Thinking 169

Sam Harrelson: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Super excited about, uh, sharing the show. Uh, this is with, uh, a friend of mine. So when I look up to, I would never tell him that, uh, someone I, uh, I've, I've learned a lot from personally and, uh, Dave Maxfield is a, he's an attorney here in Columbia, South Carolina. And, uh, we got to know each other, uh, through a co-working space that we both belong to.
[00:00:26] And, uh, David, I just want to hit it off and we had some great conversations over the years, uh, about things like apps and marketing technology and formulas to help streamline business and all kinds of cool stuff. So, anyway, Dave is, um, one of those people who knows a lot about his topic, which is, you know, the legal profession.
[00:00:48] But he's also someone who loves to learn and incorporate those things into what he's doing, uh, to improve his business. Which I think is, is really kind of, uh, uh, uh, genuinely nice approach to both live and work. Um, so it's always fun to talk to him. Uh, we had a great conversation. I think you're going to enjoy it.
[00:01:10] It's it's every again, every time I talk to Dave about this kind of thing, it helps me refine what I'm doing. And, um, after this conversation we had few days ago, I've already. Uh, gone back to a couple of things like our combined board and working, uh, but with some of the formulas that we're going to get later, there's links down in the show notes to everything, but I highly highly encourage you to listen to this, grab some pen and paper or your iPad, or however you take notes, your keyboard, whatever.
[00:01:38] If you're driving, just pull over and just listen to the whole show and start taking notes now. Uh, cause you're gonna, you're gonna need to, uh, Really sort of digest some of this. So, and remember that you can always go to thinking.fm, just type in thinking.fm, and you can find all the old shows with a really interesting people and thoughts and things that I'm working on.
[00:02:02] Plus show notes and links and blog posts and all kinds of fun stuff. Thinking got a fam. So now I'll give you Dave Maxfield, Dave Maxfield. 
[00:02:09] Dave Maxfield: [00:02:09] How are you Sam? Harrelson. 
[00:02:11] Sam Harrelson: [00:02:11] How are you? So professionally, do you get like David next? Well Esquire or is it just Dave or how do you 
[00:02:16] Dave Maxfield: [00:02:16] it's Dave Maxfield. X. Where desk?
[00:02:19] Well, neither of us can say it. No, it's Maxfield. I just feel, 
[00:02:22] Sam Harrelson: [00:02:22] I'd say Maxfield. You said Maxwell? Did I 
[00:02:25] Dave Maxfield: [00:02:25] say Maxwell? Geez. We're getting off to a horrible store here. This is just, you've only known me for two and a half years, probably so that's okay. I like 
[00:02:32] Sam Harrelson: [00:02:32] that. 
[00:02:32] Dave Maxfield: [00:02:32] Yeah. Yeah. Next Sam. Haroldson how are you? 
[00:02:37] Sam Harrelson: [00:02:37] You got to put the D in there.
[00:02:38] Yeah, well, I'm doing well. It's uh, we're we're past the holidays. We're into a new year. And, uh, 
[00:02:45] Dave Maxfield: [00:02:45] yeah. And everything feels completely different. Doesn't it? Midnight, you know, I know I haven't stopped singing whole new world from that Disney movie for like the last four days. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, you know, lions 
[00:02:59] Sam Harrelson: [00:02:59] are lying down with the lambs and you're back to normal.
[00:03:03] There's no virus. 
[00:03:04] Dave Maxfield: [00:03:04] Yeah. I knew it was just a temporal problem that really just, we just had to get over that. You know that one day and then we were thinking it'd be good. So, yeah. So everything's great, actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 
[00:03:16] Sam Harrelson: [00:03:16] So what do you, what do you do day Maxwell? 
[00:03:19] Dave Maxfield: [00:03:19] Whoever? Well, I, um, Sam, as you should, well know, I'm a consumer protection lawyer, um, in Columbia, South Carolina, and I have a, a small, I guess you'd call it a boutique or a niche firm where we really only represent people in cases.
[00:03:34] Uh, I represent consumers in cases against banks and credit reporting agencies and insurance companies and debt collectors. So what we do is very specific and very narrow, um, and that lets us do a lot of kind of cool things that, you know, when I was in law school, I didn't realize I'd get to do. But, um, yeah, I mean 
[00:03:56] Sam Harrelson: [00:03:56] the law profession or legal profession, isn't known for its cutting edge use of, you know, tech or new thought 
[00:04:02] Dave Maxfield: [00:04:02] technologies.
[00:04:03] Right. Well, I mean, to be fair, we did move to synthetic wigs in 1997. So I don't know why people say that, but yeah, but we, we, yes, it is actually it is the, um, probably maybe one of the slowest moving, um, Industries, if you will, that, that I can think of, certainly that I've been involved with. Um, and you know, the, the good thing about that, I guess, is it allows for a lot of opportunities if you're willing to maybe think a little bit differently.
[00:04:34] And I think a lot of that kind of has, has bled into the law lately. A lot of things from other industries that are move a little faster, we've started to kind of. Take heat of some of that, but, um, but yeah. Yeah, cause 
[00:04:46] Sam Harrelson: [00:04:46] that's always been the, the thing that you hear about like, you know, I come from the tech world and it's always been the thing we hear about, you know, social media or VR or blockchain or whatever, it's it's well, the, the law hasn't caught up to this yet.
[00:04:58] So we have to be really careful about how we, you know, think about Twitter or how we think about interacting and you know, this sort of a space or whatever, and we've gotta, we've gotta let the law and the ethics catch up to where this technology has pushed us. 
