Maximum Lawyer

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Tyson sits down with Darren Wurz to unpack what actually works when it comes to employee pay, bonuses, raises, and profitability inside a growing law firm. After appearing on Darren’s Lawyer Millionaire podcast, Tyson knew this conversation needed to get in front of Maximum Lawyer listeners, especially the owners wrestling with labor costs as their biggest expense. He shares the stories, numbers, and mindset shifts that moved his firm from emotional, one‑off raises and complex bonus schemes to a simpler, more intentional compensation strategy that serves both people and profit.


You will learn:
  • How Tyson handled an 80% raise demand during COVID.
  • Why automatic annual raises can backfire.
  • How he replaced complex bonuses with higher salaries.
  • How KPIs and job scorecards drive who earns more.
  • How “non‑billable” roles are still tied to profit.
  • The labor % Tyson targets to avoid bloat.
  • Why he avoids full salary transparency in the firm.
  • How AI is reshaping roles and headcount decisions.
  • How an AI‑driven case management system boosted profit and morale.

Tyson breaks down how his firm now uses job scorecards with a simple funnel of questions, starting with the purpose of the role, the top competencies, the key outcomes, and finally the numbers that prove success, to set clear KPIs for every seat. He explains why he prefers a lean team of A‑players, why labor savings from AI often get reinvested into higher salaries for remaining team members, and how he wrestles with the tension between not wanting to “replace people with AI” and making the right call for the business. He and Darren also get candid about raise requests that end in resignations, employees comparing salaries, and why your firm culture and compensation philosophy have to be aligned if you want to avoid long‑term resentment.


If you are a law firm owner who wants to pay your people fairly, protect your margins, and make smart decisions about AI and staffing, Tyson’s approach will help you move from guessing and reacting to using simple frameworks and numbers to drive compensation.


Highlights

0:23 – Tyson’s background, PI firm, and “profit on purpose” theme for the year
3:40 – The first raise request from an early employee and what he learned from it
6:20 – The COVID‑era 80% raise demand and why he refused it
12:10 – Scrapping a complex bonus system and moving to higher base salaries
16:45 – Using job scorecards and KPIs to decide who actually earns more
21:05 – Rethinking “billable vs. non‑billable” and tying every role to profit
24:30 – Targeting ~38% labor costs and avoiding overstaffed, low‑profit firms
29:15 – Why Tyson doesn’t share everyone’s salaries internally and the resentment risk
34:20 – How AI is shrinking parts of multiple roles and the hard calls that follow
47:10 – Increasing salaries when headcount drops and keeping A‑players happy
52:30 – Why fewer KPIs are better and how to pick the ones that matter
56:40 – What Tyson is reading now and how it shapes his leadership lens


If this episode helps you think differently about pay, raises, and AI in your firm, hit subscribe for more practical conversations on building a profitable, people‑first law practice, and share it with another lawyer who is tired of guessing on compensation.


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Creators and Guests

Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (01:00)
Yeah, my name’s Tyson Mutrux. I think most people would know me from Maximum Lawyer because we’ve been doing Maximum Lawyer since 2015. So this is the eleventh year. We’ve been doing it for a while. That’s where most people know me. But otherwise, I own a personal injury firm. Our main offices are in Missouri, in St. Louis and Columbia, but we also practice in pretty much every state. Our BHAG is to be in every single state by 2032. So that’s a pretty ambitious goal. But that’s who I am—do personal injury, like most people on your podcast.
Darren Wurz (01:40)
Yeah, awesome. Today we had some things planned, but I want to shift a little bit. In our community this year, we’re talking about “profit on purpose.” That’s our theme. This quarter we’re reading Simple Numbers. Great book. As I dove into it—have you read Simple Numbers before? I’m sure you have.
Tyson Mutrux (02:00)
It’s been a few years, but that’s a great book. We had the author—I can’t remember his name—on the show years ago. He’s great. Really good book.
