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- [00:01]
Host
Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone. And it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guesswork out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We've been working with them for over a year and, and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on. And the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long term commitments tying you down.
- [01:01]
Tyson Mutrix
So what are you waiting for?
- [01:02]
Host
To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit riseupmedia.com Max Law and Rise is spelled with a Z. Riseupmedia.com MaxLaw
- [01:19]
Narrator
Today's episode is a little different than our usual format. Tyson recently joined Darren Wurz on the Lawyer Millionaire podcast. And. And after the conversation, we knew we wanted to share it with all of you. This episode is a conversation about employee pay, bonuses, raises, profitability, and what actually works when it comes to compensating your team. Let's get into it.
- [01:42]
Darren Wurz
All right, we're here with Tyson Mutrix. Tyson, welcome to the show today.
- [01:47]
Tyson Mutrix
Darren, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited about this. It's always fun to talk to you.
- [01:50]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, I'm really pumped because I was on your show several years ago. It's great to have you back. So much has changed since then. Really, really glad to have you. Before we kind of dive in here, give us kind of the 30,000 foot view of who you are and what you do. So our audience knows a little bit about you.
- [02:12]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah. My name is Tyson Mutrix. I think the most, I think the most people would know me from Maximum Lawyer because we've been doing maximum lawyer since 2015. It was 2015, so this is the 11th year. So we've been doing it for a while. That's where most people know me. But otherwise I, I own a personal injury firm where we are, our main office is in Missouri, so St. Louis and Columbia, but we Also practice in pretty much every state there's. Our BHAG is to be in every single state by 2032. So that's a pretty ambitious goal. So that's who I do personal injury, as most people on your podcast do.
- [02:54]
Darren Wurz
Yeah. Awesome. So today we had some things planned, but I want to shift a little bit in our community. This year we're talking about profit on purpose. That's our theme. And this quarter we're reading Simple Numbers and.
- [03:09]
Tyson Mutrix
Great book.
- [03:10]
Darren Wurz
You know, as I. As I dove into it. Have you read Simple Numbers before? I'm sure you have.
- [03:13]
Tyson Mutrix
It's been a few years, but I. That's great. But we had the author. I can't remember his name, we had him on the show years ago, but yeah, he's great. Yeah, really good. Yeah, really good book.
- [03:22]
Darren Wurz
Fantastic. So, you know, as we get into the book, he talks a lot about labor and, you know, labor is one of the most, you know, usually the biggest expense for most law firms. Right. And managing your labor and managing your labor productivity is going to be one of your key drivers of profitability, especially as you grow, you get over that seven figures mark. So let's start with this question, you know, because I've been thinking about this and thinking about compensation in law firms. Tell me about the first time somebody asked you for a raise and how did that conversation go?
- [04:00]
Tyson Mutrix
The first time. First time that they asked me for a raise, it was a long time ago. I think I generally remember it was probably. Kelsey was one of my first employees. She was not number one, but she was think number two. And I remember her asking for really modest raise. She came and it was a simple, hey, can I come talk to you? And I was like, sure. Usually those conversations go one of two ways. Hey, I'm quitting, or hey, can I get. Can I get some more money? I don't even know if she asked for a specific amount. She might have, but she had. I know she asked for a raise and she. She deserved one at that time. So I had no problem with giving one to her. And it was. It was before we had any regular reviews. All that stuff where you, you are already proactively talking about these things. This is more of a reactive thing. But yeah, it was. This was. We're talking probably 13 years ago is probably when this happened. My recollection of it might have been completely wrong, but generally that's what it was.
- [05:11]
Darren Wurz
Yeah. And I think because I've been there and it can kind of come if you're not planning on it. It's your first time you've been asked this question. It can kind of come out of the blue and you can kind of be unprep it. And in my experience, it can be a little bit emotionally charged sometimes. It's like there could be a feeling of insult. Like, you know, I think many law firm owners might be. Might feel a little bit insulted when they're asked that question. You're surprised. You're kind of caught off guard, like, how do I approach this? Should I give a raise? And then you're kind of in this awkward moment of, well, let me think about it. I don't know. Right. So how do we fix that?
- [05:50]
Tyson Mutrix
So can I give you another story?
- [05:53]
Darren Wurz
Yes, please.