[00:05:12] Dave Maxfield: [00:05:12] Oh, that's a, I think that's a hundred percent true.
[00:05:14] And I mean, that is what you hear all the time. And we're really almost talking about two different things. When we talk about the legal profession and technology, and one of them is the one you just mentioned where, you know, technologies are developing so fast that the law really can't catch up with it.
[00:05:28] Um, and just as an example of that, I teach consumer protection law at the, um, university of South Carolina law school. And. One of the things like there's a lot of consumer protection statutes that give consumers certain rights if they provide notice to creditors or collectors and a lot of those kinds of notice or are.
[00:05:47] Deal really pen and paper, or maybe pen and typewriter kind of notices. I mean, you are, um, you know, email notices, aren't sufficient or text message notices. Aren't sufficient. Um, and so I, you know, one of the things I've actually had a student write a paper last semester, that was just like, shouldn't, we maybe modify some of the notice requirements and consumer protection statutes because, um, You know, it's the idea of having to like, you know, type out a letter and put it in an envelope and address it and put a stamp on it.
[00:06:18] I mean, I don't even know how the hell to do that anymore. So, you know, and, and nobody in my kid's generation who, you know, they're 1920, that does really. And so, um, and interestingly, on the other side of the coin, the consumer financial protection Bureau has just now started to allow debt collectors to contact people.
[00:06:38] Um, By social media or by text in some situations or by email when they couldn't, it wasn't really clear. They could do that before social media. Really? Yeah. So, um, Yeah, I know. And that's, that's going to be real interesting how that shakes out, but, um, we have at least, I guess, a one-way street now, but the, that street for consumers giving notice to debt collectors doesn't necessarily go the other way.
[00:07:02] Um, so yeah, that's one way the law is behind it. I don't know, honestly, I mean, something in the way that the law is, is, would probably have to change to be able to close that gap because I mean, the technology is moving so fast. You know, like how do you legislate or should you is a different question, but you know, something like Twitter, you know, there's not, it's just happened to be, they could really deal with it.
[00:07:27] And so, and I think the gap is probably widening rather than closing it. And the only time you get the legislature's attention is, uh, probably when something affects them now. Yeah. Yeah. Well you just, even the, the, 
[00:07:40] Sam Harrelson: [00:07:40] the notion of having. Uh, home address, you know, like that's changed so much in the last 50 years, but definitely not as, even in 20 years, 
[00:07:47] Dave Maxfield: [00:07:47] our, yeah.
[00:07:47] Our home phone numbers. Right. You got that anymore. So that's one way, um, that, I mean, I think that that affects the law sort of universally. I mean, that's a, that's a big societal problem. I think the problem that I've been most interested in solving it kind of a much smaller level is, is how does technology.
[00:08:06] Like how to lawyers adapt to technology to take advantage of it for their business purposes. 
[00:08:11] Sam Harrelson: [00:08:11] Uh, I wanted to really talk to you about, because I mean, like you said, we've known each other for a few years now and yeah, I've always been really interested in the conversations we've had about how you and your team use technology and things like, you know, you're, you're, you have Dave as a podcast that we'll talk about and link to as well.
[00:08:29] And you know, how we'll, you're willing to share with other, uh, colleagues. And, you know, students about what you do differently and, you know, within the realm of the legal profession, that's still, you know, very cutting edge for any small business. I mean, I, I think, you know, the, the big takeaway here, I think is that not only is what you're doing, grant you and your team, uh, really kind of interesting for, you know, the legal side, but, you know, if you're whatever, you know, if you're a welder, a car dealership, whatever, like you can take away some of.
[00:09:02] The, uh, the practices that you're doing. And I think it's a really cool, uh, way to, to enter a pretty niche market and, and make 
[00:09:12] Dave Maxfield: [00:09:12] a name for yourself. Well, yeah, I think that's the, the, the cool thing is, is like, and getting back to like the premise lawyers have been, you know, how, how do, what do you think of a lawyer and you think about, well, how do they make money?
[00:09:23] You know, how do they bill for things? How do they, and that's what they do. They, you know, they keep track of their hours and they send you this bill. And there were like the only profession. Maybe they can get away with it. Something like, well, how much is this going to cost? Well, you know, it just depends on how long it takes and well, how long is it going to take?
[00:09:38] Well, we won't really know until, you know, X, Y, and Z happens. And like, if you had a plumber come to your house and you asked him those questions and he told you that you'd kick that guy down the street. Yeah. Just 
[00:09:48] Sam Harrelson: [00:09:48] had that conversation this morning. Someone was like, at broke my website. Can you help me fix that?
[00:09:51] And I was like, well, yeah, sure. Yeah. Give her stuff. Well, how much it's going to cost? I'm like, what did you break it with? See, you know, like you need to boil it or are we going to have to replace 
[00:10:01] Dave Maxfield: [00:10:01] all the plumbing? Yeah. That's exactly. But I mean that at least is something that I think people can say, well, once Sam looks at this yeah.
[00:10:10] And knows what's going on, you know, I can give you a minute, give you an estimate. Right. But the what w you know, well, we have, maybe that's also unique is we have at least in litigation, somebody who's actively trying to undo everything that we do. So it's kind of like, you build this by, you know, snowman and you roll the ball into place, and then you put the next one on and you put the head on, you turn around and somebody.
