In this episode Tyson and Jim discuss about how to work ON your law firm instead of IN your law firm. Building systems is fundamental.
Building systems and building for the future is gonna make a better lawyer. You´re gonna be more efficient, you´re gonna provide better service to your clients, you´re gonna get a better result. Use your present time to make your future better.
Choose wisely your experts and consultants. Keep it simple. And don´t rely that much on other people, at the end of the day, you´re the one using the system.
Tyson´s Tip: Communication with your team, it´s important. Slack. www.slack.com
You can share everything and keep your communication in ONE place. It´s free.
Hacking´s Hack: The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber.
How to think about your business. Entrepreneur + Manager + Tactician. Learn how to balance your focus.
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Transcript: Working On Our Law Practice Instead of In Our Law Practice
Unknown Speaker
This is the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking. And I’m Tracy matrix. Welcome to the show. How you doing Tyson? Oh, good. How are you? Oh, good. I’m really excited about our topic today, which is working on our law practice instead of working in our law practice. Why don’t you explain to our listeners what that even means. Conceptually,
Tyson Mutrux
you came up with this topic. I think it’s a brilliant thing to talk about today, especially in our second episode. So a lot of times what we do is we, as attorneys, we get caught up working in the business. And what that means is we’re actually practicing law going to court filling out paperwork, if you’re a solo, that means dealing with your taxes, dealing with everything else, we get caught up in the day to day tasks, and we just get consumed by it. And we’re talking about is working on your business is stepping outside of the business, improving the efficiency of the effectiveness of your business, really creating a well oiled machine where, whether that means automating things, whether that means delegating things, there’s a lot of things you can do just step on the outside of your business, look at it, what’s wrong with your business and improve it, I think it’s a really big breakthrough. And we’re going to talk about sort of where this idea comes from and a little bit, but just stepping back and taking a look at your practice, from time to time, I think is invaluable. I think it’s way too easy to get caught up in the urgent matters of the day, that prevent you from taking sort of a long term view, trying to figure out systems, ways to do things, better ways to improve. And I think a lot of attorneys get caught up in that. And it’s, it’s essential to be successful, I think, to block out time to have the opportunity to look at ways to run your practice better. I’ll give an example. I mean, I, I’ve got a system for how my phones are answered. And we were using an answering service, because I thought that might be a little more effective for how we do things. And we use it for six months. And it just wasn’t working clients hated it. So it’s one of the things where I’d stepped back and looked at things I was like, this is worst I could do it. So we we decide to run the phones back through the firm instead of through the answering service. And clients are so much more happy than what they were before. So it’s just one of the things where I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t just stepped outside looked at it. Because every week I don’t know how you do it. But every week, it’s usually on Fridays that actually kind of sit back, what are we doing wrong? And I have systems in place. I think you do too, for actually monitoring how things are going, but that he was getting feedback from clients, and it was just not good feedback about the phones. And so you have to consistently and constantly monitor what you’re doing. Yeah. Do you have a method of doing that? Do you set aside time in your schedule? Do you have a tickler? To remind you to do that, what’s what’s your preferred method of doing that? So Friday afternoons, usually between one to three is a time I used for that. But there’s something else I use with the top five that that actually helps to, because, and I talked about that in the last episode, just doing the top five for the week is constantly had these daily goals and weekly goals. And if I’m not reaching those goals, there’s usually a reason for it. And that’s a way for just kind of self monitoring, just with that alone, because I can look at why I’m not getting those things done. I mean, you and I had a conversation the other day where I was not falling with some of my systems last Thursday, and I was on the phone all day. And it’s just you I mean, it’s you and I have where we on Monday where we meet every morning at 6am. And we talk with with Jim Manning. And so a there’s constantly things that we have built in that we’re doing and we get feedback and you you help me identify that promos having last Thursday, and I was like, I need to stick to my systems. And I have and I’m back on track. I had fun doing that too. It’s It’s always easier for me to point out the mistakes you’re making them.
