Speaker 1: My law firm continues to save thousands of dollars by not relying on any form of law firm management software. So of course, in this video, I'm gonna share with you my budget-friendly alternative to managing your clients' cases. And by the end of this video, you'll know how to replicate my system as well. So stay tuned. ♪♪ Welcome to Law Venture, a channel devoted to lawyers and future lawyers. My name's Jarrett Stone. I'm the owner of Stone Firm PLLC, a personal injury law firm. But more importantly, today in this video, I am your guide to ballin' on a budget. Let me start by saying that with this video, I am not taking any shots at the companies that do provide law firm management software. I'm not trying to start a turf war of some sort. Come at me, bro. Instead, with this video, I'm merely providing a budget-friendly alternative to managing cases because sometimes the simplest solution can be the best solution, especially if you are ballin' on a budget. And frankly, between the two of us, when people ask me how much my monthly expenses are and they realize how low they are, this is one of the biggest reasons why. It's important to note that what I'm gonna share with you in this video is tailor-made for the personal injury law firm. But if you practice an area of law other than PI, don't bounce quite yet. Stick with me because what I'm gonna share with you in this video can easily be customized based on your needs. So let's get started by talking about the heart of all of my cases, the case binder. Boil down, for me, the case binder is simply a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel that has been formatted and optimized in maintaining my client's most critical information when it comes to their case. So what we're looking at right now is the case binder that I use for my personal injury cases. Again, like I said, this is the heart and soul of my client's case and keeps the most critical information all in one easily accessible place. In particular, let's just look at this first tab. This is the Contact tab. This has all the contact information that I would need in order to contact the client, insurance companies, defendant, if needed, and defense counsel if there's a lawsuit in that applicable situation. There's also spots and spaces for additional clients as well, and I can change and make tweaks as needed. What we're looking at right now, just to orient you a little bit more, is the case binder in the format of a Google Sheet, not a Microsoft Excel. Oftentimes what I do is I create the template within a Google Sheet, and you'll see why. Just keep watching this video. And then once this is initially set up, and we'll see how, just keep watching this video, I save it as a Microsoft Excel, but you really don't have to do that. That's an extra step that I like to take, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. When it comes to orientation, though, I have additional tabs that are formatted for basically optimizing the information that I need throughout the life of my client's case. For example, the background tab gives me all the background information leading up to the wreck and injuries if it's a car wreck. The expenses tab, I have all the case expenses put into this particular tab. It automatically calculates the total of the expenses, and it takes that total, and it puts it into the closing statement because those cells are linked together. The closing statement is the accounting of the entire case. It shows the client at the very end when the case settles, here's the settlement amount, here's how much is going to attorney's fees, here's how much the case expenses are, here's how much the medical bills are, and it summarizes it all super cleanly and super easily for the client. So by automating the inputs to where case expenses are automatically feeding into the closing statement, it makes my life a whole lot easier. Development, that's the workflow of a case, at least a PI case from A to Z. I can check boxes off to make sure, okay, this is the next step I need to take, especially if I have other people working on a client's case. If they update this case binder, check off a box, and I come into the case to try and see where we are at, well, I know where we're at if they've been checking off the case development boxes. Notes, pretty self-explanatory. Records requests, it's a big deal in the PI world to get billing records and medical records and putting those in a demand package. And so it can get pretty cumbersome if your client has been going to multiple providers and you're trying to get all these bills and records and maybe subrogation documents as well. All of that information is put in the records requests tab. Maybe the most important tab though is the medical bill summary. The reason why is because when I input the provider information right here, that input of the provider's name automatically is filled in and populated on the records requests. And so I don't have to copy paste or do any extra steps. And that information is put into the closing statement so the client can see who is owed what exactly. And then once I start getting billing records, I can update this information here as applicable, charges, insurance adjustment, insurance payment, PIP or MedPay depending on your jurisdiction, PIP and or MedPay depending on your jurisdiction, number two, and how much the patient paid. Again, that accounting is pulled from these cells and put into the closing statement automatically, helps make life a whole lot easier. And then this is already pre-populated with the formula to determine the balance that's owed and the amount that I can present to the jury because in the state of Texas, it's paid and incurred. So that allows me to get a sense of, if the balance is pretty different from the presentable, then I got to evaluate the case a little bit differently because that's how Texas rolls, unfortunately. A little bit of extra information. And then speaking of PIP, there's a PIP log right here. There's also an offers log. So I can get a sense of the offers being made by the other side. I can remember the offers that I've made and we can try and have a clean log of where things are going. And then once the case does settle, closing statement again and accounting of everything. And that way the client signs off on it and is okay with where the money's going. The best part about this case binder is that it's easily customizable because it uses Google Sheets or it uses Microsoft Excel, depending on your preference. And in doing so, I've been making it a little bit better and a little bit better over the years. And I don't know what version we're on, but what I can tell you is when I made version 1.0, that very first version, it was rough. It didn't look as good as it looks now and it wasn't as optimized as it is now with all the automations and with all the extra tabs. But what I can say is that when I made version 1.0, I wasn't solo yet. I was working for another lawyer with his law firm. This is something that I wanted to try and test out. So I made that version 1.0. Again, it was a little rough. I showed it to the owner of the law firm. He loved it so much that he actually canceled his subscription to the law firm management software he was using and began running his entire law firm using these case binders. And that was my aha moment of like, wow, we really can ball on a budget and run an entire law firm using a simple and optimized and formatted Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and we don't have to pay the monthly or yearly subscription. That's a huge win. Victory. So here's what I'm trying to stress. