In Episode 34 of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, we delve into the power of process and systems with Adi Klevit. Discover how creating structured workflows can enhance your law firm's efficiency, improve client experiences, and ultimately allow lawyers to focus on what they do best. Klevit, an expert in business systems, shares valuable insights and practical tips for transforming chaos into order within your practice. Don't miss this episode—it's a game-changer for any legal professional aiming to streamline their operations. Tune in now!
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
In Episode 34 of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, we delve into the power of process and systems with Adi Klevit. Discover how creating structured workflows can enhance your law firm's efficiency, improve client experiences, and ultimately allow lawyers to focus on what they do best. Klevit, an expert in business systems, shares valuable insights and practical tips for transforming chaos into order within your practice. Don't miss this episode—it's a game-changer for any legal professional aiming to streamline their operations. Tune in now!
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
So the first thing that we do is we map the processes, the existing processes, and you're absolutely right, everybody has processes. They might not be documented, but we all follow processes. If you really look at it, the way you wake up, when you wake up in the morning, you have a process of what you do. I mean, you don't do something different every single day, right, you have a process, a routine. The same thing in businesses. That's why you're in business, that's why you're successful and that's why you're expanding. So what we do is we basically analyze the different areas of the practice. So, for instance, let's take that example that I took, that I gave you, of the law firm we were working with and we decided we're gonna concentrate on operations, accounting, hr and sales. So, for each one, we map the core processes, the core actions, the core processes that are being done in a sequential flow, right?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation, the One In The记 Everyone.
Speaker 3:This is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where I get to interview people inside and outside of the legal profession every day who are making a ding in the world usually entrepreneurs, sometimes lawyers. Today, I've got a great guest here. We are a really interesting subject here. I'm gonna speak to Avighe Klavit.
Speaker 3:She's a business success consultant and a business systems consultant. She's the host of the system simplified podcast, and the problem we're going to solve for today, adi, is this is that, of course, lawyers are good at lawyering. They oftentimes struggle with the entirety of the rest of business. We do a lot of focus and teach you on marketing and how to get more clients and more cases in the door, but one of the things we see often is that if you are successful there and you're driving more people through into your firm and hiring your law firm, but you don't have good people, you don't have good processes, you don't have good systems, then it is at least a disastrous customer experience, if not worse, right, and so what the last thing Ben Glass wants to do is to create more frustration for lawyers by helping them create disastrous practices because we're getting them more clients. So I get to talk to people like you who really are an expert, I think, in helping businesses and in large part lawyers, I think develop great systems, internal systems, so that the customer experience is great and the client gets a great result and the lawyer isn't all stressed out all the time. So that's my intro.
Speaker 3:How are you Good?
Speaker 1:Thank you and I'm glad to be here. And you are absolutely right. That's why I tell my clients is, if you are, if you need new clients, you need to definitely do a lot of marketing and get the new clients in. I what we provide in terms of the systematizing and the processes comes after so you can actually have that channel. Or if you look at it, let's say, you have a little side road, a little, I'm in a little village, you are doing a lot of marketing. Now you have all this traffic coming in. You are having all this demand. Now we're going to build the freeway so people can actually go and not get stuck in a traffic jam.
Speaker 3:I once had a lawyer. I was at a seminar as an attendee and a lawyer. There was a discussion like this going on and the lawyer said I don't want to be like McDonald's. I don't want to be process and systems, because I don't want to make it feel like the client is just a McDonald's customer. And to which my responses from lawyers is your job. People are hiring you for your creativity and your ability to solve problems. Most of what we do in the law is not that it is setting up for the solving of problems, all of which can be and we believe should be systematized so that the lawyer isn't spending, the lawyer and his or her team aren't spending time just dealing with challenges in the customer journey. So thank you for doing this work. Tell us a little bit about your own background and how you got here.
Speaker 1:Sure. So my background? I'm an industrial engineer. I've been doing it for over 30 years. Love processes, love systems. That's why I went into this profession, because it was a combination of science and understanding people and working with people, and I love both. I'm very analytical, but I also love working with people and figure out what, how do they do what they do and why do they do what they do. So I had, throughout my career I worked for, I had a couple of businesses of my own and before I started this one, I worked for international consulting companies. And then, in about 12, 13 years ago, I started with my own company. I was ready to start my own consultancy and at the beginning it was more of a general business consultant.
Speaker 1:And what I found out, which I would tell my clients look, you need process. You do need processes in order to grow, in order to scale, in order to onboard, in order to train, and it would week after week, and they would not be, would not write their processes. So then I asked them how about if I write it for you? And they go oh, absolutely so. Then I found this niche of the need to actually done it for you service, where we write the processes, we extract the information, we do the knowledge transfer and they write it for the business owner. So then they have it done. And then not only that, we have implemented, and I'll tell you the story.
