Rusty Speedy: [00:00:00] We’re going to dive into these a little bit now. And so the first one, workflow is the biggest problem in my
Sam Black : firm. So this depends and this is at which level your firm is at. So we described these levels in more detail in episode one, but basically Rusty, can you take us through the levels really quick?
Rusty Speedy: Yeah, there’s level one, two, three, and four. Level one is your attorney level two is your manager level three is CEO and four is investor level. So this is more or less the, Progression that you take as a business owner and which stage you’re at is something that you can look at episode one and figure out where you fit most.
Sam Black : Yeah. So if you’re at the attorney or manager level, more than likely, workflow is not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is more likely going to be on how to get more clients or how to get more money.
Welcome to Tech Talks, the ultimate podcast for law firm owners looking to revolutionize their practices through technology and strategic business management. Brought to [00:01:00] you by 4iiz Systems, your trusted partner in creating custom software solutions and reports to ensure that everything works together seamlessly to drive your firm’s success.
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rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: today we’re diving into the world of workflow from busting mitts that have lawyers scratching their heads to decoding the magic of software. This episode is your backstage pass to transforming your firm’s productivity game.
Sam Black : So whether your staff’s hitting the snooze button or burning the midnight oil, we’ve got the tips to get your woes straight.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: yeah. In episode one we talked about the four questions entrepreneurial attorneys need to answer in order to be successful. And this is the third question.
Sam Black : so this question is how do we get the work done?
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: get the workflow? So, internally, and I hate to even say this, we call workflow lawyer
porn because for [00:03:00] some reason, well, we said it
anyway. Attorneys tend to be most excited about this aspect of the business. They just love the idea of workflow and getting cases moved efficiently.
Sam Black : So when we talk about workflow, we don’t just mean case matter workflow, but kind of all aspects of internal processes like making bank deposits for those that still do them.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. And there’s a book that I’ve read, it was called Work the System by a guy named Sam Carpenter and he talks about building a system that’s documented. So a system with documentation for everything, but there’s also no need to go overboard.
Sam Black : So what do you mean by that?
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: So generally you want to only document things that are repeatable processes.
So things that you’re gonna do daily, monthly, weekly, yearly. And you don’t want to have to relearn or reinvent those processes every time you have to do it. so later when you document them, if you need to change something in order to be more efficient or to head off problems, you can bake those into your process.
So when you go look [00:04:00] at it again next week, you’ve got that change in there. You don’t have to, you know, remember that one thing that you had to do last time.
Sam Black : Yeah, so from a marketing perspective, ’cause I always talk about marketing. we don’t always remember like seasonal changes or things that affect the business. Maybe there was a really slow week one week in the summer because of a holiday or anything like that. We don’t normally remember them, so we need to document them.
That way when it comes around to the next year, we can be proactive instead of reactive on that.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. And another example, let’s say that you have a motion that was denied for some technical reason, so you don’t wanna make a change to your process and document it, and that process may just be a checklist of all the different things you need to do when you’re putting that motion together.
Sam Black : Okay. So in every episode we go through some myths or that we’ve heard firms say. we can go over some myths that we find about workflow. So, the first one is this is the biggest problem in my firm.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Second is better software will solve your workflow problems.
Sam Black : [00:05:00] and lastly, my staff isn’t working hard enough or they’re working too hard and have too much on their plate.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: So, we’re gonna kind of dive into these a little bit now. And so the first one, workflow’s the biggest problem in my firm.
Sam Black : So this depends. And this is at which level your firm is at. So we describe these levels in more detail in episode one, but basically Rusty, can you take us through the levels really quick? I.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. So, level 1, 2, 3, and four. Level one is your attorney. Level two is your manager. Level three is c e o, and four is investor level. So this is more or less the progression that you take as a business owner. And which stage you’re at is something that you can, you know, look at episode one and figure out where you fit most.
Sam Black : Yeah, so if you are at the attorney or manager level, more than likely workflow is not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem’s more likely gonna be on, you know, how to get more clients or how to get more money.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: If you’re at the c e O [00:06:00] level, this is like a next big opportunity because you’re gonna be dealing with volume, big volumes of cases, and efficiency will matter at that point.
Sam Black : Yeah. And to get to that last level or the investor level, you’ve gotta nail this. If not, then you’re stuck at that C E O level. This is the biggest kind of factor we find between c e o and investor levels. I.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: So the second myth was that better software will solve your workflow problems.
Sam Black : this can be true, but we talk about practice management software. So this is like practice Panther, Clio, my case, rocket Matter, Trello. Any of these tools they are important.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. But the problem with these is they’re built for what we call a least common denominator. Right. They’re very broad. They’re very generalized. So yes, there are things in there you can go set up, like, Hey, create this task after five days or something like that. But First of all, you have to go there and do that. Secondly, your reporting’s not gonna be great on all of that stuff. So when we talk about the different [00:07:00] reports, we’ll get into a little bit later, but you wanna know how long each case is staying in a stage as opposed to, Hey, I got five tasks done today. So it’s a difference between looking at how quickly your cases are moving versus how many tasks you’re getting done.