[00:10:29] You know, karate kicked the head off. So it's like really that we have that aspect of things too. And so, um, The problem though, is I think for consumers or for clients of lawyers is they get this answer. Like they don't know how much it's going to cost. Um, and they don't have like really any certainty with that.
[00:10:49] And so that's disconcerting for the, for the consumer end of it, for the client. And on the lawyer end, we have this. Like when we start to think about things and you say, well, I'm going to be a guy who spells Bill's $300 an hour or whatever. And that sounds really great. And that's a lot of money, but you know, there's only so many hours in a day.
[00:11:07] So you immediately have an upper limit that you can only exceed by doing one of two things, which is charging more per hour, which is going to. Piss people off even more typically, um, or you can kind of do the traditional big firm thing where you say, well, I'm going to do this, but then I'm going to get these associates underneath me and I'm going to build this big pyramid.
[00:11:29] And one day I'm going to be at the top of it and I'm not going to have to do that much, but I'm going to get a bunch of money. And all these people under me are going to do all the work. And, you know, one day we'll have 80 people working for us and, and that's basically like, great. But that's also like basically Amway and, you know, it's sort of, you know, that, that is, there are a lot of problems with that.
[00:11:51] And that, that also of course, circles back to the consumer who gets this bill or this quote from this big law firm, that's kind of uncertain. And all they know is they're going to pay a bunch of money an hour and. All of, that's just not a great formula for the 21st century. You know, it was really interesting.
[00:12:07] There was a time when that kind of worked, but, you know, especially I think with the pressure law firms get from DIY products. Yeah. I 
[00:12:14] Sam Harrelson: [00:12:14] was gonna say with legal zoom and that kind of stuff where it's like, Oh, trademark cost four 99 or whatever. So yeah. I'll pay that because yeah. 
[00:12:21] Dave Maxfield: [00:12:21] Yeah. And not only that, but you have, so you have like these kinds of, and there's some very good products out there like that, that solve problems for people that, you know, they maybe they don't need a lawyer at all.
[00:12:31] Um, and it gets, you know, way weirder than that too. But then you have like, if you are in one of these firms and you're doing kind of a commodity thing where you're saying we're going to do all the. You know, these kinds of transactions are gonna represent defendants and all these car wreck cases and the insurance companies are gonna, um, we're going to charge them two 50 an hour on kind of this big contract and that's, it we'll do 400 cases for them a year, whatever it is.
[00:12:58] You're going to get pushed down on your price too, because you're a commodity at that point, they can just go, well, you know, Jones and Smith up the streets say, they'll do it for two 10. What do you say? And so, you know, Walmart treatment and, um, so all of, a lot of what I've done is like, Well, how do we get out of that box?
[00:13:18] And, um, and I can kind of tell you what we did and what we looked at to try to do that a long time. Yeah, totally. Because I mean, 
[00:13:24] Sam Harrelson: [00:13:24] what our conversations over the last few years have helped me personally and professionally like get out of that box because yeah, I mean, there was a time when I was saying, okay, well, I'm going to charge this much an hour.
[00:13:34] I'm going to book this many hours a month and here's what I'm going to make. And you can do that, but yeah, like you said, you get into the situation where it's a race to the bottom with the rates, right. And you really do feel like you, you make yourself a commodity. So yeah, whether you're building websites or, or, you know, working with consumer law, like, I think there's a real danger long-term in, in structuring your.
[00:13:55] Your revenue that way. 
[00:13:56] Dave Maxfield: [00:13:56] Yeah, for sure. And of course you hit that PR problem too, of there's only so many hours a day that you, your wife's going to let you work and 
[00:14:03] Sam Harrelson: [00:14:03] that's, unless you build up, you know, like you said, the kind of the pyramid or kind of the old school. Okay. Well, I'm going to be the partner and I'm going to have lunch at the capital club and the partner does, and you know, those young people are going to deal with the work.
[00:14:16] Yeah. 
[00:14:17] Dave Maxfield: [00:14:17] Yeah. And then you got, you almost have to take up golf at that point, which I really have like zero interest in. So for house who knows or something like that, you know, who knows, there's all kinds of things that come with it, you know? Um, anyways, I feel done. I mean, how what's, what's the solution.
[00:14:35] Well, the solution to me is like, here's the, here's the solution. The solution is you mentioned like welders and car dealerships. And I think like the first thing that like a long time ago, I started like looking at books for lawyers is like, well, how to be more profitable, more productive, or run a better firm.
[00:14:50] Never really found things that. Broke any kind of the, of the mold that we're talking about, you know? And so I started looking at industries that were like outside of the legal profession and I, I read a book called the goal by Elliot hall, Ellie, you can't say it. We can't, nobody can say anybody's name today by gold rat.
[00:15:08] Eliyahu Goldratt. That's probably, um, Grossly mispronouncing his name. Who's a was an Israeli physicist who's who has died, not too far in the distant past, but really wrote this great sort of business novel called the goal, which is about sort of turning around this manufacturing firm. And what you would it leads into is, is.
[00:15:28] The idea, the things that you see in like the Toyota production system or lean six Sigma and things like that. Uh, but I guess the, the, the realization I had is look, my law firm is really just like every other business, you know, we think we're so special and so different, but all we're doing is like doing what every business does, which is to take some kind of raw material and put it through some kind of process and have some.
[00:15:54] You know, product come out. The other side 
[00:15:57] Sam Harrelson: [00:15:57] that is, I had a conversation on our previous show where the person who made this exact same analogy about their industry. And he was saying like, yeah, you know, Henry Ford saw all of these meatpackers in Chicago taking a cow and processing it down and said, Hey, we could do that for a car.
