Making Workflows Work for You, with Joyce Brafford from Rocket Matter (Sponsored)

Announcer:

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts

Zack Glaser (00:34):

Hey, y’all. I’m Zack Glaser, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and this is episode 410 of the Lawyerist Podcast. And we are diving into a sponsored podcast episode. In these, we’re joined by a legal voice or company, and we discuss the newest features, happenings, and trends in the legal world. We’re excited to offer these episodes to our audience, and we hope you enjoy them. Today I’m joined by Joyce Brafford, a project management guru from ProfitSolv. We’ll be getting into the nitty gritty of project management in your law firm.

Joyce Brafford (01:07):

Hi, I am Joyce Brafford. I am an attorney based in North Carolina. I started working at the Bar Association in North Carolina in 2011 as a practice management advisor. And I have been in legal tech either advising or selling or some combination thereof since May of 2011. In that time, I have talked to, gosh, thousands of law firms. I’ve written for several legal publications, several ABA publications. I was lucky enough to be awarded a Fast Case 50 award, which I still hold near and dear to my heart, and I absolutely love what I do. Talking about legal tech and talking to attorneys and legal professionals is probably what I will do for the rest of my professional life.

Zack Glaser (01:58):

Fantastic. I’m surprised I, if I had the Fast Case 50, I’d have it in the background, so I’m surprised that I don’t see it on a shelf behind you.

Joyce Brafford (02:06):

Honestly, I cheated my way into that thing so hard.

Zack Glaser (02:11):

I like it. I like it. However you get in, you know, like they’d, however you get in, right?

Joyce Brafford (02:16):

Yeah. However you get in. I was a huge proponent of Fast Case pretty early on, and they were courting the North Carolina Bar Association. And I will tell you, I truly believe in the power of Fast Case. I think it is the best low cost legal research provider, period. There’s a reason it is the number one legal app in the world, and it is fantastic. I love the theory and the philosophy that the company is founded on, and I went to bat hard for them at the Bar Association. I can’t say that I was actually one of the top legal minds <laugh> that year, but I, but I earned that award. <Laugh>.

Zack Glaser (02:54):

And just to, to make sure everybody knows, this is not a Fast Case sponsored podcast. That is, that is unsolicited right there. Totally

Joyce Brafford (03:02):

Unsolicited Ed. Phil, if you’re listening, Hi guys. <Laugh>.

Zack Glaser (03:07):

Hopefully they are. Hopefully they are. I hope. Well, so I, I do want to just kind of point out, you actually have been in this, you know, legal practice management area since before I was practicing. I actually started practicing October, 2011, so you can

Joyce Brafford (03:21):

Well, all right,

Zack Glaser (03:21):

I’ve got for, Yeah. For, for longer than I’ve even been going. So, on that note, what we wanted to talk about is, as you can imagine, practice management. But the question that I wanted to kind of prod at you with was more specifically project management within practice management, because I, I think, you know, law practice management, law practice management systems, it’s a, it’s big words, big concepts, at least, you know, and, and we need to get into the specifics. Sometimes question that I get a lot is how do we know as lawyers who are managing our firms, when our team members have accomplished their tasks, we’ve set up tasks, we have them doing things, how do we know when they’ve accomplished this? How do we actually manage this thing?

Joyce Brafford (04:04):

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really good question, Zack. And unfortunately, I think most law firms don’t ask that question enough, and they just say, Well, I’ve gotten paid, so things have gotten done. And the only metric they’re tracking is if they’ve gotten paid or not. I will tell you from an effective practice management perspective, that’s not the best metric. <Laugh>, it’s a metric <laugh>, but it’s not the one that I would personally advocate for.

Zack Glaser (04:30):

You know, it is a, it’s a metric that we’re concerned with. You know, it, it’s definitely one of the first KPIs that I think pops into people’s heads. But if we’re talking about being efficient, being proficient, you know, that may not be the, the right way to go. So what then is our, our metric, how do we, how do we figure it out for those of us that have been doing it that way, you know, for years?

