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Are you a law firm owner who is looking to integrate technology into your processes? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, host Tyson Mutrux discusses the transformative role of video messaging in his law firm.
Video messaging platforms are great tools to use in law firms as they can cut out lengthy emails and conversations. Tyson provides insight on a few applications that are great for lawyers. One of these platforms is Dub, which allows you to record yourself while reviewing documents. For example, if you are reviewing a document that requires feedback, you can open up the document using Dub and record yourself providing feedback in short clips. It is an easy and efficient way for clients to hear your voice. It is also perfect to use when responding to clients as it provides a unique way to update them on files.
Listen in to learn more!
02:17 Various ways law firms can use video messaging, including sending case status updates, onboarding new clients, explaining legal concepts, appointment reminders, client meetings follow-ups, requesting client testimonials, holiday greetings, and explaining documents and more!
Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here.
- Run your law firm the right way. - The right way. - This is the Maximum Liar Podcast. - Maximum Liar Podcast. (upbeat music) - Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Matrix. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. - Welcome to the show. - Welcome back to another episode of the Maximum Liar Podcast. This is Tyson and I wanna start today's episode by telling you about what I did this morning. So, I had an email from a client that he sent me, he sent me a series of emails and he sent me one yesterday and a couple before that and he sent me another one this morning and he wanted me to basically review this 17 page document that he had prepared in preparation for his deposition. And so, as you can imagine, he's a type of a client that really likes to be prepared, always has lots of questions, he has very thoughtful questions but unfortunately his questions usually require a ton of my time. And so, what I did instead of me drafting up a very long email that would have taken me a really long time to do, I went through the parts of the document that he wanted me to review. Luckily he didn't want me to review the whole 17 pages and that was based on my conversation with him yesterday that I didn't have time to. And so, he asked me to look through a couple of different parts of it. And so, what I did was, I used Dub, I've talked about Dub before, which for those of you that don't know, it's a video platform and you can send video messages to clients. There's a lot of different ones out there. I think the original was bomb bomb, I don't know if bomb bomb still around, but there's many different ways that you can send video messages these days. You could just record yourself and send a text message but Dub has other features that are pretty cool. But this video's not about Dub. This podcast is about what I did in response. I went through and I, what's kind of cool about Dub and you can do this with these other platforms. I had his document that he wanted me to review on my screen and it has a little bubble of my face. And what it is, I just went through it and answered his questions and I gave him feedback on the information that he had put in there. And so, it was a very easy, efficient, but also it's a way to connect with the clients 'cause they see my face and they hear my voice as opposed to just seeing black and white letters on a screen. And so it got me thinking though, okay, so what are some other ways though that we should be using these things? And I'll give you some examples of some of the things that we do, but I also, I brainstormed on this a little bit 'cause it'll be helpful for ways that we could in our firm use more video messaging. And it's funny 'cause we have introduced the idea to employees before and we've gotten some pushback on it. But I will tell you, that was whenever we, before we did top grading, before we did a lot of changes with the personnel that we have. And so I do wonder, I've sent a message and I'll get to that message in a second that I sent and I'm waiting feedback. And by the end of this episode, I actually might have an answer 'cause they may have already responded. But let's jump into it 'cause I wanna get into the tips that for things that we, ways we use it, but also some ideas that I'd come up with. The first thing is, and this is something that we do use, it's just sending case status updates to clients. I will tell you, just sending that video update, you get far less questions than if you were to send an email or a text message and you're not having to make a phone call either. It's kinda nice. You can give more context, you can give, you have like the non-verbals that people can see whenever you're talking that you don't get in an email or a text message. But sending those updates to them, just sending a case update to them is a really easy way. That seems like a really obvious way, right? But it's a really good way. Another one is onboarding new clients. So check this out. And this is something that we've done for quite some time. You, what do you do is a new client comes through? Shoot a quick message. Hey James, this is Tyson with Mutrix Firm. Just wanted to welcome you to the firm. There was a script. You know, I just wanted to thank you for joining the firm, I wouldn't say welcome you to the firm, but I wanna thank you for hiring us to handle your personal injury case. If you ever have a question, feel free to give me a call at any time. I'm here for you, that kind of a thing. So you can come up with whatever script that you have, but you can use it to, whenever you're doing that, introduce the team members that are gonna be handling their case, giving them an overview of whatever the initial steps of the case are. And it's gonna really allow you to set that positive tone that you want whenever it comes to the beginning of a case. All right, another one where I've done this before, because I needed to explain a legal concept to a client. Okay, so, and I don't honestly remember what it was, but it was something that I knew was very complicated to explain just in an email, because I knew they were going to, there was just a lot of nuances to it. It was gonna take a really long time to draft the email, but it was something that was extremely difficult. I think it might've been had to do with immunity and ministerial duty, which is something that's pretty complicated in the state of Missouri. Especially recently, but you can use the videos to, these video messages to explain legal concepts that are really hard to explain in writing. And you're able to break down these legal concepts into a really, and a simple and easy understand explanation. And you can talk, just like we're talking now, right? Like I'm talking to you right now, where you'll have ums and things like that in there, but they get to hear from you, they're gonna have a better explanation from you than if you just put it in writing. Another one, and this is not something that we do, this is one of those ideas that I had, appointment reminders, okay? My guess is, is that if you were to send a video message before an appointment with someone, especially