Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the relay presented by Lexamica. My name is Gabriel Steartz, founder and CEO of Lexamica, the leading attorney referral network. We are leaders who are passionate about leveraging technology and AI to enhance law firm practices. Our listeners are the owners and c suite executives at personal injury, SSD, medical malpractice, and other plaintiff law firms. My guest today is Ethan Ostroff, lawyer and entrepreneur. Ethan, great to have you on the show.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Gabe. I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. Ethan, I've watched you for a long time. Uh, you have a lot of things that I'm excited to, to talk about with you, hopefully. This is our first, uh, podcast of many together. Uh, one of the things that I really respect about you is that you're a guy who tries things, and when you try them, you do them very, very well. I think there's a lot of people who try things. There's a lot of people who do things well. But it's rare to see someone who does both of those at the same time. You've really mastered the LinkedIn game. You've done a lot of outsourcing. You've got a really successful law firm. You were one of the first lawyers on TikTok, and you rode that wave. Very, very cool stuff. Been following you for a while. What we do on the relay is the deep dive into one particular area of interest and importance for law firm owners and CEO's. And so what I wanted to talk to you today about is outsourcing for law firms. It's a big topic. Everyone's talking about it. A lot of law firms are actually doing it already at this point. I was at a mastermind recently, and probably 30, 40 law firms, by show of hands, I would say 60, 70% of law firms had some type of outsourcing directly from a hiring perspective. Not outsourcing to vendors, but hiring someone who's overseas or nearshore to do core business functions, business process outsourcing. So, I wouldn't say that this is something that's speculative anymore. I think a lot of our listeners are actually doing this already. So, as we talk about it, let's. Let's drill down into. We'll do a little bit of a overview for the people that aren't doing this yet, and then let's get into, like, how do you maximize this? How do you really make the most of something that is really happening in the industry? So, as someone who's an expert in the space, just give us a quick overview. What's happening here? What do I mean when I say outsourcing or VA is for law firms?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Sure. So I guess to give a little context on how I know a bit about the subject, I'll give you a little history on how I started my staffing companies and the firm. Does that make sense to start there, and then I'll talk a little bit about how we delegate. Well, absolutely. So, historically, January 2022, I had $20,000 in my pocket, was completely broken, and wanted to start a mass tort and personal injury firm. And you got to be a little nuts to carry those kinds of cases for as long as you have to carry them to be paid on them.
So I had no real source of cash flow. So when I was with my dad's firm, which is a pretty bread and butter personal injury firm in the Philadelphia area, my job there was to move them from needles to lidify, which is a very sophisticated case management platform. So I learned every single one of the tasks that have to get done to move a case from first touch all the way through resolution. And how do you map that out in a new system? Once we got on that new system, we started to recognize that our case managers weren't calling clients every 30 days like we needed them to. They, the paralegals, were not getting to discovery, and we were having a high level of motion to motions to compel our discovery. And it was a little embarrassing to the bar that we weren't hitting our numbers the way that we needed to. And what we realized was the wrong people were doing the wrong thing. And we started delegating one task after another, whether it be nights and weekends, intake, lead follow up, or getting medical records or opening case files or labeling mail. One thing after another, we realized it was really our fault, why they weren't hitting their numbers, because, on average, our case managers were being assigned 55 tasks per matter opened on their plate, and they just weren't doing the one thing that really mattered enough, which was calling clients. So one task after another, I helped build his team to about ten vas in the Philippines. And then that concept I, towards the end of 2021, brought on sort of my first beta client, who has about 100 people with us today day. And from there, I kind of started a cash flow business that helped me stay afloat. So the VA company was something that I was doing and took a lot of pride in how we did it, and it sort of just helped us stay alive as a business. On my law firm side was placing vas on the non law firm side. So it was sort of just bootstrapping our way to survive from a, like, practicality standpoint, which, which I love.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: And as an entrepreneur, I think one of the most important things that you can do with a product is dog food, which is use the thing that you're building in your own law firm, business, et cetera, whenever you can do that. And that's what you're talking about, is you, before you started selling it to other people, you actually used it for yourself. And anytime you're evaluating a product or a service, that's a question you should ask. Like, if you have a relevant business, have you used this yourself? Because if the answer is no, that's a huge red flag that someone's building something without having used it. So that's, that's great. As you started to build this out, one of the things that I'm hearing is that you were really doing a lot of task delegation. And one of the things that I've heard from people who are doing outsourcing a lot is a lot of this boils down to the clarity of the tasks that you're giving to these outsourced staff. People talk about that. What level of granularity do you need? This seems to be a big failure point when it doesn't work well. So how do you, how do people do this?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Well, sure. So I'll talk about how we do it, and then I'll talk about where I see the most successful clients of ours doing it. So, like you said, gabe, when you kind of describe where the pain points are for people who are trying Vasdev, Vas follow direction to a fault, number one.
