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Running a Virtual Law Firm ft. Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan ML119
Categories: Podcast
LET'S PARTNER UP AND MAXIMIZE YOUR FIRM


In this episode, Jim & Tyson interview Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan of MyVirtual.Lawyer, an entirely online law firm. Listen as they go over their business model set up! Mindset, marketing, lessons learned, biggest struggles and more!

 

Topics:

    • Overview about their firm
      • MyVirtual.Lawyer is an entirely online law firm
      • They offer non traditional services: limited scope representations
      • Customize the entire experience based on individual’s needs and their budget
      • Remote interactions through software: client portal
    • Differentiation from traditional practices
      • Litigation in family law
      • Outsourcing
      • Technology
    • Feedback from clients
      • Always positive
      • No pushbacks
    • Lessons learned
      • Trial and error
      • Finding the right technology
      • Pivot – We have to try it and see if it works and if it doesn’t we pivot
      • Flexible in services and technology
    • Automation time savers implemented
      • Practice manager software
      • Thinking our intake tools with our documents
      • Intake forms
      • Automation
    • Empowering clients

 

  • Tech stack

 

    • Marketing the virtual practice
      • UPS box for SEO purposes
      • Marketing not specific to a location
      • Social media marketing
    • Arrangement with lawyers
      • Law firm in Arkansas
      • Licenses to use the brand in the states that it is legal
    • Division of labor
    • A team made of women
    • A portable career
    • Where do they see this going?

 

  • Expanding to other states
  • The mindset

 

    • What it is that clients need and how can we do it better?
    • Improvement and growth
    • Implementation of new ideas
    • Planification
    • Working in the business and on the business

 

Jim’s hack: An app, Airtable. A database that also lets you collaborate and store documents inside the collaboration. It’s like a Google Sheets on steroids.

 

Brooke’s tip: Try to be as efficient as possible because that is going to free up time and push and move forward.

 

Laura’s hack: Don’t be stuck. Push the boundaries. Have a good work/life balance.

 

Tyson’s tip: Time maximization units. Don’t let more than 3 minutes go by without doing something really productive.

 

//

 

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: info@maximumlawyer.com

 

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

 

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

 

 

Resources:

 

Transcripts: Running a Virtual Law Firm ft. Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
It’s just like any business just like anything new because we are new we are, you know, definitely a different type of law firm. So we don’t have a lot of examples to follow. So you just have to be willing to have some trial and error. Our favorite word is pivot, because we have to try it and see if it works. And if it doesn’t, we pivot. And that’s true. On the legal services, we offer that true with the technology and software we use. We’re just really good at being flexible. So pivoting and being flexible, you just have to do that. When you’re trying something new that you don’t have an example to follow.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right away. This is the maximum layer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome

Jim Hacking
to the show. Welcome back to the maximum ROI Podcast. I’m

Tyson Mutrux
Jim hacking. And Ty semiotics. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Hey, so my friend, I just got back from the Clio conference, I should have done a lot more broadcasting from there. I should have interviewed some people. But I did make some new friends. We’re lucky enough to have them with us here today. Can I go ahead and introduce them, please?

Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. Go for it. Awesome. So

Jim Hacking
we have Brooke Moore and Laura O’Brien of my virtual dot lawyer, we met in a roundtable discussion on the future of law. And I really felt that our listeners would like to hear from them, because they have a pretty interesting and unique business model set up. And I thought that it’d be great to have them on the show. Also, they were fun. And our little group was the best. And so we had to have on the show. So thanks for coming on the show, guys. Thanks for having us.

Tyson Mutrux
All right, I don’t know who wants to go first. But Laura Brooke, you all can take turns or whatever. But tell us a little bit about what my virtual that lawyer is.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
My Virtual dot lawyer is an entirely online law firm. We primarily help family estate and business clients. And we kind of offer non traditional services. So limited scope representation services, some people don’t know what that means, if you don’t know what that means limited scope representation is when an attorney helps with heart of your matter, but not necessarily all of your legal matters. So we delegate a lot of administrative tasks to our clients. And we’re able to kind of customize the entire experience based on the individual’s needs and also their budget. So all of our interactions are remote through software that we use. And also they’re able to communicate with us through a client portal, which is kind of the center of what we do. So that’s kind of an overview of my virtual dot lawyer, Lartey. Anything to add to that,

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
I think that’s a pretty good explanation. It’s a way to, like Brooke said, customized, it limits the amount of time that the attorney is involved in the case. And therefore it makes it still profitable for the attorney because we’re not spending, you know, 40 hours on a family law case, we’re helping with pleadings and things like that. So we’re still making, making a good living off of what we do, we just are not necessarily talking on the phone with our clients all the time, and hearing all the stories. So it’s helpful on both ends for the clients and for the attorney.