Darren Wurz (02:12)
Fantastic. As we get into the book, he talks a lot about labor. Labor is usually the biggest expense for most law firms. Managing your labor and labor productivity is going to be one of your key drivers of profitability, especially as you grow and get over that seven‑figure mark. So let’s start with this question. I’ve been thinking about compensation in law firms. Tell me about the first time somebody asked you for a raise, and how did that conversation go?
Tyson Mutrux (02:35)
The first time. The first time that they asked me for a raise—it was a long time ago. I think I generally remember. It was probably Kelsey, one of my first employees. She wasn’t my number one, but she was, I think, number two. I remember her asking for a really modest raise. She came and it was a simple, “Hey, can I come talk to you?” and I was like, “Sure.” Usually those conversations go one of two ways: “Hey, I’m quitting,” or “Hey, can I get some more money?”
Tyson Mutrux (03:05)
I don’t even know if she asked for a specific amount. She might have. But I know she asked for a raise, and she deserved one at that time, so I had no problem giving it to her. It was before we had any regular reviews, before we were proactively talking about these things. It was more reactive. We’re talking probably thirteen years ago. My recollection might be off, but generally that’s what it was.
Darren Wurz (03:35)
I’ve been there. If you’re not planning on it and it’s your first time being asked, it can come out of the blue. You’re unprepared for it. In my experience it can be emotionally charged. There can be a feeling of insult. I think many law firm owners feel a little insulted when they’re asked that question. You’re surprised, caught off guard—“How do I approach this? Should I give a raise?” You’re in this awkward moment of, “Let me think about it. I don’t know.” So how do we fix that?
Tyson Mutrux (04:05)
Can I give you another story? A different one.
Darren: Yes, please.
I had one that was more recent. It was during COVID. I’m sure most people who had a firm then remember that time when employees seemed to have a lot of leverage. They were asking for significant pay increases. I had an employee who had no prior legal experience. The only legal experience she had was in the firm. We hired her as a legal assistant, and then we moved her over into a CARES team role, kind of like an intake team.
Tyson Mutrux (04:45)
She had just graduated. She started as a part‑time employee—that was part of what she did too—then we moved her to full‑time. She was with us for a few months full‑time, and then she came and asked for a raise. Her approach was interesting. She asked for about an eighty percent increase, which is the largest increase I’ve ever seen. I actually laughed when she said it because I seriously thought she was joking.
Tyson Mutrux (05:15)
I wasn’t being insulting; I wasn’t rude to her. But I told her, “We just can’t pay that. That’s not something we’re going to do.” It was more than a lot of our senior employees were making. I said, “We just can’t do that. I can’t justify that. Plus, you don’t have any experience. You just don’t have the experience to justify that. If you did, then sure, I’d be happy.” She said, “Well, I’m putting in my two‑weeks’ notice.”
Tyson Mutrux (05:45)
It was like a hostage negotiation. I remember saying, “Okay, that’s fine. Then we might as well part ways now. There’s no need to put in your two‑weeks’ notice.” I didn’t like the way she approached it. It felt unprofessional. She took a very hard line. My view of negotiations is we still have to work with each other. It’s okay to negotiate—I like when people negotiate on job offers or raises—but taking a really hard line one way or the other is a bad idea. If you have resentment on one side or the other, that’s tough to get over.
Darren Wurz (06:25)
Definitely. If there’s no criteria and you just give raises because people ask—or deny them with no rationale—that leaves a bad feeling. You can lose trust and really alienate employees. One of the things I’ve been thinking about, and Crabtree talks a little about this in the book, is that everyone should get paid a market‑based wage. There’s a salary economy. We need to make this less emotional and more objective.
Darren Wurz (06:55)
We need a compensation framework: a pay scale, levels for each role, and the only time you get an increase is if you level up or the salary economy changes. Then we can sit down with employees and say, “Tell me how much money you want to make. I want to know. Now let’s make a plan for how you get there.” Have you done anything like that in your firm—making it more objective? Tell us how you approach it now.
