How a Law Firm Used Data to Boost Efficiency Fast (Full Transcript)

[00:00:07] Speaker 1: When I graduated law school, everything was still pretty much paper. You didn't see databases, the cloud, and those types of things. There were files in a filing cabinet, and when you wanted to educate yourself about the file, you pulled the file out, you spread it on the table, and you read it. But at some point, if you're collecting and taking on more and more files, you can't do that. Not only is it a storage issue, it's an organizational issue. I had to kind of adapt to a new way of running a firm, organizing a firm, and it was something that I was resistant to. Tech is not my thing. I don't excel at it, but I know the benefit of it. When we first got Smokeball, we weren't fully utilizing the product. I knew we weren't. So when Nick came in, it was kind of a change because he wanted to do that. He embraced that project, and once he did, it really made a big difference.

[00:01:02] Speaker 2: Our files in Smokeball were not organized. We did not have a good system for utilizing our stages. After we got our files organized, the next step was to increase our reportability on this newfound data that we had entered.

[00:01:20] Speaker 1: I think I was one of those people who was managing based on feel, without really having the benefit of the data. And when you actually have the data, you might have been right or close to right, but when you have the data, it's a more precise decision. Having Smokeball and having our files staged at various junctures really allows us to quickly assess where do we need to work on files? At what stage do we need to push these through or provide more attention at that stage? Or where are we doing great? And why don't we take that process where we're doing great and put it over into another stage where we want to do better? When we got to a place where I felt like we were using more capabilities of the product, what I really liked was we said, what can you do next?

[00:02:13] Speaker 2: And so that's when we began working with Josh Hainer on creating a custom report that was kind of tailored to our specific data entry process. It was definitely something that we never expected. It just kind of came out of our individual need as a firm, you know, just trying to create a report and work with Smokeball. And we really appreciated Smokeball's openness, just being willing to work with us and create such a detailed report for us in the first place. We were able to look at cases in particular stages that had been there the longest. We were able to identify skeletons in the closet, so to speak, and work on getting them taken care of, getting them closed out one way or the other, and then ultimately prevent that from happening in the future.

[00:02:57] Speaker 1: Another factor from the dashboard that we've created is the financial data, which I really like. We're able to, at one glance, see how many cases we've resolved in a given month. We're able to see the average fee for each of those cases, and we distinguish that between overall average fee, litigation fee, claim stage fee, and a case that we may have referred out. Not only can we track average fee, but we can then hone in on which attorney has the highest fee. Is this attorney doing exceptionally well? And if so, can the other attorneys mimic that? We can also tell which types of cases are most profitable or where we're getting the highest fee, so we can put our efforts into trying to get more of those cases. Once we built our process and then had Smokeball help us with that process, whether it be just organization or document management or document creation, we were able to do more, faster, and more efficiently. And if you can do those things, you're saving money or you're making more money. Either way, it's a practical benefit.