The Executive Assistant Advantage: Amplifying Your Effectiveness and Efficiency

An executive assistant is not just someone who handles scheduling or fielding calls, but they are a right-hand person who helps manage tasks, time, and the overall business for the law firm owner. In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, host Tyson Mutrux discusses the role and value of an executive assistant for law firm owners. 

Tyson believes that having the right executive assistant can enhance a law firm owner's effectiveness by delegating higher-level tasks and operational efficiency. In this episode Tyson gives his best advice on hiring someone with a proven track record of taking action, empowering the assistant to manage the owner's schedule, and utilizing them as a filter and gatekeeper for questions and issues. 

Episode Highlights:

• 00:25 The importance of an executive assistant for law firm owners and how they can enhance productivity and focus on strategic tasks
• 02:31 Hiring advice for an executive assistant 
• 07:29 Shares success stories of law firm owners who have seen significant improvements in their effectiveness by having an executive assistant

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Transcripts: The Executive Assistant Advantage: Amplifying Your Effectiveness and Efficiency

Speaker 1 (00:00:03) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:25) - Hey there. It's Tyson again. And today I've got an exciting topic to discuss with you, so let's jump right in. Today's focus is a critical one for any law firm owners seeking to maximize their productivity. And what I'm talking about, if you've not noticed from the title of the episode, is The Role and the Value of an executive Assistant. And I want to make sure I clarify what we mean by an executive assistant, because I think sometimes this can be confused. But an executive assistant is not just someone who handles your scheduling or fields calls. This is someone that for a law firm owner, an executive assistant is your right hand person. They're helping you manage not just your tasks, but your time and by extension, your business. That's a really, really important role. And so let's discuss how an executive assistant can directly enhance your effectiveness as a law firm owner with the right executive assistant, you're not just delegating tasks to that person.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:29) - You're adding a layer of operational efficiency. And this is going to allow you to focus more on strategy and growth and less on the day to day minutia. Or let's say that you're someone that you've got a partner that runs a business or managing partner. This is going to free up your time to try cases or whatever else your role in the firm might be. So you might be thinking, well, how can you, as a law firm owner, you know, maximize this executive assistant advantage? Because I hear that quite a bit. What do they do? And it's it's really think of it as you're taking what's on your plate. Many of these higher level tasks and you're pushing them onto onto that person's plate as many of the things as you can. Okay. That's why, again, this is a very important role. So let me go through some of just a little bit of advice that I have. And if you're wondering. Yes, Elizabeth, my executive assistant, she's the one that created the majority of these tips that I'm going to give you.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:31) - But again, she she's she's got that skill set that she can actually do that. So first, I'm going to go over is you're going to make sure you're hiring someone that has a proven track record of taking action. This is not a good position for someone that likes to be told what to do over and over again. It's just that's not the type of person you want that role. You want someone that's going to take action. Okay? The next thing is you're going to want to make sure that you're turning over your calendar. You're turning over your day to the executive assistant. Okay? Empower them to manage your schedule. This is this is not only going to ensure that smooth day to day operations, but it's also going to help you maintain a focus on what's truly important. And I'm not going to tell you what's important. Whatever you know what's important, you know what you need to be focusing on, and it's going to free up your time to do that. Okay. Another another key role is using them as a filter.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:25) - So using that executive system as a filter and they can act as that gatekeeper where they can handle questions and issues from your team. And this is going to free up your time to focus on that strategic decision making or anything else. Whatever your key role is in the firm, it's going to allow you to do that. It's a it's a really big benefit. You're going to also want to make sure that you keep them engaged with background projects. Okay? So you're going to make sure that you're always there are always strategic or operational projects that they can work on and that they can help you out with because you're going to want to make sure you're integrating them into the things you're working on. That way they can they can help you along the way because there's some things that only you can do, but there are some things like some of the smaller items that that you can assign to them. Okay, make sure you keep a great culture of open communication. So you're going to want to make sure you're ensuring that they understand your thought process and your priorities by encouraging questions.

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:22) - And you want to make sure you're promoting that culture of transparency, encourage questions. It's really, really important because especially when you're first getting started, you got to get to know each other. It's an important part of it. You got to get to know each other and trust each other, which is another one of the one of my tips is make sure that you you hire someone you can trust because they're going to know many things about you right there. They're going to have access to your email. They're going to have access to many things that many other people in the firm don't have. So you're going to have you're going to make sure you can trust this person. And this one this one might be a little controversial, but I'd say you might want to I would hire someone that is in person. Okay. I've used executive assistants that are virtual. And I'd say if you can make it work, having someone physically present in the office is really important. It's it's helpful. Yes, you can make it work when it comes to a virtual executive assistant, but having someone in seat can greatly enhance your communication and the task coordination.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:25) - Um, another one is make sure you hire someone that has legal experience. A former paralegal is fantastic because that way you're not having to get them up to speed on how a law firm typically operates, and that way they understand the ins and outs of legal work and they can give you valuable insights that you're looking for. And that's going to that's going to contribute to your your firm's effectiveness, your efficiency. It's going to go a long way. Okay. This is one where the next one is I want to talk about is continued education. So continued growth of your executive assistant. Make sure you encourage that. You're going to you're going to promote their executive or sorry, their professional growth in areas like design and spreadsheet management and or presentation software. These are all things that I know Elizabeth has taken courses on and gotten better at because these are skills that can that can be a great asset to your firm. So encourage those types of things. It's really important. Hold daily meetings. All right. So regular check ins with your executive assistant.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:30) - They help you stay on top of tasks and provide a valuable opportunity for strategic brainstorming. This is something that I talked about in one of the previous episodes where she'll go through and she'll we'll go through the previous day and see what things were done and what things were not done. And she she's able to base upon those meetings, reorganize my calendar and see if things need to be fit in. Or maybe I got more things done yesterday than what I had on my calendar. And she's able to remove other items from my schedule. So having those daily check ins are really, really valuable. And this last one I want to go over is just making sure that because I want to make sure I can talk about this for a long time, but I want to make sure these are these episodes continue to be short, but make sure that your executive assistant is focused on you. They should not be tied up with unrelated matters, Other tasks. They shouldn't be on the phones. They shouldn't be doing tasks for other people in the firm.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:29) - Their focus should be on assisting you. Okay, so it's freeing up your time. That way you can do the things that are important to you and your role in the firm. I can tell you over the years I've heard countless success stories from law firm owners who've seen just a dramatic improvement in their effectiveness thanks to having an executive assistant. I'm hoping that these tips will really help you out because I think it can be a really huge success for your firm. So but remember to make sure you check out next week's episode. I'm going to be discussing Mastering Your Schedule, The Power of Time Blocking. So I'm going to get into the nitty gritty when it comes to time blocking next week. I talked about getting things on your calendar previously, but this is actually let me get into some more of the some more of the nuts and bolts. I think you'll really get a lot out of it. But until then, remember, imperfect action beats perfect in action every time. Take care.

Speaker 1 (00:08:24) - Thanks for listening to the maximum Lawyer podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:08:28) - 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.