When you’re faced with a scenario like this, how can you hold yourself accountable? In this episode, Jim and Tyson discuss spot-checking yourself for accountability.
There are often a million things running through your mind when something like this happens. Start by identifying the problem and then begin looking for solutions. It may not always be about putting a better system in place.
It’s important to think about the process and the things that need to be fixed. When you find that the ball has been dropped, review your operations and build in what is necessary to prevent this from happening again in the future.
2:27 how to keep people accountable
6:02 our system doesn’t have alarm bells
10:21 start to finish
14:22 that’s how it’s framed
17:51 my biggest concern
20:37 file reviews on a regular basis
Jim’s Hack: There’s a huge difference between having nothing on your calendar and having one thing on your calendar. Have big blocks of time away from the office where you can focus and do the high-level work that only you can do.
Tyson’s Tip: Write down the different lessons learned in a journal to give to your children when they’re older. Fill it with wisdom to pass along the way so they can treasure it forever.
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.
Resources:
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Transcript: Holding Yourself Accountable with Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux
Speaker 1
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.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson matrix. What’s up? Jimmy, it looks like
Jim Hacking
you’re doing a little bit of remodeling in your office today.
Tyson Mutrux
I am and it’s funny on camera, it doesn’t look that bad. Actually, it actually looks pretty good. But if I step aside, as I showed you a second ago, it’s kind of messy, but my, my head and my body are blocking most of the disaster that’s behind me. And if you saw my desk, you’d be like, holy crap, what the hell’s going on. But yeah, it’s gonna be fun. The new setup, I think people are really gonna like it, I think we’re probably a week away from getting done, because like the centerpiece of it is still being delivered, it’s being shipped. So you’ll see, you don’t even know what it is,
Jim Hacking
well, we are getting ready, we’re pretty darn close on buying a building. And if we buy the building, then I was scoping out my studio. So I’m really excited about building that out, I’m going to try to make a studio workplace that sort of works both ways without having to switch from one side of the room to the other if I can pull it off. And I also want to be able to stand because I really enjoy standing when we record.
Tyson Mutrux
Nice. I mean, that’ll be tough to pull off, I’m Mine’s actually going to be in two spots, I’m gonna have my work spot, and then my recording spot. So I would like to be able to do that. If you can pull it off, I’ll be really, really impressed. But it is interesting how those two spaces kind of interfere with the object of what you’re trying to do.
Jim Hacking
Correct. And so you want to get to our topic today.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s, let’s talk about accountability. So let’s hear it you got a scenario or situation for us to discuss?
Jim Hacking
Well, interestingly, so I swear to God, this will sound really weird. But since I started 75, hard, I’ve been having things happen where I think of some weird little thing. And then it happens, like, I get to the gym at five in the morning. I’m the first one there. I’ve never had my locker selected by somebody else before I get there. And as I was walking in, I was like, boy, that’d be weird. If somebody had my locker when I got there, I got there at 504. And somebody had my locker. So So then this has happened like six or seven times in the last two weeks. Today, I send you a text saying, hey, I want to talk about how to keep people accountable, without either completely not paying attention, or losing my shit when something happens. And then of course, the world, the universe. God gave me a perfect scenario for us to talk this through. So is that okay?
Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. And you’re it was funny, because I feel like your text was kind of almost like stream of thought. And I was trying to interpret what Jim hacking was trying to say to me. But so I’m so curious to hear now what the scenario is.