Jim Hacking
So walk us through it. So let’s say that I’m a mom, my husband just walked out on me and I don’t have a lot of money, what would it look like? And how would it be different than what some people think of as a traditional family law range?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Right. So what kind of differentiates us from a traditional practice, like I said, it’s limited scope. But when you look at our state law services, or business law services, those transactional services are kind of by their nature, ala carte, a lot of times you can just get a wheel or you can just get a contract. So it doesn’t look entirely different. On the transactional side where we look a little bit different. It’s on the litigation side, which is primarily our family law stuff. So if someone was coming to us and they were trying to get a divorce, they would either be able to reach us through our going online through our website and signing up on our calendar. Or they could call we actually have an answering service that answers our calls 24/7 365. So we outsource a lot of things. And we’re not on the phone all the time. So we’re able to go through there. So once they get on our calendar, we actually have an initial phone consultation with them. And then we’re able to kind of explain to them what we do, because the way we practice law is different than what they’re probably thinking they’re, you know, going to get so we explain that we try to make sure that it’s a good fit for them because there’s a level of competency that you know, is required from the client as well. And then we you know, like any other attorney assess their legal matter and decide where they need to go from there and explain the process.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
To answer your question, Jim, that mom who wants to go ahead and file for divorce because her husband left and she needs to make sure if she’s getting some child support. She’d set up an appointment on her calendar, we charge $20 for a consultation. We’ve talked to her on the phone once we decide she’s a good client. Everything else is kind of seamless through our practice management software through technology that we use. So we sent her out an intake form. You filled out everything about how long they’ve been married, what their marriage date was, you know how many children they have that kind of thing. And then we help her file pro se. And even if she needs you like an emergency custody or, or some something on the emergency side, we also do that we charge a little bit extra for that. But we can pretty much help anybody who’s filing per se. And because so many people think we’re such a DIY society, people think they can file by themselves anyway. So we’re still helping those DIY people with their pro se. family law cases, that mom who just needs some assistance, where she can do a payment plan with us for $1,500 for that divorce that she needs to get versus having to you know, plunk down $5,000 or $3,000 per retainer to get somebody deep and talk to her. So that’s that’s kind of how that’s going to work on the front end with us with our family law litigation side.

Tyson Mutrux
Do you have any pushback from clients that are so used to the typical arrangement with a lawyer like, well, what’s the pushback like with that, if you ever get any, or what’s the feedback that you get from clients,

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
so I’ve been doing this for about four years, and from clients, it’s always positive, it’s, you know, I didn’t think I could afford this service, I thought I was gonna have to do it myself or not be able to have it. So we really haven’t experienced pushback from clients. You know, our biggest obstacle are other legal professionals, law clerks, judges, attorneys, understanding what we do, because they think they think this is some kind of really low bono service, which is not or they think that they push back, because they think that we’re just, you know, some other document service provider. And really, for us, there is a lot of educating everyone involved, even the clients on the whole experience, but, you know, we are there to be their attorney in that limited capacity. So they appreciate it, they appreciate having at least a little assistance and knowing what to do. So unlike if they went and did their own documents, or went online and got some documents, they’re able to actually have customized state specific, you know, documents with an attorney in their state who they, you know, kind of come to know, virtually, and then they’re, you know, they’re not just left to what do I need to do, like, I have to figure out what form I need. And then I need to figure out what to do with it, we tell you, this is what you need. And we give you the documents you need. We’re there to communicate with them. And they’re also telling them, this is what you do with it.

