EP 209 – Joseph Tunstall – Shifting Your Firm’s Mindset with EOS
The following interview has been transcribed for our readers from rev.com. Please excuse any discrepancies in the transcription.
Eric Bersano:
Welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast. I’m Eric Bersano and have my co-host Chase Williams with me. And our special guest today is Joe Tunstall of O’Malley Tunstall. He’s an attorney and here to talk to us about how he runs his business and maybe some tips for you as well. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Tunstall:
Thank y’all for having me.
Eric Bersano:
Thank you. To jump right into things, I went through your bio. You’ve obviously been a practicing lawyer for quite a bit of time, but you’re also very keen on how to run a law firm, which is something, as a person who’s been working with lawyers since 2006, I find a lot of good lawyers are not always necessarily great at running businesses. Can you give us a little bit of background in how you came to run a business, run a law firm like a business?
Joe Tunstall:
I think, Eric, your point is very well taken. And that’s one of the things that I’ve personally run into over the years is, my first 10 years of practice, I wanted to be a good lawyer, and to be a good lawyer, I thought that meant you ignore the business aspect of what you were doing. And you go and you try cases, you handle cases, you become a subject matter expert at, in my case, it was personal injury and I can cite you all the statutes that talk about every individual piece of a UIM claim.
We tried a lot of cases to juries, but we hit a point where my law partner and I sat down and we were having a hard time figuring out, okay, where did all the money go? What did we do wrong here? Because we’re both really good at what we do, but at the end of the year we’re struggling and we’re struggling emotionally to figure out, okay, we had a good year, we had a bad year, what happened to the money? What happened to our lives? Because we were working 80 hours a week and by all intents and purposes, we’re doing really well at practicing law, but we’re doing a really crappy job at running a business and ourselves. That got me up to about 2018, and in 2018, my law partner and I just said, we got to find what else is out there and we got to make a shift.
Eric Bersano:
That’s great. Now, as a marketing guy who’s been working with attorneys, it’s really hard to tell somebody, “Hey, your intake is terrible.” “Hey, you could be doing this better.” Do you find attorneys receptive to this? Do they need to seek you out? Or if you notice something wrong, how do you broach that subject of, hey, here are some things that really could make you more efficient as a lawyer doing your lawyer side, but also your business side?
Joe Tunstall:
I think as attorneys, we have a really hard time understanding what we’re actually doing. And I agree with you. For years, my wife does profitability management for a bank, so you would think that I would’ve picked up on some of that in the last 20 something years. And instead, I’d always explained to her, that no, I’m a lawyer. We do things differently. We don’t do things like business does. Your wonderful advice that I need to be watching out for this or that, I’m just not going to take it. And I think most of the attorneys you approach are going to have the exact same response.
So initially we always start with, well, here’s all the great things you’re doing. You’re unbelievable as a trial lawyer, you’re great at this, you’re great at that. But is that the best thing for your business long- term? If your whole business concept is about one more case, then yeah, that’s perfect. But if your concept is, hey, we’re going to build something that’s going to last more than three or four years, let’s talk about it. And I think that’s really where you have to start. Because if you just jump in with folks, I mean, most of us are A++ personalities, and our first response is, “Get out of my office. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I think your point is very well taken. And that’s where we started with EOS and running a business model, that didn’t take away our ability to practice law, but it allowed us to last longer as lawyers as we do the up and down cycle that comes with personal injury work.
Chase Williams:
It’s awesome that you work on EOS. We find that a lot of the most successful firms have implemented EOS. When did you start implementing?
Joe Tunstall:
We started… it took us from 2018 to 2020, we had to figure out what we were going to follow. At the end of 2019, right before COVID hit, we had begun our implementation. One of the best things we ever did was we brought in some coaches and some help. And I think that’s the difference between people who successfully make the transition and folks that just flounder around when they hit that.
Chase Williams:
EOS is really tied into the mindset and having, from our perspective at least with our team, is when we implement something like EOS, it gives people that usually don’t have a voice, a voice, and it also creates additional accountability and it creates purpose for those people, not just go in and check the boxes every day. Do you find that that’s kind of how it’s seen at your firm?
Joe Tunstall:
I agree 100%. That’s one of the things that we see is, the amount of buy-in is tremendous. Because if you take… I always say our front desk person has just as much right to speak up in these meetings as our senior paralegal. But the only way that works is if you’re running a level 10 meeting and you give that person an opportunity to get on the agenda just like everybody else does. And if you don’t, then you have a problem.
I think the other thing is, I don’t run all these meetings. I don’t. I don’t have to. Once we taught them how, we let them run a lot of these meetings and that makes a huge difference. Because if you take someone and elevate them to a position where they’re running their own group, then what’s their level of accountability to that group?