Jim Hacking
Okay. So as you know, we’re both running pretty large firms much larger than we used to. And when we ran the firms in the old days, we were handling the cases. And so the question is, how do we make sure that cases are going out the way we want that our systems are working, and that quality control is in place, and that things are being done the way we want them to be done? Well, one of the best ways to do that is to spot check, our buddy Jay Wayne told me that, you know, he just randomly picks five or seven cases looks them all over because he doesn’t want to have to go through all of them. And he has reporting and all these other things. But the spot check for accountability just can’t be beat. So about 10 minutes after I sent you that text saying this is what I wanted to talk about, I got a very nice email from a very nice lady in India, she hired our firm to get her to the United States. So you know, a lot of times in those scenarios, Tyson, we deal with the US citizen, the most like the overseas spouse, they may not be as savvy, they may not be as electronically savvy, they might not be as involved in the whole thing. That’s not always true. You know, sometimes you have someone over there who’s like, get me over there, get me over there, get me over there. And they’re like, they’re like all on top of things. So I said, Well, this is a great opportunity to spot check one of our cases. So I go into File mine. And the first thing I learned is that the case was first originated in May, early May of 2022. So it’s four months old. Tomorrow, tomorrow will be four months old. And I go to the bottom of the feed and I work my way up. And looks like everything at the beginning was pretty good. Where the intake person acknowledged that we open the matter excited to work with you sent the introductory email sent the text, all documented and file line. And then it looks like the client, the US citizen client was a little bit slow in getting us documents. And there was some back and forth, back and forth. But when I looked at the list of documents that we were, that we were asking for, I’m like we don’t need half of this stuff. To get the case out the door, we’re going to need it later at the second stage of things when we get to the State Department, mostly about taxes, but we don’t need that stuff now. Right. So that was one thing that sort of caught my eye. And then and then there started to be sort of some large gaps between communications, there was a month, between when we sent the list of documents that were missing to be filed, and then the follow up a whole month went by from June to July. And then the client sort of revived and this is not a typical, this does have you have some clients like this, it doesn’t happen all the time. But it’s certainly within the realm of client conduct that we see. So then the paralegal goes back and forth, gets the documents. And one other thing I noticed in the feed is that there are no attorney notes, there’s no attorney notes. So I click over to Team and file and it appears that Tyson there hasn’t been an attorney assigned to the case. There’s no attorney assigned to the case. Now. Could it be that the four month delay was related to the fact that there’s no attorney overseeing things? Or that our system doesn’t have alarm bells for when a case has been languishing for four months? So I did a little timeline for the team. And I said, I basically explained it the same way I do. I said, I like getting emails like this from clients, like I was CCD on an email from the client. And I said, I like getting emails like this. And I said, so I decided to take a look. And I walked them through the timeline that I just gave you. And I sent that off right before we got on this call. So it’d be interesting to see now, I didn’t lose my temper. I asked a lot of questions. I said, What I’m worried about, I’m worried about that our system wasn’t sounding the alarm bell that four months went by, I’m worried that I think we’ve bloated, the first part of the procedure that we don’t really need to be doing to require all these documents that we could really get it out the door. Because you know, me, I’m always focused on getting it out the door. Because, you know, USCIS takes a long time anyway. So you got to get that thing on file. If you have to add a thing or two later, that’s better than just waiting, right? And really, our system set up. So you don’t have to add stuff later. But I think they’ve bloated it up with all this other stuff that they’re going to need later, to make life easier on them. But it’s not about speed. And then of course, I’m worried about the fact that there’s no attorney assigned to the case. So when they do attorney case review, guess what, it’s not on anybody’s list. So I’m really excited about doing it. And I was channeling Jason sulk, and I’m like, identify the problem with one minute start looking for solutions and not get upset. But there’s a wee bit of me, a wee bit of me that is upset. And that is more worried. And that’s sort of the way I framed it in the email. So I’d love to hear your thoughts. And I don’t need you to just tell me you need better systems. I know that, but I’m excited to hear what you have to say.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I have got thoughts. I’m not going to tell you what the thoughts are yet. I’m just going to ask you some questions. So when it comes to those basic things like assigning an attorney, is that a checklist item anywhere?
Jim Hacking
It’s a task that’s given to the supervising attorney? Well,
Tyson Mutrux
so the the supervising attorney assigns an attorney to it,
Jim Hacking
and a paralegal and two paralegals. Yeah.