Jim Hacking
I would think that as you worked into this business model, that there were some lessons that you learned some things you might have wished you’ve done differently or, or faster. As this process matured, what are some of the things that you liked about it or didn’t like about it?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yeah, so for me, it was really proved that concept initially, and it also depends state to state, the rules on limited scope, practice vary a lot. So when I started the rules here in Arkansas, we’re not as solid as what they are now. But for me, they’re on the front end, I always tell people, you know, get your systems lined up, I had to kind of figure out what technology I needed. And, you know, maybe wasted a little bit of money on things that didn’t necessarily need, and then kind of consolidated things. So on the front end, if you can line up all those things, really utilize the technology, learn your technology, because sometimes I would get things and then I wouldn’t fully use them. So you know, wouldn’t necessarily fully automate everything and use all the features that I can use. And that is such a time saver. And you could be so much more efficient. If you just take the time to do that, you know, because once you get to helping clients, you get busy, and then you’re doing you know, administrative business things, and then you’re over there helping clients. So sometimes you don’t have the time to sit down and work on your workflows, or set up how that works. So if I had spent a little bit more time on the front end, I probably would have been a little bit more efficient from the get go.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
And I’m kind of coming into this book started my virtual lawyer with a different twist, because it started off as just Arkansas virtual lawyer four years ago. And I joined her kind of later on last year. And it’s just like any business just like anything new because we are we are new we are you know, definitely a different type of law firm. So we don’t have a lot of examples to follow. So you just have to be willing to have some trial and error. And our favorite word is pivot. So we like to reference the friends, you know, Ross pivot in our brains is we’re saying that but our favorite word is pivot because we have to try it and see if it works. And if it doesn’t, we pivot. And that’s true on the legal services, we offer that true with the technology and software we use. We’re just really good at being flexible. And I think it helps to be flexible with the type of business we have as well because we’re not locked into, you know, a case that that is ongoing for two years. You know, what we do is usually fairly time I’m not using the right word, but it you know, it moves quicker in time. So, so pivoting and being flexible. You just have to do that when you’re trying something new that you don’t have an example to follow.

Tyson Mutrux
So really media has a question. He says, What are the biggest automation timesavers that you’ve implemented? And would these surprise the average lawyer,

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
I would say honestly, using the practice management software, there are a lot of different options out there for technology. And the biggest time saver that we have, that we used is kind of thinking our intake tools with our documents. So that when you’re doing something that’s a little bit more repetitive on filling out, you know, names and addresses and birthdays, that kind of thing, because we’re still doing legal work, we don’t call things forms, we’re drafting pleadings, we’re drafting documents, because it’s a lawyer who’s actually drafting these for people. But we don’t have secretaries. And we don’t have paralegals that we necessarily use for, for things that you know, could be a less of a billable hour. So our biggest time saver is utilizing the option that most practice management software’s have, or you can do like Zapier, in order to get things to kind of work together is creating these fairly intensive intake forms that our clients fill out. And then automating that to where it actually creates like it, for example, in a will, it will help fill out some of that basic information about names, addresses, phone numbers for beneficiaries, that type of thing, because there’s so much stuff that you can, you know, this type and it, you know, you have to type the same thing 14 times when you’re talking about in a state package, that’s just a huge time saver that I think probably a lot of people maybe are aware of, but don’t understand how useful it is on the back end.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Well, and it reduces human error. I think that’s one thing that, you know, people are a little bit skeptical about. But if you think of you’re having to go in and modify a pleading that you already have, and you’re changing out name, you know, unless you have some kind of automation or system to be able to go and do that, you know, you may leave, you know, Joe’s name and where you need to change to John and a lot of us, you know, I mean, I’ve been in a traditional setting in practice like that before. And it just happened. So automating kind of reduces human error a little bit. And I don’t know, one of the questions that are part of that question, I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, was something might surprise attorneys. And I don’t know if that was necessarily what that directed, Jeff, that automation? Or is it like a general technology question?

