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If your firm feels one good decision away from a breakthrough, then this is for you. We're hosting our first mastermind of 2026 in Phoenix on February 26th and 27th. And it's two days designed to actually move your firm forward and grow who you are as a leader. Day one is a full day of hot seats where you break into groups and work through the real problems in your business. Day two is our wellness workshop, featuring sessions that help you boost your energy, lower stress, and think more clearly. We have Jocelyn and Erin Freeman, host of a top 10 marriage podcast and masters in psychology, teaching relationship skills that you'll use at work and at home. A lunch and learn on habit formation with Tyson and more. View the full event details and grab your seat@maxwell events.com.

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This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix. Foreign. Good morning and welcome to the first episode and the first live show of 2026. We are streaming live in Circle, which is our new platform for the association. We have changed the name of the guild to the Association. AT is going to reflect a much broader approach to how we're going to be doing things, and much of that will be revealed as 2026 progresses. It's going to be a really exciting year. We've got some awesome changes. We've made some massive improvements. So it's going to be really, really good. With 2026, with this being the first show, I actually wanted to take the time to reflect a little bit because 2025 was really, really an amazing year both for Maximum Lawyer and both for the firm. We had amazing profits when it comes to the firm. Lots of, lots of great growth. When it comes to Maximum Lawyer, we had massive growth. I mean, I'll be kind of frank with you. We had stagnate, stagnated a little bit going into, you know, 23 24, really 24, 25. And so we, we knew we needed to shake things up a little bit and we did. We. We switched the, the format quite a bit and that led to some, some really massive improvements when it comes to our, our views on YouTube. Massive growth on YouTube. It led to growth on our podcast channel and, you know, Apple podcasts and all the, you know, Spotify, all of those channels. So really want to start with by saying thank you. That's the, the first part is, you know, want to begin in gratitude and, and say thank you for, you know, all of your support, everything you've done. 2026 was really incredible. We brought back the conference Maxlock on. We brought that back. That was a really massive undertaking. Becca did an phenomenal job executing on that. We also launched Becca's list, which I guess I'll kind of promote that a little bit. Beccaslist co. It's a platform to review vendors. That's something that's missing in the marketplace. Yeah, sure, there's Google, but I mean, you have to Google every single platform. Becca's list takes everything, all of the different legal vendors, puts them all in one place so you can easily find them. And that. That came from a conversation that Becca and I were having. And she. It's one of the things where she really. It really makes her mad sometimes how the vendors try to treat attorneys. And so that's. That's kind of how all that started. But what I figured I would do with this being the first episode of 2026 is I actually wanted to reflect. I know a lot of people, what they do is they'll. They'll do the end of year show. I. I kind of want to start with. I want to begin 26 with gratitude and go back and reflect a little bit on the shows. Some of the shows, my favorite shows, I asked Becca for some of her favorite shows, which she gave me. And so I'll. I'll kind of go through hers a little bit and compare them to my list. But I thought that'd be kind of fun. In looking back, it's also kind of interesting. The transition from December to January is always interesting to me because from a recording standpoint, you. We record these shows sometimes month, months in advance. And I got a text from Hunter Caval and he's out of Cleveland. He texted me last night about an episode and Hunter, hopefully you don't. You know, I'm not gonna. Actually, there's parts of the text I'm not going to read. But he said he's halfway through the episode with Chris early. He said he feels this in his soul. My favorite episode by an order of magnitude. And it's interesting because, I mean, I recorded that episode over a month ago, and it's just one of those things that felt like an eternity go. But it was a really great episode. Really was. It did not actually make my top 10 list, but it. It meant a lot to me that I got that text from Hunter saying how much that that meant to him. But so it's also kind of one of those things where we will record an episode and I will. Sometimes I'll be like, that's a banger episode. That's amazing. And it won't get any views you'll get very few views or listens and then we'll record one that, you know, nothing in my mind was super significant about it. But, but it will, it will, someone will, will listen like that. Like it'll have a massive impact on them. The Chris early episode was not one of those, that was one of those ones where I knew it was going to touch some people because it, we do go pretty deep with it and I, and I have been, I don't know if you've noticed, that is one of the things that I've, I've tried to do with the new, the new episodes. By new I mean the last couple years or last 18 months