Tyson Mutrux
At what point is that assignment assigned? So at what point does that task assigned to that senior attorney
Jim Hacking
now, right when the matter is opened? I don’t know how it was back in May. I think it wasn’t in all fairness to the supervising attorney. I don’t think it was I mean, I looked there’s not a task at the bottom that says I did it. And actually, that’s a good point, though. That’s a problem because the task is sort of open up the file and assign the case it doesn’t say open up the file and assign attorney one task and open up the file and assign a paralegal the other tasks. So that might be one little place
Tyson Mutrux
at a curiosity, why is the supervising attorney assigning the case to someone
Jim Hacking
to help manage caseload because they have the best sense of who’s sort of swamped at the moment? I think it should be automatic and just a rolling thing, but people around here don’t agree with me.
Tyson Mutrux
I don’t know if I agree with that either. We don’t have it automatically assigned either, because we want certain types of cases in certain pods. So I think
Jim Hacking
there’s that too. There’s one pod that does sort of more of these overseas cases in the st that pod but anyway,
Tyson Mutrux
why isn’t that handled by the leads team after the case has converted? leads him doesn’t touch cases? Okay, so cases converted and then it goes over to who does it then it go automatically go over a supervising attorney, or someone else.
Jim Hacking
So Kelsey has got a tricked out. So the panna doc when the client signs a contract, it opens up a matter in QuickBooks, and it opens up a matter in file vine. When the matters open and filed, it creates a task to the supervising attorney to assign the case. I don’t know that it has to be the supervising attorney. But that’s how it is right now. Because that was a money because when we were smaller, she had everybody in the office and she could say, oh, I can see Tim’s really busy. I’m gonna give this case to Caitlin.
Tyson Mutrux
So here’s how we have I know we’re kind of getting the details, but I think this is important. So we have our cares team, which is our leads team we call our cares team because it’s more client facing name. The way we have it is we don’t want there to be. And I know I’ve talked about this in the guild I’ve talked about in the podcast, but we don’t want there to be this drop off between, okay, leads team handling it, and then okay, you’re just shuffled off and on to someone else. And under another team, we want that continuity. So the cares team is also responsible for doing client check ins throughout the case. That way there is that continuity all the way from start to finish. And that way, there’s that that connection, because, you know, people develop these connections with with someone right at the start of the case, and they really liked that person, then they feel like, Oh, I really liked that person, I want to stick around with that person. So we do have that continuity. But we have our people. And I mean, you know what’s best for your firm, but we have our cares team assign those cases, at the very beginning. It’s one of their checklist items. And we developed these checklist items. We’re very methodical about it with by like the the most important things, it’s not all the nitty gritty things, it’s all the most important things. And one of those is and that’s why I think it’s interesting is assigning that case to an attorney so that that does not happen. And that happens within the first day, I’ve actually pulled mine up as you were talking my checklist items. And on day zero, once the contract sign that is whenever the team is assigned. So it happens right away, it doesn’t move on to that next stage, it remains a new case until it goes basically new case over to intake, because then that’s whenever the transition happens, the team, that actual team does the full intake, but it does not move on to the next step until the team is assigned, you might want to consider doing something like that before any legal work is done on us sign it so that you it sounds like you might have done that, right, you’ve got some sort of accountability built in now,
Jim Hacking
while I’m still pissed at you from last week for making me think about making me think about how I’m always on to the next case and not fully diving in, like what you’re saying could conceivably work, I would need a lot more of a leads team because they’re working on the next cases. And I think there might be a way to do that transition that might I don’t want the leads. I mean, there we have a pretty hard wall between leads and operations. And maybe that’s part of the problem. I don’t think that’s particularly the problem here. But I understand your point. So I think that we need to think about what you’re saying.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I mean, what you have going on is working for you. But I think you probably get what I’m talking about to where it goes. People can feel like they’re being shuffled around from team to team.