[00:16:14] And, you know, build this Rose planted on one side, you get an, all the. The raw materials and outcomes and model T you know, a mile down on the other side of the, uh, the 
[00:16:23] Dave Maxfield: [00:16:23] factory. Yeah. Well, that's exactly right. And I mean, that is, and then Henry Ford is a great example, too, and it actually, there's a guy named Frederick Winslow Taylor, who wrote this book in like 1911, I think called like the principles of scientific management.
[00:16:36] That was sort of one of these touchstones from like that time when people started to kind of see things that way. But what, let me ask you just out of curiosity, what industry was your other guest in. Uh, is on the electric 
[00:16:48] Sam Harrelson: [00:16:48] vehicle and clean tech space. 
[00:16:50] Dave Maxfield: [00:16:50] Okay. So he's actually in the sort of that the vehicle industry, which is a pretty natural jump, but this, you know, for the legal industry.
[00:16:58] Yeah. We're all, but we're all doing the same thing. I mean, that sort of illustrates the point. You know, you have, um, for a vehicle producer, they're getting raw material there. Turning it into a vehicle and they're selling that vehicle. They get their money on the back end when they sell it to a dealer or that, you know, somebody buys that vehicle and.
[00:17:18] W lawyers do the same thing. We take some kind of, you know, our raw material is sort of people with problems or businesses with problems, or that need something, you know, in the legal space. And we're going to take that raw material of a person with a problem, and we're going to put them through a process.
[00:17:33] And on the other side, we're going to get paid for doing that once we solve that problem for them, and you're doing the same thing, you know, somebody comes into you and they want a certain job done and you're solving a problem and you're getting paid. And so. You know, the traditional lawyer model was to get paid, you know, for that work on the, on the.
[00:17:51] As you go kind of which leads to a lot of problems that we already talked about also collection problems that we didn't talk about, but on the, you know, a lot of the work I do, um, I, I represent people in contingent cases. So a lot of my fees come only if I succeed. So it's kind of a pay for performance kind of thing, you know, or if I recover something for them, I get paid on a percentage of that, but the first important feature.
[00:18:16] So, so my money sometimes comes on the back end like that. Um, the first important feature of that is. It's not necessarily tied to how much effort I have to put into that case. Sometimes I can take a case and, you know, if my process is really good, you know, I can make a really good product in a really short period of time and make a really good return on that, that, that, you know, and there's no limit on, on that.
[00:18:40] Um, you know, of course, if, if, when I sometimes represent people on a fee-based case, I always do it on a flat fee, so they know what they have to pay and that money comes even sooner. It comes on the front end. Um, and this is really some very, except for the professions that charge by the hour, which are dwindling.
[00:18:58] I think this is what basically every business does. We put raw material through a process, get paid for doing it. And so once you kind of realize that you go, well, gosh, we're not so special. And you start to see that, you know, all you're really, you know, how you're going to make. Money is really it's formulaic in some way.
[00:19:17] And I can sort of talk about what the formula looks like for us, but it's, it's also kind of similar to what every business does. Yeah. And, and 
[00:19:25] Sam Harrelson: [00:19:25] this kind of, uh, I guess awakening type or, or insight came after reading the goal and then kind of thinking through. That same process that, that you will use, 
[00:19:36] Dave Maxfield: [00:19:36] right?
[00:19:36] Yeah. Well, the gold and lean thinking in the, in the whole bunch of other stuff. And we ended up in 2018. I wrote a book with a friend of mine who has a, um, cloud-based legal software company called rocket matter of my friend, Larry port. We wrote a book called the lean law firm, which is. It's very much like a homage to the goal.
[00:19:55] And in some ways it has a, you know, a novel aspect of it's actually a graphic novel with like illustrations and things in there where this guy kind of has to come into this dying from and try to resurrect it. And, um, kind of has this mentor figure that has a bicycle factory. That of course, bicycle factory is always the best analogy because everybody understands that or thinks they do.
[00:20:17] So, um, You know, he has this guy that's sort of in a goal. They have a guy named Jonah and in our book, it's a gentleman named guy chaplain, who is, has this bike factory and there's this whole backstory. But, um, he just kind of says, look, yeah, the law firms, just like a bike factory. And here's the, here's how you do all these different and things, you know, to, to make it run the right way.
[00:20:40] Um, but a whole, and sort of there's. The, the, the key lesson of the whole thing is that this is how you make money. There's like a formula to it. And all it is is, um, how much has each you have, you know, w what we call in our firm, a case unit, which is sort of like a. Anything that can move on its own. Like if I, if I Sue bank of America, I'm not saying I would Sue bank of America, but I have sued bank of America, lots of times because it's a blast.
[00:21:09] But let's say if they're not your podcast sponsor. Um, so let's say I represent somebody against bank of America. And that case it's just Joe Smith versus bank of America. That case has a certain value. You know, I mean, if I do really well at it, maybe that value goes up and if I do badly at it, maybe that good value goes to zero, but that case can, has a certain process that it moves through, you know, and the more it can be standardized in my firm, the faster I can move it typically.
[00:21:41] But, um, Yeah, let's just say that that case is worth $5,000 in my pocket as a lawyer, you know, it's worth more to the client than that, but my fees based on a percentage. So I, what I'm going to make on that case is $5,000. Well, you kind of figure at some point that like, You know, you can, you can look at your numbers over time and say, look on average, my cases are worth about $5,000 to me.
