Maximum Lawyer

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Most law firm owners know they’re doing too much — but identifying the real bottleneck is often harder than expected. In this episode, Chad Burton and Tyson Mutrux discuss the common warning signs that a firm owner is overloaded and why trying to both practice law and manage operations can slow growth. They explain why popular business frameworks don’t work for every firm and why the right structure depends heavily on the individual owner’s strengths, goals, and capacity.

The conversation explores how law firms can scale more effectively through better operational models, including leadership teams, outsourced functions, and Managed Service Organizations (MSOs). Tyson shares how these models can help firms improve efficiency, build stronger systems, and create more valuable long-term exit opportunities without requiring the owner to manage every detail personally.

The episode also looks ahead at the role of AI in transforming legal operations. From intake systems to document organization and discovery workflows, AI is rapidly reducing administrative workload and enabling firms to operate with greater speed and precision. Tyson explains why the concept of an AI-first law firm is quickly becoming realistic and how firms can begin preparing now.


  • 0:54 Can owners realistically both practice law and run a firm?
  • 2:03 Why some founders succeed with limited caseloads
  • 3:00 Problems with the visionary vs integrator model
  • 4:33 Why business frameworks don’t work for every firm
  • 10:25 Evolution from consulting to Law Firm OS platform
  • 12:46 How MSOs are reshaping law firm operations
  • 15:10 Creating scalable infrastructure for long-term exits
  • 20:06 Fee sharing and referral incentives in Arizona
  • 25:04 Differences between litigation and transactional firms
  • 27:26 Why MSOs are not the right fit for every firm
  • 31:31 Is a fully AI-powered law firm possible today?
  • 43:40 AI tools for document analysis and discovery automation


Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 


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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.

Chad Burton 00:00:00 All right, Chad, so I want to ask you about whenever meeting with a law firm and you're, you're kind of going through everything and you're assessing what's going on with the firm. What are some red flags to identify whenever there's too much work being placed on that law firm owner?

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:15 I think those flags are always there. And so if I'm having an initial conversation, let's say you and I haven't met, the flags are going to come out almost immediately. It's I know I'm doing too much. I have a full caseload and I never have time to work on the firm. There's all these cool things out there I want to try, but I don't do it or they have set. You asked them about goals and like, oh, of course I do. I've got goals. I've got, here's what I'm going to do. How are those going like are I've got too much casework. It comes out real quick, real easy. I mean, so it's not even flags. It's just it's it's just they're front and center.

Chad Burton 00:00:54 All right. So I want to ask you something related to that. Do you think it's possible. Like and what I mean by possible. I think almost anything's possible. What I mean is, like, is it realistic to expect a law firm owner to be able to actually practice law and run the law firm, or do you think it's better to have more of a practice manager type, whether that's a lawyer or non-lawyer, and then someone that actually runs the the practice side of things, where it's when it comes to like the legal operations.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:23 I think, I mean, it really depends on the individual because I mean, that's where I mean, we could read a million books on how to run a business.

Chad Burton 00:01:33 There's a lot of.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:33 There's a lot of them out there and they're all really saying the same thing with the different edge to it. But the, I think it really depends on the individual, because I think there are some that can pull off both, some that have, you know, been doing this long enough that they've figured out the sweet spot of, I want x number of cases and I'll do the 5 to 10 big ones that I like, the clients I really want to work with, and then I work on the firm the rest of the time.

Tyson Mutrux 00:02:03 Some people are awful at working on the firm and know it. So then they bring in somebody else. But that's a hard one too, because especially if the firm is focused around the founder and that name is around the founder, you're going to go two, three, four attempts at finding that practice manager, because the people that you think maybe internal first, like, oh, this person has been with me for a while there. They get it, they get me. Well, they may suck at managing others. They may be really good at the job they had, but then you promote them up and it doesn't work. And so I think it really is. It really depends. And that's where you have these conversations with people that you have read. Let's say let's go with traction. Let's go. That's it. Or shots or something, you know, a drinking game for saying different buzz terms. But like if we go traction or iOS. People are like, I need an integrator. That's where people default to.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:00 It's like, you're not ready for that. Or you're like, no, you don't because you don't have your act together or you're the you're really good at this, so don't hand it off. So it really depends on the individual.

Chad Burton 00:03:17 It's interesting what you said about that too. because you hear people talk about they they'll, they'll just adopt a phrase or some sort of methodology. And I don't think that there's any perfect book out there. Like, I've always been a fan of scaling up. I mean, I'm a fan of traction. It's like I'm against it, but it has forced people to think, oh, I need I need a visionary and I need an integrator. And I think that's kind of a nonsense. I, I think it works for some. It doesn't work for all. I think that if you want to scale, I think that traction is a really difficult model to scale in because you make it so 1 or 2 person focused where you have the visionary and usually it centers around the visionary.

Chad Burton 00:04:00 You know, and and I think people like the phrase visionary. You know.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:05 It sounds.

Chad Burton 00:04:05 Cool. It sounds really cool.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:07 Integrator sounds lame and like, you know, like you do work visionaries like you sit around with your pipe and you, you're bourbon and you're just, you know, listening to music by the fire, thinking of big thoughts that people are going to do for you. Like it's just.