Number two, they cannot go and try to do a task that they're not 100% sure of because they will not have the confidence to execute the way you need done. So part one is whatever the task is that you are going to be delegating to that VA, you have to be extremely clear so that anyone could go through that training module and understand what that task is. So let's take, for example, downloading records from a medical records portal like MRO or RRS. It has to get done, but who does it? That role really doesn't interact with the front end client. So that could, in theory, be a great candidate for a VA to come in, download those records, label them, and place them in the file. But if you aren't really clear with your naming protocols or where things go, and you expect them to, quote, unquote, figure it out, they're going to struggle. So really clear direction is critical. Then also in my opinion, the backend assembly line approach is the approach that I see the most success with. So the simpler the role. For example, in a perfect world, I'm not saying everybody listening to this has the volume of Morgan and Morgane, but I'm sure if you have anywhere from over 100 cases to 1000, 502,000, 2500 cases, you have enough volume in some of your task work that just one task could be a full time job. So let's take your auto firm. Maybe it's getting DeC pages from insurance companies. Maybe if you're in a no fault state, it's requesting a pip balance. Maybe it's calling adjusters to see if they got your demand and if it isn't voluminous enough, maybe you have a two task role for that back end virtual assistant. But the more tasks you place on them, the more you're going to need thorough training for and the higher likelihood of failure. Because where I see firms struggle with EAS is when they kind of throw them in the bucket of legal assistant or case manager where it's like endless tasks fall under this role.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: And let me drill down this. You're saying kind of best practice from what you've seen is a single task function. So you have Joe, and Joe has a single task that has, that is his entire role, which he's been trained on by someone who understands that task and has just run through everything in great detail. So you're talking about extraordinarily precise job roles for a VA. So you're not saying, all right, we're going to hire 20 vas, we're going to throw them in as a general assistant to 20 different attorneys. You're saying, let's go in and assembly line the pre let process and there's 20 different tasks each and lit certain circumstances, but yes. Yeah, and kind of in kind of a best case scenario. So which leads to my question which is what? What do you view as an MVP minimum viable product for rolling out an offshoring outsourcing team program? Like how many people can you start with? If you're saying it's this precise, are you pulling a specific task that you just, your firm does all the time while leaving other generalists in place? Is there a number of heads that you think culturally and functionally you need to start with?
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Sure. So the main answer I have for you is where are you the most behind that might be different firm by firm, maybe one firm. We started with two vas, with a firm that was 700 Dec pages behind on their cases. We have another firm that just needed a downloader and a labeler. We have other firms that they just lost their receptionist. They need just someone to answer and transfer calls. We have other firms that are building out their intake department from scratch with our people as their first intakers that are just doing intake instead of having their paralegals or case managers or lawyers in the qualification part of intake, or even the closing part, depending on the practice area that you are. So from a starting point, in my opinion, I would challenge the listeners on this.
Think about what is, where I'm most behind and what is potentially revenue generating if it has to be a starting point. I love placing nights, weekends, overnight or, sorry, nights, weekends, outbound follow up and intake support. Here's why. If you look at sorry, go ahead.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: No. So is there a difference in success with putting someone on a new task? Like let's say we're not manning nights and weekends, we're going to develop training, we're going to put our VA on that task versus here's something we already are doing, and we're going to pull a VA in and replace someone else. Is it better to start with one of them?
