How to Build a Thriving Firm

00:03 Speaker 1 Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host in today's episode. We're going back in time to when I was a guest on Trial or Nation with Michael Cowan. Michael, we discussed my experience running a firm and practicing law, as well as the tips and tactics to scaling a practice and some of the processes we found very effective in our firm. I also learned a lot of great tips from Michael and some of the great things he's doing at his law firm as well. 00:41 Speaker 2 How are you doing today, Jack? 00:43 Speaker 1 I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Having a great time at the TTLA Annual conference. 00:46 Speaker 2 Yeah. And for any listeners today noticing that there's unusual amount of background noise, I apologize, but we're recording this at the TTLA conference. We got a room as far away from the conference down the hallway as we could find, but there's still people hanging outside talking. So just bear with us. It's free, so you can't get your money back. So, Jack, tell me a little bit about yourself. 01:08 Speaker 1 Well, I'm originally from East Texas, grew up in Longview, which is for those of you not From Texas, about 45 miles west of Louisiana border. My dad owned a restaurant growing up. And so I grew up washing dishes, cooking, waiting tables, bartending, which was also great training for being a trial lawyer and learning how to talk to people. 01:30 Speaker 2 I agree. 01:31 Speaker 1 And it was a great experience. 01:34 Speaker 2 Actually, waiting tables was one of the things I look for when I hire young lawyers because I'm finding that people that wait tables when they have to deal with people and give them good service, even when they're being unreasonable. And also you're working for tips. And when you've busted your butt for 217 an hour plus whatever someone else is willing to give you tend to appreciate what you make as a lawyer a little more and you're a little more realistic about the value and the need to work hard. 02:00 Speaker 1 If you can convince, you know, an upset someone in a happy hour that's upset to give you a tip, that's good training for trial work. 02:09 Speaker 2 Absolutely. So you got a law school and got licensed about 2006. And so 12 years later, how big is your firm? 02:20 Speaker 1 We currently have 63 members of the team and 23 attorneys. 02:25 Speaker 2 Wow. In all in one office or different places. 02:28 Speaker 1 We have three main offices. One in Austin, one in Denver, and then one in Dallas. And our hubs primarily in Austin, where 16 of our attorneys are. We opened up in Denver three years ago, and I got licensed there and several other attorneys did, and now we have six attorneys in that office and then one in Dallas. 02:50 Speaker 2 So making money in a state with caps. 02:52 Speaker 1 Yeah, it is. It is a challenge, but it's beautiful in Colorado. That's a plus. 02:58 Speaker 2 So, basically, I wanted you to just give us a little story of how you go from 12 years ago being a new law school graduate to 12 years later having a law firm that's that big, and you do all personal injury law. 03:11 Speaker 1 We do exclusively personal injury law. 03:14 Speaker 2 Can you just give me a little bit of that story of how you start from getting out of school, getting a job for somebody else, and then over such a fairly short period of time, building this business up? 03:24 Speaker 1 So it kind of starts where I was out of law school initially. I went to Baylor Law School. And after my second year of law school, my wife was still in college, and I looked. I had a few opportunities to go work in East Texas or in Houston at some really good law firms. I pushed all of those aside to go be close to my wife. And I found myself waiting tables in Round Rock, Texas, which I'd sworn I was done doing, that. I would never wait tables again. I must have applied to over 150 law firms. 03:54 Speaker 2 Awesome. It's a rough market. 03:56 Speaker 1 It is. And I didn't realize that at the time. I didn't click that. There's 300 attorneys graduating from UT every year, and I was fortunate enough to get offered a clerkship at a firm that did primarily family law. They asked me how much I wanted. I said I'd work for free. They said, how's $8 an hour? I said, you got a deal. Wow. And this was while I was still a law clerk during the summer. And I basically did whatever they need done. They had two attorneys at the time. I was a receptionist. I was the paralegal. I went to the courthouse, I talked to clients, and they had a handful of personal injury cases. And up to this point, I really hadn't given a lot of thought to doing plaintiff's work, But I found I really loved that part of the practice. 04:40 Speaker 1 And they offered me a position when I came out of law school to start ramping up and doing personal injury law. I had to do family law while I built up the practice at the time. And I realized very quickly that family law was not something I personally wanted to practice. So I tried to build up the PI practice as much as I could, and he also gave me the opportunity to be a big part of the business of running the firm. And so I took up a lot of space, and then he put me in charge of HR and of marketing and management. 05:10 Speaker 2 Wow. 05:11 Speaker 1 And so that's kind of one of the beginnings of it. 05:15 Speaker 2 And then at some point, how long did you work for someone else before you struck out? 05:19 Speaker 1 I worked for him a little over a year and a half, close to two years. And my dad had always told me I was going to start my own law firm. And I told him, no way I'm going to be at this firm the rest of my life. And, you know, things changed. And I decided, you know what, this is the right step to take. My wife was very encouraging. We just bought our house. And it was right before the 2008 crash. And so bought the house, quit my job, stock market crashes, our house value goes down. And I opened my practice. 05:55 Speaker 2 And were you a solo or did you practice with somebody else? 05:58 Speaker 1 At first I had a law partner who did business law, and he is now somewhat retired, and he does. He's a county treasurer in Williamson County. And we started in Williamson County. He did business and I did personal injury, and then we had an associate that did family law. 06:14 Speaker 2 You started off doing personal injury work in Williamson County, Texas. And for those of us, our listeners are not from Texas, that is choosing one of the most difficult venues in the state as far as jury verdicts and case values to start in. How was that? 06:31 Speaker 1 You know, it was intentional, actually, that we picked that county because I knew that Austin was very competitive, that Dallas is very competitive. So went where the. Where the competition wasn't. And bad stuff happens, unfortunately, in Williamson county just like anywhere else. And I was able to generate a lot of referrals that way by making inroads places where not a lot of other plaintiffs lawyers were going. And so it turned out to be a really fortuitous move by focusing on Williamson county in the beginning. 07:04 Speaker 2 And then how did your firm grow over the years? 07:09 Speaker 1 You know, I think it started with a plan. So I read a really great book early on in my career called the E. Myth. 07:15 Speaker 2 Yeah, I read that too. 07:17 Speaker 1 Great book. And that kind of set me off to planning where I wanted the firm to grow to go to. And I started off by drawing an org chart for what the firm would be like when we had 30 lawyers who would be in charge of HR, finance, marketing. And then I worked my way backwards from there to where I was at then, while at the same time trying to make sure I focused on what the core principles that I wanted the firm to be about, while also making sure I'm still a practicing lawyer because I didn't want to just become a CEO or just a business guy. I want to make sure I was still meeting with the clients, practicing law, because I think there's a lot of ways you can make money in this life. 07:57 Speaker 1 And the reason I like doing personal injury work is you get to help people and work with clients. 