Tyson Mutrux (07:20)
We used to take more of—I think—a loose approach than what we do now. I’ll answer your question, but I’m curious about your thoughts on Crabtree’s approach. If I remember correctly, they don’t have automatic pay raises built in. I don’t even think they have pay raises built in. It’s more like you have to do something to get the raise—some sort of leveling up. That’s not typical. It’s definitely not typical.
Darren Wurz (07:45)
I think I agree with it to an extent. There shouldn’t just be an automatic bump every year, because people start to expect it. Then if there’s a year you can’t do it, you’re in trouble and everybody’s mad. But if the salary economy changes—if the market wage for a role increases significantly—then there’s an argument to adjust the entire scale. Automatic every‑year increases are the surprising part, and it made sense to me when he challenged that. What do you think?
Tyson Mutrux (08:15)
It makes some sense. I don’t believe in automatic pay increases, but I do agree in some sort of nominal increase every year based on cost of living. He talks a little bit about cost of living in that book. It’s been years since I’ve read it, but he does address it. Because the cost of living increases every year, we at least have to factor that in to some extent.
Tyson Mutrux (08:45)
Our approach completely changed on salaries. We used to have lower salaries and higher bonuses. We had a really complex bonus system, which is a real pain in the butt if you have one. Lots of opportunities for bonuses. But we were finding that some employees we felt really deserved higher pay weren’t hitting the bonuses, so they weren’t getting as much as we wanted to pay them. So we said, “It’s a pain to track all these bonuses. Let’s scrap the entire bonus system and just increase salaries substantially.” That’s the model we’ve been going on for a while.
Tyson Mutrux (09:25)
When it comes to pay increases, we do two reviews a year. During the annual review we evaluate for an increase. There’s no formula. The leadership team meets, talks, and asks, “Should we increase their pay here?” Usually we see employees asking for an increase during the annual review. We don’t always give it. It’s based on, “Have they leveled up? Is there a reason to pay them more money in this role?”
Tyson Mutrux (09:55)
I can’t remember Crabtree’s exact perspective, but it could be the same role and not everyone is worth the same amount. I have zero problem paying a person who is worth more… more money, even if it’s the exact same position. We view it based on value to the firm. It’s a general, subjective way, but we try to make it as objective as possible.
Darren Wurz (10:25)
Yeah, some kind of productivity measurement. Two people in the same role are not necessarily worth the same amount. Maybe you have different levels within that role—junior, senior, etc. Someone can be a total workhorse in a role and blow it out of the park compared to someone else. You should have KPIs built in. That’s one of the things we’re looking at too. Are you hitting your KPIs regularly? Maybe both are hitting them, but one is blowing it out of the water and one is just barely meeting them.
Tyson Mutrux (10:55)
Exactly. We can objectively see that one is doing a better job for the firm. There’s rhyme to our reason—it’s not like we’re pulling something out of a hat.
Darren Wurz (11:05)
Absolutely. One of the more controversial things Crabtree says: he subscribes to open‑book management, where everybody knows all the numbers. He takes it further: everyone knows what everyone makes. His argument is if you’re paid a fair market wage, it should make sense and shouldn’t be a problem. If someone says, “Why does Susie make more than me?” it’s a great opportunity for conversation. That’s unnerving for a lot of folks. What do you think about that?
Tyson Mutrux (11:35)
I don’t subscribe to that. I think it creates too much resentment. I understand the philosophy, but here’s the reality: Susie makes more money because the firm thinks she’s worth more. Jane makes less because we think Jane is worth less. If Jane knows what Susie makes, Jane is going to think she’s a better employee than Susie. It doesn’t matter what we tell Jane. We can explain it, but Jane doesn’t care. In her head she’s more valuable.