[00:22:04] Some of them are worth a lot more. Some of them are worth a lot less, but that's what they're worth on average, like a median. Yeah. Like an average unit value, almost like a price for a bicycle or something like that. Right. So once you know that and you can say, well, I'm trying to make, and I'll just make up an easy number here.
[00:22:21] $500,000 this year, then I know I got to put a hundred. Uh, cases across the finish line, KC units across the finish line that year. And if I do that, and that's not a sir thing, but I'm likely to make about that much money because the law of averages tells me that that's true. And so what you start to see is, you know, a lot of, I think advice geared towards lawyers is like getting them.
[00:22:45] It's like kind of geared on the marketing and like, here's how you get more clients. Here's how you get more clients. And I do consulting for other law firms sometimes, and almost never as their problem that they have not enough clients, almost always their problem is like we don't do when we get them.
[00:22:59] We don't do, we don't handle it. Quickly enough or the right way. Right. Um, because what you, the other half of the equation, like if we say each case units worth $5,000 is, well, how many of them can you get across the finish line in a year and that's called your throughput or your throughput rate? Yeah. So if I, if, if I put a hundred across the finish line every year, uh, or in a year, that's my, um, it's like almost like miles per hour, like sort of a speed measure then very simply my income formula is just going to be a hundred.
[00:23:31] Through a throughput of a hundred times case unit value of 5,000 I'm minute probably make about $500,000. So the big shift for me was always to look at that and say, you know what? Case unit value. I don't have a ton of control over that. Like I get this case and it sort of is what it is and I can make it better and maybe I can, you know, make it a lot better.
[00:23:53] But in the end, it's an insurance adjuster or a judge or a jury or a lawyer on the other side, that's going to put a value on that case. I can't like just set a price tag on it and say, here's the value. Somebody else gets to decide that because in the law and litigation, if push comes to shove, some third-party tells you what your case is worth, and it might be zero.
[00:24:12] Right. Um, so that I don't have a ton of control over, but what I have a lot of control over is like, how long is that going to stay between the start and finish lines in my system? You know, um, if I, and that gets into something called cycle time, which is, you know, when you have like throughput rate is a hundred per year cycle time is on average, how long does it take your unit to get from point a to point B?
[00:24:38] And that's what really all these, the goal is about. When you talk about the theory of constraints, um, it's sort of like that idea that. Um, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, right in a process is only as fast as sort of its slowest part. And so what you're always trying to do is say, well, this is what slow the slowest part of this is right now, how do we make that part faster?
[00:25:03] And once you make that one part of your process faster, you're going to have some new constraint that pops up someplace else. And then you're going to figure out how to make that one faster. But over years and years of making everything. Part of it faster all the time. Like a guy walking around with a camera, WD 40, it gets pretty fast and that, and you have tons and tons of control over that.
[00:25:25] And especially. And I know I'm just going on and on. Fantastic. Um, w where you really were people who do project based work, kind of like you or me. Cause that's kind of how we think of ourselves as some, we have some client that wants something done, where we get killed as a place that we never think of us getting killed.
[00:25:45] And that is when we let stuff sit there. For no reason. That's what, that's what destroys us. And S because what you, when you start to do the math and you realize that your cycle times affecting your throughput and that your, you know, your throughput is going to determine how many units you put across the finish line.
[00:26:01] And. How much money you make, you realize that you can't let stuff sit. And so, um, that's all what you should be doing is designing a process. That's a raw material on the left side to an output on the right side process that has as few steps in it as possible and moves as quickly as can and avoids these situations where things are sitting there, like in a queue for no reason.
[00:26:28] Sam Harrelson: [00:26:28] I mean, you have an intentionally small team that we take team, unlike many law firms or, you know, uh, or how people think about law firms. So does your whole team buy into that or, I mean, is it something that you all train against and, and. You know, focus on it in terms of, you know, cycle times and throughput rate.
[00:26:48] Dave Maxfield: [00:26:48] Yeah. W w uh, quite a bit, actually, that's they understand when we, when we lay out goals for the beginning of the year, the goals are like, this is the outcome that we hope to achieve income wise. Um, and to do that, we need to have a average. Um, case unit value of X. So, and when we know, like to the penny over eight years, what that's like, what that number is on average.
[00:27:11] So we can say, let's try to increase that maybe 5%, you know, and then let's say that our average case unit about is 5,000. Then we go, let's try to take that to 5,000, 250. That's a very small change. So that's doable. Um, and then what we look at then is like, well, to put. Say hypothetically a hundred across the finish line this year.
[00:27:33] What does our cycle time have to be to do that? And we just make a calc there's. I have a way to calculate that. It's it's you can use something called Little's law to do that, and it will littles all will tell you how fast your, your cycle time needs to be. Um, and we'll tell you, um, how much. Inventory you should have at any particular time probably to achieve that.
[00:27:55] And then, so they're very much bought into the idea of this case is getting too old. You know, this case is hanging around too long. Um, And to get really granular about it. You know, cases with more value actually can hang around longer because you're still gonna do okay on that, right? The cases with low value, you gotta get them in and out like fast, which is very counterintuitive.
[00:28:18] You think I've got to put all my work in my best cases or my most valuable cases. But really it's those little ones without much value hanging around that are like, they're getting you sometimes. So yeah. 
[00:28:29] Sam Harrelson: [00:28:29] Fascinating. I, I just was Googling while you were saying that, which I want to come back to, but there's an explanation of Little's law from toggle the time-tracking app.