08:02 Speaker 2 Did you actually work like an E. Myth because they have, like, their consulting business, or did you just read the book? 08:06 Speaker 1 I just read the book, and then I read the E. Myth attorney, which they had a little kind of a side version of it. And if you're. I like. I think the E. Myth is actually better than the E. Myth attorney personally. But I never used the consultants. But I just consumed a lot of literature on how to run a business. 08:24 Speaker 2 I did. It helped. But you seem to have run a bit better business than I do, despite the lack of consulting. I worked with a lot of consultants over the years, so always trying to figure out a way to do it better. 08:36 Speaker 1 I think that's really smart, and I have as well. I think you've got to know what you don't know. I think. I think a lot of times in our business, egos get in the way of success. Whether it's on a case you think you may be. You know, you don't want to talk to your friend who does medical malpractice because you don't want to seem like you're not the best at that area, but you're going to help the client. And the same in business, you got to know that there's other people smarter that have more experience that you have that you can take from. And one thing that I wanted to make sure got taken away from this is nothing that I've done has been original in the sense of it was other people's ideas and thoughts that I'm building on. 09:12 Speaker 1 And it's all out there. And none of it's a trick. It's stuff that you can do by just being consistent. 09:19 Speaker 2 So you have the vision of what you're going to be when you have, what you said, 30 attorneys, and you only have two. So I guess the first thing you need to do, you start getting some work. If you don't have any cases, you can't build the firm. So whether it's just you that does PI, your partner does business law, how do you get cases? I mean, you're there in Williamson County. 09:37 Speaker 1 There was. We took a couple routes. One is we wanted to Build referrals, a referral network of attorneys that sent us cases. We also wanted to make sure we kept our current and future, our current clients and past clients in the loop. And then we wanted to do broadcast marketing in the sense of not on tv, but on the Internet, word of mouth, sponsoring events to bring in people that may not have heard of us. And it was all about creating systems and just listening to your team speak about marketing. And a lot of the stuff you guys talked about was so true that it's about consistency. And so, for example, when it came to getting clients from other attorneys, I had a rule that I had to do at least two networking events a week. 10:21 Speaker 1 And we still have that with our attorneys where they have to do one networking event a week, where they go have an intentional interaction with another lawyer that can bring in business to the firm. And. And it took about a year for that to start paying off. And I had attorneys that would send me 40 terrible cases, you know, and I said, just keep sending them. And they would call and apologize. I'm sorry, I'm sending this bad case. Don't apologize. You send me everything. You can. Just forward them. I don't care if it's the worst case ever. I'll screen it and I'll tell you if I can take it or not. And those attorneys that were sending me bad cases started sending me really good cases. 10:53 Speaker 2 Oh, wow. 10:55 Speaker 1 And we really focused on bankruptcy lawyers, family law attorneys, criminal defense attorneys. And we really tried to foster an atmosphere of sharing. So we never came at it of, hey, you got this great case, why don't you send it to us? Say, hey, you have this case, here's our discovery, you know, here's how I would approach this deposition. Here's how you should handle the segregation issue. And I think a lot of people, especially attorneys, think that doing personal injury law is a quick buck, is easy. They soon realized, man, this is a. 11:26 Speaker 2 Lot of work, a lot of risk. 11:28 Speaker 1 And a lot of risk. 11:31 Speaker 2 And so even as a three year lawyer, then you were able to generate attorney referrals. 11:37 Speaker 1 That's right. And part of it was being in Williamson County. And I think part of it was I looked older than I was. My wife gives me a hard time, says I looked 40 at age 22. And so I thought was able to build up relationships with more established attorneys because they didn't know anyone that was really doing PI in Williamson County. It was all Austin. And there's kind of a cross town rivalry between Travis county and Williamson County. And you're Either a Williamson county person or a Travis county person. They don't mix very often. 12:06 Speaker 2 It's interesting, you know, I started off similar. I would do the. I was a three year lawyer unintentionally out of my own because, not that I got fired, my boss quit and I ended up with a law firm and literally quit practicing PLL and became a public defender. Wow. And so I had to figure out how to get business. And so what I did was nobody wanted to handle all state low property damage, chiropractor. And so I got to go try a bunch of cases. And you know, I was in the Rio Grande Valley, which can be a good venue and one enough of them where, you know, over the years I started getting better and better things, but, you know, I had to pay the dues for a long time. Doing that sounds like you had to do the same thing. 12:47 Speaker 1 Very much so. I remember and I look back at so many of the cases that I had early on that I'm. First, I was like, what was I thinking taking that case? And second, you know, I can't believe I handled this way or that way. But I'll tell you, some of the best work I felt like I did on cases where some of those first cases that were really tough liability cases that I only had five cases at the time. So I'm gonna work the heck out of this case and really dive in and make sure that we get the best outcome we can, because I need this case to work out. 13:16 Speaker 2 Yeah. And so then over the years, I guess what did you do then to continue building that? 13:22 Speaker 1 Well, so we're very analytical in our approach. And I say we because I think it all starts with having a great team. Something that it took me a long time to figure out is that who you hire is usually the most important decision you can make. My theory is if you hired amazing, brilliant people at every part of the organization and had a bad system, you're probably going to still be successful. If you have a great system and hire people that aren't smart, that don't care, that don't work hard, you're going to fail. Even if you have the best system in the world. 13:54 Speaker 2 Absolutely. 13:55 Speaker 1 So it started with making sure we're getting great people that took a lot of trial and error. Because you know, think about, do I want someone that's too expensive, too cheap, and we made every mistake you can think of. We hired people that were too expensive, that didn't want to do the job that they had hired for, or someone we didn't pay enough for that, they left for a better opportunity. And so it started with making sure were hiring great people and then creating the system where their success leads to shared success and making sure the great people that we have stay with the team. And as they are getting more and more successful, we're all growing together. And so it started with creating a plan on how to hire people and how to find great people as we grew. 14:40 Speaker 2 I struggle with that. Could you give me some advice what you've learned? How to hire great lawyers and legal systems, for example? 