That’s that’s always true. I think this life in general.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, that’s probably another topic for podcast is sort of accountability partners and things like that. So maybe we’ll talk about that next week. But I really think that for me, one of the best decisions I ever made in running my practice was picking one day a week where I don’t see clients. I don’t necessarily work on files, but at least block out the afternoon to just work on, you know, big picture stuff, working on ways to him Through the business ways, you know, I keep track with notes during the week of things that are bothering me. And then I try to figure out a way for us as a team here at the office to sort of improve on that. Together.
Tyson Mutrux
We also have other things too. So you have that I don’t I don’t quite do to that extent, I just use my afternoon on Friday to to work on that you spend a lot more time on that. We also have the masterminds that we do every six weeks, that with with other Infusionsoft users where we, you know, we talked about what’s going on with our business, how to improve it, things like that. So I think that’s also beneficial, because it allows us it forces us to it doesn’t just allows it forces us to step outside and actually have people hammer you with questions about, hey, what’s going on with us why you present your problem, and they give you suggestions on how to prove it, improve it, I mean, that’s very beneficial. So if people are in a mastermind group, they should get in, get into one, we don’t pay for it. We just formed it with some people we know and trust. And we like like Joe Polish says, know, like and trust. And it forces you to actually analyze your business because people are putting you on the spot.
Jim Hacking
I also think too, that, you know, running a law practice or being a lawyer can be sort of a solitary endeavor, and that you can get in this mode of just putting your head down and doing work, work, work, work, work, work, work, because there’s work, work, work, work, work, work, work that needs to get done. But that, you know, that’s like a trap. And if you spend all of your time sort of in reactive mode, that you’re not going to be able to have a good offense, you’re not going to be able to make bigger strides, you might be able to tinker with little things here and there. Or worse just be putting out fires. And what the long term thinking does, allows you to put a priority on things that are important, but not necessarily urgent,
Tyson Mutrux
right? For example, a way of fixing that problem where you’re always work, work, work, or work is having systems in place. And the way you figure out what systems you need is by stepping outside your business and working on it as opposed to in it. Because you’re right, it is so easy to say okay, I’ve got a trial this week, I’ve had a trial three weeks and a trial and two months, I’ve got to do this, I got to do this, I’ve got to do this. When in reality, if you had stepped outside and looked okay, I could have delegated a bunch of this stuff. I don’t have to be doing all this stuff. But instead, you’re just you’re grinding away, grinding away grinding away. Before you know it. I mean, in five years, you’re in the exact same place you were five years ago,
Jim Hacking
I think it’s a little bit trickier for you than for me to with a busy litigation practice, you know, with immigration for me, we get to sort of I mean, there’s times where I have to go to the immigration court are times where I have to go to USCIS for an interview. But But generally, we make our own schedule. And when I have something in court or at the agency, I have weeks, if not months of lead time, and I know what’s coming. So I have a much easier time I think of scheduling out long term. How do you handle it when you’re dealing with court imposed hearing dates and trying to work with other attorneys to schedule things? I mean, I would think and I, you know, I was a litigator for 10 years. I know that with litigation, that trying to get things scheduled and get you know, you could schedule things all day long, you could schedule yourself weeks out, I would think
Tyson Mutrux
so you’re right. That’s one of the biggest struggles, the thing I tried to do is I try to stack court appearances. That’s a big part of it. I don’t have many court appearances in the afternoon. For example, let’s say, I give you the most basic one, let’s head traffic ticket out to handle well, I’m gonna go. Let’s see, I’m in St. Charles County, I’ve got a criminal matter out there, I’m gonna go grab that traffic file. While I’m out there to try and resolve at the same time I try to get as much done at the same time as I can, you know, my policy about taking phone calls, I don’t take unscheduled phone calls like John Fisher, I have my assistant scheduled them for between three and 430 every day. So they stack my phone calls. So my call backs, and there’s usually a bunch of them. That’s when I’ll take them throughout the day. But the court appearances is a big one. And it’s frustrating because I’ll give you a prime example. Just last week, we I appeared in court two weeks ago, set a trial date of May 17, I think is the date. And then I get a notice last week where the judge sets a hearing for next week. And no one had talked about at the hearing. It was just as random schedule and neither me or the other attorney have any idea why it’s scheduled. And it’s really frustrating things like that are really frustrating the those are the things we’ve got to deal