[00:28:38] Yeah. And they use a talk of business to explain it, but it's yeah. I, I keep forgetting this. I've I've heard you talk about it so many times. Um, and it's something. I guess recently, especially with the pandemic and everyone being on lockdown and stuff, and having conversations with colleagues who were all kind of going through the same ups and downs.
[00:29:00] We were last year and we had a great year, but yeah. Yeah, there were some points where everything just fell out the bottom because right. Something would happen or there would be a new lockdown or there would be, you know, schools aren't opening and marketing budgets would shift, you know, almost overnight.
[00:29:14] So retainer clients would go away and then they would come back and projects that we had signed wouldn't show up. And then all of a sudden they would show up two weeks later, like, okay, we need this. And so it was just kind of a chaotic year. Um, And there's so many other, the other like marketing and marketing tech agencies, I've talked to you that went through the same thing.
[00:29:32] And one of the common refrains I kept hearing was, you know, our estimation for what we were going to make was so far off, either up or down, because we couldn't predict kind of in a week to week, month to month, like, okay, well, we're going to have this much revenue or this much profit this month. And, uh, something like this would I think really help if people kind of slow down, is that okay?
[00:29:55] Well, you know, I know we've got this huge project for 20, 25 grand over here and these little, you know, 500,000, $2,000 projects over here. Right? Where do we need to focus our energy to get these things done? Because everyone's in a hurry. Yeah. You know, we're going to have angry clients and they're not going to refer us and that's going to lead to the end of the world.
[00:30:14] So yeah, something like this really can help you sit back and say, okay, we've got this much. Uh, raw material and we need to produce this in order to make this, to keep the lights on. So how do we do that? Right. And that's, that's constantly like, you know, as a business owner, that's my biggest struggle is figuring out where to apply, you know, my focus, my direction, my energy, and not getting caught up in the huge projects and saying, Oh, well, I've got this thing going on over here.
[00:30:39] Let me make sure, you know, that's getting through and, and lowering the cycle time for that. I think that's a really great way to look at it. 
[00:30:46] Dave Maxfield: [00:30:46] Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely, and, you know, just to everybody who listens, who, you know, went through, we all went through a rough last year and I mean, it, it w if you survive, you know, that's good enough for last year, really?
[00:31:00] Because, I mean, it's nothing is going to make everything easy ever. You know, people who want to sell you like a solution, it's like, Oh, just do this and invest in my six step process. And the rest of your life will be a breeze that just doesn't exist. I mean, things are, um, You know, work is always work in some ways, but this, what I do feel like this gives you, and what has given me is like the ability to sustain things like this when we have like these weird situations without like a lot of drama, you know, I mean, I was like, okay, well this is going to be harder and this will be harder, but I have a very clear idea of like what to do because of that.
[00:31:36] And that is really because I do want to get back to one other piece of, I guess, tech that we stole from. People in your, your field mostly, um, which is the idea that this process should be visually, you know, once you say, okay, well here's what my numbers are. You really need to lay out your workflow in a visual left to right way.
[00:31:58] It's not just a metaphor that I get raw material in on the left and on the right. It comes out and something happens in the middle. You should have a way of seeing where all your projects are like in real time and like the best tool we've ever found, you know, how, like I love Kanban boards, um, to the point that I've, you know, mispronounced them all the time.
[00:32:17] I'm sure. Correct. Japanese pronunciation doesn't sound like somebody from Columbia, South Carolina saying it, but the, um, Th th having a product like Trello, which a lot of people who, you know, do software program are really familiar with or, or something, what we use in house. Yeah. You guys use Trello, we've talked about Trello, a bunch.
[00:32:35] You and I, and I use a product called Rendell now, which is, is sort of a, uh, It's a lot, like it's a Kanban board like Trello, but sort of takes the automation that you can use with sort of third party apps and kind of allows it sort of brings it into the app itself. It's kind of like a very advanced trailer.
[00:32:53] It's a very advanced Trello that you can set a lot of rules so that when somebody checks off this, this moves here and this gets done, has a lot of sort of, you know, automation going on in the background and you can represent things on multiple boards, which. For certain reasons is really helpful, um, for what we do.
[00:33:11] But you, you have this idea this year, this big, main Kanban board and on the left is your sort of your prospect's raw material and sort of where your. Process begins. You know, we have almost like your starting line and on the right, you have your finish and your, your job every day is to say, well, what's what is where and how do I get it to the finish line?
[00:33:32] What's stopping it from moving. And one of the things you asked about like staff training that are. That my two paralegals, Christie and Janell who were really cool and great, um, are really amazing people and very smart, but they're very attuned to when things get blocked, because they know until we put a label on, on a, you know, this, this block, you know, and what, what what's blocking this, why, you know, why is it, why is it not moving forward right now is a question we ask a lot.
[00:33:59] And usually it's because of a couple of things. There's only a couple of reasons. Well, To get really macro there's two reasons there's either a good reason or no reason the good reason might be, or a reason might be that it's a resource is, is not, um, available. Like if something is waiting on me to do it and I'm doing something else, then I, by definition, can't do that at the same time.
[00:34:23] And so you have like some issue of like resource scarcity, you know, there's one person that can do this and that person's busy. So that's. That tells you something in your system that probably ought to get changed a little bit. If that happens, we'll what can we do to minimize that? Um, you know, systemically, but the other reason would be in our industry, like there's, uh, there's some external block, you know, me not doing it because I'm doing something else as an internal block.