Tyson Mutrux
I think what William wants to know is, is there anything that you’re doing that would surprise the average lawyer, I think is what he’s getting that

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
we’re empowering the clients, both of us have practiced in traditional law firms, we’ve both started our own traditional law firms, and then full representation. And I would say that we as lawyers, we live in a world of, you know, walk uphill both ways in the snow. That’s how we, you know, that’s how we go to school. That’s how we take our test, you know, when we’re younger, that kind of thing. Probably the thing that would maybe surprise is how empowered and involve the client can feel, and they won’t bother you as much.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Right? That’s what I was going to add. That’s one reason I was asking, because one thing that surprises people is when they say, Okay, you’re using this technology, you have this client portal, they have direct access to message you, you have these flat fees, you charge them, how do they not drive you crazy? How do they not, you know, are they not blowing up your inbox? And really, they’re not because, you know, one of the things all of us attorneys, you know, get in trouble for a lot of times for clients is, you know, a lack of communication. But in the portal, we’re able to use technology for them to feel like they have access to us. So even if we don’t directly respond, they’re able to communicate with us. And that communication is there. So we actually don’t answer any incoming calls. And we outsource that. And we also only speak to clients for the initial consults, when they’re scheduled on our calendar. And so everything after that all of the correspondence goes through the portal, which you know, helps to be secure, because it’s secure, it’s encrypted. All of our communications are in one place. So we’re not, you know, searching things, tracking things down. So I think it’s surprising a lot of times for attorneys that we’re not just being, I guess, abused by having flat rates or abused by being so accessible virtually,

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
and especially in a Family Law world for anybody who has experience with that. Both Brooke and I practiced in a traditional family law representation. And I will tell you, our lives are so much happier with doing a limited scope.

Jim Hacking
We’re getting a lot of good questions on the Facebook group. But before we get to it, I had a question. Can you talk to us a little bit about your tech stack? What are the pieces of technology that you guys are using to do all this

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
so we do have quite a bit and it’s all integrated as much as possible. And you know, you can use things kind of on the back end. We have our website is kind of our main point of contact, which has our calendar system kind of built into that. So we use acuity scheduling for our calendar we with it with acuity we sync payment for the consultation fee with stripe, so that gets directly deposited when it comes to the actual consultations. To be honest, we just use either or Google or we use a free video technology if somebody wants a video call, because occasionally that needs to happen. Some people like to see your face even though our faces are on our website, we you know, use practice management software. Currently we’re using practice Panther, you know, we’ve tried a couple of different options, practice panther is working better for our services right now, within PracticePanther, we can integrate a lot of things. So PracticePanther itself has the intake forms, the automation and things like that built in, it works with DocuSign, in order to get our contract signed, I mean, there’s there’s a list of things, but they all are fairly seamless law pay for our flat fee, you can set up payment plans and things inside PracticePanther. It’s a little bit of a list. But they all I’m kind of in charge of a lot of that. But Brooke is the one who has spent three years before I came on, you know, testing out other things that didn’t work. So I got I got it on the easy part where I’m just making sure that works now.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Well, and internally, too, we use armor text was just kind of something newer that we use for our team. And it’s really cool because it’s secure and encrypted. And it’s for the individual and the device. So if we have an attorney, and because when we’re all set jurisdictional, we at our attorney out California loses her phone, then we can just wipe that clean. So that’s kind of something cool. It doesn’t really play with other things. So we only use it internally right now. But it’s because it is so secure.

Tyson Mutrux
Didn’t go just meet at Clio con,

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
we did. Go we love Clio too. I was a Clio user for two years. It’s just some of the functionality for the way we’re practicing. And to be honest, legal tech in general, some of our technology that we use is not legal specific. And it’s just because the way we’re trying to do things is not necessarily the way it’s built right now for the legal tech space. But whenever I present a lot of times when I’m talking about technology, people ask what we’re at what we use, and I’ll tell specifically maybe what we’re using at the time, but like Laura kind of alluded to now, she said that’s what we’re using now. And the reason is because we reevaluate. So as you know, it’s it’s moving quickly. And as these companies, you know, add features and modify things, what’s a good fit for us right now might not necessarily be a good fit for us down the line. So we are constantly we don’t sit stagnant on our technology, we are constantly evaluating for the best experience for the clients and for us. So all the love to Clio, because we do and they put on a great show of great speakers, though we love them both. You can’t go wrong with either one.

Tyson Mutrux
So alright, so I want to ask you a question that Christopher Weaver has, it’s a really good question. He says, with a lot of online marketing and rankings geared towards having a physical address, for example, Google business and Facebook, how do you market the virtual practice?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Right, so that’s one thing we look at again, that’s what we looked at here, because we don’t have a physical office space. But also we have licensees, and we have contract attorneys and in other states, and so we have to look at the bonafide office requirement. What we do here, because like he said, you know, Google, is just going to ignore you if you don’t have some kind of physical address. So you can always use like an office sharespace address, but we use a UPS box because you get an actual physical address. So that’s how we kind of address that. A lot of our marketing is not specific to a location. It’s on social media, we’re having social media marketing, but yeah, for for SEO purposes, we have our ups box.