Chase Williams:
Do you find that this helps you keep your partners accountable? Let’s say the marketing firm that you work with, are you setting up scorecards and holding them accountable via the scorecards? What’s that relationship like?
Joe Tunstall:
That’s a great question. We have our own internal scorecards that we’re looking at, and then we check off based on what we’re getting from them, against our scorecard. But we don’t create our own KPIs. The acronym thing annoys me. So the key performance indicator that we have, and we try and limit it to five or six numbers per person, that’s it. And the first, let’s say, 90 days somebody is on that with me, I may give them three numbers. It’s just three numbers that they’re responsible for. And at this point, my law partner and I have a lot more numbers that we’re responsible for and that we’re reviewing regularly. And with our marketing, we’re looking at basically how that marketing is touching our bottom line. So things like clicks, you can measure clicks any way you want to.
We’ve been doing Google marketing since 2004. At first it was, let me get you 150,000 clicks. And it took us a couple years to figure out that that doesn’t do anything on my bottom line. So we had to figure out how the numbers that we give those folks effect our bottom line and then look at what does that introduce as far as a new case now. And then it allowed us to work backwards and figure out, okay, where did that person really hear about us and where did that information that that person received make the difference from whether they called us or didn’t call us?
Eric Bersano:
What would you say would be, if you were talking to, say, an attorney that had had a law practice for about five years and was frustrated because felt like they were just keeping the lights on, had just enough business to do what they’re doing and nothing more. If you’re looking at the tent pole analogy, what would you say would be, is it one tent pole to address first and then you attack the next? Or are there three or four things that you really need to do to structure a law firm so that it can become more efficient?
Joe Tunstall:
I think it’s a mindset shift to begin with. And I know very briefly in the conversation we had before we started, we had talked about mindset. So when I’m talking to someone who, and I’ve got a number of young lawyers that call me about these questions, and I always start with their complete mindset. How are you looking at this? One analogy I’ve heard that I really like because it seems to be so simple, is most people have seen this show Yellowstone. And in the very first episode there’s this great little, where he’s sitting there talking to his son and they’re out on the horses and he says, “You see all these cows, what do you see?” And the answer is, he’s a cowboy. And then the dad’s a rancher, and the difference between a rancher and a cowboy.
And when I talk to these younger attorneys, I’m always like, you’ve been a cowboy. You’re the attorney. Now you need to be a business owner. And there’s two completely different ways of looking at this. That doesn’t mean you stop being an attorney, it doesn’t mean you stop going to court. It doesn’t mean you stop doing any of these things you’re really good at, but you got to have a bigger picture, a bigger outlook, because now you’re responsible for people’s salaries and for bringing in business. And so each of these pieces has a plan and either work on the plan, get the plan together, or go work for somebody else. It’s just one or the other, in my opinion.
Eric Bersano:
One of the things that I noticed when I first started working with lawyers was, there was a group of attorneys that had been around before you were allowed to advertise. Advertising and even running a business was almost like a dirty thing. Advertising was ugly, they didn’t like it because they didn’t grow up in it. And now we’re moving into this technology age. What you might have had to do 20 years ago can be done with an app or a tool. You’ve got the CRMs out there, practice management software, you can outsource your intake, all of these different things. How have you modified your law firm with technology as things have changed over the years?
Joe Tunstall:
We attempted to go paperless in 2004, so we were a little ahead of our time, and brought in, at the time, we thought was one of the better case management systems. We only did that because my law partner had a view of the law as, if I do a really good job, then I want all the cases I can get. If I do a really bad job, then I don’t deserve any cases. So if the way to get cases is to advertise, then I have no problems with advertising. North Carolina was allowed to start TV advertising in 1984, and he started TV advertising in 1984.
In 2004, he sent me to California to a Google conference, because the next thing he saw was Google AdWords. So today, how do we take that previous knowledge and then transform it into what we do? And the answer is, we use a case management system with CRM that comes in so that I can figure out where each and every case came from. You’re never perfect. And doing marketing like you guys do, you know the holistic approach of, you got to have a little bit of a foot in everything or you’re going to miss some piece of it, but at the same time, you’ve got to know where most of your information is being driven from. So we spend a lot of time figuring that out, running reports, looking at every single change we make and what the long-term effect of that is.
And then we use the technology so that we’re not having to literally hand enter these things in, but instead it pulls out the reports from our telephone system and from our, we use Litify, so from Litify, and it puts it together in a real easy to use place for me to see. And then if I change and say, okay, this month we’re going to cut back on the AdWords instead or the PPC and we’re going to increase TV, and then I can actually do a dollar for dollar comparison as to what that changed. Other than that, you’re just guessing and throwing stuff against the wall.