Jim Hacking
That’s, that’s the part that I was mad about that. So that sorry, I forgot to clarify. So you pointed out last week, Jim walked me through how a client gets to talk to an attorney. And it was like, they talked to the client coordinators first, then they talked to the intake team, then they go to the lawyer, then they go back to the intake team. And it’s like a ping pong ball. And so then what I’m hearing you say now is that continues through the whole scenario. So now I’m doubly pissed at you. It’s two episodes in a row where you’ve given me more work to do and things to fix
Tyson Mutrux
part of what it’s going to kind of create a problem for the viewer to do it. It does require a bigger team, you know, it’s, but it also relieves some of that stress on your people throughout the case, too. And it will also it allows the client to give more honest feedback to because think about this, let’s say that I’m representing you, are you going to say to me that you’re not happy with me? Maybe but most likely not. But you would tell a third party, it’s almost like they’re an independent third party, that they’re willing to tell, hey, you know what I really wish Tyson were a little bit more communicative. Right? I like if something like that, you’re, you’re less likely to say that to me. So it is an independent sounding board. And that’s the purpose of it. And that’s why I like it. It’s not for everybody, I get that. But it’s just something something to consider. And with this. So this is this actually is all related. This is actually all related. So this is good that we’re talking to this. This also, then the reason why some of these are built in we’ve got a two week check in that’s built in for that the cares team does. So this isn’t done by the team. This is done by the cares team. This is that continuity. So the two week check in. So within the first two weeks, they call to check in to see how things are going. And then and that’s how it’s framed. Where, you know, Hey, Jim, this is Tyson just calling to see how you’re doing and see if see if there’s anything we could do for you. And we have a list of questions that they go and we have them rate their experience to that point. And if it’s low at that point, we know that we need to adjust course and that we’ve missed something and it’s also an opportunity for us not to identify any issues like what you’re talking about, hey, no attorney has been assigned to this we need to get an attorney signed to this so we can get things moving. And that’s where that the powers that carriers team comes in.
Jim Hacking
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Tyson Mutrux
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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast Tyson’s helping me diagnose some problems with one of our cases that sort of illustrates bigger problems. And as often these given me great wisdom, and I appreciate that. Yeah, I like that idea of having the intake person who signed up because they people really liked the intake people like they really liked. And then they also, if I had to identify a home coming from operations, it’s like, they wish they heard from their peer league a little bit more. And they wish that things were as fun and energetic as they were with the Leeds team. So that’s a point well taken. What about the issue of just sort of what I found that the case hasn’t been assigned that people aren’t like that there was a month where nothing happened? Any ideas on how to especially that one like sound the alarm when something like that happens?
Tyson Mutrux
Something that cause Schiff wheezing. eyston is based on a report and something that Catia has built out for us is that, and you can do this easily and five on if there’s been no contact. And do you have a separate client contact tab? Or is it all in the Activity tab? I don’t know. Okay. So we build a separate client contact tab, we have one for enemy contact, one for client contact, enemy Nice. Yeah, and that kind of fun. So yeah, enemy contact, and then client contact, the client contact one, he’s just built out where if it’s an automatic task now used to be come to a report for me. But now it’s a an actual automatic task, where if there’s been no client contact within three weeks, what happens is it creates a task for the Triple C to reach out to him. And that’s automatically built out. And that’s in addition to other tasks that are built in throughout the case process. And that’s also in addition to the client check ins that our people do. And it just brings up onto our radar that, hey, something’s amiss here, we need to reach out. And sometimes it’s just as simple as you know, we haven’t put a note in the file. And so Okay, I did speak to this client, I just need to put a note in the file and allows us to address that. So there’s things like that, that you can build in that you should build in, that automatically create a task for your people. And that can easily be done, Kelsey can figure that part out. And another thing and you’ll want to pass this on to Kelsey, in our client contact app whenever you enter a note, because my biggest concern about doing it, the way that we do it was that I want the the Activities tab to be updated. And he’s built a zap, where when you enter something into the client contact tab, it automatically puts it into the Activity tab. That way, when you’re looking the Activities tab, you can see what’s going on. And you have like a full picture of things.