with and all I can really do is Brian stack my court appearances The best I can and then I try to limit like other meetings like you always have people that want to meet with you right all the time. There’s a for example Northwest mutual I don’t know why it is they’ve always got someone trying to call an attorney trying to meet with them. You know, it’s it’s constant but I had a guy called me yesterday, I wanted to meet with me and I scheduled meetings for early in the mornings. So before before any court appearances, and most people don’t want to meet before 8am that don’t. But I said, I said my meetings before 8am. Because if they really want to meet with me, they’re gonna want to meet with me whenever I set the time. So that’s those are things I do, you’re right, it’s a little different than yours, it’s a good contrast, because you can set your own schedule with, like, for example, trials, I mean, trials will wipe out an entire week for me, so I can’t meet it at all. And so it’s a huge scheduling problem, but she got to deal with it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I was in Memphis this week for mediation just for 24 hours. And just having that block of time away from the office, which is, it was on a Monday, which is usually one of my days for meeting with new clients, it really threw me off my game for the rest of the week. As far as I even had, I had to give up some of my Wednesday time to sort of account for that. And I think that that can be tricky. Well, the
Tyson Mutrux
other issue is, and this should not be a problem, and no, it’s not a problem, your your firm’s that one of mine, but just make sure everybody in your firm knows what’s going on, you know, when you can meet when you can’t meet, because if they don’t know it, then it’s just not going to the system will work. It’s a machine, you know, the machines got to be communicating with other parts of the machine. And if your staff doesn’t know that you own, you don’t take appointments on certain days, and they schedule it on those days, well, that’s gonna, that’s gonna cause a problem for you, it’s gonna cause a problem for everybody. So please make sure communicate with your entire team, let them know what’s going on.
Jim Hacking
So this is the maximum lawyer podcast Tyson and Jim talking about working on your law practice and that in your law practice on that day to day grinding kind of a basis. And, you know, I think that’s right. I think the point you make about having a team is absolutely essential. You know, if Sam Walton tried to do everything at the first WalMart that he opened, there would not be all the 1000s of Walmart’s that there are across the land. And I think I, you know, I, when I’m done at McGurk, I look around. And I think, you know, here, Miguel works, has grown probably four times as big as it was, when I was in college, you know, it’s a wonderful restaurant and bar, very successful, and it’s owned by an attorney. And he’s not there, you know, making hamburgers or pouring beer. I’m sure when he’s there, he’s enjoying himself, just like the patrons. And so I think about that, when I think about my law practices, you know, how can I delegate things or get help with other people, so that I can do the big picture thinking, which is one of the things that only I can do.
Tyson Mutrux
And I mean, I know we talked about how we can kind of get to that point. So we can do entire episode, but we can kind of talk about how we do that, that the table. So I’ll just go through it briefly. We don’t have to spend a whole lot of time on it. But how, and we’ve talked about this with other attorneys. One way of doing this is you list every task that you could do an entire day, every single task, it doesn’t matter if it’s matching the phone, if it’s, let’s say you fill out a note card and top five for the day, whatever it is, you fill it out. And then you go through and you mark which one of those you can eliminate which one of those tasks you can delegate, which one of those tasks you can automate. And I think there’s one more gem and I couldn’t write this down, am I leaving one of them out? Do you say eliminate, eliminate, so yeah, that’d be that’s eliminate delegate and automate. And that will make your life so much better. I cannot tell you how much it’ll it’ll improve your life, because you’re getting some of the stuff you’re just getting rid of, you don’t need to do it every day. And so that’s going to free up a bunch of your time just by itself. And then there’s gonna be some stuff that you can delegate, give to other other people in your firm and those things you can automate. And there’s different tools you can use to automate. And you need to do this at every level of your firm from top to bottom. Because if you’re going to be delegating stuff down to your staff, well, you know what, maybe they need to eliminate stuff or delegate stuff to other people in the firm, and all the way down until you’ve worked it out with every single level from from the top manager of your firm, down to the receptionist. No, you have to do it with every single position. But here’s the other thing of it is and again, this is a very important. If you don’t know how your firm runs from point A to point Z, you may need to start there. And then start doing this little practice because you need to break it down step by step by step you and I’ve done this with our firms. So from the moment the call comes in, to the moment the case is closed, everyone knows what’s going on. And you’ve got to have that in place before you can do this task.