- [05:54]
Tyson Mutrix
Okay. I had one that was more recent. It was during COVID and it was. I don't. I'm sure most people that have had a firm since then, you remember there was a time where the employees seem to have a lot of leverage, where they were asking for significant pay increases. And I had an employee that was. She had no prior legal experience. The only legal experience she had was in the firm. She was a. We, I think we hired her as a, an assistant legal assistant. And then we moved her over into a cares team role, which is kind of like an intake team. And I remember her coming. She had like, just graduated. She started as a part time employee. That was part of what she did too. She started as a part time employee. Then we moved her to full time. She was with us for a few months full time that she came and asked for a raise. And it was really interesting. Her approach, her approach was that she asked for. It was about an 80% increase, which is, wow, the largest increase I've ever seen.
- [06:56]
Darren Wurz
Yeah.
- [06:57]
Tyson Mutrix
And I was really. I was kind of like, I. I actually laughed when she said it because I thought she was. I seriously thought she was joking. But yeah. And I wasn't being insulting. I wasn't rude to her or anything else. But then she. I remember her. And I said, I, we. We just can't pay that. Like, that's just not something we're going to do. That's. It was more than a lot of our senior employees were making. I'm like, we just can't do that. I can't justify that. Plus, you don't have any experience. You just don't have the experience to justify that. I said, if you did, then sure, I'd be happy.
- [07:27]
Darren Wurz
Yeah.
- [07:28]
Tyson Mutrix
And she said, she's like, well, I'm putting in my two weeks notice.
- [07:31]
Darren Wurz
It's like, oh, wow.
- [07:33]
Tyson Mutrix
It was like a. It was like a hostage negotiation or something. And I remember, I say, okay, that's fine. And then we. And I just told her, well, then we might as well just part ways now. There's no, no need to put in your two weeks notice. And I was. Because it just, it was one of those. I didn't like the way she approached it. It was very. I felt like it was a very unprofessional way of, of approaching it because she was, she wasn't really the, the most professional in the way she approached it either. I was one of those things where she was. I, I just didn't. The. The way she viewed the negotiation, it was like she took a very hard line with it. I was like, well, we have to still work with each other. This is kind of the way I view negotiations. Yeah, we, we have to work with each other. Like, so you. It's okay to negotiate. I like when people actually, when we offer them jobs or even if we're giving raises, I like them negotiating. But taking a really hard line, one side, one way or the other is a really bad idea because you have to still work with each other. And if you have resentment on one, one side or the other, that's a tough thing to get over. It really is.
- [08:35]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, definitely. And if there's no, like, criteria and you, you just give out raises because people ask, or even if you deny them and there's no, like, rationale for it, that can leave a real bad feeling with your employees. You can lose a lot of trust. You can really alienate them. So one of the things that I've been thinking about, Crabtree talks a little bit about this in the book, is that everyone should get paid a market based wage. There's a salary economy. And so what we need to do is make this less emotional and more objective. And so I got thinking about this. I was thinking, you know, what we need to do is we need to have a compensation framework. There should be a pay scale. There should be, like, for each role, there should be levels. And the only time you get an increase is if you level up or, yeah, basically you level up or the salary economy changes. And so then we can sit down with our employees and we can have a more objective conversation. And I can tell them, look, tell me how much money you want to make. I want to know now. Let's make a plan for how you get there. Have you done anything like that in your firm? Like, making that more objective? Tell us how you approach it now
- [09:54]
Tyson Mutrix
so we we used to take more of a. I think it was a loose approach than, than what we do now. I, I do wonder. I, I'm gonna answer your question, but I am curious what your thoughts on. He's got an interesting approach where, if I remember correctly, he doesn't. They don't have like automatic pay raises built in.
- [10:12]
Darren Wurz
Exactly.
- [10:13]
Tyson Mutrix
I don't even think they have pay raises built in. It is more of like you have to do something to then get the raise. Like it's gotta be some sort of, like you said, leveling up. I do wonder what your, your perspective is on that because I think that that's not, that's not typical. It's definitely not typical.
- [10:29]
Darren Wurz
I think I agree with it to a certain extent. There shouldn't be just like an automatic bump every year necessarily because people then start to expect that every single year. And then if there's a year you can't do it, you're in trouble and everybody's mad. But you know, if the salary economy changes, if like the market wage for your role has increased significantly, then there's an argument for you to be paid more. Maybe we're going to adjust the entire scale, but just like an automatic every year increase. Yeah, you know, that was kind of a surprising thing for me when he said that. And I was like, but it makes sense to some degree. What do you think?