Speaker 1:So you know to your point, ben, what we mentioned about the lawyer saying they don't want to be a McDonald. I hear it a lot because people have concern that if they're going to document the processes and procedures, they're going to become something that wrote, it's going to affect their creativity. But it's the opposite and what you were saying is so correct, because the processes and procedures are there. So you can actually shine as a lawyer and use your creativity. As an example, we were just just finished the project with an immigration law practice and we documented their processes and procedures in terms of the operations, their sales, their HR, and now it's the paralegals know exactly what to do.
Speaker 1:So you have a new client, you know what, and they have to fill out forms, they have to provide information. But then you can spend your time as a lawyer to really think and come up with solutions on how to resolve the cases that are not usual or not resolving, or give the advice, and then you really have. You're adding value and you're doing what you're so good at and you don't have to then be held. You're not being held back because the paperwork, the paperwork was not done right and to your point, the risk in it because, let's say, it's a sensitive, it's time sensitive matter and you have to submit all the paperwork on time. If you don't have a process to do that and follow it, then, no matter how brilliant you are, you're going to lose the case because you didn't submit it on time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's lots of risk. I often think, adi, of the medical industry and I have physicians and specialists and stuff that I turned to, and some of them are very well organized and the processes are great, some of them. I tell this one doctor, like you guys, you have all this technology to communicate, but just because you have it all doesn't mean I need 27 texts and emails reminding me of the appointment that I made. Okay, I'm going to come there, and so there's that balance. But let me say I think so.
Speaker 3:One of the things I see in lawyers is this challenge so they've been out, they've been practicing and oftentimes they started very small and now they have a team, they've got cases, they're good lawyers and so they have a lot of systems in somebody's head. They're not typically documented, they're not followed by all and they don't even know where to start and it almost seems overwhelming. And so how do you I'm curious, as an outsider come into an established firm again? Everybody has systems, probably not documented, probably not found, lots of systems. How do you start to attack that problem for the lawyer?
Speaker 1:So the first thing that we do is we map the processes, the existing processes, and you're absolutely right, everybody has processes. They might not be documented, but we all follow processes. If you really look at it, the way you wake up, when you wake up in the morning, you have a process of what you do. You don't do something different every single day, right, you have a process, a routine. The same thing in businesses. That's why you're in business, that's why you're successful and that's why you're extending. So what we do is we basically analyze the different areas of the practice. So, for instance, let's take that example that I took, that I gave you, of the law firm we were working with and we decided we're going to concentrate on operations, accounting, hr and sales. So for each one, we map the core processes, the core actions, the core processes that are being done in a sequential flow. Right? Because, let's say, if you take operations, so you have a client coming in, you onboard them, then you do different, whatever the activities are with that client. You have the engagement letter, you sign them up, but then you have a sequence of actions that you do and then it's either your power, legal or whomever is going to handle them, and it goes all the way to the end. If you have to go to court or maybe you don't, you know litigating, but there is some kind of an agreement you get to or you represent them. So, whatever the flow is, we identify that flow for each one of those divisions, if you would, and then we figure out what is the priority.
Speaker 1:And the question that I always like to ask is what area of your practice, if you had well documented processes and procedures, will get you the biggest return on investment? And I like to say that return investment, yes, you do want to be more profitable, because that's what we are working towards, but return investment can identify itself with many other areas. For instance, if, what? If you are working right now 80 hours and you have a family and you want to spend time with your family, then the return investment is for you maybe to take evocation uninterrupted or spend time with your family, or or maybe invest time in building the practice and make it more profitable or spend whatever it means to you.
Speaker 1:That's is where we're going to start, because, for instance, if you say, okay, right now I'm also doing all the operations or all the paperwork, I want to hire a paralegal but or an admin assistant or a practice manager, but I just don't know what to tell them to do. Go, okay, that's the first area we're going to start. We're going to create a job description and we're going to document in that person is going to do so. When they come on board, you will be able to onboard and train them and they will be able to take things off your plate. So maybe now we'll have a small win of, instead of working 80 hours, it's down to 70, and the next month down to 60, and eventually you will be free of the practice. So just wear the hats that you want to wear.
Speaker 3:And there, as you noted, there's many benefits, and one I think often goes overlooked is this, which is the value of having employees and team members who love coming to work and who love the people they work with and they love the work that they do, and people have choices of where to go to work. Today, like one of the biggest challenges in America is we hear so finding and keeping good teams. And when you run a place that's not chaotic, when you run a place where everybody knows what they're supposed to do and in what order and why, it benefits the client and the team they are, in my view, they are more likely to stay around and support the mission of the business.