Joyce Brafford (04:53):

Yeah. there are lots of ways to track tasks. Way back in the day, there was huge influx of task management software tools that people were really, really into. And you could put individual tasks. I had several that I used online. Then we started seeing better task management within practice management solutions mm-hmm. And those started out as pretty root of entry. I have a task, did I get it done or not? Since then, we’ve gotten the ability to assign tasks to track progress on those tasks, to delegate portions of those tasks to other people to make those tasks contingent upon the completion of a previous task or event and things have gotten really, really granular at this point. Yeah. And there’s a tremendous amount of analytics that you can drive from a good practice management solution. I just, I wanna just tell you specifically within Rocket Matter, which is the product that I’m here to talk about today.

(05:52):

I would love for people to just see it, right? Yeah. Because what we’re talking about in this system, which is really in my, my opinion, best of breed, right? You have a task, you can either have an individual task or you can have a workflow. You can see exactly where a matter is on a series of progressions. In rocket matter, we have can band boards. Okay. And when you are looking at your tasks, you see who has assigned that task, who created that task, how long it’s been opened, what is that task related to? Is there a matter associated with it? Is it billable or not? And it’s really as either an administrator or a responsible attorney to run a very basic time and billing report. How much has my team billed? How does that relate to the amount of time that has been tracked for the month?

(06:37):

Where are we standing with these tasks and where are we standing with our open matters? So going back to your very basic questions how do I know when a task has been accomplished? Unless you have a system in place that allows you to view the tasks that have been assigned out to your team members, you don’t. Right. And that if you don’t have it, then you really are relying on whether or not you got paid, which I’m just gonna flat out today. And to anyone, I’m sorry if you’re doing it that way, it’s terrible. Stop <laugh>, get the system in place. Right, Right.

Zack Glaser (07:09):

I was told one time, like, how do you tell somebody who’s making millions of dollars that they’re doing something wrong? No. Yeah. And that’s the thing is like a lot of times people who are doing it that way are still making money, hopefully but you could be making more, or you could be doing more with less or, or something like that. So it’s not so much like you’re a terrible human being and you’re practicing law, and it’s just not the right way to do it if we’re talking about managing our offices. And so the thing that strikes me with that is a system to view your tasks, You know? And there are a lot of different ways that tasks can be looked at, but I, I think the first is I want to get people thinking about these tasks in workflows. You know, you, you said, Look at these things in workflows, and, and this idea is more about having a series of tasks that people can do.

(07:58):

And from Rocket Matter’s perspective, we can assign those tasks out kind of individually to different people. So Zack, as the lawyer on, on this, we’ve had an interview with a client and I’ve said, Yes, we are gonna accept this client. And then it goes to somebody else on my team who has a task to set up this file, and then it goes to somebody else on my team who has a task to send out a letter or, or something. You know, we, we have a series of tasks, but we have to have a way of, of viewing those. And so you said something about the campaign board. Can you kind of tell me a little bit about what that would look like in that workflow environment?

Joyce Brafford (08:39):

Yeah. So the kanban board is, you can think of it as a giant bulletin board where you have post-its for individual tasks or individual matters. In fact, you have had Kanban boards for just about anything you want. I’m a, I’m a big believer in them. And as something progresses from beginning to end, it makes its way across this board. It’s a, a linear way of delineating where someone or something is in the process of completion. So let’s say I’m a family law attorney. I have someone come to me that’s interested in my services, Right? So we’ve gone through the, the initial interview. I’ve accepted them as a client. So first step on my Kanban board, my first column where they might fit in with another group of clients is intake. Have I done my initial client interview? Next step is have I collected all the documentation, recording marital assets that are necessary?

(09:34):

 Have I collected all the information regarding any minor children that might be necessary? Right? Right. All of those pieces, have I served the party, have I provided a response? Whatever it needs to be in that series of progression until we get to the final resolution for that particular matter, whatever type of matter it happens to be and you can think of a canned and board specific to a type of project, specific to a type of client, but it’s a template of check boxes that you can go through Okay. That are entirely linear. So as I’m looking at a Kanban board for my firm, I can see, I know that this type of practice area or practice type takes about six weeks to resolve. Right. They’re, they’re pretty, it’s a traffic tickets. Right. I know these family law matters are gonna take closer to seven months to resolve.