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a personal injury practice. If you're open to balling on a budget and if you don't wanna rely on monthly or yearly subscriptions, then consider optimizing a Google Sheets or a Microsoft Excel in a way to where your client's entire case and the most important information of that case can be put within a similar case binder that works for you in your law firm. Quick heads up. If you're enrolled in the PI playbook, then you already should have a copy of my latest case binder for you to use as a template. There's also a lesson that takes you through every important cell of the case binder. So that way you know exactly what you should potentially change, not change, or you know what should be going into that particular cell. So definitely be sure to check out that lesson as well. If you aren't enrolled in the PI playbook, but you do wanna use this case binder to just use it straight away for your own practice or to customize it based on your needs, then keep watching because by the end of the video, I'll share with you how you can get your copy as well. Next up, we have to talk about what I think is the coolest part of my law firm setup. If you've been following my journey here on Law Venture, then you know that I'm a massive proponent of Google Workspace. One of the many reasons why I'm such a big fan of Google Workspace is because it allows me to automate my intake process. I know this is a little abstract. You may not know what I mean by that. So let's make it concrete by hopping back into the computer. As y'all probably know from a previous video that's sliding above, I'm a big fan of Google Forms. And the reason why is because all the information within that video that you should check out. But when somebody fills out an intake form using Google Forms, that's when the real magic happens. In particular, this Google Form is filled out and Google Scripts kicks in because what I've done is implemented a particular script that does three amazing things for me. The first thing is that it automatically generates a new case binder from the Google Sheet template we were looking at earlier. The second thing is that it automatically saves the new case binder in a designated folder of my choosing. And the third thing is that it automatically inputs the answers from this Google intake form into the specific cells of my choosing within that case binder. This saves me so much time from having to copy, paste, copy, paste every single answer for every single client. That ends up taking way too much time. Time is money. So this automation step is invaluable for me. Putting this Google Script in place has made my life easier. And I have to confess, it's one of those things that I forget that it's doing such heavy lifting for me and saving me so much time. But I'll be honest with you. I don't have a background when it comes to coding and scripts. I spent, let's just say an embarrassing amount of time having to learn the exact script needed to do everything I just said it does. Again, if you're already enrolled in the PI Playbook, you already have access to this script just like the case binder. And you also have access to the step-by-step lesson for setting the script and automation up. Once you set it up, you don't have to worry about it moving forward. Be sure to check out that lesson if you haven't already. Now, if you're not enrolled in the PI Playbook, but you want a similar system put in place, this part is for you. You can get my intake form. You can get the case binder in a Microsoft Excel and Google Sheet format. You can get the script and you can get the step-by-step lesson for implementing that script by clicking the link that's sliding above, hopefully right now. And I'll put a link in the description for you to check out as well. Full disclosure though, not trying to blindside you. This package of everything I just mentioned is not going to be free for a couple of reasons. First, I think it'd be a little unfair for those that have paid and enrolled in the PI Playbook. Second, whenever you pay for something like this, you're paying for speed and convenience of being able to get this bad boy set up ASAP. What I found is that when somebody typically pays for something, they're more likely to get it set up. And that's the goal here. So to fully round out how I manage my law firm's cases, we need to talk about the least sexy topic, which is a filing system and using folders and templates. Again, I know it's not sexy, but what is great about this is it allows me to streamline my workflow. So here's what I recommend that you do in order to streamline your success, because this is what I do and it saves me so much time. And again, it allows me to ball on a budget. I finish out and spend the time to create a new client file that's going to be the template file and contain all of my templates within that file. So notice that it says copy paste. Basically what I do is I copy it when a new client is set up. And then notice this is current clients dummy. This isn't actually my client list. And then I paste the folder right here, rename it to the client's name, open it up. And within this now no longer template folder, now client folder, I have everything that I need. You see, whenever I start clicking on these folders, within them are templates. For example, within the correspondence folder, there's a template letter representation. There's a template demand letter. There's a template facts for me to use. Within the liens folder, there are template documents related to Medicare. There are template documents related to letters of protection. And there are subfolders within these folders and there are templates within those subfolders. So over the years, what I've been doing is whenever I finish out a document of some sort that I feel like is, oh, this is the best one yet, I'll also save it to this copy and paste template folder we were looking at earlier so that whenever I sign a new client up, they get the most recent template. But maybe more importantly, I get the most recent template without having to track down these previous templates in other cases and having to remember exactly when and in what circumstance did I use that particular letter or correspondence or whatever. So the point here is if you're worried about streamlining your success, then the best thing to do is just rinse and repeat the best work you've done in the past by creating those templates, putting them in a folder, and then using that folder over and over again as your clients are rolling in. Just a quick timeout though, if you are interested in learning about my folder and filing system or if you wanna see the templates that I use, then that can only be accessed by enrolling into the PI Playbook. So if you wanna learn more, I'll cite a link above and I'll have a link in the description just for you. Okay, so let's get into the overall concept here of this video. If you spend the time like I did to get organized and optimized, then you can potentially completely avoid the monthly or yearly subscriptions that come with having a lot of these law firm management softwares. In fact, I did a little bit of research before starting this video and I learned and was a little surprised to see that the more your law firm grows, the more expensive these services and platforms become. In my situation, that's not the case. My law firm continues to grow, my expenses when it comes to the law firm management stay the same and that's the very definition of balling on a budget. Okay, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, thoughts or if you just wanna say hi, leave that in the comment section down below. If you're still watching this video, I appreciate you. Don't forget to hit the like button. It allows us to rank a little bit higher, help more people, reach more people and if you haven't subscribed yet, that's down below as well. With all that said, I'll see you in the next video.