Jim Hacking
And that brings up the thing that really interested me the most in your practice, and that was the arrangement you have with other lawyers. And I have to tell you that we didn’t talk that long at the conference, but I still don’t really even understand how am I virtual dub lawyer expands beyond Arkansas. So if you could just explain it to me in a simple way, I think our listeners would be surprised by what you both have been able to pull off.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yes. So basically, the way we have it set up, we have our law firm here in Arkansas, which is what we’ve been describing to you. And we spent these four years building it up and kind of testing the model, figuring out what works. So essentially, we have all these workflows and software, we have all these things in place. And so I was getting tons of calls, and I still do for people who are, you know, how to ever how to become a virtual lawyer, what is limited scope, so, you know, several times a week getting on the phone with people. And so for me, it was let me see how, you know, we can take this other places because they’re, you know, this is something that’s needed everywhere. So initially, we tried out and just having some contract attorneys, and mostly it was to kind of meet needs different places. But you know, we tried that out, it didn’t really work like we wanted it to work. So we actually have a separate business that is an LLC, and it’s strictly for licensing. We do not provide any legal services through through that business. It is our national brand, which I spent a lot of time speaking nationally and growing it that way, but our national brand name plus all of our systems, software support and processes. So it’s not the legal service itself, that we’re licensing so we have to license These in Oklahoma and basically they license that it’s almost like a program. I don’t even know what to call it, but it’s the brand system and process. And so they’re able to license it, use it in their practices use it infinitely, however they’re using it. And basically, they just kind of follow what we’re doing and are able to utilize the software and things that we use in our practice and our processes and systems internally.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yep. So just a quick sum up of that is that we do we have a totally independent company, that is not a law firm just provides the brands and the processes, also, you know, access to us and our marketing and also be part of that as well. So marking our platform, our marketing tools are part of that as well, because it’s it’s a part of the platform, which is the systems and processes we use. And so people can license with us to use that brands. And as long as no limited scope and virtual law firm are not prohibited in their states, which it’s not a it’s not prohibited in most states that I know of. There are a couple that are a little bit antiquated. But as long as it’s, you know, it’s allowed in that state, then they can license to use my virtual dot lawyer get all of our kind of background knowledge that we’ve been working on. And I say we very loosely because mostly Brooke and I’ve been here for about a year now they can get our experience and our knowledge and everything that we’ve built without having to start from scratch themselves. So that’s basically what it is. They can license the systems and be their own law firm in their jurisdiction by using our brands.

Tyson Mutrux
I’m cracking up, I’m reading euros bios and they cracked up. They’re so funny. The third bullet point for years, Brooke, I’m not going to say it so we don’t have an expletive on here. It’s fantastic. So I recommend people going and looking at their bios, it cracks a the frick up. That’s really good. I also want to keep want to say us, because like my cousin Vinnie us anyways, I’m curious, I don’t understand really what the division of labor is between us. So let me know between the two of you. What’s the division of labor?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
I feel like I think just the humans because we’re Jim is my dad is lives in Missouri and in the Ozarks in Missouri, like the Ozarks area, it’s humans there. So no, it is not.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
So the division of labor, you know, we have our strengths on the legal side for the Arkansas, my virtual dot lawyer Law Firm, where Brooke has a stronger business law background than I do. So she handles the majority of our law firm business that’s related to business law. I, my primary areas of practice in for presentation have been in family and estate planning. So I handle majority of the Family Law and Estate Planning. And that’s partially two because we have our licensing business where we, you know, also devote our time and Brooke is you know, has built this brand over the past four years. So Brookes division of our division of labor there is Brooke is in charge of kind of the brand and the marketing and making sure how that all functions, our social media presence, working with our marketing firm, because we do have a marketing firm that handles a lot of the tedious tasks for us on you know, posts and things like that. And then I’m in charge of you know, my title on the website with my bio is chaos coordinator, which matches pretty well with what I do. The I’m in charge of just kind of making sure the day to day stuff works. I’m weird like that. I like to make sure stuff works. And I’m not that creative. So Brookes creative, I just like to do the the tedious stuff and make sure that the books are kept and the software’s ready, that kind of thing.