[00:34:52] There's an external block, which is, well, the court we're waiting on the court, you know, for this. And we just can't get around that. You just have to live with that. Sometimes you can't fix that when you win, but if it's a client that's blocking it, you know, we still need this from them. Then they descend upon that client.
[00:35:09] Like the angels. Do you get what we need? That's 
[00:35:12] Sam Harrelson: [00:35:12] where my, my combine board falls apart. I'm so terrible at following up with clients and saying, Hey, we talked about this last Wednesday. Now it's a, the next Thursday and you haven't gotten me this and this and this, and they've got a deadline coming up and this thing is blocked.
[00:35:27] I wish I could do that. And Mariana yells at me all the time for this. Um, and it's the reason why our business, you know, is, is. So frustrating for, for her, uh, cause I'm, I'm constantly like, well, I'll follow up with an email later today, but blah, blah, blah. And she's like, no, do that. That's flogged. 
[00:35:42] Dave Maxfield: [00:35:42] So that's the first thing you need to do.
[00:35:44] She's right about it. But I mean, that's the kind of thing that you can also solve with automation too. And, um, I'm not quite smart enough to do that, but there are apps that will, um, you know, put a drip on somebody to, um, You know, get them to do what they're supposed to do hopefully. And so, you know, things like you can do like that.
[00:36:03] Um, you know, and it's always like, w w when I say things will never be perfect and easy. I mean, part of us all being humans is that as humans, we have to say, well, I don't want to push this guy too far. You know, there's a certain, you got to sort of weigh the, am I going to drive this person crazy to the point where I drive them off or not.
[00:36:21] Right. You know, but you know, to, to have some. Tactical pressure to get what we need. Um, but a lot of times, you know, those are reasons why things are blocked. A lot of times, the reason is no reason, you know what I mean? And that's, and you're also on the hunt for those. So they're pretty attuned to looking for those things, but it's only once you start to sort of spread things across the board, that these things become apparent to you.
[00:36:43] Um, and that's good. Yeah. Well, you see what you're really, I mean, it's a visual representation of what you're actually doing. 
[00:36:49] Sam Harrelson: [00:36:49] Right. And it's not like a, to deal it's in a notebook or app or something you've got to run. So let me ask you one more thing or two, when, when you lay everything out on your board what's and you were the team of looking at it, do you keep, um, like a internal blog and external blog categories or columns?
[00:37:09] Or do you just 
[00:37:10] Dave Maxfield: [00:37:10] say blocked. Um, we keep an external and internal. Okay. Um, so that they can see what the cause of it is. And, um, uh, pro tip on Trello, you know, Trello has this pirate mode, which is, um, I is cool because as cards sit there for a long time in the same column, they start to kind of like wither an age, like.
[00:37:30] Pirate parchment. I don't know if you've ever yeah. Hard aging, a hard age. Yeah. It's like Carnegie where the cart actually starts to like disintegrate in front of you. Okay. It breaks my 
[00:37:40] Sam Harrelson: [00:37:40] heart when I see an age. It does. 
[00:37:43] Dave Maxfield: [00:37:43] So that's, that's cool. But yes, we do have those in the board and a lot of what I do with the board.
[00:37:49] That's a cool thing. And you can do this in Trello is to filter it. So if I want to see what's everything that's blocked right now. And if we have like a tag on there that says, it's blocked, I can filter on that and just say, well, here's all. And it'll just show me only the things that are blocked right now.
[00:38:04] So, you know, those are things that need attention. Or if my, you know, have like little icons, you know, one for me, one for Janell, one for Christina. And if I want to see, um, well, what does it, what do I got to do to do this week? Cause we have a meeting at the beginning of each week and say, here's who's doing what?
[00:38:19] Um, And so I can filter down and say, here's the stuff I have to do. And really the way I work, that's mostly replaced like any sort of a to-do list is to, um, Phil, you, you have this meeting. Okay. Everybody has their assignments. I filter down my board to what I gotta do, and I just work on moving stuff, you know, what do I going to do to move?
[00:38:38] And once I've done everything I can on that, I take my icon off. It, it disappears off my filtered board. And, you know, by the end of the week, I might, I might start with the, at the beginning of the week. You know, 35 cases that I got to work on and I ended week and I'm usually five or six left. So I know I'm doing the right thing.
[00:38:55] It's a very, you know, in a, in a foggy environment, it's a pretty clear dashboard about what you're really doing. So that's really good, which is 
[00:39:02] Sam Harrelson: [00:39:02] so important because I mean, I think with, you know, everyone's experiencing, you know, pandemic brain, right? Like you said, everything's hazy and foggy and you know, motivation is, is.
[00:39:13] A big issue for a lot of people right now, a lot of people are struggling with, you know, just going through the motions of moving things and doing things right. So having, yeah, having that laid out, like in a really simplistic sort of dashboard that says, Hey, you know, here are your actions. It's not a to do list.
[00:39:28] Like this is part of a bigger project, but you know, here's your next steps so that we can make money and you 
[00:39:33] Dave Maxfield: [00:39:33] can pick them up. Yeah, which is, it turns out to be important. People, you know, adulting is hard. It sucks. Doesn't it? 
[00:39:42] Sam Harrelson: [00:39:42] Well, that's fantastic.  
[00:39:46] Dave Maxfield: [00:39:46] to talk to you about it. You're always, um, you have always given me such good ideas and shown me such cool stuff that I'm happy to, uh, sound.
