess, I could see criminal offense going slow, like you want to drag up the case a little bit, because you don't-- you want to get-- you want the victims to get worn out. I mean, I can see that. I can make some arguments for that.

But doing the essential tasks that need to be done, though, right, doing those essential tasks, I don't know-- Like, for example, like getting your own discovery out the door. By doing those essential tasks, I don't-- I can't think of, really, any other reasons why you'd want to go slow. I mean, I completely think you're right on that. I think all those problems, like when it comes to, you know, client communication and whenever it's filing deadlines, whatever the major things are, that are big hiccups, I'd say you're right. Almost all those can be solved by going fast. You're totally right about that.

Jim:                  And not just going fast, going fast‑er. Like what if, whenever someone brought us a problem, we just said, “How could you go faster?” And, you know. And, a lot of times, it's these mental blocks that people have. It's so much more that, you know, you're quibbling with me or with yourself about whether to do X, Y, or Z when it'd be better for you just to pick one and go with it. And, you know, your-- actually, your delay in deciding is actually hindering you more than the chance of making a wrong decision, I think.

And Norman Schwarzkopf talked about this, I think, in the Iraq War is that, you know, it's better to have a decision made than to worry about making a wrong decision. I'm butchering it. But that's what I'm talking about is I think that so many people get so tight and bullocksed up that they're afraid to make a decision and then everything else is just passing ‘em by.

Tyson:             It's funny. And I wish I could tell you where this came from. I'll have to look it up.

But there's a study that was done about successful people. And one of the traits of successful people were that they make decisions like fairly quickly, like it's their ability to make fast decisions. And I've always wondered like, “Is it their ability to make fast decisions or is it the fact that they just decided on something?” You know what I mean? Like it's not that it's A, B, C, or D are correct. It’s that they chose A, B, C, or D. And I've always wondered that. But that is one of the traits of successful people is making that decision, right? So, I've always wondered that.

So, your point is actually-- it's actually accurate. Like, it's been proven to be accurate. So, I think, that's 100% correct.

Jim:                  It's probably both. It's probably-- the fact that a decision is made and that you're moving towards the right decision. I mean, yesterday, we had a leadership meeting. And then, we had a meeting with sort of the before unit. So, our leads team leader, our marketing leader, and our client communication leader, and sort of the idea was thrown out that, you know, I'm doing my YouTube Live shows that I should have one of the leads team members on each show to sort of be like the sidekick, and sort of bring in the people on camera, and all that stuff.

And by the meeting we had, later on in the day, like that was all set up. And Amany looks at me and she's like, “What? We just sort of started talking about this.” And I'm like, “I have a new schedule now. I had it all built out, ready to go. We're like-- we're going to do it, start this week.” And she was like, “What the heck?”

And that reminds me, my wonderful wife, is very deliberate and likes to move slowly. She's like more lawyers. Most lawyers are like her than they are like me. And so, I think that, as lawyers, especially, we have to sort of push back against our natural tendencies to want to slow things down, control things a little bit, and, you know, take our time.

Tyson:             That's such a good point. And that's really-- that's how we win, right? That's how we win against the natural tendencies of most lawyers where they do operate slowly. I mean, that’s how you win - you go fast.

But, Jimmy, we're getting close to time so I'm going to wrap things up, unless you have any final thoughts.

Jim:                  I'm good.

Tyson:             All right. I'm going to wrap things up.

Before I get to all the other stuff, please give us a five‑star review. Please go there and give us a five‑star review. It helps spread that love so please spread some love today and give a five‑star review. And then, if you want to share the podcast with somebody, do that as well. Help spread the love even more.

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I will tell you, Jim, the conversations I had outside the mastermind this last weekend was just amazing. And those were all Guild members. So, maxlawguild.com. And then, remember to get your tickets to the conference, MaxLawCon2022.com.

Jimmy, what's your hack week the week?

Jim:                  I may have recommended this book before but, given the fact that we were talking about speed, I can't tell you how much I love this book called Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman. He founded LinkedIn. And it's all about moving fast. And there aren't that many books about, you know, fast growth companies. It's actually hard to find.

I mean, I'm looking forward to I'm going on a retreat in the middle of April, with a bunch of startup owners, you know, these really fast‑growing companies. And one of the reasons I did that is because I want to be around other people who are having to grow really quickly, like we've doubled in size each of the last two years and now we're getting sort of beyond my mental bandwidth for that. And so, you know, any lesson or tips that we can find on speed, as it relates to growth, is important. And that book is really great.

Tyson:             I actually don't think you have recommended that book, so that's-- I'm going to check that one out. That's cool. Reid Hoffman’s smart, a very smart guy, so. He's also got a podcast, too. It's pretty good.

Jim:                  It’s great. Yeah.

Tyson:             Yeah. Good stuff.

Well-- and I also-- I want to hear more about this retreat. I know you mentioned it to me before, but I want to hear more later, so.

And my tip of the week is this really got me thinking, whenever we're talking about the topic earlier and I was hesitant to talk about strike fast strike off. I was like, “You know what? Let me get this damn trademark.” We even used Joey for our trademark for MaxLaw and I'm going to use it for strike fast, strike often. So, I'm going to start that process today. I'm going to pay him and, hopefully, by the time this episode airs, we'll have our paperwork filed at least. That way we've got-- I don't want people trying to steal that trademark. But the point is, get your trademark in. I recommend Joey. Joey's really, really good, indielaw.com.

But, really, the tip is, if you've got something that is important to your firm, trademark it. So, trademark if you can. Joey Vitale is a Guild member, so. And everyone I've talked to has had really good results from him. So, I recommend you checking it out. So, that's my tip of the week.

Jimmy, lots of fun, man. As always.

Jim:                  Good stuff, brother.

Tyson:             All right, man.

Jim:                  All right, later.