Jim Hacking
We’re talking today with Brooke Moore and Laura O’Brien of my virtual dot lawyer, we’re really happy to have you ladies on the show in looking at your website, it occurs to me that your entire team is made up of women. And I think that’s awesome. I’m wondering if that’s on purpose. I have the pleasure of being married to a female lawyer and I have tremendous respect for ladies who practice the law. And I’m wondering sort of how that impacts or was that a deliberate thing with your firm?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yes, it was deliberate. In large part it started whenever I started this, my husband’s in the military, we thought that he was going to be transferred to DC and I will talk about taking another bar exam. And then I really realized because he is career Army National Guard. So we’re not in a branch that really moves around as much. So I thought, well, that’s kind of when I got introduced to some of the issues that military spouse attorneys face and so I wanted to kind of target military spouse attorneys. We have one other military spouse attorney in California that’s on the team right now. But to give them a portable career that they can take with them and not have to worry about waiting in somewhere else or whatever. So it kind of started out there. And then we just are culture and our brand really just kind of drove people in. I’m a mom, I have three kids. We have several other attorneys who are moms who have kids. And a lot of it was, you know, how do we make this work for us also offering a really valuable service to the client. And so it just kind of we attracted a lot of women. I will say, I’m here in Arkansas, in our firm here. Well, it’s Laura and I, but we also we have our overflow work, especially since we have these other roles in this other business. So we do have two contract attorneys here in our state. And he’s not on the website yet. But I really needed somebody to help me with the business law stuff. So we do have a man that we’re letting in? Who did he said that exact thing to us? He said, Well, I noticed on the website, that there are no men, and I’m going to be the only man and we’re like, well, welcome. You know, don’t don’t make us regret this. But But yeah, so if it is intentional, we’re not necessarily, you know, excluding males. And we’ve talked to several folks out there about, you know, life and thing, though, it’s definitely not the but the culture is definitely more conducive for the ladies. And and we definitely want to empower working moms, military, spouse, attorneys, male and female, and just entrepreneurial attorneys in general.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
But we will have a male face on there. As soon as we get his picture up there.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
All right. So tell me this, where do you see this thing headed? I mean, where are you looking at creating this just huge presence across the country? Do you want this to be more of a regional thing? Where do you where do you see it going?

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yeah, I mean, we really want to go as many places we can go, obviously, you know, again, different states have different rules on virtual lawyering limited scope representation. But for us, Oklahoma just happened because I spoken Oklahoma, a lot of good folks there, they had just introduced some new role. So it was a ripe environment from that. But we have talked to people from, you know, the northeast, over to the west coast. So we have people everywhere that we’ve talked to about expanding, and I mean, it really is, you know, quasi access to justice issue. It’s a service, you know, moderate income individuals really aren’t adequately being provided services by attorneys. And you have all these non attorney legal service providers that have the right idea. And they’re recognizing this gap in the market. And so for us, if there’s a place that we can fill it, we want to be there, if there is a solo or small, firm attorney, who, you know, doesn’t want to start from scratch who wants you know, to kind of pick this up and take it and promote it and work it there, we really want that, because we want to be able to have this service anywhere that we can have this service. Yeah.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
And it’s kind of started off regionally just because of what Brooke said, but exactly what she said, there are a few states that it’s going to take some time for them to come around to the idea that this is the best thing for clients and for the mental health of lawyers. For sure, you know, we all practicing attorneys understand it’s, it’s a hard job, you’re dealing with people’s lives. And you know, lawyers have, you know, the highest rates of a lot of bad things. And so, you know, we’re in a situation where we can, you know, still help people, we can help people who wouldn’t normally be helped, you know, we’re not necessarily going to be able to help people who would be going to legal aid, but we’re going to be helping people who can’t afford to spend $17,000 on their divorce, and they just need to get some stuff done. Not everything has to be, you know, handled by fighting it out in court, you know, you can do things, a lot of things on the back end. And so, so we really, really want to see this expand out wherever it can, or the citizens sake and for attorneys mental health six.