[00:39:56] Semi intelligent for even a short period of time. No, it it's. It's 
[00:40:01] Sam Harrelson: [00:40:01] always, it's always fascinating for me to see how companies are using these tools like Trello or toggle or, or what, what was 
[00:40:07] Dave Maxfield: [00:40:07] your con Rendell, Rendell. Yeah. Which is a great, a really good app. Um, and I love Trello too, but Rendell is kind of next level and, and I've actually messed with a lot of these, but that one is the one that to me is like, yeah.
[00:40:21] Wow. And let me tell you what I guess is really different about it. Cause I mentioned mirroring on it. Yeah. And if you do have like a shop that has four or five, six people on it, you know, one of the challenges is for people to know, it's like great for them to be able to see this big board in real time, really helpful, critical, indispensable, but for them to know like, okay, well what do I got to do this week?
[00:40:42] You know, We the way our board is set up is so that everybody has, or both my staff members have like their individual boards. And when they get assigned something on the big one, it goes to it mirrors to a very simple board that is like, almost like not done, done, you know, just like two, three columns or something like that.
[00:41:02] And they can see. Like, here's all the stuff I got to do. And you can, if you want to make things really simple, like my job is to move this from not done to done this week, you know? And so they have a very clear idea of what their role is within the larger picture. So it's not, and 
[00:41:19] Sam Harrelson: [00:41:19] they're not constantly trying to ask, you were asking each other, like, Hey, did you do this?
[00:41:23] Or do I need to do this? Or, um, uh, what do I need to do this week? Which is the hardest part of managing a team is. Making that frictionless kind of thing where everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing in a, in a affirmative and, and, you know, progressive way. Right, 
[00:41:38] Dave Maxfield: [00:41:38] right. Yeah. That's it. So it sort of solves that challenge and, um, Yeah.
[00:41:43] I mean, they're very helpful if I could leave everybody with like one last tip about like, where things get caught. Cause it's, it's, uh, there's two places where in most systems they get caught in my experience for us at least. And I think it, but I do think this is kind of. Applies to a lot of businesses, a lot of things get caught at the end.
[00:42:04] Like you sorta think I've done everything with this, but you're not maybe paid yet. Or there's like something that's like hanging you sort of mentally scratched it off your list, but it's not done. And most importantly, if it's a. Get paid at the end job or get your final bill paid job. You haven't got that yet until that's done.
[00:42:23] You can't move that off the list. So focusing at the end of your list really quickly at the beginning of the week is really important because you've got you'll, you'll find all these things are like hanging right at the edge of the wastebasket and just need this little nudge. And so you got to give them those little nudges and then the other place is at the beginning.
[00:42:40] Like you'll take in this new project and you'll have it and it'll sit and you won't start it. And that's, what's getting you to, because every day it's not like sitting with within sort of, you know, for what, what for us is usually filing, uh, some kind of a claim it's every day is adding the cycle time.
[00:42:59] So we're really big. I'm really big at like, my main job is to get those things started because I. I I'm, I'm trying to keep that cycle time down. Yeah. So mathematically, it seems to work, but those are the two places I really focus and, and seems to be in most businesses, places where things kind of get.
[00:43:18] Sam Harrelson: [00:43:18] Yeah. And it's where people don't focus because we think the middle of the board or the middle of the process where you're actually doing stuff is. Well, you need to put all the attention for all these products and 
[00:43:27] Dave Maxfield: [00:43:27] you'll find that the middle kind of takes care of itself sometimes in some ways, I mean, there's things you have to do, but there's a certain flow and pull to it, especially like in the legal profession, which has a lot of, sort of, this happens, then this happens and then there's a deadline for this.
[00:43:40] Those deadlines will kind of almost like chains that pull things through the middle, but there's no such deadline like on the front or the end. Yeah. Putting 
[00:43:49] Sam Harrelson: [00:43:49] it. And I think that applies for so many people. I mean, that's where businesses. That's um, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Again, that's, that's where I get hung up.
[00:43:57] As I look at my board or look at my to-do list or look at whatever, and I see. You know, the big part that I have to do that I'm responsible for. And I'll let it sit over in the done column for two weeks after I've done it and the person hasn't paid or, you know, the company hasn't paid and it's like, why didn't I get paid for that?
[00:44:15] Why, you know, and that's the whole, that becomes a project in itself. And. Yeah, we 
[00:44:21] Dave Maxfield: [00:44:21] are, we are here after all to try to get paid and make the world a better place, but it can do both. Yeah. It's uh, it's, it's a balancing 
[00:44:29] Sam Harrelson: [00:44:29] act. It is. Well, thank you, Dave. That, that was. I think really powerful. I think people are gonna get 
[00:44:34] Dave Maxfield: [00:44:34] a lot out of it, out of that.
[00:44:35] I hope so. And thanks for having me. And, um, yeah. I, if anybody has questions, I guess they can, do you want me to say like how to get ahold of me or anything that please I've got everything we've done in the show notes, but yeah. Great. Okay. Well, you can tell people. Sure you can message me at Twitter at, at consumer law SC, um, that would work or you could, uh, take emails.
[00:44:56] I still answer emails, David consumer law, SC like South carolina.com. Yeah. And 
[00:45:03] Sam Harrelson: [00:45:03] I'll have links to lean law firm and all that and your podcast and everything we've discussed here. But, uh, yeah, I think, I think you've, you've 
[00:45:10] Dave Maxfield: [00:45:10] helped a lot of people. Great. That's what I'm here for Sam. Thank you. Thanks.