(10:20):

Right. So when I’m looking at how much money I should be collecting for each one of these, when I look at where I’m gonna need to allocate my staff in order to get those tasks done, associated with each one of them, I know where I need to plan. It’s future planning, it’s future-proof sort of mindset for your law firm. That was a very long answer. So let me just rephrase. I can, Band board <laugh> is a way to linear <laugh> to divide tasks. It’s a series of checkboxes to chronologically define where you are in a task completion.

Zack Glaser (10:54):

So I, I think we can unpack a lot of things in there because you, you did put a lot of information in that and, but I, I think you’re right. It, it’s, Well, I know you’re right. It, it’s, it’s a linear way of, of determining whether people have completed it. But first thing I wanna say is this is digital. Yes. It’s bulletin board, but it’s a, it’s a digital bulletin board. I’ve heard people talk about these, these buck, these is buckets as swim lanes but they’re really just a different status in a sense. Yeah. And so, kind of going back to how do we determine whether or not one of our team members is taking care of a task? Well, if they’ve taken care of the intake tasks, it’s no longer an intake.

Joyce Brafford (11:29):

That’s exactly right.

Zack Glaser (11:31):

Yeah. We’re in the second step. And so, so you look at this kind of 30,000 foot view of all the cases you have and Okay, well this one’s in that area. And you could set this up in a way to where if something has been an intake too long, it flags it. Okay. Well, that’s how we know somebody didn’t do it. Because I think that’s the question is, I can tell when somebody did do something. Yeah. It’s difficult to determine a negative when one of my team members hasn’t done something. And I think that goes to what you said a little bit earlier with running some of these reports, these task reports and approaching this a little bit differently. Instead of saying, Okay, well my, my people are gonna get back to me and tell me when they’re done with something. Well, maybe I look every week and I see what are my tasks that aren’t taken care of?

(12:17):

What, what are each individual’s tasks that aren’t taken care of? And I know that’s a report that Rocket Matter can run. Yeah, certainly. And so can can other task managers, but, but Rocket Matter inside your law practice management system can run that report. Quite frankly, that’s a simple report for rocket matter you know, we we’re not even getting into business intelligence reports, you know? Exactly. Or major analytics. But I also think that, that, when I talk to people about project management and the Kanban boards, one way of doing the Kanban board is to set up that template. That is the same type of case that we do every time. Divorce usually lends itself pretty decently to this. I know that doing wills in estates lends itself to that, but criminal law doesn’t necessarily lend itself to that. Some litigation doesn’t lend itself to that. And so how do we, how do we set up our tasks and check on our tasks in something that doesn’t have that 30,000 foot view? We are running all of our stuff through this same workflow every time, you know?

Joyce Brafford (13:18):

Yeah. No, that’s a really, really good question. So some things do have a very specific timeframe. Right. And some things don’t they just run however long it takes for to run. I’m just, I’m a big believer that everything I’m working on has to be touched. And I believe in helping law firms set things up in the same way. Even if I expect something in a litigation matter, for example, to take two and a half years, six years to resolve, I’m never going to go six months without talking to my client. Right? So while something might stay in the same status for a, an extended period of time on a canon, that does not mean that tasks within that status set should not be completed. Right. Right. So, bare minimum for me, I believe in having at least a once-monthly email, it can be templated as you want.

(14:14):

You know, Hi, there’s no status update. We’ll continue to update you as, as things progress and change. Have I sent that email out to my client? Right. Right. Because at the end of this, I want my client, if they haven’t paid me up front, or if they’re paying me on a monthly, quarterly basis, whatever it happens to be, I want them to know that I’m working for them. So they’re gonna know that if I reach out to them. So even if you can’t see changes in the status of a particular matter, you can definitely see if tasks have been handled on it and nothing should be stagnant. And that’s another report you can run in Rocket Matter. Right. Do I have things that are absolutely stagnant? When was the last time there was client communication on a matter? And it’s pretty easy to make a determination that somebody needs to be called, even if it’s just to say, update, No update. Right.

