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Are you a law firm owner looking for a new way to streamline processes? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson Mutrux discusses the benefits of using flowcharts and decision trees to streamline law firm operations.
Tyson shares the process for developing a decision tree. A decision tree can help streamline processes for a law firm. It is a “yes-no” tree that can be used to make decisions on various things. It is great for teams where there is a process needed to make a decision on something. In the personal injury firm, it is a good tool when deciding how much a claim should be for a client. For others, it is a good way to provide staff with options to flow from the top to the bottom to arrive at a decision and determine what the end result is. To make decision trees effective, make it a mandatory process for your business.
Listen in to learn more!
2:58 How to condense knowledge into a decision tree to aid attorneys
5:51 The process for developing the decision tree
6:37 How dedicating time to create the flowchart saves hours
7:25 The need for law firms to adapt processes as laws
Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here.
(upbeat music) - Run your law firm, the right way. - The right way. - This is the maximum lawyer podcast. - The maximum lawyer podcast. - Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and Tyson Nutriks, let's partner up and maximize your firm. - Welcome to the show. (upbeat music) - Hey, Tyson back here with another Saturday episode, and today I'm gonna talk about flow charts, decision trees. Something fun, I think it's been pretty cool. Something that is going to save you a ton of time if you take the time to do it, but before I get into what I've been working on and this tip for you, it should be a text if you have something you want me to cover on the podcast. I'd love to do it if I can, or if you just wanna say hi, just text me, say hi, tell me who you are, and I'd love to chat with you. Three, one, four, five, zero, one, nine, two, six, zero, three, one, four, five, zero, one, nine, two, six, zero. I'd also love to hear from you if you have a question that you want to have on air. All you have to do is go to maximumlawyer.com/askask, maximumlawyer.com/ask, and all you do is upload your submission there, and we'll play it on the podcast, and what we'll do is we will answer your question on the air. And so it doesn't matter if you're just starting out or if you're sitting in some law office, daydreaming about starting your own firm, or if you've been doing this for years, you have questions. It doesn't matter, upload your submission, and we will answer it on the air. All right, so something recently that we've been going through is settlement releases. It's something that I feel like kind of our attorneys have had an issue grasping because there's, I mean, it's contract law is what it is. And Missouri is very nuanced in some things, and you have to be careful. 'Cause you're dealing with insurance policies, you're dealing with insurance settlements. There's a lot of contingencies with a lot of different things, and I get it. So there's a lot going on. So what I've tried to do is condense my knowledge into a document that they can go to, but what it ended up happening is, I don't know if I'm embarrassed to admit it or what, but I don't like that I had to do this. It was getting to the point where I was having to go and review a bunch of settlement releases after they had reviewed them, and I was trying to find a way for that not to happen anymore. And so like I said, I went and I tried to condense down all of my knowledge over the last 14 years into a document, and it turned out to be a decision tree or a flow chart, whatever you wanna call it. It has helped teach them the process. And we have manuals on everything, okay? And I could've put a lot of these questions into some sort of manual, but it wouldn't have been nearly as effective as would I put together. I'm happy to share this with anyone, so text us for a copy, 3145019260, just shoot me text to let me know you wanna receive a copy of it. But it's really just a bunch of yes-no's that then lead down to whether or not you need to make edits and then send it back, or if you need to dig a little deeper or you need to change things. And it does allow for it to escalate it up to have me look at it at some point. There are, because like I said, it can be pretty nuanced. I gave them permission with a couple questions where, I'll give you an example, 'cause I'm giving them permission to elevate it if they need to, 'cause it is something that's really, really important, because if you get it wrong, and so for those of you that don't do personal injury, if you get this settlement release wrong, you might screw up a million dollar claim by settling a $25,000 claim, because the other driver may have only had $25,000 in coverage, but maybe you had a million dollar underinsured motorist policy, or you had a claim against someone else. So if you get this wrong, you could really, you could really cost them the firm dearly. And so that's why this is so important. But this question, we've had a couple questions like this, but this one in particular is just, does the release contain anything that concerns you? Okay, so, oh, I don't recognize