- [11:09]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, so I, it makes some sense. I do believe in, and I don't, I don't believe in any automatic pay increases, but I do, I do agree in some sort of nominal increase every year. And that's based on like, I think cost of living. He talks a little bit about cost of living in, in that book, if I remember it. It's been years since I've read that book. But the, he does talk a little bit about cost of living in there. But I think just for the fact that there is an increase in cost of living every single year, that you at least have to factor that in to some extent. I'll also say we, our approach completely changed on how we do salaries now. We used to do lower salaries and then do higher bonuses. We, we had a really complex bonus system which is a real pain in the butt if you have one. It really. Because we were, we had, you had a lot of opportunities for bonuses. But yeah, what we're finding is in some employees that we felt really deserved higher pay, they may not have been hitting the bonuses and so they weren't getting as much as we wanted to pay. So we just said, all right, It's a pain in the butt to track all these bonuses. Let's just scrap the entire bonus system and just increase salary substantially. And that's the model we've been going out for a while now when it comes to pay increases. So we do, we do do two reviews a year. So we do both of those during the annual review. We do, we do, we do evaluate it for an increase. There's no formula we use. It's more of the leadership team. We meet about it, we talk about it. Should we increase their pay here? Usually what we see is we see an employee asking for an increase during the annual annual review. We don't always give it. It's based on. Okay, I wouldn't. I'm not even going to pretend to say we do it the same way as Crabtree talks in the book, where if you level up, but subjectively we kind of are saying, hey, like, have they leveled up? Is there a reason to pay them more money in this role? And so we. And I, and I am, to me. And I can't remember what his perspective is on this. It could be the exact same role, but not everyone is. Is worth the same amount. So I have zero problem. Yeah, a person that is worth more and more money, I have zero problem with that. Even if it's the exact same position. And so we, we kind of view on. On. On value to the firm. That's. It's, it's a pretty. Yeah, general subjective way, I guess. But we try to make it as objective. As objective as possible.
- [13:36]
Darren Wurz
Yeah. Some kind of productivity measurement. Because you're right, two people in the same role are not necessarily worth the same amount. And maybe there's a way you could have different levels within that role, like a junior senior, etc. Or something like that. Because, yeah, someone can be a total workhorse in a role and just be blowing it out of the park in comparison to somebody else.
- [14:03]
Tyson Mutrix
And you should have KPIs built in. And so that's one of the things we're looking at too. Okay, so are you hitting your KPIs on a regular basis? And maybe they're both hitting KPIs, but one of them is just blowing it out of the water and one of them is just barely meeting the KPIs. Yeah, we can objectively look and see. Okay. One of them is actually doing a better job for the firm. They just objectively are. So there. It's not like we're just pulling up, you know, some sort of something out of a hat and Just making it up. We, there is some rhyme to our, to our reason.
- [14:35]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And one of the more controversial things that Crabtree says, he subscribes to the open book management philosophy where everybody knows all the numbers. And he takes it even a step further in that everyone knows what everyone makes. And his argument is when you're paid a fair market wage, you know, then it should make sense and it shouldn't be a problem. And if someone's like, well, why, why does, why does Susie make more than me? Well, there's a great opportunity for a conversation that's a little bit unnerving for a lot of folks. So what do you, what do you think about that?
- [15:16]
Tyson Mutrix
I don't subscribe to that. I, I, I just think it creates too much resentment because I, I, I like, I, I understand the philosophy. I get it. But, but here's the reality of it. Okay. So Susie makes more money. Okay. Because we, because as the firm, we think Susie makes more money, but Jane makes less money. And because we think Jane is worth less. If Jane knows what Susie makes, Jane's going to think that she, she, in her mind, she is a better employee than Susie. And that's in matter of what we tell Jane. We can explain it to Jane, but Jane does not care. Jane in her head think she's more valuable because. And it, she, Jane will not care about the numbers. Jane will care about. Well, I do this for the firm and I do that for the firm. And, and so she'll find a lot of other reasons as to why she is worth more than Susie. That's just the reason. And anyone, anyone that has run a firm, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That rings a bell for a lot of you because you've had that same situation before where you've tried to, it's, it's one of the things where we've had an employee not. I think this only happened one time. Well, I guess twice. The story that I told you, that was an extreme example. We had a, we had an employee come and ask for a raise and we just explained to her as to why she, we didn't believe she was entitled to a raise. We were nicer about it and she quit like a week later. It's just, yeah, her head. It didn't matter what we said. She had convinced herself that she was worth more money. Yeah, I, I, I think that there's a problem with that. You're also going to get resentment over how much does the, the law firm owner make. We, we do Show. I think that there is something we do that is similar, though, where we do show, like, all the fees that come in, because that's one of the things that we track on a regular basis. Every quarter we. We look at one of our rocks is always the number, the amount of fees that we've collected. So that is. They do see how much money's coming in. They don't see the money going out. They. They don't. I don't. They know we spend a lot of money on cases, so I don't think that they really care about. About seeing that anyways. But I think sharing. Sharing salaries is just a. I just. It's not a. It's not a pain in the butt that I want. I just don't want.