[00:11:14] Speaker B: So something I'm going to just call you out on right there. Vas are not a replacement solution. That is a culture cancer that can really cause problems in a law firm. They are your attrition solution. Before you go out and hire another paralegal to get medical records. We are your attrition solution to take the shit off your team. They hate to do so. Framing it for culture to accept it is so important because if your paralegals or lawyers are scared for their job, they're not going to let go and relinquish the work that they should be letting go of. And that's going to cause culture problems to try to even get the vas to be successful. So from a starting point, firms are behind in different areas. I like to kind of start for my own firm. My entry level position in my intake department for VAS is a pure outbound follow up virtual assistant. So someone that comes in, touches leads that have already been touched twice. So my first two calls are done by people I trust and know that are going to close that person if they get them on the phone calls three through 15, I would challenge listeners on here. Go look at how many times you follow up with your leads before you give up. Because what's happening is if you're running social media ads or even Google Ads, the more marketing you run, the colder the leads get. And the more you do on social, the colder the leads get, which means you have to follow up more. So if you're giving up after three, maybe four or five follow up attempts, and you have the misconception, oh, they don't want me anyway. And let's say that you didn't call them on a night or a weekend, you are throwing marketing dollars away. So I love to sell as a starting point, typically a two VA package for nights and weekends. Intake coverage, specifically with the focus on outbound follow up, because people typically make the mistake of thinking you're outbound and you're inbound, can be the same person at scale that breaks.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: No, you can't do that at scale because those are completely different job functions. But it's really interesting to me to hear how you're talking about this, which is not replacement, because, and I'm in a position maybe to be a little bit more brutally honest, which is I would look at this and say, well, if I have a task, is it more cost effective and productive, not just saving money, but also in terms of can it be done as well by someone out of house or someone in house? And maybe culturally it has to be sold one way or another. But at the end of the day, I'm running a business, and so I'm looking at it from, if it's more cost effective to put these people on this role than someone who's, you know, onshore in my physical office, I'm going to do that. And if it's more cost effective to do it out of house, I'm willing to look at it a little bit more bluntly. I understand from, like, a cultural perspective why people don't want to be replaced. But at the end of the day, like, you're, you're, you're in a business, and so there's just things that you have to do to run your business. Well, one of the questions I have is, so you're selling this as a value add? I certainly think that I can say that there are cost saving measures here as well. Like, if you have a paralegal who's highly trained, they've been on your team for ten years or been in the space for ten years, they're making 80 to 100 grand. You shouldn't have them going and doing med record retrieval. You shouldn't have them doing, you shouldn't have your most experienced intake person doing outbound calls overnight. It's like that just doesn't make any sense. Whether or not they're doing it today, there's better and higher work for them to do. So, as you're growing your business, I do think you can do a kind of replacement because your business can grow with these additional outsourced roles.
One of the things that was really interesting to me that I've heard is the perspective on how do you, let's say you have a larger VA team, 10, 20, 50 people.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: I'm at close to 100. Internally.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: You're close to 100. Do you.
I've heard that one of the ways to really make this successful is to make them become a part of your team, not just to pretend like they are, but they actually are part or maybe even a majority of your team, and that you really can have an integrated culture across even continents. Talk about your experience trying to build culture across the ocean.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, so happy to talk on that. I also do want to touch on, you know, categorizing tasks, so I don't want to forget about that, too.