14:47 Speaker 1 I think first experience is overrated. Okay, we hire a lot of really smart people that we can train and mold, but they've got to have that core aspects of hunger. They have to be driven, they have to be smart, and they have to be hard working. And I think organization is underrated. I think they have to be very well organized to be a good lawyer or a good paralegal. And I think the interview is a lot of times the least important part of the job search process. So we have a great in house recruiter that we just brought on about a year and a half ago, but before that we did it all in house or did all ourselves. And so what I try to do is try to pick out data points that lead to attributes that I'm looking for in someone. 15:33 Speaker 1 So were talking about waiting tables before. I really like people that have done blue collar or service industry jobs. And so I'll look for their resumes or anything that shows that I like people that are problem solvers. And so we have everyone, whether it's an attorney or staff member, take an aptitude test prior to their in person interview. We've also done things in order to do a lot of screening because one of the hardest things is you post a job and you get 300 resumes and you've got to sit there after a long day of practicing law and go through all these resumes and figure out who the heck am I going to hire. 16:09 Speaker 1 So what we did was we do a Skype interview first, which is about 10 minutes long, and we tell the candidate, hey, this is going to be a 10 minute interview. That's the purpose of this. And, and then I'll watch those interviews of the people that we picked out of long stack. So I don't spend all day meeting with people because most of the time in an interview, you know, in the first five minutes, yeah, this is not going to work out. But if it's in person, you feel obliged to spend an hour with them because you don't want to hurt their feelings. Right. 16:37 Speaker 2 Yeah. I found the interviews are the worst predictor of whether people are going to work out. Because the people we interview best are the ones that are switching jobs every six months to a year because they have a lot of practice. 16:46 Speaker 1 Yeah. 16:47 Speaker 2 And some people, you know, the people you want. What we found is people we want aren't necessarily people looking for jobs either. That's a whole other topic of how you recruit people and how you find people. But it is so hard. And that's been the key. Success. And I think your point that experience can be overrated. I don't know if you've ever found this, but we have systems that I think work. And one issue I've had, when I've hired an experienced lawyer, they have something that's worked for them. And there's a great resistance to doing it our way. Have you experienced any of that? 17:20 Speaker 1 I've experienced that more times than I can count with some really good lawyers. And so what I really try to do on the front end is warn them and say, hey, your system may be great for you and my system may not be as good as yours, but if you're gonna jump on with us, you gotta do it our way. 17:34 Speaker 2 Yeah. 17:35 Speaker 1 I look at our firm like a sports team. Part of my job is to be the coach. And I said, there's a right way, a wrong way, and it's our way. And it's important that we're all rowing in the same direction and we'll just start spinning in circles. Yeah, that a lot of times. But even then, sometimes people just, it's tough to get them to buy in. 17:52 Speaker 2 It really is. And I've just had to unfortunately say, look, this is the way we do things and we would love to have you work here, but if you want to do it your way, you know, this entrepreneurial spirit, go do it your way somewhere else. I completely agree. And that's unfortunately, you know, you want to have the firm of your dreams and you have to make sure that you have people doing it the way you want it done. And so what do you do to make sure then? Can you describe some systems you do to make sure that the lawyers and other staff members you have are working up a case the way you want it worked up? 18:25 Speaker 1 You know, we do a lot of things that are unique. One is we developed our own practice management software. We have an in house software developer. 18:33 Speaker 2 Oh, really? 18:35 Speaker 1 And we don't sell it. No one else uses it. And the cool thing about that is it can be customized. And so we have all these checklists and processes and memos that we put in the software that'll send an alert if you're going against the firm strategy. And so it'll kind of alert you, hey, it's 120 days out from trial. Here's what you should be doing at 120 days out. And a checklist automatically pops up and reminds them, here's the steps you need to take. It's also a way to train good habits. A great book I read the Power of Habit. It sounds like a self help book, but it's really a business book. And it's about how to build habits in both organizations and people. And we found the software and our processes and checklists help build the habits that lead to success. 19:22 Speaker 1 Because I think just like in sports, greatness is built by doing the right thing every single day. And one of our core principles is excellence always. Which means we don't do a great job some of the time, we do a great job all the time. And I tell the team that's from the facts cover page to how you go to court. For example, one of our, we have a hearing checklist that every attorney has to follow. Every attorney has to turn in, even if they've done a thousand of them. And it says, read the local rules. Because the most experienced attorney will forget to read the local rules because we practice in all these different jurisdictions, they'll show up and the judge will get mad at them because they didn't do something that the local rule said to do. 20:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, I am going to find some time to sit down with you, my friend. Because we do similar things. We have checklists. I have needls, which is a good program. And then we had to hire someone to build a dashboard on top of needls to pull out the data in the form that I need to run a firm which is not just looking at a case by case, but looking at a lawyer's doctor of the firm. Are people doing what needs to be done on a case? And what I've really found is that, you know, people resist systems saying, look, we're not going burgers at McDonald's. This is an art. And there's a lot of truth to that because a case is an art and it needs long periods. 20:41 Speaker 2 I think of uninterrupted time working on the creative aspect of the case, discovering the facts, working on our theories. But when you have the checklist to make sure that your medical records are proven up that you found and named your before and after witnesses, that you have your, you know, 90 for us, 90 days for experts, that you've hired all your experts and given them what they needed and have a discovery plan for getting them what else they're going to need to get the reports out. When that stuff happens automatically, then you can be free because you're not always panicking about the deadline you're about to miss. 21:16 Speaker 1 Well, and I think that's a really great point. And what we try to do is build within our checklist and processes a lot of the creative side of. We do a thing called a litigation strategy memo before we file any lawsuit. And in that, we follow the rules of the road method, the reptile method, and you have to put in your rules and there's a checklist. Does it meet all of the elements? That is a good rule. And that stuff's hard. It's hard to do that. And so you force them to go through, to post to. They're just kind of rushing it. Copy and paste something from another case. We force the attorneys to figure out what witnesses are really going to call what discovery, what's your budget on the case and all that's built in. 21:53 Speaker 1 And I think a lot of the times, the resistance to the process is the resistance to doing that creative thinking, actually thinking through it and not waiting until that comes