Sam Black : Yeah, so. When we talk about these softwares, we’re not necessarily bashing on them because these software solutions are important and they do help you organize work, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll get the work done any faster.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. You can spend your entire professional career building out all these complicated workflows, but you’ll actually need to put a system in place in order to be more efficient. Right? Like I said, it’s not just rules and you know, tasks you need like a system where you’re looking at it from beginning to end.
Sam Black : Definitely, and a lot of people start with like task lists, which are important.
But it really needs to be focused on what is the most important things to do first instead of like, this is the order that we need to do them.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. And so when we look at workflows and talk about how to build workflows to [00:08:00] be more efficient look at this book called The Gold by a guy named Eli Goldratt. We’ll have these resources later just in case you do wanna go back and look at ’em. But this is in specific reference to a manufacturing process or manufacturing processes.
And I know no one likes to think of their firm as, you know, a plant where you’re building a bunch of different stuff, but in a lot of ways it, there are a lot of similarities.
Sam Black : Yeah, so this specifically has been applied to many industries, including the service industry, but we do find it appropriate, as Rusty said when we’re talking about
the law office
workflows. And how that applies here as well.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: and I’m gonna throw a couple terms out there. We don’t need to really necessarily know what these mean. We’ll get into these more detail in later episodes. But things that you wanna measure when you’re looking at your Workflow processes or throughput inventory, operating expenses and bottlenecks,
Sam Black : Yeah, so basically we’re trying to say improving the process of anything other than the constraint is a waste of [00:09:00] time at that moment. It can only go as fast as that constraint allows.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: I think I forgot to mention. So what is a constraint?
Sam Black : Yeah. so I like to put it in really easy terms, but you’ve all been in traffic. And so if you are on a four lane road that’s under construction with four different sections and you close two of the lanes and then further down, they open back up to like three, and then they close down to one lane.
then it goes back to three and then four. Which section should they try to finish first to increase the flow of traffic?
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: So, yeah, like Sam was saying, you’ve got. Two lanes, three lanes, one lane, three, and then four. So if you’re making your three lane back to four, right? It’s still gonna get to that one lane section, and it’s just gonna bottleneck right there. So everybody’s gonna have to go to that one little section and it’s gonna go even slower probably because you’re just increasing traffic that’s gonna hit that little area. So really the main thing you need to work on is that one lane section. That is gonna be the thing that is gonna get that [00:10:00] traffic moving through the whole area much faster.
Sam Black : Yeah, so to do this, there is a process and the first step is kind of identifying what those constraints are.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah, and I’ll give you an example of that. It is Basically, let’s say that part of your process is getting your client to bring in all their bills, right? That may be the thing in your workflow that takes the longest. So your next step is deciding how you’re going to exploit the systems constraint.
How are you going to start removing those bottlenecks, max.
Sam Black : Yeah. And so the next step is to subordinate everything else to exploit those constraints, so . You know, deprioritize everything else that’s not that constraint. And then Rusty
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah, and then you’re gonna elevate the system’s constraint. And that means basically you are going to try to make it where it’s no longer the constraint. You are gonna ma mostly focus on that. You are going to get it as smooth out as possible. And then if you’re measuring properly, you could say, hey, now it’s no longer getting the documents, [00:11:00] it’s drafting, you know, the pleadings or whatever it needs to be is the next thing that’s slowing us down.
Sam Black : So, and then lastly, so if in the previous a constraint has been resolved, and once that constraint is resolved, go back to step one and find the next constraint. we also have to remember like, just because a constraint is resolved, it’s not a one-time fix. You have to make sure it stays resolved.
It’s no longer Constraint. If that lane goes back down to one lane, you need to figure out how to get it opened back up to three lanes again.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Exactly. And so getting into that, there’s a term we use constantly around our company. It’s called Kinai, and that’s an initialism. It’s constant, never ending improvement. And we like to say this needs to AP be applied in all areas of the firm, but you know, in my estimation, most definitely workflow.
Sam Black : All right, so the next myth or thing that we hear a lot is either my staff isn’t working hard enough, or on the other end they’re working too hard and [00:12:00] they don’t have enough time to get all their tasks done.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. And we got into this next part a little bit when we were discussing expenses, which I think was in episode two but that was that your least compensated person, the person that you’re paying the least amount of money needs to be doing as much in your workflow as they can. Whereas your most compensated person, which is generally gonna be your attorneys, they only need to be doing the high level task that really only they are qualified to do.
Sam Black : Yeah, absolutely. So this goes into the myth of 100% productivity also by a book by the the Phoenix Project.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: And yeah, this one kind of goes into DevOps and stuff. So it’s near and dear to my heart. But again, has been applied to multiple industries and so we talk about this idea of unplanned work. I. So let’s say that you have come up with an excellent workflow and your staff can get like, let’s say 30 tasks done per day. But you’ve got clients calling, you got people coming in, you got people dropping off a giant box [00:13:00] of documents, so that’s unplanned work. If they were working the whole day, yes, they could get 30 tasks done, but how many can they get done if all that stuff is happening and they have to deal with that?