Zack Glaser (15:03):

Right. Now that, that’s a good point is, is there are a lot of kind of indicators to us Yeah. That the ball has been dropped, You know, there’s statute of limitations I imagine would be a good one to run. Has this file been been messed with? But even with those cases that they’re not moving from one swim lane to the other, from one bucket to the other, I think we could probably have workflows, small workflows, we’re still gonna have things that are repeatable that we do, even if it’s, you know, file this with the court, or did we do interrogatories or have we done discovery? You know, if if we’re in litigation, we can have a discovery workflow that that could be brought in into that Kanban board.

Joyce Brafford (15:43):

You sure can. You sure can. One of the things that you just mentioned was statute of limitations. I just wanna be really clear specifically within Rocket matter, it’s really easy to determine your statute of limitations. It’s really easy to set a number of deadlines. So if there’s a response to by a specific date, put that deadline in there and you’ll get notifications of reminders many weeks in advance. So you have the option to always make sure, like, I’m gonna define my, my deadlines early. I’m gonna make sure that I get reminders of those deadlines. I’m gonna set some tasks associated with those deadlines so things won’t move. And I think that Zack, this gets back to a larger point, right. We always wanna make sure that things are moving in our firms. We always wanna make sure that things are progressing towards the resolution so the firm can either move on a new case or bill for that time, whatever it happens to be.

(16:31):

Right. It is practically impossible for anyone who has a typical caseload to remember to do everything manually. It’s just not gonna happen. You complete a task, you’ve sent the email, you’ve recorded what you needed to record, you’ve made the notes in the file, it is outrageously easy to just move on to the next matter in your list without creating a future task. Right. And that is where we mess up. So not only can we see wind files have not been touched, not only can we see how long they’ve been in this particular swimming lane to use their verbiage there, we can also see is there a task on this? And if there is not a task on this, why not? Maybe there’s a really good reason but there’s probably not one <laugh>

Zack Glaser (17:15):

If, if there’s no task at any point in the future that Yeah. I remember when I was practicing, I actually, in order to get out of a file, there was a popup that said, Is there a future task on this? And you had to click yes in order to get out of that file because every single file <laugh> is going to have some sort of future task, even if it’s a statute of limitations or something.

Joyce Brafford (17:35):

It has to have something.

Zack Glaser (17:36):

One of the things that you touched on earlier, talking about workflows, talking about kind of setting these up and aligning your efforts with what type of case it is that, that struck me is if we, we have our workflow set up, even if they’re standard workflows, we start to know where to allocate our resources. Yeah. You know what a lot of people think, in fact, this isn’t worth my time to go right out this workflow to create this workflow. I would argue that it’s worth your time just from a, a management standpoint, but from an actual asset management standpoint, it seems to be, you know, what, what you’re saying that this is is worth doing.

Joyce Brafford (18:15):

Yeah. Oh yeah. <Laugh>, it definitely is. It’s worth it to understand where your mon when your money’s gonna get there. It’s worth it to understand where you need to take someone off of a practice area for a little while. You’ve got a paralegal who’s gonna be worth a lot more to your firm if he or she is, is supporting another practice area for some period of time. Right. And then one of the things that just, we skip over a lot with the creation of workflows, but I find it to be incredibly helpful. It’s a knowledge management tool. If I have someone coming into the firm and I’ve got a new hire, or my old assistant left, or my old associate is out the door and I need to bring somebody else in, I honestly don’t have time to sit with that person for four weeks and, and have them shadow me or me shadow them.

(18:58):

It’s not gonna happen. So what happens to anyone who goes to work could affirm you get thrown to the wolves and somebody says, Go figure it out. And how much of your time as a young attorney is then written off because you took too long doing something? Right? Right. You’re gonna be responsible for a certain amount of billable hours. You spent four hours doing something, your managing partner looks at this, says, What are you stupid? And strikes it down to one and all of a sudden you think, Oh, I got four billable hours. No, you got one billable hour. So let’s make this easier for everybody. Let’s say these are the ways that this law firm approaches this particular matter this is how we ensure good client service. This is how we ensure that our team is not wasting their time. It’s a management tool, it’s an HR tool. It is an employee retention tool. So yeah. It’s good practice management. It’s really good from a legal perspective when you are trying to make sure that your team is on task. Yeah. But it has so many applications beyond just making sure that your team is doing what they’re supposed to do.