Speaker 1:To be around and they're stable, and he felt that sense of stability that he's not now looking for another job because he saw that there is future. Just by seeing that, the fact that they invested in having systems and organizing this sense of security and stability yeah, Now it would seem to me that it would be difficult to do this from afar.
Speaker 3:Do you all? Do you come and embed yourself and talk to the team and find out how this is how things are actually going today? Or are you doing this virtually?
Speaker 1:That's a good question and it's actually. We're doing it all remote and we're very successful at it. Pre-pandemic we used to go in person, but it limit us to the geographical area where we were at, and during the pandemic we actually expanded tremendously, even internationally. We have clients in Australia and in the UK and we realized that we can do it. It's more efficient to actually do it virtually because we still the majority of the things that people do, especially in the service industry.
Speaker 1:You need a computer, you can do it from anywhere, and when we do is a call just like this one, I can still see you. I don't have to be in the same room as you. We record everything, which is makes it much more efficient because then we extract snippets of videos for training. We take the screenshots ourselves. I don't have to ask you to send the screenshots, you can show me what you do. You claim I can be in front of a whole conference people sitting in a conference room and we work together. We've done it very successfully virtually remotely, and even I have some clients that are manufacturing clients and I needed to see their production. You take even your microphone. You can totally see that they were around and I can see it and then ask questions, and I'm asking the questions and show me and how it works and why. And all of that Because, if you really look at it, the majority of the work is being done today between you and your computer 100%, and so a typical law firm, owner of a small law firm.
Speaker 3:their next question would be excuse me, how much of my time is going to be involved in this process of documentation versus the time of you or someone on your team? I'd be speaking to the paralegals, the case managers, the marketing team. How does that break down typically?
Speaker 1:We definitely talk to the team. We don't just talk to the owner, we talk to the team. We construct the information we submitted that the owner should be involved and read the information that we got and approve it or add to it, because after all, depends on how involved they are. But it's basically it's definitely a team effort where we work with the team and not just with one person.
Speaker 4:Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at greatlabelmarketingcom.
Speaker 3:As you've worked with law firms in particular. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see walking in, even virtually walking into a practice that hasn't had somebody like you before? Maybe they're doing EOS and they figured out that oh, actually, it really works better if we have documented processes followed by all. So what are some of the biggest leverage points that you have seen that if we get this fixed, we really start the train moving faster.
Speaker 1:Sure. So one of the things is that really the accountability and the job descriptions for each position right. What I've seen is that sometimes murky, there is no cut line between what does the office manager do and what does the assistant do and the power legal and they help each other. But whose responsibility is it? That can be part of it Utilizing the systems that they have. That's another like the practice management system, whatever they use, but also a marketing system and how it works and really make sure that people are trained on it and are using it. Sometimes I've seen that there are two technology happy meaning, like they just have subscribed to all the software that they can find and then they don't use, utilize any of those. So we do a little bit. We like to clean house if they would like to, and basically consolidate things into a few systems. So there is no, you don't need to log into 20 of those. Those are the different things that they see.
Speaker 3:That's going to be a big sort of initial ROI payback. Right there is, hey, we're going to help you eliminate the bad spend or the unnecessary spend right now, because you've signed up for all these things to use all this software to about 15% of their capacity. But really, with you being an expert in a number of the systems, I'm sure here's how we could get accomplished what you want to get accomplished using these two of the five that you have. That's got to be huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, and you've got.
Speaker 1:Another obstacle that I encountered and we know how to overcome that, but it's something to look at is that you might have somebody in your practice that have been there for a long time and they might be a little bit.
Speaker 1:They will have trepidation in terms of having to document what they do in terms of their job security quote unquote.
Speaker 1:But that is a culture problem, because the truth is that people should get excited about it, should get involved and should see the future. It shouldn't be a threat, it should actually be a job security, because if you have well documented processes and procedures, then the business is going to continue and exist, because you will be able to adapt change to situation that require change very easily. Because you can go over your process, your processes, and see what to change. You're not going to then, let you had to switch during the pandemic from working in the office to working from home. If you have all your processes documented, it's very easy to just go through them and see what tweaks you need to do so you can see for the same service and do the things that you're doing, but just doing it from the post, from the office. So I think having those processes gives a lot of give a sense of security, a sense of air we're going to be successful. But to people that have objection.
Speaker 3:One of the things that we teach when we hear somebody say, oh, I don't need this because I've got Mary and Mary's been working with me for 25 years and Mary knows everything.