Tyson Mutrux (12:05)
Jane won’t care about the numbers; she’ll care about “I do this for the firm, I do that for the firm,” and she’ll find reasons why she’s worth more than Susie. Anyone who has run a firm knows exactly what I’m talking about. It rings a bell because you’ve had the same situation: you explain, but the person has convinced herself she’s worth more. We had an employee come and ask for a raise; we explained why we didn’t believe she was entitled to it—we were nice about it—and she quit a week later. In her head, it didn’t matter what we said.
Tyson Mutrux (12:45)
You also get resentment over how much the law firm owner makes. We do something similar to open‑book management where we show fees that come in; that’s something we track quarterly. One of our rocks is always the amount of fees we’ve collected. So they do see how much money’s coming in. They don’t see the money going out. They know we spend a lot on cases; I don’t think they care to see that anyway. Sharing salaries is just a pain in the butt I don’t want.
Darren Wurz (13:20)
Could be dangerous. I can see both sides. On one hand, people are going to talk—whether you tell them or not, they’ll figure it out. They’ll make assumptions about how much you as the owner make too. There’s something there perhaps. But I get where you’re coming from—it can open a whole can of worms. Legally, you can’t tell employees not to tell each other what they make. There’s federal law on that. So don’t do that.
Tyson Mutrux (13:50)
Right. That’s the classic employer‑law thing where the boss says you’re not supposed to discuss how much you make with each other. It’s kind of an unwritten rule. It was surprising to me; we’ve had employees say, “Hey, I heard such‑and‑such makes such‑and‑such money; I’d like a raise.” We’ve had to have that conversation. The first time I heard it I was surprised—who talks to each other about salaries? I’ve never had that conversation as an employee. It’s foreign to me. But I guess it’s more normal these days. It happens.
Darren Wurz (14:25)
Let’s talk about an idea I’ve been wrestling with. A lot of law firms say there are billable employees and non‑billable employees. I think there’s a problem with that separation. Non‑billable employees should be measured similarly because they contribute to profit. They help make your billable employees more billable, improve efficiency, and drive profit in ways beyond direct billing. Overall, they contribute to profitability. I think they should be measured that way. What are your thoughts?
Tyson Mutrux (14:55)
I agree. That’s why you look at metrics like profit per employee or revenue per employee. I think that’s a good metric. Another way I like better is revenue per attorney, revenue per paralegal or case manager. You can do it that way so it’s more specific. Even better: if you have teams or pods, revenue per team. That’s another way of looking at it. To ignore the non‑legal operations side when it comes to numbers is a big mistake.
Tyson Mutrux (15:25)
I was talking to Brian Mitman about something different, but he’s got basically a COO and someone in charge of legal operations too, because they’re so drastically different. Having a COO over legal operations doesn’t make sense unless they have a legal background. Even then, they’re completely different things—the business side and the legal side. Having metrics for those makes a lot of sense. Otherwise you get bloat. If you ignore non‑billable side, you can get a lot of bloat in your business.
Darren Wurz (15:55)
Mm‑hmm. Everybody should be thinking about how they connect to profit. We should be educating employees along those lines. A book we’re going to get into next quarter is the open‑book management book, The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. His argument is bonus systems are, like you said, very complex. So many nuances; it can be a full‑time job just to manage incentives. A very simple way: make profit the KPI. That’s KPI number one. Then educate every employee about how what they do connects directly to profitability.
Darren Wurz (16:30)
How do you approach KPIs and thinking along those terms?
Tyson Mutrux (16:35)
We use a worksheet. It’s a filtering process. People wonder, “How do you develop KPIs?” We create job scorecards for everyone and ask four questions: we go through purpose, skill traits and competencies, functional accountabilities, and then we come up with KPIs. It’s all tied to purpose.