Zack Glaser (20:05):

Absolutely. You know, as you’re talking about that, it, it makes me think of what people say about document automation. Yes. This is true in, in my opinion, that when you automate these documents, you reduce errors because you don’t have to do these things. When you automate these workflows, when you create these workflows, you reduce errors because you don’t have somebody sitting there saying, What’s my next step? Again, what are the rules? How many days do I have to get this filed? No, you already have that set in there for people to take care of. And then when you’ve got that process created, kind of going back to our initial question of how do I know that, that people are doing this? When you’ve got that process created, then you can, as the managing attorney look at it, it from a 30,000-foot view and confidently say, if these things are in these, these lanes or in these buckets, then they’re correct. And I think of it as a way to reduce stress because oh yes. If, if I throw somebody to the wolves, then I’m thinking, well now I’ve gotta go check their statute limitations. I’ve gotta go check all these things because I’m not sure and it’s my license. I’m the one that’s supposed to manage them. And if I’m not sure that they are getting this done, then I’m gonna have to go expend a ton of my time going behind them and checking.

Joyce Brafford (21:18):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. And you know, you think to yourself, Well, I don’t have a whole lot of time to set these up. You know, I don’t have, I don’t have the money to invest in a system that’s gonna work. I would challenge that. How much money in time would you like to invest here? And how much money in time would you like to invest with a firm who is in a licensed defense practice? Right. <laugh>, I mean, it’s not always, it’s not always that extreme. It’s truly not always that extreme. But I can’t tell you how many folks I have seen over the course of the year, years plural. Go to one of my favorite law firms here in the state of North Carolina. I don’t know that I can put their name out here, but I will just say they’re fantastic people.

(22:00):

They’re absolutely fantastic people. And they do a lot of malpractice insurance defense work, and they are incredibly smart, and a huge number of their clients got called up before the bar because they didn’t email someone back, They just didn’t talk to their clients. Yes. People get called before the bar because of trust accounting rules more than anything else, right? Yeah. But right behind that, why do people file a complaint with the bar because their lawyer isn’t working for them anymore, because they won’t give them a call back. And honestly, have a workflow work for your clients, provide the status updates. Somebody asks what you’re doing. Oh yeah. I have a full list of everything that I’ve done for you. It’s entirely defensible. Yep. So yeah, pay for it upfront and a very small funds compared to what you actually bill or pay for it on the back end when you don’t get client referrals anymore.

Zack Glaser (22:54):

No, I absolutely, this is one of those areas that I talked to people about a good bit of, when you’re a young attorney starting out, you often have a lot more time than you have money.

Joyce Brafford (23:04):

Yes.

Zack Glaser (23:05):

I mean, I did, I had a lot more time than I had money, but I had time to create workflows. Okay, great. Well then if you’re an attorney or a firm that is established and you have more money, then you have time, well now you have money to pay somebody to create workflows, <laugh> like, either way, there’s no excuse for, for not creating these, these task lists, these workflows, all of these things. And kind of going into what Lawyerist talks about, this is part of your operations manual. What you’re saying about this being the knowledge management, this is part of your operations manual, and all these workflows go down to how do we accomplish tasks? How do we as a firm take care of things and honestly have workflows for your internal stuff. Have workflows for how do we do our HR stuff? How do we onboard, how do we, you know, all of these things are gonna be, if you’re gonna do something a second time, you might as well do a workflow of some sort. So that kind of leads me to this like, last question of if I’m starting to do my workflows, I’m at nothing, but I’ve got some system, where do I start? What would be your advice on what is the lowest hanging fruit or the, the place where I’m able to leverage the most? Where, where would I start if I’m getting started with this,

Joyce Brafford (24:22):