- [17:35]
Darren Wurz
It could be dangerous. Could be dangerous. I think there's. There's potentially. I can see both sides. I mean, on the one hand, they're. People are going to talk. So, you know, whether you tell them whether everybody knows how much everybody makes or not, they're going to figure it out. Yeah, yeah. And they're going to make assumptions about how much you, as the owner make, too. You know, so there's. Yeah, there's something there perhaps, but I totally get where you're coming from. It can open up a whole can of worms.
- [18:06]
Tyson Mutrix
Legally, I've seen attorneys do this. Legally, you can't do this. You can't tell employees not to tell each other what they make. There's.
- [18:13]
Darren Wurz
There's.
- [18:13]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, there's federal law on it. So don't, don't actually do that. That's. That's something.
- [18:18]
Darren Wurz
Right? That's like the classic, you know, employer law thing, right? Where the, the boss, like, you're not supposed to discuss how much you make with, with each other. You know, it is, it is like
- [18:30]
Tyson Mutrix
one of those, like, unwritten rules where. Yeah, it was really surprising to me because we've had employees, we've had where, like, hey, I heard such and such make such and such money. You know, I'd like a raise. And so we've had that. We've had to have that conversation with people.
- [18:43]
Darren Wurz
People, sure.
- [18:45]
Tyson Mutrix
But it was the first time I ever heard it. I was a little surprised because I'm laying like, who talks to each other about their salaries? I have never. I have never had that conversation with an employee as whenever I've been an employee, I've never had that conversation. It is so foreign to me. But I mean, I guess I think it's just more normal these days.
- [19:03]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, it happens. Let's Talk about an idea that I've been wrestling with. A lot of law firms have this notion of, you know, there are billable employees and there are non billable employees. I think there's a problem with making that separation because, and here's where I'm coming from, the non billable employees should be measured similarly because they do contribute to profit. I mean they help make your billable employees more billable, they improve the efficiency, they drive profit in other ways, you know, than just, you know, you can bill for their time. But overall they do contribute to the profitability of the firm and I think they should be measured that way. What are your thoughts?
- [19:49]
Tyson Mutrix
I agree. I mean that's why you look at something like profit per employee or revenue per employee. I think that that's a good metric. Another way you could do it, and I like this a little bit better, is, you know, revenue per attorney, revenue per paralegal or case manager. You could do it that way too. That way it's a little bit more specific. Even better way is if you have teams. So if you have pods or teams, revenue per team, that's another way of looking at it too. So I, I think I agree with you. I, I think to ignore the non legal operation side when it comes to the numbers is a really big mistake. And that's, that's something that I was, I was talking to Brian Mittman about something different but he's got a, he's basically got a coo, but he's also got someone that's in charge of legal operations too because they are so drastically different. They're COO over legal operations. Doesn't make any sense Unless, yeah, legal background. But even then they're, they're completely different things. The, the business side of things and the legal side of things, completely different. So having, yeah, metric for those, it makes a lot of sense because otherwise what you have is that's where you get the bloat. If you're ignoring the side of things that are not billable, you can get a lot of bloat in your business because you're ignoring it.
- [21:07]
Darren Wurz
And everybody should be thinking about how they connect to profit. And we should be educating all of our employees along those, those lines. A book that we're going to get into next quarter is the Open Book Management book. It's the Great Game of Business by Jack Stack and basically that's his argument. You know, bonus systems are like you said, can be so complex, there can be so many nuances. It can be a whole full time job Just to manage the incentive program. But a very simple way to manage the incentive program is. And KPIs, too. Right? We don't need five pages of KPIs. No, you do not. So his argument is let's make profit the KPI. There's your KPI number one. And then let's educate every employee about how what they do is, connects directly to profitability. How do you approach KPIs and thinking along those terms?