Chase Williams:
Joe, I’m very curious to understand what your day looks like today, versus maybe three or four years ago. Before you had the mindset shift, what did your day look like versus what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis now?
Joe Tunstall:
That’s a great question. A few years ago I was going from case to case to case all day long. I would walk in the door early and get on my first phone call with a client, get a deposition, mediation, whatever. We do a lot of litigation, so I was in and out of from one event to another event all day long. Which was fun, but at the end of the day, what I was doing was putting off making all the decisions I really needed to make and the meetings we were having were more frustrating than anything else. And now I have a pretty structured week. Even if I have court, even if I have a deposition or I have a mediation, then that is set within a framework of when I do those during the week. And we just tell other folks, these are the times and dates he has available period.
And then every Friday we have an executive meeting and we sit down and look at everything that’s happened that week and we go through in about 90 minutes everything we to. We set out what we’re going to do for the next week. During the week, I have meetings with our associate attorneys and we do both one-on-ones as well as a group meeting. Again, we keep them to a limited period of time. We’re not meeting people to death. That’s something that that’s super frustrating for me, so when we do these level 10 meetings and we reduce the time we spend on individual issues to, instead of from 60 or 70 minutes, maybe we reduce it to 20. So we only hit one issue that week, but we’re going to actually hit that issue and talk about it all the way through.
And then we meet with our operating team. And I don’t run all these meetings. I don’t go to all of them, but they’re all done. And I get a summary of what everybody talked about and was able to then take that and then meet with my folks about moving forward with each piece. It’s structured, is pretty much the difference between before and after.
Chase Williams:
That structure allows you to focus on some of the… for those that don’t know, [inaudible 00:16:18] is like the rocks that you’ve set up and those are your big goals for your quarter. I mean, I guess it sounds like in the past the goals would be like, hey, let me get as many cases as possible. Let me make money. That’s going to maybe keep you afloat for a bit, but I’m sure as a business owner and as a lawyer, it’s super stressful. So would you say since you had this shift in mindset, you’re less stressed?
Joe Tunstall:
Yes. We are. The stress before was the unknown. For me it was the beginning of every year I didn’t know whether I was going to go broke or make a million dollars. And that was the stress I had every year and it was super frustrating. As we’ve gotten more into more of a business structure, the other part is we’re trying to keep our income flow at a more steady level, so we’re keeping up with number of cases that are moved every week, number of cases that resolve. It doesn’t affect the work we’re doing, but what we actually did in our case was reduce the total number of cases handled by every person, because we found that by taking some better cases and spending more time on those better cases, they resolved more quickly for a more favorable result for the client. I know both of you work in this nomenclature that we talk about, but we picked our avatar and then we’ve continued to market towards our avatar and we refer out everything that doesn’t meet our avatar.
Eric Bersano:
I think that can be scary for law firms. I’ve talked to people before about niches within law, then within personal injury. And I think niches are a great way to go. And me on the other side of the fence, being the marketer, I’ll throw out ideas, but I’m never trying to push someone on how to change their law firm in business, but I want to present those ideas. So for you, if you’re taking anything that was viable in the door but found yourself spread too thin, it may be scary to say, “God, I’ve just got to refer out half the stuff that comes in and only worry about this.” But I think it does a couple things.
Number one, it sets you apart to the consumer because you could say, “Listen, we take less cases. If we take your case, we really believe in this. We’re going to throw all of our power into it.” And it kind of frees you up because all of these other 50% of the cases that may have been low lower value cases, but still take time, now you’re freed up from that work and can really put all your efforts into that. So was it scary to make that transition? Was it an overnight decision or did it slowly morph into that?
Joe Tunstall:
Slowly. One of the biggest pieces for us is my law partner and I both began working with individual coaches as well as with group coaches. So we have a business coach that we work with as well as individual folks. Susan and I came together and independently we had been working through these ideas of how to niche down to something that makes more sense. And then my business coach, after taking all our numbers, asked us if we understood the concept of 80/20. And at this point we’ve been reading nothing but business every chance we get. So we both said, “Of course we understand 80/20.” And he’s like, “Okay, well let me show you your numbers.” And 80% of our income was coming in from 20% of our cases, period. And he’s like, “Now let’s talk about this.”
He’s like, “This is what I expected to find and I found it. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do with that. Do we want to understand that we’re going to continue to pay the bills with these smaller cases and take more and more and more of them? Do we want to niche down? How do y’all want to handle that?” It was really scary. I mean, I’m a PI guy. I’ve been advertising since 2000. I’m scared to death to turn anything down. I mean, if they call my phone and I’ve already spent, what, $400 to make that phone ring, why would I ever turn anything down? But what we’ve found is by turning those down, we develop capacity. And everybody in my office right now knows my word for the year this year is capacity. So every time I walk in I’m like, “Look, do you have too many cases?” Which is the opposite of what some firms are. They’re like, “We need more cases.” And I’m like, “We need better cases.”