Sam Black : Yeah, so a lot of how we do this is by making wait times visible, so knowing when your work has to wait to be done. Since the resource who is supposed to be doing it is busy or when your work has to go back through the process because it either needs to be redone or lacks some parts or anything like that.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: And yeah, so this is still going back to that bottleneck, right? Your people are the bottleneck. They only have so much time that they can work, and you’re getting here and we’re talking about wait time. So I’m gonna give you the weird, nerdy math on it, but it’s the percentage that a resource is busy, divided by the percentage that the resource
is idle.
Sam Black : when we say
resource, We do mean people
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: That’s right. So in the book, it’s a person, he’s got a name, Brent. So, carrying this a little bit further, if Brent is 50% utilized, so let’s say that [00:14:00] he’s got 50% of unplanned work coming in, it just happens every day. Then his wait time is gonna be 50 50, which means that you must wait for 50% of his time to get your work processed. So in a nutshell, you can’t plan eight hours of work per day for Brent, you can only plan four hours. So if you’re planning on gonna get 30 tasks done, let’s lower that to 15. That’s the only way that’s actually gonna happen.
Sam Black : So basically the two biggest questions we need to ask are, do the projects that people are pushing increase the operational stability? . And do they increase the capacity of the most constrained resource of the company? If not, the answer is that these projects are not the best use of your time right now, and you need to focus on the one that’s the constraint.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. And we talk about the most constrained resource of your company. It’s probably you when you first get started. You know, everything comes onto your plate. So one way we talk about this, doing those least compensated people. So instead of owning a case, [00:15:00] beginning to end, start to finish like to come up with departments for stages.
Again, you need some staff in order to be able to do this, but for example, we have things like a document collection team. These people follow up with your clients and say, Hey, you haven’t brought us all the documents you need. And we need to speed this part of the process up. This is our constraint. So bring these documents in.
If we hound them, hopefully they bring ’em in. Additionally, drafters, people who draft pleadings or forms or whatever. And then even a mailing team, people to process mail. Once you get to a certain level, you get a lot of mail. You need to send a lot of mail. It has caught up a little bit recently where you can do more via email as opposed to fax, but still in certain jurisdictions it’s not, so, mailing team is another one that you might need.
Sam Black : Yeah. So, and as we’re talking about, this is the most important thing at that c e o and investor level, we need to be focused on reports. Rusty, can we go through kind of what reports we need to look at if we’re focusing on workflow?
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah, so one of the terms i mentioned earlier was inventory. [00:16:00] And that is basically your number of cases total, right? You have, let’s say if you have 20 active cases, 2000 active cases, that’s your inventory. Now, you also want to get the number that are in each stage. Let’s say that of those hundred cases, 20 of them are in that document collection stage. So at any given time, you wanna know how many are in the document collection stage versus how many are in the drafting stage.
Sam Black : the next. One is throughput and Rusty, can you go through what that is?
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Yeah. More or less it’s how quickly you move things from stage to stage. There’s a more complicated definition. I’m not gonna bore you with that one right now, but think of it as how quickly can we move a case from stage one to stage five? We want to get it done. So how quickly are we doing that?
That’s something you wanna measure. You wanna see if you’re getting better at moving your cases, or worse at moving your cases over time.
Sam Black : All right. Next report.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: Oh yeah. So the time and stage, so how long something’s in a stage. We just talked about the document collection stage.[00:17:00] Something that’s gonna very much affect throughput and help you identify that constraint is how long something is in that stage. So let’s say all in all, it takes, I don’t know, six months to complete a case, but for two of those months, you’re in the document collection stage. That is a very easy way to to determine what your constraint is, plus looking at your inventory and saying, Hey, how many people do I need to put into this part of the workflow in order to move the case? Is.
Sam Black : Yeah. So the last report that we’d like to go through is individual and team performance. So the goal of your. Or team, or the goal of that individual is to move the case, not just complete the task. So we’ll be going into this a lot in next week’s episode where we’re going through team performance and creating these goals for your teams and how to make it a win-win for the employee and for the firm.
be coming up next week.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: And yeah we’ll definitely take a deeper dive into all of the workflow stuff as we continue these, four questions, you can go [00:18:00] super, super deep and we’re just getting started.
Sam Black : Yeah, so you can find all of these resources or contact us at four eyes.com/podcast.
rusty_1_09-26-2023_102402: And you can also submit some questions. We may talk about those in future episodes or we can just personally provide you resources that might help, answer those questions. Or lastly, you could hire us and we do all this stuff for you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the 4iiZ Tech Talks. I hope you learned some actionable strategies to attract more clients and grow your law firm. Remember, consistent small wins over time lead to massive growth. Try implementing just one tactic from this episode and see how it goes.
We’ll be back next week with more strategies to take your law firm to the next level.