that. Maybe I need to elevate this. And so I have added those things in there, all the way down to release approved. There's also some parts where it's kind of a, almost a shortcut. We're like, it has a couple of things we don't really care about. It's like, yeah, do we necessarily, would we agree to those clauses if these other things were in play, then, you know, no, we wouldn't agree to it. But because these other things are not in play, we don't really care that much. And so we'll agree to it. So it's got off ramps, I guess you could put it. But sort of the process that I went through is I went through and I took three or four releases that need to be reviewed. I went through and I, and I went through my process. And it was one of those things where I'd never thought about what my process was for evaluating a settlement release. And by the way, we've done numerous videos and trainings on set-up releases, okay. So if you're thinking, well, Tyson, why don't you just do a training, which we have done, okay? We have done all these things. And for some reason, it was just something that was not clicking. And this is why we did this, but so I went through my process. I do this, and I do this, and I do this, okay. So almost like a checklist, all right. And then after I went through that, sorry, I figured out, here's how I do it. And then I thought about, okay, well, what are some things that I've seen in the past that are a little different that could throw someone off or you think it's okay, but it's not. Or it's just something you'll see every few years and what do I do in that situation? So I thought about all those scenarios. So I threw that in there. And then I thought, okay, so what, I guess what other questions might I have if I'm going through this for the first time? And I've never really done this before. So I had all those questions. So I went through these multiple iterations and what I end up doing, just so you know, I took half a day, it wasn't off work, but I left the office, I went and sat at a coffee shop, took my laptop and took a half a day, which is very valuable, very valuable time. But I went through and I spent that time to do it. I even, you know, you don't have to do this, you can have someone else design it, but I actually just did it all in Canva, okay. So I did it myself. Is it the prettiest thing in the world? Probably not, but it got the point, it does the job, but I went through and I, you know, designed it myself, took half a day and it saved me hours upon hours upon hours of time. And it's a document that we can use over and over and over again that I'm happy to share with you, like I said, but it's something that we are now starting to do that with many different processes that will help streamline things in the future. And luckily the thing about Canva, we have a professional account, so you don't need one to do this, but we have a lot of our stuff organized in different folders inside of Canva, but, you know, if things change when it comes to this, if a law changes or whatever, but we can go and then we can edit it. And, you know, 'cause the processes will change over time. Something that we're very serious about in our firm is that we have a process, but we know that it's not gonna last forever 'cause firms catch on, State Farm has already caught on a little bit, so we know that we've gotta adjust our processes a little bit. And so it's a, it's almost a game of cat and mouse, but don't think that you're gonna set it and forget it with all your processes. They'll stay in place for a long time and you'll make tweaks along the way, but there'll be times where you have to make fairly substantial changes. And so having those somewhere that you can go back in reference is pretty important. All right, so that's all I have for you today. Flow charts, decision trees, whatever you wanna call them. Really helpful, okay? It solves a lot of those, you know, questions that you get over and over again, or it allows them, gives them a process to think through things. You know, we talk about, you know, and you hear about in law school thinking like a lawyer, this helps them think like a lawyer. And it's also helpful that our case managers could use this, by the way, we tested it on our case managers. So before we gave it to the attorneys, we tested it on the case managers to make sure that it was easily understandable. Another little handy tip for you is testing it on other people that may not use it to make sure that everything's clear and that the language is clear in there. But that's all I have for you. If you want this, just shoot me a text. You know, in there, just type flow chart. Yeah, just put type in flow chart. One word, F-L-O-W-C-H-A-R-T, flow chart, just text me flow chart. Three, one, four, five, zero, one, nine, two, six, zero. I'll know what you're talking about, and I will send you a copy. I don't think that there's anything in here that needs to be removed. Yeah, there's nothing in here. I'll just shoot it back to you. If I need to redact anything, I will, but you'll get the point once you see it. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. As always, 'til next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. See ya. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximumlawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