upon you in the case. 22:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, I've had people say, well, there's a life cycle in a case. There is. But when you plan it out early, it goes. And then the depositions go so much better. When you know where you're going before you start and the discovery, what you ask for, what you don't. I mean, you know, in trucking cases, I used to. When I first started, I had a set of 283 requests for production that I just gathered everybody's request for production. I put them all together. I asked for a lot of things that I didn't need. In 90% of the cases, I sometimes asked for the same thing eight different ways because I didn't know what was important and what wasn't. You know, now that we're, you know, more seasoned, we have a smaller, still pretty thorough list. 22:42 Speaker 2 And then other things we add depending on the type of the case. 22:45 Speaker 1 Well, I think that's. And that's something that we've been really focusing on is why I keep telling the younger attorneys, don't send discovery. We don't need to send. Because when you're before the judge on that motion to compel Hearing, you need to come in it with clean hands. And if you sent 500 requests for production and they're like, you, Honor, this is ridiculous. To just point and say, pretty ridiculous. 23:05 Speaker 2 Yeah. 23:06 Speaker 1 One other thing that we've done that I think is a little unique is we have a training and development attorney, because the second stage that's made us successful is not just hiring great people, but getting them up to speed as quickly as we can. And so that person's job is to bring up the new attorneys and paralegals. And we have a training certification system where the attorneys and paralegals demonstrate their ability to do certain things, whether it's a deposition, discovery. And based on their certifications, they allows them to handle different types of cases. 23:41 Speaker 2 Wow. 23:41 Speaker 1 So if you want to handle a trucking case at our firm, you have to get certified in trucking cases, which means you watch and read these cles. You sit second chair with some more seasoned attorneys at the firm through at least a certain number of cases. You take expert depositions, and it's almost like a class that verifies that you're able to do it. And then we have the senior attorneys actually do a confirmation. They filed a little form saying, you know, I confirm this person is going to excel handling trucking cases or premises cases, whatever type of case it might be. 24:12 Speaker 2 And how did you find a training and development attorney? 24:15 Speaker 1 Well, that was another kind of trial and error. I made up the position because I'd never heard of it before. And I was like, what would I call this? And who would we want to attract? And were very lucky to get a very talented attorney. And she had been a practicing lawyer, really brilliant, had done a law review. It was kind of burnt out from litigation, but still wanted to be involved in cases. And she read our job posting and said, this is for me. And she just came in and just loved it from day one. 24:41 Speaker 2 That is brilliant. You know, one of the things I've struggled with is I come up with these plans to do this. I have training plans, I have certification plans, and I'm never able to implement them. I'm going to confess, I have a lot of unimplemented plans and training and certification. And a lot of it's because I become my own roadblock. I commit to do too much myself, and then I have to practice law. I have to run a firm. It doesn't happen. And then I've been having trouble finding the right person to put in charge of it. But that is, I'm so proud of you for actually doing that. And you know, a lot of us talk about that, but you've actually done it well. 25:14 Speaker 1 And what I try to do when. And that was a really tough decision actually, because, you know, that's a big line item in your budget to bring on someone that's not generating revenue, who's an attorney. But what I try to think about is what time am I spending on that topic and how many cases could I be working on. And that's one of the things that I'm always evaluating each week, each month is how much time did I get to spend on cases. And I consider it an unsuccessful month if I don't spend at least 60% of my time working on cases. Yeah. And so when I found myself spending two thirds of my time training people, it's like, man, I need to figure out how to get this done. 25:51 Speaker 2 That's brilliant. 25:52 Speaker 1 Well, thank you. 25:53 Speaker 2 I mean, I'm not pulling smoke up, but that is, I'm really impressed. I'm glad we're doing it. If nothing else, I don't care if anyone else listens to this. I'm glad I'm sitting here. 26:02 Speaker 1 Well, and the cool thing is through the software we've developed is like that's all in the system. So the attorney can do. It's kind of self study. They check off when they've done it and it's worked well so far. We do the same with paralegals, teach them how to E file. And I have the same principle when it comes to legal assistance and paralegals. We hire really smart people out of college and unfortunately sometimes that means they're only with you a couple years because they want to go to law school. But you get really awesome people for that two year time frame that get up to speed super fast. 26:31 Speaker 2 That's interesting. I was having an interesting conversation with another lawyer at a seminar last week when were walking down the street to dinner. And Steve Gersten, he's been the podcast, he's had a lot of. He's got another big firm that run, that's run very well. And you know, when I started and we're blessed to have some really good legal systems at our firm, but we have to go through a lot of people to find them. Whereas when I started, there were a lot of superstar legal systems out there. And I was, you know, Steve and I were talking because he's in Michigan, Island, Texas, we've seen the same thing. And I think he hit the nail on the head is that 30 or 40 years ago because, you know, were hiring people with like 20 years experience 20 something years ago. 27:08 Speaker 2 So let's say 40 years ago. There are a lot of really bright women that kind of got pigeonholed into being secretaries, assistants, and now they're lawyers, doctors, CEOs, and you know, we're drawn from a different pool of people now and then, you know, a lot of people, like I said, thank God for society, are doing, you know, different things rather than being kind of pigeonholed into being an assistant when they had the capacity to be a lawyer. But I think unless you're doing what you're doing, which is hiring those college grads or aspiring to be someone else, I mean, how do you find those people that are bright enough to be a lawyer but are willing to be an assistant for a while? 27:48 Speaker 1 I think that's really hard. I mean, and we struggled with that with a law for a long time. And we hired some very experienced people who were great paralegals for other attorneys, but they really hated our systems and it was very tough to get them. And a lot of them weren't as tech savvy that the one thing that can be a negative at our firm is if you're not really good with technology, you can't survive at our place. 28:10 Speaker 2 Yeah. 28:10 Speaker 1 You know, because we're doing something new every day. Well, we do video conferences. We do all sorts of things that if you don't feel comfortable with that, it's really tough to thrive there. 28:19 Speaker 2 Yeah, well, you have to be your firm. You can't, you know, once you make an exception, then you don't have a. 28:24 Speaker 1 System anymore that's 100% right. 28:26 Speaker 2 And I learned that the hard way too. You just can't. Your rules are what you enforce and if you don't enforce them, then you have no systems. 