So when it comes to, like, getting them into your team and feeling like they're a part of it, what I suggest as a practical start starting point, part one is just create either teams slack or WhatsApp groups. Create a live chat for their department that they're reporting to with their supervisor. So, for example, if they're working in your intake department, they have someone to go to for their questions. So they are not going rogue and doing things they're not 100% sure of. So from a, getting them direct access to the person who has the knowledge base, plus feeling like they are a part of the team, create one teams group or chat group for the department they're working in. Then another global, even if you don't have one, use it as an experience to create a cross departmental chat group where your entire team can communicate and send words of encouragement publicly to them. Because I have a KPI intake bonus structure, and it works great. And positive reinforcement for virtual assistants and good culture fits where they really feel appreciated. Goes way further than any dollar amount I have found. So you know something, Gabe? Just a touch on that I don't forget on. I hope that answered your last question. Those are some practical starting points to get them into the culture. You know, maybe it's a, you know, on team bonding, monthly meetings with everybody where everyone can see their face and talk to them and, you know, actually feel like they're a part of the team because they might not come to your Christmas party unless you want them to, which is great.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we could talk for an hour on that subject because there's cultural differences. There's language barriers, there's physical distance, there's time zone differences. All of those things lead to cultural attrition, which is people who are actually part of your team 40 hours a week, feeling like they're not really a part of your team. And the easiest way to increase productivity, to have a well functioning company organization, is to focus on the cultural parts to make sure that what you're doing is encouraging people to truly feel like they're on the same team. And I've heard of law firms who've literally set up here's a camera into our intake team onshore. Here's our camera offshore, and we have them beam across to each other on big flat screen tvs so that you can physically feel like you're in the same kind of like, those are like small things in terms of dollar amounts, but the value that it creates in terms of creating a cross ocean culture of we're all doing the same thing together, I think is immense. And there's no amount, like, to your point, there's no amount of bonus money that you can pay that is going to make a human being feel cared for and a part of a team that they want to perform well on YouTube. Made in post today about this that I really appreciated, about how people want to work for good leaders, they want to be a part of good teams, and that is worth a lot more than just getting another couple of dollars. While that really does matter a lot, not to downplay that, fundamentally, we want to belong to a team. So that's. That's just really important. And outsourced out offshore folks are no different than onshore in that regard. We only have a couple minutes left. You had one more thing you want to talk about? Let's hit.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, if you don't mind. So my suggestion is a little bit different than other staffing companies in the legal space on how to utilize VAS. I suggest part one on intake, you can leverage Vas in a personal injury intake role in the beginning, start them in an outbound follow up role for them to learn how to do things, your processes, procedures, your scripts, et cetera. Then they can develop into someone that takes inbound live transfers when you know and trust they're good enough at that role. When it comes to active cases, though, I take a little different approach. My approach is use your stateside people for more client contact and only use vas if you have non compliant people that they need to be compliant called on a night or a weekend, because maybe they're not answering your call. Or maybe, you know, your stateside paralegal assigned to their case tried them three or four times and they're now becoming a problem client. Use vas in off hours to engage them. But the primary contact, in my opinion, should be a stateside representative because they know how those escalation issues are dealt with. Then on the front end, back end, front end is centralized. As few people as possible at your firm they should speak to, but on the back end. And what should be delegated to a VA? And anyone listening to this, if you shoot me an email, I'd be happy to provide resources of tasks that we do with tons of firms. Just as a giveaway, it comes down to what is the type of task. Is it brain surgery sophisticated or essential brain surgery is your lawyer work? Showing up to court can't delegate that. Taking a deposition can't delegate that. Your paralegal work, in my opinion, is irate clients. Things that people went to paralegal school for, you know, filing things that aren't necessarily your traditional filing task, or writing discovery or drafting pleadings, those kinds of things. Maybe you're delegated to AI in time, but currently are living under the paralegal bucket. But everything else that is consistent and repetitive, that requires your cases require to move. That is the category. On your active cases, you can consider Vas for.
I like saying intake first because you might not be following up with your leads enough, and it's a great revenue generating thing you could pay for the VA for right away. On larger firms, you may want to consider some of these more efficiency, assembly line, back end type roles. And we've done, you know, both active case VA placements, intake placements. We work with about 150 firms in a variety of these types of roles. But I just wanted to make sure people are looking at the task as brain surgery, sophisticated, essential. Anything in that essential bucket is a candidate to be delegated.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I love it. I love frameworks. I love ways of thinking about things. Super helpful, Ethan. I also appreciate the entry point that you've given, which is what is the highest value task that your firm is probably not doing? Outbound follow up. There's almost no downside because those are folks that are probably not going to call you anymore, but you get them. You get them retained. That's money in your pocket. You're recouping costs on your biggest line item, which is marketing. Makes tons of sense. It's easy to justify dipping your toes in the water and then moving those people once they're more experienced in your firm. To other roles, upskill them, uh, and start to build that team out. And last, I, you know, last mastermind, I was at 60. 70% of law firms are doing outsourcing. There's massive cost efficiencies here. If you're not doing this with your law firm, you really need to be looking at it. I don't have people on the podcast that I don't think are creating absolute value in their, uh, in their domain. So I would highly recommend that you talk to Ethan. If you're looking at outsourcing, you know what you're doing. You're doing it in house. You're doing it out of house for other folks. So, Ethan, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate having you.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Of course, man. Thanks so much.