Speaker 3:And we say one is the most dangerous number in business, because if something happens to Mary, voluntarily or involuntarily, then you're in deep trouble. And so one of the things that happens at E is, as firms get better of recognizing that culture is important and recognizing that systems are important, is sometimes people who have been around a long time. They just have to leave. So the point I was making I want to make sure that we make this point and it's on this recording is that one of the things that happens when, oftentimes, when a firm recognizes that culture is important, that processes are important and now we are going to change things, we're going to change things it's that oftentimes the people that have been there for excuse me for a long time, you just find out that it's really not the right place for them anymore. If they are super resistant to this, if they feel threatened and we can't convince them otherwise, then it really is time, and that's just part of the process of owning and running a business.
Speaker 1:That's correct, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3:Can you share with me how much of your work is law firms now and versus other types of businesses, and give me some, give us some view of sort of the scope and size of businesses that you work with?
Speaker 1:Sure, so we work. We are business agnostic because the common denominator is really processes and procedures. We have worked with several law firms. We understand the jargon, we understand the culture, we understand and also each law firm is different. It really depends on what type of law they practice, the size of it. We worked anywhere from smaller law firms to hundreds of lawyers in that firm.
Speaker 1:But again, we'll start with one department at a time, so it's not going to be a big, so it's. We still compartment it into the different divisions and into the different sections. The companies that we work with are basically fast growing companies that are lacking consistency. Now. Those are companies that achieve a certain level of success, that you help them with the marketing and they have leads and they have. The phones are ringing and people are calling in or emailing in or texting in, whatever they do right. So they have that. But what they do they are lacking now is the consistency in order to grow, in order to scale, in order to service all those people. So that is, those are the companies that we work with.
Speaker 3:And then can you share with me, particularly in a law firm space you talked about the immigration firm a couple other examples. When you came in and the biggest problem was in this part maybe it's sales and marketing, maybe it's onboarding, maybe it's hiring and firing and we were able to do this and here's the result the firm got.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I was working with a law firm where they were actually expending and they were hiring new lawyers and what they didn't have? They actually didn't have a good onboarding internally for the lawyers. So we actually created the whole onboarding system in terms of what is the philosophy of the practice, Like what does it mean to be a lawyer here, all the way from that high level to actually how do you actually record your hours and how do you get paid and how do you submit all the paperwork that you need to be to submit, how do you collaborate with others, when can you find some resources? All of that in terms of the actual onboarding in order to orient the new lawyer to how to work in the law firm. And that was very successful because they were hiring a few lawyers at the time which, if you have to sit down with everyone and explain and talk and it's not uniform it's very hard to do.
Speaker 3:How long does a typical engagement last? So does someone hire your firm for a set period of time, a set accomplishment of goals? How does that work?
Speaker 1:Both. It depends on what they want to do and the size of the firm or the size of the company. We can document one department at a time and then they say they find somebody internally.
Speaker 3:That You're explaining like depends on what the firm wants in terms of what your engagements are like. Let's do this. If people want to get a hold of you, find out more about you know, start to write some articles for the marketing journals. So our members are going to see your articles in our journal. Where can they go to find out more about your company? What you can do. I don't know if you have a free consultation or what sort of offer you have for them. How can they contact you? Adi?
Speaker 1:Very easy. So, yes, we do have a free process mapping session, 30 minutes with me to go over your processes and how we can help you. And you can find me on LinkedIn, adi clevitt. You can go to our website, be success CG dot com, or you can text us or call us at 503 662 2911.
Speaker 3:So now I'm curious on that 30 minute process mapping, how many, when you're talking to lawyers, how many can explain clearly what their processes actually are? I'm curious.
Speaker 1:It's really depends how we can map the, the, the practice, to tell you like, okay, those are the main processes we need to concentrate on. Or maybe you go okay, I have a problem with my onboarding, so okay, so let's map your onboarding. What are the main processes here? And it's mainly to to ask questions. It's like a discovery session, right, where I discovered how many processes do you want, what areas do you want to concentrate on, what's your priority, et cetera.
Speaker 3:I'll bet they all come to you rather dysfunctional and over time you're able to make that, or you can call us this is. This is a great. So it's adi clevitt, the business is business success consulting group and you're also a host of systems simplified podcast, and hopefully I'll get a chance to be on your program in a short while and share some ideas for other solo and small firms. Thank you so much for being on the program.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Ben.
Speaker 2:If you like what you just heard on the Renegade lawyer podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal marketing community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone Renegade by rejecting the status quo of the legal profession so they can deliver high quality legal services coupled with top notch customer service to clients who pay, stay and refer. Learn more at greatlegalmarketingcom. That's greatlegalmarketingcom.