is try to go deeper on topics and that's why we don't have a set time for, for episodes anymore. It used to be 30 minutes or less. Now I mean I could go 90 minutes and when we do our recording days, some of the episodes I could go three hours if, if we had time. But we're usually recording six episodes in a day, which is a lot. It is. And, and the first time we did it, I was running over every single time. So I've gotten a little bit better about the timing of things. But if we had time, a lot of these episodes we'd be going a lot deeper but don't have the time. And one of my concerns was what is this something that you all will listen to and you've proven that, yes, you will. You like the longer content and so we're going to keep doing it. I want to give you what you want. And if that changes, it's one of those things where when we did the 30 minute episodes, that's what people wanted at the time. People no longer want that. Seems you want us to go deeper on things and that's what we're doing. And so we'll continue to do that for sure. But let's get to. I want to get to some of my, my favorite episodes of the year. Other than one, I'm going to rank one at number one and it's my favorite episode ever. I'll give you that. One last. But let me go through my list which I have right here. One of them is. It's unlocking the secrets to viral videos. You may have seen a different title. We were, we have been changing the, the titles of some YouTube to test out some tweak, to tweak some things and see how, how it changes the numbers. But on this was with Hillary Billings. So the episode with Hillary Billings and how Hillary Billings turns Stories into millions of views. And Hillary Billings is really interesting story. It goes really deep. We start really deep with that one. That was really kind of an interesting one because we started going deeper than I thought we were going to go. I thought we would kind of go talk a little bit about personal stuff and then get into, you know, more marketing stuff. And we didn't get to the marketing part until later in the episode, but it was really kind of an interesting one. One of the quotes from it, people don't share content because it's good. They share it because it moves them. That was a really. I thought it was a really good quote. And you know, it's one of those ones where she's a former not. Not quite news anchor. She's a news reporter, so she presents really well. That. That was part. Part of what made the episode really good is that she can talk really well on camera. It's funny, the people that have the experience on camera, you can tell and usually from like a news standpoint because they. Their body positioning and how they talk to the camera and talk to you and. And so it's. It's a really interesting thing. She was really, really good. I thought it was a really, really good one. Another one of my favorites. It was a. A conversation with me and Becca and we were talking about. I don't know if we were talking about Becca's list on this one or not yet. We did a separate one about Becca's list. But the name of the. The. The topic of this one was a frank discussion about vendors that charge too much. And actually this is one. We did not do a. We did not talk about Becca's list yet because we'd not launched it. But this was sparked by a Guild post and it. It really sort of became like a pressure release valve for me and Becca because it was, you know, someone had made a post about, you know, vendors and how they really do take advantage of attorneys. It is the. I think a lot of you probably heard of it, you know, having like the lawyer tax. That is a real thing. It's absolutely a real thing. But it's not only that is the approach that many vendors have is that this is our product. You pay for it, deal with it. And the customer service element of it is completely missing. And they don't care. It's just like. And a lot of times we're stuck. There's other. Or at least at least the feeling is that we're stuck. Like, this is the premier product. Deal with it. Which I don't Want to get off on too much of a tangent, but like with Westlaw, I think Westlaw probably is the best legal research platform. And when their parent company bought was it Case Text and then just killed it. Just that it made me so mad because I thought Case Text was the best. I thought Case Text was great. They had Copilot, which was awesome. I think that's what it was called. And then they killed it. Just frustrated the hell out of me. And so. But this, that's why we have Becca's List now. Becca's List was created because of that post and because of that episode. That's how Becca's List was created, was so that we could evaluate vendors and, and level the playing field. That's why. That's how that was. All right, let's get to the another one. This was the legal tech shakeup. This was in March. And this was with Dr. Kane Elliott from Filevine. He is a legal futurist for Filevine. And it was really. I remember leaving that episode. I remember I talked about that episode to people for months. And that's how profound it was. There's a quote from that. Every profession that thought it was immune eventually learned it wasn't. It's a really profound quote. And that one is a. I really recommend that you go back if you have, if you want an idea as to how, at least how, how Cain thinks the legal profession is going to progress, I highly encourage you go back and listen to that. He kind of blew my mind on a few things. I, in, in hindsight, I