The Secret Plan To Launch Your Firm Into 2024: Operations

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE 

Are you a firm owner who is struggling with solving operational issues for the firm? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Jim and Tyson discuss strategies for law firm success through defining operational clarity and efficiency. This is part three of a five part series discussing how firms can have a successful launch in 2024.

Jim shares that he would spend his hour going over the organizational charts of the firm to see what the 5 most important things for each role are. It is important to meet with each person and get an understanding of how they are doing and if their roles or responsibilities have changed since they began. This will provide more clarity on what that role consists of. Law firms are always changing and the way people did things a year prior or the responsibilities staff have will change as time goes on. It is important to ensure this is being reviewed each year.

Tyson shares the need to think about a strategy when you choose to grow a law firm. Growing a firm is expensive, especially if you want to create a new team. For example, a team or a pod can consist of a case manager, an attorney and a litigation assistant. That is a team of 3 people with 3 salaries, which can be expensive if you want to grow. Think about how to expand in order to get that new team without hiring everyone all at once. Also think about who should be hired first and where to leverage across other areas until you are ready to hire the second and third person. Tyson also delves into looking at processes and where to trim the fat. Looking at areas where too much is going on and where workflows can be improved is another way to get clarity and efficiency for a firm.

Listen in to learn more!

Episode Highlights:

• 1:00 The importance of assessing each person in the firm to see how they're doing
• 4:05 Focusing on evaluating processes and optimizing workflows

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Transcripts: The Secret Plan To Launch Your Firm Into 2024: Operations

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Today's episode is day three of a five part series to help you launch your firm into 2024. Each day this week, we're dropping a new episode to guide you in setting up your firm for next year in one hour per day. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes, go back and listen to them first and then come back here. Today's hour will be spent on operations.

Speaker 2 (00:00:21) - Let's go run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson new tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:46) - All right. So let's now go over to operations Jimbo. So we are now on day three. It is Thursday. This would make it the 28th. And you've got your hour Jimmy. Go.

Jim Hacking (00:01:00) - So if I have one hour to look at my operations, I'm going to spend that hour looking at our accountability chart or org chart, trying to figure out what are the five most important things for each role.

Jim Hacking (00:01:12) - I'm going to ask myself, are these five things being met? How regularly are they? How would I score them on this? We just did this with our whole team. We assessed each person in the firm to see how they're doing and how the requirements of the job are being met or not, and you'll just get great clarity if you understand what the five most important things are for that job. Hopefully you've done that work already. If you haven't, then I think if you don't have clarity yourself as a law firm owner as to what this person's role is and what they should be doing, then how can you expect them to have clarity on what they're supposed to be doing? And a lot of times it's simply because people are doing too many things right. So one of the nice things about having areas of responsibility and things that people know that they're in charge of is that it reduces overwhelm and it allows for accountability. So I think being crystal clear as you come out of the gates as to how your firm is operating now, because it's fundamentally going to be different than just 12 months ago.

Jim Hacking (00:02:16) - So just I think you surprise yourself. For us, there's been growth, but there doesn't necessarily have to be growth. It just turnover or, you know, changes in functions or, you know, greater prioritization given to other parts of the firm. So I think that, you know, a law firm, an LLC, a corporation is a living, breathing thing, just like a family or a person. And you've got to be able to track those changes that have happened, the growth of the firm and then adapt accordingly.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:45) - Yeah. And I would say this be thinking about what your strategy is if you do choose to grow. So we we have actually a very, a very specific way that we, we are adding each team. And it's something that we, we had to sort of think out because anybody that works in pods, if you think about it, it's very expensive. Every time you had a new team, okay, every time you had a new team, you're especially people that have three or 4 or 5 people in their team.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:12) - If you've got, you know, 1 or 2 people, it's cheap. Or if it's one person, it's not a team. But if you have two, two or more, you know, it can be pretty expensive. So instead of adding a case manager plus an attorney and then maybe, you know, litigation assistant like that's three people. That's a lot of salaries. That's a lot of overhead. How are you going to expand to get to that new team without having to add that team all at one time? So be thinking about things like that. How are you going to whenever you're looking at that org chart like Jim's talking about, um, how do you how do you do that? Which person do you hire first and then which one do you hire second? Which one do you hire? Third. And then how do you make sure that's a separate team by itself. So those are the things you're going to be thinking about especially. And that's one of the benefits of using the pod system is it's also sort of the downfall too because not downfall, but one of the downsides where it can be more expensive to add that team, but it does give you that flexibility that you don't have to just add a team at a time.

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:05) - With my hour, though, Jim would would all be. It's interesting because you you were focusing on people. I would focus on process where I'm I'm going through all of our processes and figuring out where can I trim the fat, where, where are the things that we're just doing extra things, or where are their redundancies? Where are their issues with the workflows? Right before this call, I had just gotten done working meeting with Blue Team, and I was I got a lot of great information from them when it comes to workflows and maybe switching where tasks need to be. So, you know, some tasks pop up whenever we change it to one phase, and maybe it should be the phase before that. So figuring out, looking at each one of these, looking at and and if you don't have all these in some centralized location, maybe you spend your hour working on that where you put everything in one place. That way you have an idea to, you know, what is the what is everything look like? What do all the workflows look like? Obviously, you're not going to get all of your workflows in one place in one hour, but you can at least start on it.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:01) - Or you can get big picture of what it looks like. So during that time, that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at, you know, it's process optimization. How do my workflows look and what what needs to change?

Speaker 2 (00:05:13) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host, and to access more content, go to Maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.