new clients, if you meet with a new client in person, this is probably a very effective way to get them to show up to it. You could also do it for court appearances, that they need to show for any important deadlines where you need information from them. It has that little personal touch that you want. I think like for criminal defense attorneys, it would be really, really helpful. You know, hey, James, you've got court tomorrow, it's your plea hearing. So make sure you are dressed up, you have your suit on, make sure that you have family members that are willing to come and speak on your behalf at the sentencing, yadda yadda yadda. So you get the idea. It's a really effective way to get them, I think, to show up to wherever they need to go. All right, another one, I follow up to any client meeting or consultation that you have, or I follow up to maybe you had a meeting with opposing counsel, or you had mediation like in Missouri, if there's a work comp mediation, the client's not there. It's just the judge and the attorneys. So you could do a summary after those, or when it comes to client meetings, if you want them to remember some key things, you can send them a summary via a video that they can always have, that way they don't have to write something down, or it's a piece of paper that you gave them that you could lose, this would go to them in an email or a text message that they could easily use and keep later. The next one is, and this is one that we do use, to request client testimonials. So you can send it, people are far more likely to respond with a yes, I'll give you a testimonial, or I'll give you a five-star review at the end of the case, or whenever, really if you've done something good for them during the case, even if it's not the end, they're far more willing to give it to you if you send a video than just a simple email or text message. Another one that we've done in the past, this is not something that we do for everybody 'cause you think about doing it for every single client, and by the way, I'll just make this as a side note. These are usually personalized, yes, you can make these video messages that you send out to everybody, but what I like about these video messages, they are specific to the client. So you're actually saying their name and giving details to them, that way that they know it's about them. You could just do a blast with a video, "Hey, Merry Christmas from NutriX Firm Injury Lawyers," something like that. It's gonna be far more effective if you make this personalized, but to my point, we have done holiday greetings in the past or birthday videos to clients in the past. It's just, one of the things that's very time-consuming. So doing it, I've not done it to every single client. That's just a lot to ask. But it's something you could do, especially if you're a type of a firm where you have a limited number of clients, and so you have more time to be able to send a video like that. Something else that we've done in the past, and this is similar to what I did earlier with the client that I was talking about, or to the explaining some sort of complex legal theory or concept that you want the client to understand, but it's explaining documents. So I've done this with settlement releases. I've even done this where we had a bankruptcy trustee in Missouri. This is probably similar in other states where if the client's going through a bankruptcy during a personal injury case, essentially the bankruptcy trustee becomes our client. And although the client's still our client too, it's sort of complicated. I'm not going to get into it. But something that I did on that case, or on some of those cases, but I've done with other clients when it comes to the settlement releases. And so the bankruptcy trustee is an attorney usually. And I think maybe they're always an attorney, I don't know, but every time I've dealt with them, they're always an attorney. And it was easier for me to explain the release to them via video than it was going back and forth, 'cause we had gone back and forth quite a bit, and there was a lot of questions even over the phone. And it was just easier for me to go through the release via video with it on the screen so they could see it. And on that, they gave me a wonderful feedback. They said, that's great. It was easy to understand. I really appreciate you sending that over. So that's something else you could do is explaining a document if you need to via video. And then the last one, this is one where, and this is, I was talking about that message that I sent, and let's see if they have responded yet, 'cause it's, right now, it is office hours, and I have not yet gotten a response. We're only two minutes into office hours, so it doesn't appear I've gotten a response yet, although they have acknowledged that they've seen it, which is they've got a little, they added a little emoji total, let me know that they've seen it. But not yet, but I sent a message to the Cares team earlier to ask if they wanted to start getting client feedback by sending a video message. And with Dubb, you can allow them to comment on the video. They can do a lot of different things. They can do emojis, they can click different buttons. I think there might be even a survey option. I need to check on that, but you can get client feedback from them. How are we doing on your case? Is there anything you need from us? Can we do anything better? Things like that, that way you can improve the experience for them and do a better job of representing them. So those are all of the different ideas and ways that we use video messaging. Before I go though, I wanted to tell you about something new that we're doing. We've opened it before and it's still open for submissions, for questions on all things, starting and running a law firm so that we can answer them on a future episode of the podcast, whether you're dreaming of launching your own firm, you're knee deep in the trenches or somewhere in between. We're here to listen, and I want to make sure that you reach out to us so that we can take your video and answer your questions live on the air. Just go to maximumler.com/ask, that's maximumlawyer.com/ask and we will read your question on the air, I'll actually play your question on the air and answer it live for you. All right, that's all I have for you. As a reminder, if you have any questions that you want me to or have any questions for me or if you have something you want me to cover on a Saturday show, just shoot me a text and I'll try to cover it. If I can, 3145019260, especially last week, we had a lot of great suggestions from the show, so I would love to hear some more from you. And by the way, I did get a response, just a second ago from my message, I was talking about to our CARES team. They're 100% up for trying it, especially if here's one of the, here's the messages. I think that some clients may benefit from that. I'm 100% up for trying it out, especially if you pay for it already. I think if your clients are older, might appreciate it that most. Interesting, okay, very good. So they are open to it. And so I think we're gonna try that out for the CARES team, but I am wrapping things up. So until next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. Take care. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer Badger. 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)