28:39 Speaker 1 Zynda Law Group is a plaintiff's personal injury law firm made up of over 30 lawyers that handle catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases throughout the United States. We regularly counsel and joint venture with firms across the country. Over the last several years, we have paid millions of dollars in joint venture counsel fees to the law firms we work with. If you are a law firm or attorney and have a catastrophic personal injury or wrongful death case you would like to joint venture or work with Zynda Law Group on, please reach out to us at 800-863-5312 or email us@infodferm.com and we can set up a time to discuss your. 29:20 Speaker 2 And so. Okay, so we Talked about how you get people to do what you want to do. How about volume wise? I've seen all sorts of different volume. I mean, I've unfortunately at one point in my career had 200 cases and three legal assistants. They were all little cases. Luckily by myself, that's not a good way to practice. I have a lot less than that. Now the other hand, you see Jude Bissile, who has one to four cases at a time, that's all he wants and won't take more than four cases, which I think, you know, is great for him if you can get those right. Four cases, I think it's hard for a lot of people to sustain. What is the level where you found makes sense for balancing quality with being able to have enough cases to make money with a lawyer? 29:59 Speaker 1 Well, that's a great question. And I think it all starts with the idea of how much money do you want your firm to make and what's the life cycle of your cases? So we find that our attorneys, we typically want them to have at least 36 if they're working on larger cases, because this can take two to three years. That means you're selling one case or going to trial in one case once a month. Or if you're handling a more moderate docket, we want the attorneys to have between 50 and 60 cases because that means you're resolving a case once a month or once a week. And we track the length of time that our cases take to resolve. So every case that comes in is plugged into our system. We call it the vault. And we track the length of the case. 30:40 Speaker 1 We tag cases with different characteristics. If it's a trucking, if it happened in Williamson county, if it was 48 year old male, and it's all put in the system. So we can predict how long we think a case is going to take based on our historical analysis going back seven or eight years. And so on average, our cases take about 9.3 months to resolve. And so we know if we want this attorney to hit this revenue marker, they're going to need this type of case. And then we classify the cases as catastrophic, severe or moderate. And if you're handling a catastrophic case, that counts as three moderate cases. And each attorney has a cap on the number of cases they can handle. And so whereas at a lot of firms you may want your attorneys to have as much many cases as possible. 31:23 Speaker 1 We really want to try to cap that so our attorneys can put in the time with the clients and the time to really thinking through the strategy because we want that younger attorney who's working on the moderate cases in two years to be working on the catastrophic cases. And you can't just jump up to the big leagues if you haven't been doing it the right way the whole time. 31:40 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I have found at my firm, the. As the volume of cases per lawyer has gone down, the revenue per lawyer has gone up, and the time on desk or the time between opening and closing has also gone down. Because that's, you know, that's one way to make more money per year is just to turn the case quicker without settling it cheap. Obviously, you don't want to get in that. And how do you avoid that? In a volume practice, there is a temptation to just, you know, churn them and burn them, bring them in, settle them for what you can get and go to the next one. Minimize the outlay, minimize the work. You know, how do you deal with the temptation the lawyers might have to do that and making sure that you do quality work and get top dollar. 32:22 Speaker 1 I think it all starts with the top and sending the right message to your attorneys from leadership down. And our firm is pretty turns down a lot of cases. We sign up one out of every 10 cases that we talk to. 32:36 Speaker 2 Wow. 32:37 Speaker 1 And so the attorneys are doing a good job on that front end of vetting to make sure it's a good case. Then when that case is signed up, the attorney analyzes the case. They do what's called a case strategy memo. And an example of how we use technology in this regard is as soon as the meeting with the client's over, our attorneys do a voice memo to the file, which is a data dump of everything they can think of about the client, about the case. It's like a little mini opening statement almost, except it has some of the cons to the case as well. 33:05 Speaker 2 Right. 33:06 Speaker 1 And then at that point, they come up with somewhat of an idea of what do they think this case is roughly going to turn out nine months from now. It's obviously not very predictive, but it gives a rough idea. And then as the case is progressing, they update that each month. And then prior to resolution time, they have to get it approved by their senior attorney. So each attorney works with one of our senior lawyers and then by me. And so every case is vetted to make sure that it's the right outcome for the client. 33:35 Speaker 2 That's awesome. Yeah. Because you hear stories and, you know, I'm sure it doesn't happen very often of, you know, lawyers that they want to hit their numbers. So they'll go settle them cheap and then make more money that month. But one, it's not right for the clients and two, in the long run the firm makes less money because you know, you get a short, you know, it's like you sell everything you have cheap and then what do you have left? And then also when you get a reputation for selling cheap, that's going to be in the great databases that the insurance companies have and they're going to know they don't have to go pony up more money than you'll give in. 34:07 Speaker 1 Well, one thing we also do is we reward the attorneys for, we call them effort metrics. So it's not necessarily the end result of getting the fee, but are you pushing the case along? So each month our attorneys don't necessarily have a quota on fees, but they do have a quota on metrics, which is depositions, mediations, trials, demands, lawsuits filed to show the case is being pushed. And they get high fived and rewarded based on pushing the case. And not necessarily they do get rewarded on the outcome, but it's to give a marker leading up to the outcome. 34:40 Speaker 2 That's interesting. Have you ever read the Four Disciplines of Execution? 34:42 Speaker 1 No, I haven't. 34:43 Speaker 2 It's a great book. You know, I read it and it's kind of, they say like you have leading measures and trailing measures. So the amount of money that's brought in on a case or case settlements or trailing measures that happens after all the work is done. If you want to change or improve behavior, you have to analyze what the leading measures are. What are the things people do that lead to that outcome? And so like at our firm, we actually have a weekly meeting and I brought the team and started with people that were more successful so they could teach the ones that were not moving cases as well. What are the things that we do that cause cases to be ready for trial and lead to resolution? 35:21 Speaker 2 And after a two hour meeting, it was decided it was filing a lawsuit, getting the trial date, taking the key depositions, getting all the records and reviewing them and sending demands. And so we have a weekly meeting. It's 20 minutes. And every lawyer first of all talks about did I do what I promised to do at the last meeting? Then we review our numbers, both the trailing measures and the actual outcomes. And then we make a promise of the one to three things we're going to do the next week, above and beyond our regular job to I'm going to send a demand in this case, I'm going to take, get these depots set. 35:53 Speaker 2 I'm going to get a mediation set, you know, and, you know, it's had a great effect because we just learned to focus on those and to reward that behavior and encourage that behavior instead of focusing on the end result, which, you know, honestly is three to nine months after you do the right thing. 