- [22:02]
Tyson Mutrix
Well, we actually go, we use a worksheet on it. It's how we. It's kind of a filtering process. So I can actually pull up our, our worksheet and kind of walk you through the questions that we, we ask. Because it's. To me, it's very important how we do it. And most people wonder like, oh, how do you develop KPIs? Well, we, we create job scorecards for everyone and we ask. It's, it's four questions where we go. We go through the purpose, we go through the skill traits and competencies. We go through their functional accountabilities, and then that's how we come up with the KPIs. That's how we do it. And so it's all tied to the purpose that. So you'll see how this kind of works. So starts with why does the position exist? Then what are the five most important competencies to do the job? What are the three to five most important outcomes we need this person to deliver? And then what key numbers or targets would indicate this person is doing a good job? So those are all. It's kind of a funnel. That's how we, that's how we create those. And so those are all. That's how they're all. So it's, it's tied to the purpose of the firm. Which, which their purpose should be, you know, tied to the revenues of the firm.
- [23:06]
Darren Wurz
Absolutely. So often we want to measure so many things and so many things are nice to know, but we really only need to know the need to know things. And then we'll figure out what needs to change and what needs to happen. One of the metrics that Crabtree talks about is labor productivity ratio, which is how much. Well, basically gross revenue, because law firms don't usually have cost of goods sold or a lot of direct costs. But you know, your, your total revenue, your gross revenue per labor dollar, like how, you know, total labor spend should stay at his recommendation is 50% or less of total revenue.
- [23:53]
Tyson Mutrix
50%'s high, but anyways, keep going.
- [23:55]
Darren Wurz
Okay. Yeah, so I'm Curious what your metrics are, you know, and how you think about like total labor cost, especially with, you know, AI coming into the picture. And you know what, how is that changing your thinking there?
- [24:11]
Tyson Mutrix
My thinking has been changing quite a bit. I did an episode on this recently. I actually did. It was a live show in the association and I, I was, we were, I was hesitant to actually publish it live because my employees sometimes listen to the podcast. I think you should keep your. Because as a, as a services based business, I think keeping your overhead right in that 38% range, give or take a little bit when it comes to labor is a, it's a, it's a decent number to be at. You can pay your employees more. It also depends on if you factor in the owner compensation. So you can play with those numbers and all that too. But I, So your number, you're looking
- [24:49]
Darren Wurz
at more like 38 is what you're targeting.
- [24:51]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah.
- [24:52]
Darren Wurz
Okay.
- [24:52]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah. 30. I think now you can. I. Can. I. I'm sure I'm hearing criticism both ways. People are. Because I've heard people say, well, I try to keep it around 30%. Those people are going to get criticism from the people on the 50% side because they're going to say, well, you're not paying your employees enough. So that's where you're going to get both sides. You're going to get people you need to squeeze more out. Then you're going to get people on the 50% side that say, well, you need to pay your employees more. I think the way we do think 38% is actually pretty good. So we. Okay, yeah, I mean, we do. We have fought really hard. Part of this, you got to remember too, is we have fought extremely hard to use the fewest number of people possible. That's why we worked on top grading and hiring only A players. And if someone becomes a B or C player, make sure that they find another place outside of our firm to go work. So the 38% is a good number. They get paid good salaries. But you also got to remember, like we, like we have also this is something else I didn't talk about. Anytime we've reduced the workforce intentionally, we increase salaries. No one asked for it. We just increase the salaries. So it's not like we are, we are cutting the workforce and I'm just pocketing the cash. We, we will cut the workforce and we'll increase salaries and we're still, we're still more profitable. But we've been very intentional about this because you have people. Oh, I've got 50 people in my firm. I've got 80 people in my firm. Well, how's your profit? Like, how are you?