Jim Hacking
When you tell you what the activity said was that different than the feed? The like
Tyson Mutrux
the Activities tab is like the fetus for all files, the Activities tab is for that.
Jim Hacking
For that for that yeah, the feed for that file. Right, exactly. Right. Okay. I gotcha. All right. So I mean, what are your thoughts about all this stuff was sitting back and like being a law firm owner? And I would imagine that this gives you some consternation like it did for me. I mean, do you ever have situations like this?
Tyson Mutrux
We all do. I think there are people that will tell you, Oh, I know, we never have a case fall through the cracks like that. That’s not that’s not true that we all have these situations where something something is ignored, or a checklist item is checked off, and it shouldn’t have, it concerns me that it is September. And this is it was May that concerns me that’s a long time. I mean, that really
Jim Hacking
big month that those two things are really what bothered me. And, you know, in all fairness, the US citizen spouse did go a little bit slowly, but we have to build in for that like, okay, you know, you have a slow walking client. I mean, sometimes these guys aren’t in such a hurry to get their spouse here. I’m not saying that about this case. But sometimes that’s actually true. Right? So we have different personas. And we have to think about the personas of the people, like some people are super organized and get you everything on the very first day. Some people get you stuff, you know, after you nag them for a week and a half, right. And so we’ve got to account for that. We’ve got to take that into account. And I think one of the things over there in the operations is that they’ve been busy. So they focus on the people that are moving fast at the expense of the people that move slow, when in fact they probably need to reverse it a little bit.
Tyson Mutrux
I’ve got two thoughts. One is so Kay status is a new product that we’re using. And we’re still in beta. We’re rolling it out with you know, a few clients. We’re not doing it with all of our clients just so we work out all the kinks and they’ve got a button in there there’s really handy Jimbo, really handy where if the clients not getting you what you need, which is that’s a common problem, right? Actually, I would say it’s not an uncommon problem. That’s what I’ll say, there are some days where clients won’t get you everything you need. And you can put the case on hold in case status. And a big red ribbon appears on the app that says your case is on hold until you whatever, you know. And so that is something I’m really interested to see how that works going forward. I can’t I don’t have enough feedback to tell you right now. But I do like the idea of it. So that’s one thing. The other thing is, is that and this is more concerning to me than anything, I’m going to make an assumption that you all are doing file reviews on a regular basis and that they are was not cut on a on a file review.
Jim Hacking
Perfect. So let me tackle both of those. I love the first one with the red ribbon. And here’s why. You know, it took the client a month to get us some stuff, but you know, damn well, that man, he’s talking to his wife every night. Oh, yeah, baby. I’m working on that case I’m working on I sent them everything. I’m just I don’t know, I haven’t heard back from them. I don’t know what the deal is. And if baby gets on the app and sees this big red line, she’s gonna be you son of a bitch. You get those passport photos over to him. I’m tired of sitting here in India. I want to be in the United States get that done? Yes. And as far as case review, you know, I hate that case review. You know, that’s like the bane of my existence. That was like the first thing that I got rid of. And I believe it’s highly ineffective, highly ineffective. So they just gave me proof of that. I mean, first of all, you can’t do attorney case review. If there’s no attorney assigned to the case. That’s a problem. But yeah, I get your point. I mean, I think with case review there, sometimes there’s this mindless, pending, pending pending, waiting on Docs waiting on Docs pending, you know, like where there’s no actual thought so I trust file vine, to alert me better than I trust human beings to alert me these days.