36:07 Speaker 1 I think that's a great idea. That is really smart and a great approach because I think life's about being intentional. And by taking the time to be intentional, it's going to lead to better success for the firm. 36:20 Speaker 2 And what it also told me is I can't try to improve 10 things at the firm at once. Get this thing done, get that working, and then find the next thing. 36:26 Speaker 1 Well, you and I sound very similar on the ideas front. I have notebooks and notebooks of ideas. And what I had to learn the hard way is that you can't do all of them. 36:34 Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm still learning that you're much better on the implementation front, though. 36:37 Speaker 1 It sounds like maybe tbd, you know, you're talking about pushing cases. Another thing that we do through our platform is there's a report the attorney can run that shows the health of their docket. And so it's not necessarily the health of any individual case, but it shows how many cases that it's been more than 120 days in lit and you don't have a trial date. How many cases have been in pre litigation more than six months. And they get a score based on the different numbers. Now, it doesn't mean that they could have a bad score, but they could have a great docket because there's exceptions. If you have 40 medical malpractice cases, you know, those are a different animal than a car rep case. But it's a good way to look and see. Should I look further into this? 37:23 Speaker 1 And it's a way to tell the attorneys, hey, take a look at these 10 or 12 cases and see, is there anything we could do? Maybe there's not, but take a look at them and see. And it's a way to automate that process. You don't have to pay someone to sit and review each file. The platform does it for them. 37:37 Speaker 2 So given you have a fairly large number of attorneys, what kind of meetings do you have and how often do you have them? 37:44 Speaker 1 So we brought on a person we call a docket manager who is like the coach for the team. And then that docket manager, the attorney also works with a senior litigator at the firm, and the docket manager meets with their attorney once A week and touch base, how are things going through their docket, and then the senior attorney meets with that associate once a month. And that's usually more on, and also on an as needed basis on strategy of cases and kind of big picture items and individual case advice. And so one thing we're big on is collaboration. And so, you know, an attorney may meet with several different lawyers in the firm to get advice on a certain issue, but there's always a required meeting with their document manager at least once a week. 38:33 Speaker 1 And it's been an interesting dynamic because they're not technically that attorney's boss. So we tell them like, you guys can disagree. And we've really encouraged debate and that's actually been a challenge that we're trying to overcome is I want my associate to come into my office and say, hey, I think you're not handling that case. Right. I think we should do it this way. And we have that open environment where we can talk it through and say, well, I've handled cases like this. Maybe, maybe you're right and we can debate it. And so the docket manager is there to be more of a coach and they can disagree. And then it goes to the senior attorney to kind of decide the tie. 39:06 Speaker 2 That's great. Is the docket manager a non lawyer? 39:09 Speaker 1 No, that's an attorney. 39:09 Speaker 2 Oh, it's an excellent attorney. That's a docket manager. 39:11 Speaker 1 And they practice as well. Everyone who's an attorney, including the trained development attorney, practice law in some capacity because I don't think you can do that job without being in the trenches with your team. 39:24 Speaker 2 So I guess he or she would have a smaller docket. I would imagine they typically will work. 39:29 Speaker 1 On three to five cases at a time, max, maybe as little as two. Then we also do a lot of second chairing on cases. And so if you're a younger attorney, you want to work on the biggest case in law firm, you go to that attorney and say, hey, can I be the second chair on that file? They say, great, you're in charge of client contact. And then they get a role in that litigation. So a lot of those, the docket manager and the trained development attorney are second chairs in some of the bigger cases in the firm. And so they're also required to take depositions, to go to mediation, to go to trial themselves, because you got to keep your skills sharp. 40:01 Speaker 2 Absolutely. 40:04 Speaker 1 I feel like we're going to be hiring people after this. 40:08 Speaker 2 These are great ideas. They are. And we're having our partners retreat in about Three, we're having a firm retreat next week. We're on our partners retreat in a little over a month. And so definitely I'm gonna take some of this stuff. 40:22 Speaker 1 I would love to hear about your partner retreat. Cause that's something that I've been wanting to do for several years. It's just been a matter of like being intentional about it and figuring out is it worth the time, is it worth the investment? 40:32 Speaker 2 It hasn't always been, I'll be honest. Depends on who is there and how dedicated they are to the process. And you know, I used to go places like Napa and New Orleans and stuff, and I found that the partying gets in the way of the. So this year we're going to do it local. We may go back to having a great trip sometime. But all I know is, all I have on the agenda right now is where we are, where we want to be and how we're going to get there. I think that's plenty for two days of being. But you know, the biggest thing is that we want the three of us to be, you know, we love all the people we work with, but out of the office with no interruptions, able to just focus on the big picture, you know. 41:16 Speaker 2 And I think we have to do that once a year because you get so caught up in the day to day of the cases and everything else that if you don't step back then, you know, things can slip or you can just not go the direction that you want to end up going. 41:29 Speaker 1 I think that's really smart. We've been trying to develop a lot of committees within the firm to try to get more collaboration and to try to get stuff growing more organically because the bigger you get, it's really tough to have a top down structure. So, you know, each year we try to do charitable initiatives. And so that pretty much entails me sitting down and thinking, what the heck are we going to do? And making a list. But we did a charity committee this year and the attorney, the young attorneys just kind of ran with it on their own and came up with it and organically created it. 42:01 Speaker 2 So if you have someone else who has a law firm, either solo want to add somebody else, or you know, mid sized firm wanting to grow. What advice do you have for adding lawyers? 42:12 Speaker 1 I would say decide why you need to add an attorney. One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of law firms make, especially solos, is they have about 50% more work than they can handle. So they hire an associate and that associate does that work. Pretty fast. Then there's not enough work for that person to do. And the solo says, we'll go find more work. And the person you brought on has no way of doing that. And they end up losing the person and the cycle starts all over again. So I think the first thing is to figure out why you want that person and what you're going to have them do. And do you have enough work to do it. But once you've decided that, I think you got to make sure you're spending time looking at the financials. 