The Art of Delegation with Tyson Mutrux

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a law firm owner who is overworked and needs more support? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson Mutrux discusses the crucial role of delegation in law firm management. 

Running a successful law firm is all about delegating tasks to other employees. Delegation is all about taking things off your plate and allowing yourself as an owner to focus on other important tasks. As an owner, you need to trust your team to do well and allow them to take on the responsibility of doing certain things. If you don’t have trust with your team, there will be no growth and you as a law firm owner will become overwhelmed and burnt out.

Tyson identifies a few tasks that can be delegated to other team members. One of these are routine and repeat tasks such as scanning. Delegating this to another person can really take the stress off of an owner. You can even create a process for scanning that makes it more efficient. Legal research is another time consuming task that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant. Growth tasks such as drafting documents can be given to a junior staff member or a legal student to allow them to build that skill. 

Listen in to learn more about delegation.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:23 The importance and impact of delegation
• 1:17 Tips for identifying routine tasks suitable for delegation
• 5:57 The impact of delegation on team empowerment and growth

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Transcripts: The Art of Delegation with Tyson Mutrux

Tyson (00:15.15)
Okay, test, test, test, test, test. My eyes are looking rough, it was late night. All right, here we go.

Don't worry, I didn't go drinking. I just was up late. Oh, here we go.

Tyson (00:38.67)
Hey, it's Tyson and I am in Las Vegas right now for a Jason Selk event. It's a little seminar I'm attending that he's putting on. It starts in about 45 minutes or so, but I wanted to get in a quick episode. And today I want to talk about delegation and the art of delegation. It's not something that you're, it's not just about, you know, getting rid of the things that you don't want to do.

It's just not, it's not that it's about actually, you know, taking things that, um, off your plate so that you can do the things that are the most important things. I think this is a really fitting one to do while I'm in Vegas for Jason's event, because he talks about focusing on really that one thing, like, you know, one thing at a time. What's that one thing you can do to move, move the ball forward one, one inch at a time and really focusing on the most important tasks. And this is.

really what it's about. And so I've talked about this quite a bit over the years and delegation is super important, but it's also really, really difficult because sometimes it's just easier to just do that one little thing. Oh, I'm just going to get it done. But then all those things pile up. You talk about task switching, which is another issue, and it really becomes a problem. So we're going to talk about delegation today fairly quickly. These are Bytesays episodes, so that's…

why do it but it delegation matters okay it really does matter it's something that will take you if you can figure this out all right if you can take delegation and figure it out it's gonna help propel you right it's gonna help you grow your firm it's gonna help you and growth can mean a lot of different things Jim and I talked about that a lot growth doesn't mean you know adding you know 50 offices growth just means whatever success is to you so growth is getting better at your craft.

success could be that you're able to spend more time with your family, right? Growth can mean many, many different things, but it begins with delegation, being able to offload some of the things that you shouldn't be doing to other people. It's really going to empower your team, too. And this is another thing, too. We had recently, we had a changeover with an attorney and…

Tyson (03:03.79)
And speaking to the case manager was really interesting because when I was talking to her, I told her, I was like, listen, we're going to be relying on you more. And she felt so much more confident. And she was way happier because she knew that we trusted her. The attorney that was working with her did not trust her, was doing a lot of those small tasks themselves. I'm not going to say if it's a man or woman, because it doesn't matter. But they were taking those tasks on themselves.

And so the case manager just didn't feel valued. She didn't feel trusted. And whenever I'd let her know, hey, we're going to start relying on you a lot more. She loved it. And so there's that part of it too, that you have to really remember. It's not just about offloading things from you. Your team, they want more to do. They want to be trusted. They want to be empowered. So remember that part of it.

So let's go through some things, ways of identifying some tasks. And we're going to start with three, OK? We're going to make this really easy on you, especially if you're having issues trying to delegate, OK? So any routine tasks or time -consuming tasks, these are things that we'll use the example of scanning, right? So hopefully you will learn. No one is scanning, but if you're solo, just a true solo, just you, then you might be scanning. But if you can offload those tasks. But scanning is one of those things. It's a really.

routine tasks task. It may not even be that time consuming, but it's a really routine task that you can offload. Anything that's really time consuming, many of you might try to fight me on this one, but it's fine. Legal research, if you could find a way to offload that, legal research could be really time consuming. And if you can find someone in your office or even outsource it, where they're doing your legal research, and even if you insist on writing whatever you need to write,

That could be something that could help you help speed up the process for you. So and start with the tasks that are necessary. So we're talking about where do we start when it comes to delegation. The tests are necessary, but they're not necessarily they don't necessarily require a level of expertise, especially your level of expertise. So we're talking about scanning, scheduling, document filing, basic research. And then now let's move on to.

Tyson (05:29.166)
Number two, tasks that are outside your expertise, all right? How about that? You don't know everything, no one does. So you're gonna identify those tasks that someone else could perform better than you. And this could include, it could be research, right? It might be the writing part of it and many other administrative duties. Maybe you're not very good at making phone calls to certain people, okay? That's something where you can delegate to someone else. All right, then let's go to number three.

And this is where there's really opportunities for team growth. So identify, number three is identify opportunities for team growth. So look for tasks that, where maybe junior staff could take over or an associate, like drafting documents, maybe you have an associate or maybe even you have a case manager that you could trust to draft some higher level documents. They don't, they're not, you can give them some sort of criteria to use, but.

it's going to require a level of expertise, but not quite your level of expertise. And they can draft these documents under your supervision or under someone else's supervision in the firm. That's another, that's a sort of a elevated step of this where you have got someone underneath you that's then delegating to someone else, which would be pretty good. But remember, you've got to choose the right people for delegation. Not ever, you can't delegate.

Every task to one person, right? You got to figure out who the right person is. Consider work workload, right? Some people might be overworked. And so don't, a mistake that many people make is they go back to the well, right? They go to the same person over and over and over again. Next you know you've burned that person out. So don't do that. Provide training. This is another part of it too. All right, so right now I'm training a different case manager on some things and it's time consuming. But you know what?

it's gonna save me a ton of time in the future on certain things. And so we're doing some demand training and some hammer letter training and all that, where I'm really going deep with her, but it's gonna save me a ton of time on the back end. So consider the training part of it too. So remember that. So I'm gonna wrap things up. A lot of this is about empowerment, not micromanagement. This is about taking things off your plate.

Tyson (07:49.71)
This is about freeing up your time to do the most important tasks. And as you're doing this, provide feedback. Give your team feedback so that they know and they can get better. Don't just go to your office and complain because they're not doing it right. Give them feedback so they can get better. Because I know a lot of you probably do that. Mastering this can really transform your practice and your life. So please work on this. This is a skill that you have to work on.

As a reminder, if you have something you want me to cover on these episodes, make sure that you send me a text message, 314 -501 -9260. I get a lot of great ideas from you all, so please keep them coming. I would love to hear from you, so give me a text. Until next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. Take care.