- [26:14]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [26:15]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah. So it's, I've seen a lot of 50 person firms, 40 person firms that are not, they're not doing well financially. I'll also. Look, the, the AI question is something I've had to evolve. I mean, I'm, I am still evolving on this. Where my view on it is don't use AI to replace employees. Use AI to make things more efficient. And then you, you shift all of your, your employees to more of a, you know, customer service type of a position. They are client facing, they're taking care of the clients. That's the position I've taken on it. I had a coaching call with Jason Selk probably about a month ago, a few weeks ago, and we had, we had used AI to basically replace three positions. And we don't really have, we don't have a need for those three people. We just don't even shifting the custom customer service doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And he said, well, from a business standpoint, what's the right call? And I said, well, get rid of those three people. That's the right call. Which is a really tough thing for me to swallow because I've never not taken that approach. I don't want to use AI to replace people. But if we are making that logical, really, the business type of a decision, the right decision is from a business standpoint, that you don't need those people anymore, so you need to reduce your workforce. We've not, we, we have actually reduced one. We've taken one off the board. And so that I, I'm not comfortable taking all three off the board. I just don't, I don't, I don't feel.
- [27:55]
Darren Wurz
Yeah.
- [27:55]
Tyson Mutrix
That it's, it's not something I feel great about. And so I'm very hesitant to, to pull that trigger. I just am.
- [28:03]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, that's a good, that's a really tough question to wrestle with. I don't, I don't have any suggestions. I, I think that's one you've got to really figure out for yourself, you know, maybe. And I'm kind of thinking about it for my own business. I want every employee to be empowered by AI to improve their efficiency. And maybe that's how we grow. Maybe we can grow further without needing to increase headcount. Kind of, kind of taking that approach. And how I think about it, how do we, you know, but you know at the end of the day, you know, if somebody, you know, their. Their whole role is no longer going to be needed completely, you know, then that, you know, hey, well, you know, it's tough to get rid of people, but the way we think about that, or, you know, the way I've been taught to think about that is, you know, it's. It's the kind thing to do because you're. You're helping them, you know, move on to somewhere else and it's going to be a better fit for them, hopefully.
- [29:03]
Host
Yeah.
- [29:03]
Tyson Mutrix
And I think here's the struggle that a lot of people are going to have is that you're not going to see full roles be taken being replaced at one time. What you're going to see is substantial parts of their role being taken in one spot and then another role, substantial parts of another role being taken, and then substantial another role being taken. And those people are just going to have less to do. They are. And so you're going to have these big pockets that are no longer necessary in your firm and you're at the. Find a way to put that puzzle together.
- [29:37]
Darren Wurz
Yeah, yeah. You mentioned in our call just. We'll touch on this before we go. You've built an entire case management system using Claude code and Bolt.
- [29:49]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah.
- [29:50]
Darren Wurz
And you're dramatically reducing your software spend as a result of it. Tell us just a little bit about that.
- [29:56]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah. So did I tell you what the origin of this was, why we end up doing this?
- [30:02]
Darren Wurz
Because I don't think so.
- [30:03]
Tyson Mutrix
I'll give a little context. So we had. We had shifted to Zoho a few years ago and we had made a pretty massive upgrade to the system about now, I guess, maybe six to seven weeks ago. And it was a massive failure. It was now a massive failure. It. Things were like, things were broken. Things weren't working. And I was afraid people were gonna start leaving. I was like the. I mean, it killed. I killed morale. I'm talking. Yeah, destroyed it. So Kasha, Kasha was our cto. And so about. In about three weeks, what we did was we put. We built from scratch a case management system using, like you said, Claude and Bolt. So Bolt, that new is one of those systems where you can, you know, type in, you can prompt it and it'll build the website and all that. And so what we did is I bolt. And then you end up saving money. People might think it's redundant. What you're doing is actually you're saving a lot of money when it comes to credits because you're having a very much more specific prompt. But then you have claw that follows up on the prompt to make sure that was implement implemented correctly by bold. So we have. I may have or may not. May or may not have said this. I know I've said this in the association. I did a demo in the association yesterday where I showed it off to everybody because in my opinion it's the most advanced case management system on the market. It's not on the market, you know, but I, it, it, it's got all the AI built into it, it's got its own AI chat bots, it's got everything built into it. And it's. What's really cool about it is it's brought our cost down substantially when it comes to our technology cost. But then also if someone wants something in a few minutes, we can implement that thing, whatever that thing is. And then we've also done these little bitty things that you can't do in an out of the box case management system where we've created all these little tool tips which if you don' Tool tip is it's that little circle with the I in the middle of it when you click on it. Yeah, information. So what's really cool is we've turned those into trainings. So let's, let's say that you're in the middle of, you need to know how to request medical records. Let's say that that's, that's. We don't have that tool tip. I'm just making that up so people could get an idea as what this is. So let's say you have a new team member forgot in their training. Okay. How do you request medical records? Well, they're in the file. They're, they're getting ready to request some medical records and they see the tool tip, they click on it and it's got the full training built in right there. So there's a pop up, it's a full training and it will walk them through how, how to request medical records. So we have not fully implemented all this because we have so many trainings in Zoho. We're migrating all of those over so that we can, we can put them throughout the entire system. So all of the trainings, they're going to go out of our, out of our trainings, all of our training modules and put those into the system. So we've been, we, we implemented a new HR system so we're not using Zoho people anymore. So we're taking everything that we can and we're Creating it inside of the system so people don't have to leave. And that's the big wow. Because where you see a lot of the drain is if you have someone. They're working, they're working, working. Okay, I've got to go in the system over here. Okay. And then they get distracted by something else, and then it takes them 20 minutes back over to this job. Okay, now I'm over here. Okay. Boom. All right. What was I doing again? Oh, I've got that one thing I've got to do. Okay, let me go back over here. So much of that, that, that efficiency by doing that.