Jim Hacking
Well, I really liked one little sentence you had in there, which is you don’t need to do it. And I think that the cool thing about that sentences is that if we change the inflection in different parts of the sentence, it highlights sort of the points that we’re making. So if we say You don’t need to be doing it. So that’s sort of the delegation part, you know, do you need to be the one running to the post office to drop off the mail? Do you need to be the one to, you know, do all of the bookkeeping, you know, and I think that that a lot of lawyers get in this trap of thinking that only they can do it, that they’re the only ones who can do even, you know, a deposition or interrogatory, or discovery that, you know, they think practicing law is an art that can’t be systematized that they’re very creative and witty and insightful, and that they’re going to be, you know, this great insight is going to come to them while they’re in the middle of battle. And then only they can do this. And I think that’s, that’s a little bit of ego. And it’s a big trap for being able to scale and to turn your practice into something bigger than just you. And your law license.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, the thing I missed the most when I went out on my own, I will tell you, the number one thing I missed, was not having someone complete the interlocutors before I had a chance to look at them. Because my old boss, he had a really good system for having the discovery completed and had a really great assistant. And she knew as it came in, she went in, she filled in everything she could, then we would meet with a client and then we would finish the interrogatory. And they would sign it. And the part I missed was not having that person fill in all those blanks for me. And because it Discovery’s just a pain in the ass, let’s just say it really is. And now I mean, now we’ve got systems in place where that happens. But I remember at the time when I started my own firm, I didn’t have that system in place. I didn’t have someone to do that for me. But it’s one of those things where you just have to have those systems. And there’s things that can be done. You’re right, because some attorneys think that they’ve got to do the discovery, it’s not BS, you don’t have to put every little piece together there are things let’s say that, let’s say yes, overall, you want to be the one that does the discovery well, okay, there are certain parts of that, that you don’t have to do. You don’t have to be the one that types it up. Let’s say this is an extreme example. But let’s say you want to meet with a client and record the session and have someone else type up the notes that are type up the interrogatory responses, you don’t have to be the one that sits down at that computer, and punches in all the the numbers and letters and everything else. You don’t have to be the one that does it. It’s a waste of your time as an attorney.
Jim Hacking
So that’s a good piece of advice. And that was gonna sort of be my next question is, okay, let’s say that someone has looked at their practice and looked at their firm and figured out some things that they don’t like that they would like to not have to do anymore. I mean, what are some of the tips or ways to think about it that you’ve been successful with
Tyson Mutrux
man, the number one thing is probably Infusionsoft, I automate a ton of things. So a lawsuit sample, let’s say, a personal injury, an auto accident case, a lot of that language in that lawsuit is not going to change. A lot of it’s not I mean, there are very specific things that are going to change with it. But for example, the header from the header down at the signature, there’s a lot of the just introductory language, the closing language, all that stays the same. So we file a lawsuit, a petition is generated, my system goes through and changes it to fill in those things that need to be changed a little bit, I then come back through and review it. And next thing, you know, we’ve got a petition that would have normally taken a lot longer than only takes probably less than 20 minutes to do. Now there are we’ve got that from every stage. So from opening a file, to closing the file, we’ve got that mark, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Another example might be medical record requests. For a personal injury attorney, that is the one of the worst things we have to do is there’s a follow up process. So we’ve automated that where we put in the information for the Provider A record request is generated. And then there is a sequence of events that then take place where my system four days later has to call and confirm that they received our request. And then at the 15 to actually that’s a 16 day market 16 day mark, another phone call takes place. Have you sent the request yet? No. So another one gets fired off another request. So hey, it’s been 15 days. And then at the 30 day mark, and this sounds really really regressive for getting medical records. But it’s, we get our records probably in less than 15 days for the most part, which is super quick for personal injury attorneys. And so that 30 day more, another one goes out says it’s been 30 days don’t make basically a threat to subpoena them to come testify, you deliver the records, and we get the records in no time. So that’s just one example of how we do things. And that’s because we’ve broken down the practice from A to Z. And I thought Jim, I think I answered your question, but maybe I got off track a little bit. You do get a little
Jim Hacking
bit rambling, but that’s your way. Here’s what I want to know. I want to repeat It has to be as practical as possible. How did you actually find the time? And to do it? And how did you actually sit down to do it? Did you do it on paper? Did you do it on your computer? Did you build it within Infusionsoft? Or what did you do?