Tyson Mutrux (17:00)
So it starts with: Why does the position exist? Then: What are the five most important competencies to do the job? Then: What are the three to five most important outcomes we need this person to deliver? And finally: What key numbers or targets would indicate this person is doing a good job? It’s a funnel. That’s how we create those. They’re tied to the purpose of the firm, which should be tied to revenues.
Darren Wurz (17:30)
Absolutely. Often we want to measure so many things. Many are nice to know, but we really only need the need‑to‑know things. Then we figure out what needs to change and what needs to happen.
Darren Wurz (17:45)
One of the metrics Crabtree talks about is labor productivity ratio—basically gross revenue per labor dollar, since law firms don’t usually have cost of goods sold. Total labor spend should stay at fifty percent or less of total revenue. Fifty is high, but keep going. I’m curious what your metrics are and how you think about total labor cost, especially with AI coming into the picture. How is that changing your thinking?
Tyson Mutrux (18:15)
My thinking’s been changing a lot. I did an episode on this recently—a live show in the association. I was hesitant to publish it because my employees sometimes listen to the podcast. I think as a services‑based business, keeping your overhead in that thirty‑eight percent range, give or take, when it comes to labor is a decent number. You can pay your employees more. It also depends on whether you factor in owner compensation; you can play with those numbers.
Tyson Mutrux (18:45)
So yes, my target is more like thirty‑eight percent. Now, I’m sure I’m hearing criticism both ways. People say, “I try to keep it around 30%,” and they get criticism from the 50% side—“You’re not paying your employees enough.” The 50% side gets criticism from the 30% side—“You’re bloated.” I think thirty‑eight percent is pretty good.
Tyson Mutrux (19:10)
We have fought extremely hard to use the fewest number of people possible. That’s why we worked on topgrading and hiring only A‑players. If someone becomes a B or C player, we make sure they find another place outside our firm to work. So thirty‑eight percent is a good number. Our people get good salaries. And anytime we’ve reduced the workforce intentionally, we increase salaries. No one asked; we just increase them. We’re not cutting the workforce and pocketing the cash. We cut the workforce and increase salaries, and we’re still more profitable.
Tyson Mutrux (19:45)
You hear people say, “I’ve got 50 people in my firm; I’ve got 80 people.” My question is, “How’s your profit?” I’ve seen a lot of fifty‑person and forty‑person firms that are not doing well financially.
Tyson Mutrux (20:00)
On AI: I’ve had to evolve. My view was: don’t use AI to replace employees; use AI to make things more efficient and shift employees to customer service, client‑facing positions. I had a coaching call with Jason Selk a few weeks ago. We had used AI to basically replace three positions. We don’t have a need for those three people. Even shifting to customer service doesn’t make sense. Jason said, “From a business standpoint, what’s the right call?” I said, “Get rid of those three people.” That’s the right call, but it’s tough to swallow. I don’t want to use AI to replace people. But logically, you don’t need those people anymore, so you reduce the workforce. We’ve actually reduced one; we’ve taken one off the board. I’m not comfortable taking all three off.
Darren Wurz (20:55)
That’s a tough question to wrestle with. I don’t have suggestions; you have to figure it out for yourself. For my own business, I want every employee empowered by AI to improve efficiency. Maybe that’s how we grow—grow further without increasing headcount. But if someone’s whole role is no longer needed, it’s tough to let them go. The way I’ve been taught is: it can be the kind thing to do because you’re helping them move on to somewhere that’s a better fit.
Tyson Mutrux (21:25)
Here’s the struggle: you’re not going to see full roles replaced at one time. You’ll see substantial parts of a role taken in one spot, then another role, then another. Those people just have less to do. You’re going to have big pockets that are no longer necessary. You have to find a way to put that puzzle together.
Darren Wurz (21:50)
You mentioned in our call—you’ve built an entire case management system using Claude Code and Bolt and are dramatically reducing software spend. Tell us a little about that.
Tyson Mutrux (22:00)
Did I tell you the origin of this—why we did it?