And we’ve been on this for a couple years now and our median and our case value keeps going up. As our attorney’s fees keep going up for each case that we take, we have to take less cases to hit the same goals. And then other attorneys see this, and despite the fact that we’re an advertising firm, 70% of our cases are referrals from other lawyers. And they’re doing that because they’re seeing that we’re doing things right, we are handling our cases correctly, and then they refer cases to us and then we handle them and then they send more cases to us and the value of those cases goes up and up and up.
We still market, but we’re able to be more selective with that. And then we’re able to refer out everything that doesn’t hit that market that we’re looking for. And as a result, our attorney fee value keeps going up and we’re able to do what we want to do as lawyers. We just work on good cases and make a difference in people’s lives, which is different from chasing and making sure you make payroll next week.
Chase Williams:
One of the things that is always valuable and I like to ask on the podcast is, what’s the low hanging fruit? EOS is a huge undertaking. We talked about hiring third parties. You have to get your whole team on board. If some of our listeners really aren’t ready to dive into something as intense as EOS or some other sort of management system, what are some other things that lawyers can do to shift their mindset that’s low hanging fruit? Two or three things that you’ve done in the past couple years that really made a difference?
Joe Tunstall:
That’s a good question. The first thing I’d say is, you asked about technology earlier. In this day and age, if you want to find or get the benefit of coaching without spending the tens of thousands of dollars, it’s on the internet and it’s free. I mean, we started out by listening to podcasts like this one and getting some different… Seeing what else was out there and what other people were doing. So first thing I would say is take advantage of whatever’s free. It’s there. There are people on YouTube and on podcasts that will teach you exactly how to do 80% of the EOS, and you don’t have to go out of pocket a dollar.
The second piece I would say is, go buy somebody lunch. I mean, for the cost of lunch, you go pick up the phone and call someone that you think is doing a good job with running their business and sit down and ask them what they’re doing. I do that regularly. I’m really bad about it. I don’t like to eat by myself, number one. Number two, I’ve learned a long time ago that if I use my lunches as opportunities to meet other people and talk to other people that I learn a lot, especially if I don’t spend the whole time talking, but actually listen to what they’re saying too, which makes you a better person and a better lawyer and a better everything. But going out and finding people who are in the same position and then taking advantage of that by seeing what they know that you don’t. So that would be my first two tips.
And then my third tip would be, just take a minute to figure out what you’ve got and where you want to go. You don’t have to sit down and come up with your core values and your niche and everything for EOS, but what about just where you want to be in a year? Where you want to be in two years? If the answer is I want to be doing the exact same thing, then don’t change anything. But if the answer is I’m not happy with it, then sit down and figure out where you want to go. Because if you can figure that part out, the next piece, each additional piece becomes a little bit easier.
Eric Bersano:
I think the one thing that was mentioned earlier on was getting everybody involved in this. I’ve seen it here at our company where you empower somebody to make a change, not only do you get the insight from the person, whether it’s a content writer or SEO person or whoever it is, you get the person who’s on the ground doing it day in and day out. As opposed to having a top time down mentality where you say, “Hey, let’s do it this way now.” Not only does that person probably come up with better and different ideas than you would, but because they were part of the ideation, they’re bought in. Now when you implement it, they’re like, “This was my idea.” So they understand that they’ve got some responsibility now and accountability because they were part of that process.
The two themes that I kind of got from you are, one, the entire firm’s got to be bought in, meaning the top. So if you run your law firm, you can’t just say, “Hey, here’s a tool. Go use it. Go figure it out.” That attorney really has to be bought into the whole process as well and make it part of the culture. But then it’s really the empowerment of each person. So you’re telling me that you’re going up to your attorneys or paralegals and, do you have too much work? What’s your capacity? So now you’re empowering them to make decisions about their workflow and how much time they need to make sure that they’re providing 100% to each one of those cases.
We’re kind of at the end of our time at the podcast. Do you have something that you’d like to leave the audience with, pearls of wisdom or books that you’ve read, websites you’ve gone to? Anything like that that we can leave as a final note?
Joe Tunstall:
Well, we talked a lot about EOS, so I would just say read Traction. You don’t need to go buy a $10,000 implementer. You can read Traction, it’s what, 20 bucks on Amazon, and start there. And that’ll give you some idea of what else may be out there.
The number one thing I see for attorneys that I talk to on a regular basis is, they just don’t want to get out of this mindset of, I’m a professional, therefore my business will take care of itself. And if you get out of that mindset and just expand your brain just a little bit, the opportunities to do more for folks and to be a better professional are out there. You just got to open your brain up a little bit and see it.