Tyson Mutrux
I think the way I did it was probably a little bit different than what you did it. But okay, so I think I’ve showed you my book, I’ve got this black book that I write in all the time. And I’ve actually, I carry it with me all the time. And so what I did was, and I’ll open the page to it, I actually broke down my practice on paper. So I wrote it down. And I didn’t do it like this, you know, flowchart method, I actually wrote it down. Okay, what is stage one of the personal injury process, and I wrote down every task that’s under stage one, and then what stage two like, and then I wrote on every task in stage two, and then stage three and stage four and stage five and stage six, and so on. In the pre, I broke the pre trial, or pre suit, pour my practice down into seven different there’s seven things, seven steps that are taken prior to litigation, and litigation is broken out in a bunch of more, but I wrote down every task and each one of those. And then once I had that I had that before using the Infusionsoft. But then once I got Infusionsoft, I built it out within Infusionsoft. I didn’t I didn’t do flowcharts or anything like that. I actually built it out. And I just, what I would do is when you talk about the time element, I would work all day. And then I would spend probably three hours a night, which is a lot, I understand that. But I spent, I was investing in my futures, the way I look at it. I spent three hours every night and I would just work on building out these campaigns to automate the vast majority of my practice. And I remember there’s a moment whenever I was meeting with the guy, were like in that four hour introductory session, where through Infusionsoft, and he helped me build one campaign. And that’s when it really clicked, he said, he said to me, how many hours a week do you think this will save? Yeah. And I told him, he said, Alright, good. Now go schedule a vacation with your wife, because I just saved you so many out of that, I can remember the hours were for a year, he’s like, I just saved you so many hours. He’s like, go take a vacation with your wife. And it just clicked. And so that’s why I said, you know, I’m invest in my future. So I’ve got a lot more time. Next up automated these things. So I just broke it down. So that’s how I did it. I don’t know, how did you do it?
Jim Hacking
Well, I’ll get to that in just a second. But I do think that that’s right. I mean, I think one way to think about this as a, you know, building systems and building for the future is going to make you a better lawyer, you’re going to be more efficient, you’re going to provide better service to your clients, you’re going to get a better result overall, that what we’re talking about is using some of our present time to make our future better to make it more streamlined and more systematized. That’s one thing for us. You know, I’ll give you an example. So we do a process of when a US citizen marry someone from overseas, there’s a part of that takes place with USCIS. And then there’s a part that takes place with the State Department. And then there’s a part that takes place at the embassy. So what we did is we picked when a brand new case came in, we just kept track of everything that we did in that case, and we turned it into a Google Document flowchart, or just it’s just text like number one, number two, number three, it turns out that we take 76 steps from start to finish to bring someone from overseas to be with their US citizen spouse, and we’re really glad we did that. It really helps cut down on mistakes, and it streamlines things. The other thing it does is it allows me to when someone comes in and asked me well, why should I hire an attorney? To do this? Why can I just do this myself? I said, Well, do you know how many steps it takes to bring your spouse here from overseas? We do probably three of these a week. And so we’ve been keeping track, and it takes us 76 steps to get your husband from France to St. Louis. And that’s pretty effective when you’re telling people because they don’t know what they don’t know. And we do we know what we need to know in order to do our job effectively. And I think it helps not just with the way that we do it, but it also helps us explain it to the clients of where our value comes in.