- [33:23]
Darren Wurz
Yeah.
- [33:24]
Tyson Mutrix
The whole idea is to keep them right there in the system so they can do better job, and so they can also just. They'll be happier. The team is. I'd say that when we had the failure of the system launch, it was. The team was at a 2%. Like, that's what morale was. Now they're, I'd say 99 or 100% because they are so excited. They're like, can you add this thing? Can you add this thing? Can you add this thing? We have this. We have a running. Yeah, we can't keep up. We can't keep up with. They're so excited about it. So it's pretty cool.
- [33:52]
Darren Wurz
That is awesome. I love that. Well, I'll have to play around with. What is that Bolt new? Is that what you mentioned?
- [34:00]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, there's both. There's Bolt new, there's lovable Grock. Just launched one Grock build. I've not played with it yet. You have to have the. Whatever the premier Grok is, whatever that is, you've got to have that. But I've not played around with it. But there's. There's a bunch of them. I, I like Bolt because that's what I started on, but I know there's a bunch of other ones out there.
- [34:23]
Darren Wurz
Okay, very cool. Well, Tyson, it's been great having you on the show today. One last question before we go. We always ask our guests, is there something you're reading right now that you're really enjoying that you'd like to recommend to our listeners? Listeners.
- [34:39]
Tyson Mutrix
The. I don't know how this is going to be received, but I am gonna. Going to reread the Bible. So I bought this Bible and I'm. This isn't, like, me preaching about anything, so I promise I'm not going to preach. But it was one of those things where, like, I. I saw this really cool Bible and it was like, how, like, it's like, explains the history of the Bible as you're reading it. And I, like, tells all the stories and explains the different stories. So I. I find history very interesting to me. And so it's one of those things where it actually goes through and, like, explains different parts of, like, why this was in the Bible. It's very interesting to me. So that's. That's what I've been.
- [35:15]
Darren Wurz
Very cool. Well, very cool and very unique. Yes.
- [35:18]
Tyson Mutrix
I'm sure you weren't expecting that one. I was. It was honestly not a book I expected to read, but it was. It was. It's pretty cool.
- [35:25]
Darren Wurz
Yeah. Very nice. Well, anything else you want to leave our listeners with before we go?
- [35:31]
Tyson Mutrix
No, I appreciate doing this. I love. I love your show. I love. I love coming on and do these things. So thanks for having me. And if you ever, you know, want to come on the show again, just let me know.
- [35:40]
Darren Wurz
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Tyson.
- [35:42]
Tyson Mutrix
Yeah, thank you. All right, real quick. Before we start today's episode, we open nominations for the very first Max Lockhan awards. And honestly, this one means a lot to me because it's something I've been wanting to do for several years, and we're finally doing it. These awards are about recognizing the people who are genuinely making an impact in the legal industry. The people building standout brands. They're innovating. They're creating incredible cultures and teams, marketers getting attention for their law firms, leaders giving back to the community, people pushing the industry forward and raising the standard for all of us. We created 10 different awards to celebrate law firm owners inside the community and the legal industry. And I'd love for you to take a few minutes and nominate someone that you know. Nominations are open now through June 30th at MaximumLawyer.com forward/awards. And hey, make sure you nominate more than one person if you want. There are 10 different awards, so nominate away. Nominate someone for every single category if you know someone that fits that role. There are a lot of people that are in the community, in the max law community that deserve to be recognized, and hopefully you will share the love and recognize those that deserve to be nominated.