probably should have taken a break. I should have taken a break halfway through, collect my thoughts and then come back to it because he was, he was dropping some bombs and I was like, oh, my gosh. And, and not nothing in a negative way either. It wasn't like, these are bombs that are going to kill, kill the profession. That's not going to happen. I, and I, I've given my thoughts on what's going to happen with AI and I'm not going to go into those here. I've given those on other episodes. But Kane goes really deep with what he thinks, how he thinks things are going to progress. And I mean, that's what he's paid to do. I, I put a lot of stock in his opinion because that's what he's paid to do. Right? He's essentially paid to think, you know, and he, at the same time we had, had had him out for. And him and Dan Schnerbush, they came out and did presentations about AI and It was really cool. He'd done. Done like a live demo, so really cool stuff coming from, From Kane. Another one, one of my favorites. It was interesting because this, I think these three I'm talking about, we recorded. Yeah. So the one with Becca, the one with Kane Elliott, and then the one with Brian Mittman. This is one of my favorites. We recorded all at the same place at the same time, if I remember correctly. Actually, no, that's not true, actually. No, it is. I think we, we recorded all of the, all of those all out in Scottsdale, if I remember correctly. I may be misremembering a little bit, but I'm pretty sure we did. So. Really cool. Great episode with Brian Mittman. That was really interesting about that one. Brian's was. We were in the middle. He was in the middle of a. Not really a merger. He was acquiring a firm in the middle of it. And he was on the. It was in the final stages of it. And he's pretty open about this. So I, I, he's, he's okay with me talking about. Because I've talked to him about it before, but I'm not gonna go into too much detail. That ended up falling apart. And if you really juxtapose how he was feeling about it and then you compare to, like, what actually happened, it was really interesting. And like listening to the episode, relistening the episode, and then knowing that the, the deal fell through, he was kind of in the middle of it. And I remember him, he and I having some conversations afterwards, and it was just kind of an interesting thing. And he and I, we had a lot of fun with it. It was just one of those ones where I left. It was the last episode of the night. So it was a. On the tail end of six episodes. Really long day. I think it was two episodes after the, the Kane Elliott one where we went really deep and I left full of energy. That's how great I felt about that, that episode. Awesome. Just a really awesome, awesome episode. Love that one a lot. The name of that one was Future Proof. Future proofing your law firm with Brian Mittman. Really cool stuff on that one. Another one, I did that. I think I flew down to Atlanta for this one. This is one where we, we. Since we did Hawaii last year, we didn't record in Hawaii, and that was on purpose. We, we had to make up a recording day. I had to go and record somewhere, so I flew down to Atlanta. I'll go ahead and call out Stephen Lefkoff. Stephen Lefkoff got Covid so he couldn't record during that one. So you still owe me one, Stephen. But I flew down to Atlanta and we recorded some really good episodes down there. This one was with Jaden. Doy. Oh my gosh. I really, really encourage you to reach out to Jaden and get to know Jaden. Full of energy. The name of the episode was how your money story is sabotaging your law firm. It was really a mindset. Mindset episode, I would say. But also it's about staying grounded in the numbers and your behavior. So it's. It's a good little mix. You can't out earn a belief you won't confront is one of the quotes from that episode. That's a really, really good one. So I. I highly encourage you to listen to that one. Jaden's just a. It's a ball of energy. Just an absolute ball of energy. When we ran into each other at the conference, it's just one of those things where it's like anytime you meet someone like Jaden, just. You leave just with more energy than. Than you. You entered the room with. So really cool. All right, this next one, one of my. One of my all time favorites. It's one of those ones where I don't know if it'll age well. I just don't know. Some of them, Some of these episodes will just, you know, they'll be good forever. This is one because it's about AI it's like we're like, we're in the beginning. If you really think about it, we're in the beginning of AI But Dan Schnerbush and I. So why your legal case management system is costing you cases with Dan Schnerbush and gosh, I had a lot of fun with that one. We were really nerding out. So if you want to hear a couple people nerding out on AI stuff. And Dan really knows his stuff. That's why we asked him to come out and speak and speak to the guild about things. He really knows his stuff. But it was such a good one. And I remember being like, that was a lot of fun just because I was nerding out and we were just talking about a bunch of different stuff when it comes to tech. And we kind of sort of came with this analogy about AI agents and carpenters and all that. So that was a really fun one. One. I really, really enjoyed that one. But that was good. All right, so the next episode, it's really. It was really a series of episodes and it was the couple series. Now what I had in my