42:51 Speaker 1 Attorneys are notoriously bad business people. And I think if you're going to own your own practice, you've got to look at the business of your practice like a case. There's a system, there's a method to do these things. And you've got to be as disciplined about that as you are about the best case you have. And so budgeting out, do I have enough run room to bring on an associate and be comfortable with them not generating revenue for six months or nine months and can I sustain that or is that going to create a strain on everything else? Am I not going to fund. I use this money for case expense because I'm paying an associate and then do I have enough work for that? 43:24 Speaker 2 I found the opposite problem. I can bring in enough work to hire 20 or 30 attorneys, but I'm just choosing. Maybe I need to say no to a lot more of that work because I don't want to run a law firm with 20 or 30 attorneys. I'm proud of you for doing it. It's just not what I want to do anymore. I did my E myth, I plot out what I wanted and when I got it, I realized it didn't make me happy. 43:47 Speaker 1 I think that's so you got to follow your own North Star. I think the attorneys, most of the attorneys that I admire most are solar practitioners. 43:54 Speaker 2 Well, I'm a seven lawyer firm, so we're not. I love my seven lawyer firm. I want to keep it seven. And if we grow, it'll be, you know, add an associate for a partner. Not, you know, but it'll be a different kind of growth and not as rapid. Not going from four to 10 in two years. That was just. I didn't have the business skills to handle that right. 44:13 Speaker 1 Well, I think it's about what do you want out of your law firm? I think that's another question a lot of attorneys don't ask. A lot is what do I want from my practice? A friend of mine, when I first started Practicing in Williamson County. Loved coaching soccer, but he was a patent lawyer also, so he created his practice to where he could work a couple days a week, make really good money. He was a solo. He had his clients, and he just wanted enough work to work two days a week. And then he traveled and coached soccer the other three, and he loved it. And that firm was extremely successful for him. And I think you don't want to copy anybody else. You want to figure out what does success mean to me. Do I want to have a lifestyle, offer more? 44:51 Speaker 1 I get to spend, you know, as much time with my family as humanly possible and travel? Or do I want to grow and have a lot of people? Do I want to focus just on medical malpractice? And that's what drives me. What are the things that I want out of the practice? 45:03 Speaker 2 And you do you. What's. How much of a life do you get to have running a firm of this size? 45:09 Speaker 1 Well, I have really hard and fast rules on family time and personal time. And as with other things, I try to be very intentional about it. So I have a little alarm that goes off on my phone every day at 6pm says, Go home. 45:21 Speaker 2 Wow. 45:22 Speaker 1 Now, I don't do that, but it's a reminder that's what I should be doing. And I try to make sure I spend at least two to three hours with my kids every day, come heck or high water. And then at least one weekend day is, like, off limits for work, you know, so Saturday is typically just family, just kids, no work. But it's always a struggle. It's a challenge. I find myself pulled between family, being a business person, and being an attorney and trying to balance each of those. 45:53 Speaker 2 Three and the difference between being in the room with your kids and being. 45:56 Speaker 1 Present with your kids 100%. Something I've started doing that I've found really helpful is I turn my phone off as soon as I get home and I put in a drawer, because I find if I don't turn it off, I'll somehow find it and I'll somehow check. I'm like, how did this in my hand? Yeah, I thought I got rid of you. So by turning it off, it just makes it even harder to go find the thing and turn it back on. 46:17 Speaker 2 I remember a few years ago, I had a. My wife is very particular who could babysit our children. So we probably had our first dinner alone in, you know, probably a couple years. And I was checking. I noticed at one point in dinner, she. She was on Facebook, and I Was checking email, you know, not a good thing. And so I actually, when I went on vacation last year, I did not bring a phone with me. 46:39 Speaker 1 Wow, that is great. How'd it go? 46:42 Speaker 2 It was awesome. You know, I was intentional about it. Most of our cases are under deferral. There's actually we have a lot of different referring lawyers, but we have probably a group of eight to 10 firms that give us a majority of our work. I let them all know that I want to be gone and off the grid for 14 days. That these are the people on the cases that you're handling. These are the lawyers, these are the legal assistants, this is the management person, these are the partners. If there is an issue, this is whatever they see. If it's a new case, if it's a problem with an existing case. If you want just a question, this is who you can talk to. 47:14 Speaker 2 And this is a person that knows where I'm staying and could get a hold of me if there was a true emergency. And there were no true emergencies. 47:20 Speaker 1 That's awesome. I'm going to have to try that. That's a great idea. 47:23 Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm doing it again this summer. Going to take four weeks off this summer in a row. I'm going to go at least two without a phone. Wow. And it was liberating. And my wife had her phone. The hotel rooms had phones. If there was a true emergency, they would have been able to get a hold of me. 47:40 Speaker 1 It's amazing that were all able to survive without phones for all of human history. 47:44 Speaker 2 Yeah. And when I started, they had cell phones when I started practicing, but I couldn't afford them because there was like 45 cents a minute. When you're doing Allstate disputed liability, low impact chiropractor cases, you know, with the phone rates back then, you couldn't afford one. 47:59 Speaker 1 You know, another thing you're talking about affording a phone is we try to be very conscious on our budget when it comes to stuff we don't necessarily need. You know, we always try to put things do we want or do we need it? And try to make sure we're being cognizant of what are we taking away from financially if we go get this really fancy conference room table versus one that's really nice, but it's not as nice as this one over here and having a really firm. I think if you're going to have your own practice, you've got to have a good budgeting process. 48:29 Speaker 2 Yeah. John Black, he's passed away since, but he Was. He told me early on. And it hasn't sunk in as much as it needs to with me. But it's not what you make, it's what you keep. 48:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. Right. And, you know, you're talking about our phones and distractions. I really try to coach our attorneys on getting away from their phones and not checking email constantly. And we don't police what people go on their computers. We kind of judge based on success or results. But if I find an attorney that's saying to the office, 8 o' clock on a regular basis, I say, you know what? You may be an organizational problem. You know, why don't you count how many times you open your outlook throughout the day? And it's not because you're like doing something frivolous. An email may come in on a case, but check it once a day, twice a day, be intentional about it, opposed to every five minutes. It's like a gerbil gets a little piece of cheese, you know, you pop up. Oh, check that. 49:20 Speaker 1 What's that? What's that? 49:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. 