Tyson Mutrux
Great. I like that. That’s a great sales tactic to that’s fantastic.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. And it only dawned on me after we did the list of things that it takes to bring someone here, you know, it actually surprised me.
Tyson Mutrux
So she you called me out a little bit earlier about because we’re talking about how you’re able to point out problems with my practice. And so it’s easier to do it let me call you out something. So I built mine out myself. Right. My Infusionsoft part of it. And you made a mistake early on. You hired somebody and he built out this elaborate thing for you. And you couldn’t use it. Remember that?
Jim Hacking
Oh yeah, I think I did that with more than one. Infusionsoft expert. Yes.
Tyson Mutrux
There’s a takeaway from that. To me, the takeaway is, there’s some things you can delegate some things that you just, I don’t know. I mean, maybe maybe you can sum it up better than I can. I don’t know, what’s what’s the takeaway from
Jim Hacking
either a couple takeaways? Number one is anybody ever, there are a lot of people out there who are happy to take your money, and you need to pick your experts and your consultants very carefully. And I’m not saying anyone did anything unethical. I’m just saying that we probably all got a little bit overly optimistic and how systematized we could be. That’s one thing number two is keep it simple. I think that we tried to build a campaign that was massive in scope, and then it was very hard for users to use. And three, I think that you really can’t rely that much on other people, because at the end of the day, you’re going to be the one that has to use it, you have to understand it. And if you can’t explain it to your team, then it’s just gonna be like this shiny thing you have up on the shelf that you don’t really take down to actually use. So I think that being personally involved in the creation of the systems is essential. I
Tyson Mutrux
couldn’t said it better myself. Alright, we are getting close on time. Are we?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, well, let’s hear, let’s hear Tyson’s tip. ISIS tip
Tyson Mutrux
I am going to talk about I was going to talk about up work. But I’m gonna I’ll leave that for another day, I want to talk about Slack. We talked about communication, today, a little bit with our team. And the way I communicate because I’ve, I use a lot of virtual assistants. And I’ve got my team also in the office, I use Slack to communicate and Slack has been phenomenal. You and I use Slack. I think slack is phenomenal for communicating among teams. You can share documents, you can share, audio, video, audio, whatever it is, it’s it’s a way to store all your communications in one place. And I thought it would be it was kind of a redundancy of like email and other things. And it’s not it’s really not it’s so much better. So I recommend slack for communicating with teams.
Jim Hacking
I’ve been really happy with it. Do we? Do we pay for that? I think it’s free isn’t free. Wow. That’s crazy. All right. So hackings hack, my hack for this week, this is going to be something that we talk about a lot on the show. It’s something I spend a lot of time when I talk to other lawyers about. And it’s a book called The E Myth revisited. It’s by Michael Gerber. I read it early, soon after starting my own practice. And it basically is a primer on how to think about your business. You know, a lot of people think, Well, I’m a lawyer, and I know how to practice law. So therefore that will make me a good law firm manager. And that’s just not true. And basically, Michael talks about the fact that when you own your own business, or your own law practice, that there’s sort of this three headed thing that runs the practice, there’s the entrepreneur who thinks big thoughts and dreams for the firm and thinks about where the firm is headed. Then there’s the manager who asked to actually manage the work that needs to get done. And then there’s the tactician, who actually does the legal work. And that whenever you’re in one of those three spheres, if you’re doing a lot of management work, then you start feeling guilty for not doing the big picture work or the tactical work, or vice versa. If you’re doing all tactical, like we said earlier, head, your head down just working, working working, then you’re not going to have the time to do the entrepreneurial stuff. And so it really crystallizes it in a in a nice, concrete way. He uses the example of a Baker, who thought that she could run a bakery because she enjoyed baking so much. And I think it’s got a lot of resonance for lawyers. I love it. Perfect. All right. We’ll wrap it up because I hear another train coming. So we’ll talk to you next week, Tyson.
Tyson Mutrux
Great week, everybody.