Jim Hacking
Well, that was the thing that struck me when we met at the conference was, you know, I found you both to be extremely positive. And to have a really great mindset talk about what that mindset is like, how do you guys go through your week? What are your thinking about as far as growing the firm? I think you guys have a growth mindset. Obviously, you’re thinking outside the box, talk to our listeners about that. That’s my last question.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
I think, you know, every week is different for us right now, because we are currently in such a growth pattern. I started it, we call it MVL. For short, I started at MVL my virtual dot lawyer last year, and I had been this is this is like my seven different career being a lawyer. I graduated from law school and passed the bar exam 24 And you don’t know what you want to do at 24. So you know, I tried out a bunch of different things, including working for a large legal research company for a long time travel, you know, live in different states. And, you know, me coming on, I think it’s given Brooke some some leeway to do the things that she wants to do with the creative side because I can handle those things that are, you know, tedious and day to day. So every week is a little bit different, but it really is about you know, pushing forward with our social media. We live in a world where everyone’s online all the time. And you know, What are the best ways to get out there in front of potential clients? You know? So Brooke is Brooke has focused more on that with her day to day weekly, when she’s not planning to go speak at different events, because she does speak with the ABA on a regular basis. And, you know, my deal is just making sure the banking works. I you know, I’ve been on the phone today with our scheduling people, our bank trying to figure out how payments work out best. And so it’s, you know, it’s Brooke is growth minded. And I’ll let her talk about that for just a second. But as I drone on about the fact that I’m the one who is calls with the banks going, why can’t we just do this? And, and that’s, you know, so I get to deal with some of those frustrations that she was having before, but that’s the only thing I deal with, because I just listened to her great ideas and say, Yes, that sounds great. Well, let her talk more about what her growth ideas like how her weak looks with that with planning outs.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Yeah, so bring on Laura was probably the best decision I have ever made, mostly because it is there are a lot of tedious things. So even if you’re wanting to innovate, even like I said, before you run out of time to be able to automate, do like things like that. So, you know, when I approach my week, you know, I’m looking at, here’s all the things that we have to do here, all the ideas, you know, what’s going to work? What makes sense how to implement that. And also, you know how to push it a little bit further. Because for me, unless somebody says, I can’t do it, or unless somebody tells me No, then I’m gonna do it. And then I’ll ask for forgiveness later. So for me, it’s really finding, and because I really think pushing the profession forward is going to have to come, you know, from us, it’s going to have to come internally and not necessarily wait for it to trickle down for them to tell us what to do, which I know is a really scary thing. But for me, that’s just the mindset I’m in. When I’m talking to people, I’m out meeting people, other professionals, not necessarily attorneys, talking to clients, I’m gathering that feedback, because I want to figure out what you know, you want to get in the client’s head, you want to figure out what is it that you need? What are we not doing? How can we do it better? Whether it’s, you know, what can we be utilizing with our technology? How can this process be better? So every week, I pretty much start my week, like, obviously here on my to do list? But also, you know, who do I need to talk to? What do I need to do? What ideas do I have? What can I implement? And how do I get there? And then I also have to kind of work through in my head and plan for what pushback am I going to get? And how am I going to get around that. So I spend a lot of time like she said, fortunately, I’m able to, you know, only take business law cases, finally, which is great. I don’t want to do any other stuff right now. So I’m able to focus on the stuff I enjoy doing. But I’m also able to focus on growing the business branding the business and helping other attorneys. Like I said, I talk to at least once a week, I’m talking to another attorney about you know how to implement technology in their practice how to, you know, be a virtual lawyer how to provide limited scope services, that fees and things like that. So I’m really passionate about helping other innovative entrepreneurs, whether it’s a collaborative effort with us or you know, independently, because I think it’s going to take everybody kind of pushing it forward and pushing the envelope to really effectuate any kind of change in the profession.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
And I think that’s something that because I feel like, you know, we found each other last year making mutual colleague, and it really does, it’s hard for one person to do alone. And it’s great to find kind of your Yang to your Yang, or however that phrase goes because he likes doing this. And I like doing that. And it’s not that she’s not good at that. It’s just that I’m not good at this. And I like doing that. My task list during the week is I can check it off more like it’s okay, I’ve done that. I’ve called that bank, I’ve done this with hers. It’s just this constant kind of growth of ideas. And, you know, if I could encourage anybody, not only obviously to talk to us about licensing our brand, but also, you know, you gotta you gotta have somebody that you can throw ideas off of, because it’s hard. I mean, she’s done this herself for three years. And I mean, luckily we’re very vocal with how much we like each other and appreciate each other because she’s, you know, she’s telling me how great it is to be able to bounce stuff off me instead of just random people in the grocery store, or you know, that kind of thing.