Tyson Mutrux
We’ll Totally agree. And you can build in with like, yes or no buttons you built in on things where you it’ll it can alert you on that? Let me ask you something the supervising attorney, are they also practicing like actually working on cases? Not many. Okay, that alleviates my concern. My concern was maybe the supervising attorney is a bottleneck and isn’t getting to some of these things. But
Jim Hacking
no, okay. No, we’re gonna find out though he actually, I think that the managing attorney in May is different than the managing attorney now. So we’ll see. There’s lots to find out.
Tyson Mutrux
So tell me something that I want to ask you about. I want to be able to improve on this one. How are you? I mean, what are you doing when it comes to reporting to make sure that files aren’t falling through the cracks? Like so what are some of the things that you will do in your files?
Jim Hacking
That’s a great question. Clearly not enough. I’m not an operation. So I’m gonna go find out the answer to your question.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay. I like that. And we’ll report back. All right, Jimmy, I think that’s enough. We’ve, I think we’ve analyzed your firm and done, I think we’ve done a lot of good work here. So let’s go to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, there’s just so much great information being shared there. If you want a higher level conversation, join us in the guild go to max law guild.com. That’s Max law. guild.com. Just it’s just a fantastic place to be. I love love hanging out in the guild. And while you’re listening to our tips in our hacks, please give us a five star review, we would really, really appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,
Jim Hacking
my hack of the week is something that I posted in a guild yesterday, which is, there’s a huge difference between having nothing on your calendar and having one thing on your calendar. It’s a huge difference having big blocks of time, where you can just think, or work doing deep work. That’s so much more beneficial, I think, at least to me, than having to remember, like if I have something at 1030, and I’m free all morning, that 1030 thing is just nagging my brain the whole time leading up to it so that I don’t forget it so that I’m thinking about what’s going to happen at it. I really encourage everyone to have big blocks of time, away from the office away from other people or in the office when other people aren’t around, where you can focus and do the high level work that only you can do as the law firm owner.
Tyson Mutrux
I like it. That’s very, very good. So for my tip of the week, I have been writing in this journal, it’s one that Amy got me a while ago, you can actually write in the rain, it’s called right in the rain, the pages can get wet and you can still write on it. It’s kind of cool, but that’s actually not what my tip is. I guess that’s a tip within a tip. I’ve been writing down little bullet points for my children, that I’m going to give them this book whenever they’re older. And it’s just little, you know, lessons learned along the way. And I’m actually kind of excited. I’ve been carrying my truck and just whenever I think of something, I’ll write it in there. And I’ll give you like number 14 is tell people when you love them, so like just little bullet points like that number 10. Try as many things as you can. And, um, my, the whole thing is, is I’m gonna fill this book with, you know, little bits of wisdom that I’ve learned along the way. And hopefully, it’ll be a nice little gift that they’ll treasure forever. But number one, let me give you a number one serious thing. But number one, be nice to each other, you’re going to remember the times you had together forever. So things like that, you know. So I think it’s a fun little thing to hopefully little treasure forever.
Jim Hacking
That’s a great thing. You know, I’ll say this to you. I said it to somebody else yesterday that I was at home by myself yesterday, in my unblocked time where I had, you could do whatever I wanted. And I looked at a picture of the boys when they were young, and I thought to myself, I wasn’t thinking that oh, that was a long time ago, I was thinking, I keep getting further and further away from that. Like, it’s like a train that’s leaving me right and so enjoy these times with Hudson going to kindergarten and enjoy Jackson and boys Cub Scouts, all that stuff, because it’s gone way too fast.
Tyson Mutrux
So I can’t I don’t know where I actually, you know, I think I saw this on a Facebook ad. I saw that. But how old is Nora? Nora is 13 Okay, so
Jim Hacking
I’m gonna really make you sad. Oh, but 85% thing I know about that. You have
Tyson Mutrux
only 1825 days of her being in your house. Yeah. That’s if she leaves at 18 go to college. That’s it. You know? I mean, that’s all he got. And so you need to cherish every day. Yep, for sure. Thanks, brother. You bet man, as always enjoyed it. So I will talk to you later later. Say.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