Darren: I don’t think so.
We’d shifted to Zoho a few years ago and made a massive upgrade to the system about six to seven weeks ago. It was a massive failure. Things were broken, things weren’t working. I was afraid people were going to start leaving. It killed morale—destroyed it. Kasha is our CTO. In about three weeks, we built from scratch a case management system using Claude and Bolt.
Tyson Mutrux (22:40)
Bolt.new is one of those systems where you type in prompts and it builds the website and all that. We use Bolt, then Claude. You end up saving money on credits because you have very specific prompts, and then Claude follows up on the prompt to make sure it’s implemented correctly by Bolt. I’ve said this in the association: in my opinion it’s the most advanced case management system on the market. It’s not on the market, but it has all the AI built into it—its own AI chatbots, everything.
Tyson Mutrux (23:15)
It’s brought our cost down substantially on technology. If someone wants something, in a few minutes we can implement that thing—whatever it is. We’ve also done little things you can’t do in an out‑of‑the‑box case management system: we’ve created tooltips. If you don’t know, a tooltip is the little circle with the “i” in the middle—click it and you get more information. We’ve turned those into trainings.
Tyson Mutrux (23:45)
Let’s say you need to know how to request medical records. We don’t yet have that tooltip; I’m just giving an example. A new team member might have forgotten in training how to request records. They’re in the file, getting ready to request medical records, and they see the tooltip. They click, and it has the full training built in. A pop‑up with full training walks them through how to request medical records.
Tyson Mutrux (24:15)
We haven’t fully implemented this because we have so many trainings in Zoho. We’re migrating them over so we can put them throughout the system. All the trainings will go out of our training modules and into the system. We implemented a new HR system—we’re not using Zoho People anymore. We’re taking everything we can and creating it inside the system so people don’t have to leave.
Tyson Mutrux (24:45)
That’s the big part. You see a lot of drain when someone is working, then has to go to another system. They get distracted by something else; it takes 20 minutes to get back to the job. Then they go back again. You lose so much efficiency doing that. The idea is to keep them right there in the system so they can do a better job and be happier.
Tyson Mutrux (25:15)
When we had the failure of the system launch, the team was at two percent morale. Now they’re at ninety‑nine or one hundred percent because they’re so excited. “Can you add this? Can you add that?” We have a running list; we can’t keep up with all their requests because they’re so excited. It’s pretty cool.
Darren Wurz (25:40)
That is awesome. I love that. I’ll have to play around with—what is it? Bolt.new, you mentioned?
Tyson Mutrux (25:50)
Yeah, there’s Bolt, bolt.new, there’s Lovable. Grok just launched one—Grok Build. I haven’t played with it yet. You need whatever the premier Grok is. I haven’t tried it. There are a bunch of them. I like Bolt because that’s what I started on, but there are others.
Darren Wurz (26:15)
Okay, very cool. Tyson, it’s been great having you on the show today. One last question before we go. We always ask our guests: is there something you’re reading right now that you’re really enjoying that you’d like to recommend to our listeners?
Tyson Mutrux (26:30)
I don’t know how this is going to be received, but I’m going to reread the Bible. I bought this Bible—and this isn’t me preaching, I promise. I’m not going to preach. I saw this really cool Bible that explains the history of the Bible as you’re reading it. It tells the stories and explains them. I find history very interesting. It goes through and explains different parts of why something is in the Bible. It’s very interesting to me. That’s what I’ve been reading.
Darren Wurz (27:05)
Very cool. Very unique. I’m sure you weren’t expecting that one. It wasn’t a book I expected you to mention, but that’s pretty cool. Anything else you want to leave our listeners with before we go?
Tyson Mutrux (27:20)
No, I appreciate doing this. I love your show. I love coming on and doing these things. Thanks for having me. If you ever want to come on the show again, just let me know.
Darren Wurz (27:35)
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Tyson.
Tyson: Yeah, thank you.