49:21 Speaker 1 And you actually only get two hours of productive work in the whole day. 49:25 Speaker 2 Yeah. I found that there are points in my life where I didn't really feel like working, but I felt like I had to be there. And so I do email. I would do check up on the listservs and just, I would look busy and I would get nothing accomplished. And I. And I would be there for nine hours. Would have done nothing, but at least nobody could criticize me because I was there on the computer. Whereas I can get up early in the morning, work uninterrupted at home for an hour or two and get in and I can do in four hours. I still work a lot of hours, but I could get done in four hours what I could have done in eight or nine had I not, had I been interrupted. Phone calls, emails. Do you take unscheduled phone calls? 50:03 Speaker 1 I. I do not. I really try to avoid that. And I'm very upfront with my clients. I tell my clients at every initial client meeting, said, listen, when you call the office, my paralegal is going to schedule a meeting for us to talk. You can call as many times as you want now, hopefully they don't call every day, three times a day. I've had clients like that. I'm sure we all have. But I say my paralegal schedules a time to meet and talk about your case, either over the phone or in person. And it can be the same day or the next day, but it's so I can focus just on your file. I'll have your file in front of me. I'll be prepared to talk about what you want to talk about. 50:36 Speaker 1 Opposed to, I'm thinking about 10 other things and someone calls, interrupts us. And now I can't work on your case. And I found when I explained that to people, they have zero qualms with doing it that way. 50:47 Speaker 2 Yeah, I found the same thing. I mean, there's a couple people that don't like it, but you can't represent everybody but Jen. And I said, look, when I'm working on your case, I don't want anyone interrupting me. I want to focus on nothing but your case. And for the same thing, when I work on someone else's case, that's what I'm going to do. Because then that way I have that focus to give to yours. We will meet, we will talk. It's just when I'm doing something, I have to finish doing it before I move on to the next thing. Because that's how I want to get you the results you need. Because I'm checking email and checking texts and taking phone calls while I'm working on your case. You're not getting my best effort. 51:20 Speaker 1 When we tell our attorneys to turn off their computer monitors if they're having an important conversation with the client because you'll be distracted and not even know it. So I tell them, just flip it off when you're on the phone, take out a notepad as if they're sitting across from you, and you'll be amazed by how more engaged you seem. 51:37 Speaker 2 Wow. 51:37 Speaker 1 Because I'm sure we've all been these conversations, right? You're on the phone and all of a sudden you just kind of. I'll just open Outlook real quick. Yep, you open Outlook like, oh, look, that's weird. And then you look up, you're like, I haven't been paying attention to what this person's been saying for 10 minutes. And now there's silence on the other end. 51:53 Speaker 2 I need to do that with my wife, too, when I talk to her, because I know there's been times when she's caught me not knowing what we're talking about. 52:01 Speaker 1 Well, the other thing that I'm a big believer in is that willpower is overrated. I think you've got to set yourself up for success by setting the atmosphere that you want to do in order to be successful. Like, you and I don't have our laptops out right now. If we did, we'd be setting ourselves up for failure, because you and I would be doing other things while we're doing this. The same. When you're dealing with the client, you know, make sure. We always tell our attorneys, make sure you're prepared when you're going to meet with the client. Think through what you're going to say. Visualize it. Set yourself up for success. 52:31 Speaker 2 So one thing that's always a struggle is the difference between, you know, to run a law firm. There's a lot of managerial and organizational things that have to be done. And, you know, sometimes at the bigger firms, you get the lawyer at the top. That's all they do. And then a lot of us like to try cases. How is that balanced in your practice? 52:50 Speaker 1 You know, like, with everything, it's about being intentional. And I make sure that I am the lead attorney on at least 10 cases at any given time. And I make sure that I blocked off at least four hours every day focused on working on those 10 files. So whether taking depositions, taking expert depositions, talking to experts in full, forcing myself to go into those. And were talking before about how willpower is overrated because I have awesome attorneys. I've worked with one attorney, Joe Caputo, my partner at the firm. He's worked with me since he was an intern. 53:23 Speaker 2 Wow. 53:24 Speaker 1 Intern, law clerk, associate. Now six years. And so I can give him anything, and he's going to do it probably the same way I would do it. Maybe like 1% less. But no, he's great. And it's really easy for me to hand that off to him. So I'll set myself up for success by saying, I'm the only one scheduled for this deposition or this mediation, so I have to go. And so no one else can go to this. Otherwise, I would have a tendency to say, well, this fire came up. I have to do this interview. And so I forced myself to do those things, you know, because at the end of the day, our firm is about helping people. 53:58 Speaker 1 I really think it's important that you have a North Star for why you're doing what you do in life, whether it's professionally or personally. And our firm is about helping as many people with meaningful cases as we can. Sometimes. I mean, saying no to a case. But I want to make sure that all of our attorneys can look the client in the eye and say, I was the best lawyer for your case, and we got the best outcome that we think was humanly possible for this cop. 54:22 Speaker 2 And how do you instill that culture in other lawyers who work for you? 54:26 Speaker 1 So we have four principles that we talk about in the interview process, we talk about at the hiring process, and anytime something's going wrong with an attorney or a file, we reflect back to those. And those core principles are excellence always. And to us, that means putting the client's interest first, always looking at the case from their point of view, and doing things well at every single level. And that's our number one principle. And all the others are subservient to that. The second is we only want the best to work at our law firm. Doesn't mean that the person is necessarily the best in the world right then, but they have the potential to be great. We want every client to feel like we would treat our best friend if were represented in the file. 55:07 Speaker 2 That's awesome. I could talk to you for hours and hours more. But we know podcast has its kind of natural time period. I know I have learned a lot. I hope our listeners have too, that I'm going to apply in my practice and I hope we get to speak again. 55:22 Speaker 1 Thank you. It's been great. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Effective Lawyer. A big thank you to Michael Cowan and all of the great team at Trial Lawyer Nation. I really enjoyed being on his podcast. Please, please go check it out. Especially if you want to practice plaintiff's law. His firm is one of the best and his show is one of the best at learning the ins and out of becoming a great plaintiff's lawyer. Hope everyone is safe and well and has a great holiday season. Thanks. Until next time, thank you for taking the time to listen to the this episode of the Effective Lawyer. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to rate it 5 stars and leave us a review. 56:08 Speaker 1 To get notified about new episodes that are upcoming or have been released, go to zdfirm.com/podcast Sign up for our mailing list.