Tyson Mutrux
Man, I wish I had a co host I can bounce things off of that I liked I just can’t seem to find a co host. Now we do want to wrap things up. We this has been really, really good. Before I do I want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group. If you’re watching here, you’re obviously already here. But if you’re listening, join there. There’s a lot of great discussion going on. Also go to iTunes or a future podcast and please give us a five star review. I want to definitely get those numbers up so we can help spread the love so please do so. Jimmy, what’s your hacking the week? So have

Jim Hacking
a don’t hack in a do hack my don’t hack is don’t send smart aleck postcards to your podcast co hosts that say smartest things like Hey Jim, I hope you’re enjoying Cleo Khan. In Nola yawn. I’m enjoying the great city of Chicago with fleet With Mack while you’re doing boring stuff, oh, well see soon, Tyson. So don’t send smart aleck postcards unless you want to get beat up the next time you see each other. My do is a pretty cool app. I don’t think we’ve talked about it on the show before. It’s called Air table. And we’re working on a big project trying to get an h1 be approved. And our clients are a little bit more technologically savvy than my colleague, Andrew Bloomberg, and I. And they turned us on to airtable, which is a database that also lets you collaborate and store documents inside the collaboration. It’s it’s very, very powerful. And we’ve just started playing around with it. But as far as getting our h1 B appeal out the door, it’s been really helpful to sort of organize everything, because we have four different people working on it at the same time. And it’s sort of like Google sheets on steroids.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting, you said Jimmy, I looked at Air table about 18 months ago, and I thought it was way too complicated. And maybe it’s just I didn’t understand how to use it. So I’m interested to see how you use it when you’re done. Because that sounds pretty good. Alright, so let’s say we get two hacks and tips from Laura and Brooke this week, since there’s two of you. So whoever wants to go first tip and or hack.

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
Okay, I guess I’ll go first. So for a tip, I would just say try to be as efficient as possible, because that’s going to free up time. And in that time, I think that you should hack the legal profession by not only utilizing technology, because everybody in my opinion, should be doing that. But you know, push forward, don’t wait to be told what you can and can’t do if there are no clear line, move forward and see how you can move things forward. So

Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan
and I would say my tip is along the same lines as Brooke is, don’t be stuck. I was very scared when I was a young lawyer that you had to do everything the way that you were told that it had to be done. Maybe that’s true for court filings for, you know, the immediate future, but, you know, try to push the boundaries, but also have a have a good work life balance. I know that’s a stupid phrase that we all say, and very few of us do. But you can’t let your work consume you. I have done that in my past, and I have made myself sick literally from it. So gotta have some work life balance, go, you know, take a walk when you’re in a bad mood, or you just got off the phone with the client. That’s, that’s to me is, is one of the more important things I want to be happy. So make sure you’re happy with your life.

Tyson Mutrux
Excellent. All right, so my tip of the week, actually comes from our coach Jason Selke. Every Tuesday, he sends us mental toughness, Tuesday email, it’s really good. But this week was really good, because he talks about when he goes time maximization units, and how very successful people don’t let a certain amount of time go by without doing something productive. And so he actually listed chart, you know, the basically, if you’re gonna make between 50 and 100,000 a year, you know, you’ll you’ll get 30 minutes to go by in a day without really doing productive. But the most successful people, three minutes, they cherish that three minutes, they won’t let more than three minutes go by without doing something very productive. And so I think it’s really cool. And I’ve actually written it down. I’m looking at it right above my computer, I’ve written on my whiteboard to remind myself not to let three minutes go by. So if I find myself wasting time I get myself back on track. So it’s really good. So I’m over that amount of time for you, whatever that might be. So that’s my tip, and then get to work. So, Brooke, Laura, thank you so much for coming on. This has been fantastic. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

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