head and what actually happened. Two different things. To a certain extent I thought there'd be more drama and that's that. In my head I thought there would be more drama. There was. I wouldn't say any drama. There was. I really wish there was like a behind the scenes cameras after the fact of like. Like sort of like a real world cameras where. Or Big Brother where, you know, the episode, one thing happens with the episode and then behind the scenes you hear like conversations about the episode. I would have really liked that. But what we did is we had couples on that were running firms together and we asked them the exact same questions. And I had some follow ups that were variations, but for the most part they were the exact same questions and we wanted to compare the two. And I think in hindsight I probably would have given more time for the. The bringing them together part of it because we didn't really give enough time for that. That being said, it was a ton of fun for me, for me to do. Hopefully it was a fun one for you to listen to because it was a. It was a. I will tell you this, it was a massive undertaking to do, to coordinate everything. And I. But it was just. To me, it was a lot of fun. It was. It was interesting seeing the difference, the different answers to the different questions. And it was funny. I think what took me the longest with those episodes was, was narrowing down the questions because we had to have. We couldn't have, you know, 50 questions because we had to get them all done in a certain amount of time. And because I think we did fif. I think it was either. I think it was 10, 10 and 5, or 10, 10 and 10. I can't remember how we divided it, but we had a certain amount of time with each person and then a certain amount of time with them together. So I had to really narrow them down. And so Becca and I, we went back and forth, okay, what, you know, what questions should we ask? And there were questions that I thought were kind of fun that I had to get rid of. And there. But there we. We had to really sort of narrow it down to the best questions, the absolute best questions. And I do think we nailed that part of it. I think we nailed the right questions. We got that. But it was one of those things. One of those things where if we had more time, it would have been. We could have done way more with it. But it was just, you know, we're limited on time with some of these things, but. All right, let's get on to the next one. All right, this is gonna be my number one, so I'm gonna skip this one. The next one was with Evelyn, AKA the real secret behind boutique firm growth. Hint, it's not marketing. And that's one you might see by different names. I know that. Specifically, I think I changed that title on YouTube. If you're looking for it, just search Maximum Lawyer and Evelyn, AKA that was one. It was funny because if you don't know Evelyn, one of the kindest, nicest people you've ever made. Full. Just a ball of energy as well. But I told. I told her. I mean, she's going through a massive transition in her life. And I asked her beforehand if I could, you know, ask about those. She's like, she's. She was an open book about things, and we really kind of went deep with some stuff. And I remember, like, just us hugging you at the end, and she's like, oh, my gosh. She's like, you're like a therapist. But it was just so much fun talking about what it's really like to run a law firm while you also have personal things going on as well. And I'm not going to get into those here. You can listen to the episode. It's worth listening to, I promise you. It really is. And she's. She runs an interesting practice because she is. It's an international practice between Canada and the United States. She has an immigration firm. So we get into a lot of different topics, and it's. It's a lot of fun. We get into the business side of things. We get into some personal stuff. A lot of. Lot of just, you know, mission sacrifice. Get into her childhood. When it comes to, you know, immigrating to the United States and all it was. Or to. To Canada, it was just a really incredible episode. But I really, really encourage that. All right, let's get into my number one, and then I'll get to. To Becca's. Becca's List, Becky List dot com. The. My favorite one was with my wife Amy. We did the name of that one is behind the Firm. A Candid conversation with Tyson and Amy. And it was really fun because she. It was the first time she'd been on the. On the show in almost 10 years. Right. So we're. This is our 10th year, so we'll celebrate. Well, I guess we'll celebrate year 10, the anniversary this year. And she'd never been on the show. Never been. And it was time. It was one of those ones that Becca. I don't know if she insisted, but she. She definitely wanted to have Amy on the show. And it was. It really was a lot of fun. I got more texts and messages and emails about that episode than maybe any episode I've ever gotten. That was so much fun to. Because we had a little bit of banter back and forth, but it was more me. She didn't know any of the questions I was gonna ask. She kept asking me beforehand, what are you gonna ask me? I'm like, you'll find out. The way this. These episodes usually start is I have these inside briefs on everybody, and I. Part of the insight brief. And that gives me a lot of information about the person. You know, social media posts, quotes that they've. They've had, episodes they've done with other podcasts, news stories, lots