What do I need to do next? What literally am I doing next in my firm right now? Let me take an additional 30 seconds, a step to write down what I’m doing, because there’s absolutely this idea that you can say, Okay, let me just think about this from a big project management perspective and figure out what I need to figure out, Right? Just I don’t know what I don’t know. So let me stop and think. And I would tell you that if you are not the type of person who already has workflows and checklists if you aren’t operating in that mindset already, it’s going to be really hard to figure out what the easiest thing to do is. So I would truly start with what I am doing next. I’m gonna come into my firm, what do I have to do first today? Is it respond to client emails? Great. Here’s how I do that. What am I gonna do after I respond to my client emails? Is it gonna create a document? Great. Here’s how I do that. And is it a pain to jot something down as you’re going through it? 100%. Yeah.

Zack Glaser (25:21):

Absolutely. That’s why we don’t always do it all the time. Yeah. Yes.

Joyce Brafford (25:24):

It’s a, it’s a pain, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. The other piece of advice that I’ll say here is, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, Let me say that. And people don’t normally say that but let me just clarify this. Right. Even if your workflow is garbage, it’s not gonna stay garbage. Right. Even if you create a workflow that’s not perfect right now, you have a starting point. If you can’t fix everything in your office right now, it is okay because it’s worth doing. So taking some small step towards getting it right is better than not taking any step at all.

Zack Glaser (26:01):

I like that. I like that. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. At least get started, you know, At least get started. Yeah. Cause it’s, yeah, you’re right. It’s, it’s not gonna stay bad forever. And I mean, it’s, the Rome wasn’t built in a day. Eat the elephant, one bite at the time. All of these things just, and, and I, I like your advice of start where you are, where are you, Start there. I think that’s wonderful. Obviously we’re, we’re here for, for Rocket Matter and Rocket Matter can do all of these things. It really can. It’s, it’s one of my, my favorite project managers inside a practice management system. And, Well, let me, let me ask you this. What’s your favorite part of specifically Rocket Matters project management before we kind of move on a little bit bit?

Joyce Brafford (26:43):

Yeah. My favorite part, because I’m a very visual person is that I can go just about anywhere in Rocket Matter, but I, the Kanban board specifically and I can open up my Kanban boards for a specific practice area and I can see it. It does not take me a long time to scroll through a chart. I don’t have to think about the data. It’s there. And if you are a visual person like I am, it’s boom, I’ve got it. I know what’s happening in this firm, and I know where I need to immediately dedicate some energy.

Zack Glaser (27:14):

Fantastic. Well, Joyce, I really appreciate your time. Here. It is. I could talk to you for a while, as you could imagine about all of this stuff. You’re, you’re a wealth of information on this, so I, I really appreciate you talking about practice management and specifically project management within practice management with us. If people want to know more, wanna see what we’ve been talking about and how we can impact their firm and how they can implement some of this stuff, they can go to Rocketmatter.com, get a demo. I know that all the people, I’ve gotten plenty of demos of Rocket Matter and people are always extremely helpful there, so they can go there. Anything else that, that they need to know or, or can see rocketmatter.com or any piece of advice that you’d like to leave people with?

Joyce Brafford (27:56):

Well, if you go and get, you get a demo you are going to be impressed with what you see. If you have great practice management now, or if you have no practice management at all, Rocket Matters got something for you. But please make sure that you’re taking a look at that project management piece. It’s going to make a huge impact in your firm. But beyond that, I just wanna make sure that everybody sees it. And if you have any questions, you can always reach out to us. You can either contact me or contact anyone at Rocket Matter. Send us an email, reach out to us on Twitter, reach out to us on LinkedIn. We’ve got an active Facebook page, whatever you need. And we’re here to answer you.

Zack Glaser (28:32):

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I will say that Rocket Matter does things worth doing and they do it

Joyce Brafford (28:37):

Well. They

Zack Glaser (28:38):

Do. I appreciate you being here, Joyce. Thank you.

Joyce Brafford (28:40):

Thank you so much, Zack. It’s been a pleasure.

Announcer:

The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First. If you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab to schedule a 10 minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you.