of. I mean, I'm talking lots of things with Tiffany Weber. In my inside brief I had. This was one of the first episodes of the new format we did. I knew her favorite type of ice cream. Talking, like, really detailed information. I know that may be silly, but that was a. That was. I think it was Texas sheet cake. Ice cream is her favorite. But with Amy, I mean, I already. I mean, we essentially have grown up together, you know, and so I know a lot about her, but I did have analystic questions, and I could have just thrown those questions at the door because we got into a bunch of different stuff. And I thought it was funny because there's a moment, and if you go back and listen to it, you'll. You'll see. I asked her a question, and she didn't know if I meant one thing or another thing. And so she. She kind of gave me this look, and I thought it was kind of a funny. I thought it was a great part of the episode where she didn't. She didn't know how personal I wanted her to go with it. And I was just kind of like, you do whatever you want. You can answer that however you want when it comes to these questions. And so that was. That was a lot of fun. And I think that she was probably a little apprehensive about doing it, but it was. Ended up turning out to be just a wonderful episode. I remember I listened to that episode almost immediately after it came out because I wanted to hear how it. How it sounded and how it looked, and it allowed me to sort of reminisce about the episode. It was. It was a Just. I really, really enjoyed that one. And it was also a really good reminder of, like, the journey. The journey that we've had together, but with the firm as well. And so love that episode. Excellent, excellent episode. But all right, let me get to Becca's favorite. So Becca. Hers. One of her favorites was also Jaden Doy. It was the April 29 episode how your how your money story is sabotaging your law firm. Kane Elliott. It was. Was another one of her favorites as well. This was the best product and service review platform for law firm owners. This was the one about Becca's list. So my. One of my favorites was the one that really triggered the creation of Becca's list. Hers was the one about Becca. Becca's list. But she also listed the frank discussion about vendors that charge too much. So that was. It was interesting. A lot of ours are tracking here and I by the way I created my list separate. The Our lists were created separate from each other. We didn't know what the other person was choosing. So she also put future proofing your law firm with Brian Mittman. Good. Once she chose that, I didn't choose why solving problems for your team just might be the worst idea ever. And that was July 26th. The July 26th episode. And then she had some runners. Runner ups, runners, runner ups, runner ups. How to treat your law firm like an asset, not a job with Jonathan Hawkins. That was a really good one. I went on Jonathan's podcast as well. He's. He's really good. Another one was how Mike's firm eliminates silos and serves clients better with Mike Payne. So that was. That was a really, really good one. And then this was also a great. This was on my. This is like on my top 15. The cash flow fix no one told you about until now with Chelsea Williams. That was the May 6th one. That was a really, really good one. I really wish I could have done that one in person. That one was a remote one, but still really good. Yes, I highly recommend Chelsea. She's fantastic. So but that is my top 10 and Becca's top 10 for 2025. Those are our favorite episodes. Really enjoyed it. 2025 was just an incredible year. 2026 is just going to be so much better. I wish all of you the best of luck with 2026. The association will have much more coming to the association by Maximum Lawyer soon. And so hopefully you enjoyed this show. Hopefully you enjoy the Association. Go to maximlawyer.com if you are interested in the association. We are in circle now. That way you it's a much easier format for us to track everything you can. If you have a question about billing, there's a channel for that right. If you have a question about AI and Automations, there's a channel for that. So there's. You can actually focus on different things. We've got coaches, so we've got coaches in there. So each quarter we'll have new coaches. So that is just. Actually, I'll go and tell you who some of our coaches are for this quarter, because I think it's a. We have some freaking phenomenal coaches that are in here. So Max and Martin from Swan's legal engineering team, they are in there for all your AI questions. Just forgive me, Martin, for screwing up your last name, but Kravchenko, I think I got it right. I actually think I nailed that. So that's why I didn't. At first, I wasn't gonna say his last name. But they're just phenomenal. We had Swans come out. Max and Santi came out and spoke at Max Lacon. They. They did the night session. It was incredible. So if you have questions about AI, you should definitely come check it out. Jeff Hampton, YouTube Rainmakers coach. He's in there for all your YouTube questions. He's freaking phenomenal. And Molly Creamer, she's a former big law litigator turned billing coach. So if you have billing questions, she's in there for any coaching questions when it comes to billing. So those are we. And we will be rotating coaches every single quarter. So hopefully you'll join us in the association by Maximum Lawyer. But have a wonderful week, everybody. We will be seeing you.