Chad Burton 00:04:22 Yeah. And I think that there's a I think there's a real problem with that. And so I actually wanted to get your thoughts on that whether you were it sounds like you might be in the similar, same thought, but I just didn't know if you had any thoughts on that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:33 Yeah. No, I think that's I think that's the case and I think trying and I when I started doing this a long time ago, I tried implementing these different concepts to say, hey, here's some good tools, let's do this. Traction was out. Well, I guess scaling up, although I like the Vern, Geno thing where I saw some blog posts somewhere where verbs like, listen, Gina was my student and you know, you know, basically like this blog post is like, you know, he's he's kind of a whiny bitch.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:04 And, you know, I wish him the best. And he's done great things, but still, like, I'm I got this I'm a little bit better.

Chad Burton 00:05:12 Well, it is interesting you say that before you finish. Your thought is that there are some overlap. Definitely some overlap. But it's the the basic principles actually are quite a bit different. Like if you, if you actually were to read scaling up and study it versus traction, it is there. There they are. There are some definitely radical terms for sure.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:32 And I first looked at scaling up after traction. And actually you were talking about scaling up. And I saw, you know, I was like, I want to go take a look at that. And, you know, quite frankly, now, like you don't need those books, what you need to do is go to Claude or ChatGPT and say, hey, here's my issue, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. And, which is, you know, people that work with firms like me like that, I love that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:59 Now, when I get to have those conversations and say, here's the things I've been working through, because now it helps you focus in on really what matters, because you can say, look, I want to run my firm like Vern would with scaling up. Here's what I've got. Tell me everything I need to do. And, so anyway, the fitting people into the model, I, as I was talking about earlier, coming back to that, I tried it for a while, but then it just most people that are looking for that help either are going to hire true consultants that do just those models. and I looked at that once because I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll just do this. And then I think it's like a franchise for iOS and.

Chad Burton 00:06:43 100% of those.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:44 And I talked to somebody on it. It was it was kind of it was a very short call. She was like, all right. I'm like, well, do I have to just do this? And she's like, yeah, you only do iOS.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:53 It's exclusive, and if you do anything else, we'll pull your franchise. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is not a good fit.

Chad Burton 00:06:59 Well, okay, so this is a really good point to like so and I think that part of the reason why law firm owners are drawn to iOS is because it is like you have this 1 or 2 people that it centers around. And so they're kind of drawn, oh, I want to be the person. But think about this, okay. If you look at scaling up, if we just compare this to this is this is a I think this is a great topic for this conversation because iOS is, is that more you got center based sort of leadership, right? When it comes in at us, you have leadership teams, all that kind of stuff. But it really does center around 1 or 2 people. That's not how scaling up is built. Scaling up is more like you're building a company, right? And what's interesting to me is that you have people pushing iOS, but it's also franchise based where you have these individual people that you have to rely on, like the they're the ones that can't remember what they call them, traction coaches.

Chad Burton 00:07:50 I can't remember what they call them, but I think there's another term for it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:53 Yeah, there's a implementer.

Chad Burton 00:07:55 Implementers.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:56 There because I still get their emails like join this call. And like I just remember this lady that I talked to, I feel like I offended her when I was like, well, I'm not going to do that. And she's like, well, it's you're an idiot.

Chad Burton 00:08:05 Well, okay. So think about this. Like, so you were you were dependent on an implementer. But if you look at go outside the legal space, go outside of really like go look at the big biggest companies. Are they dependent on a third party to help them run their business? Sure. They might hire consultants every once in a while for one offs, but you're not completely dependent on an implementer. Correct? Not at all.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:27 Right. You're hiring internally. That's your at some point because it doesn't make sense.

Chad Burton 00:08:31 Yeah. So how is if you are a your law firm advisor I guess.

Chad Burton 00:08:37 Is that how you I think that's what your LinkedIn profile says as law firm advisor, I.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:40 Don't even I haven't looked at LinkedIn in a while, which is somebody told me the other day, they're like, your picture is so old. It's like, I guess I gotta go look at. So it may say that okay.

Chad Burton 00:08:50 It does. And I noticed we were actually not connected on LinkedIn, which I thought was hilarious. Really. Yeah. We've known each other for years.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:56 Right, right. Because I don't use it.

Chad Burton 00:08:57 But that's on the same way. If it's if I want if I want to be abused by a bunch of spam messages, I'll go on LinkedIn.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:04 Right. Exactly.

Chad Burton 00:09:04 That's what I'll do. So what, what how do you how do you avoid that stigma? As a as someone that advises law firms, whenever you have things like that out there that maybe like, well, I don't want to have to freaking pay you, like, nonstop to help me with my firm.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:20 Well, that goes to kind of how our models evolved. Like, I like yes. Advisor is fine. Like, you know, ChatGPT is an advisor now or Claude or pick your favorite version of it. I mean, one of the things that I've enjoyed about our model is that it's evolved a lot over time. I mean, when Billy and I started at, I don't know, modern law practice probably seven, eight years ago or so. there was a, the consulting component, and then we had this outsourced intake. Yeah. Because at that time, there wasn't a lot of attention being paid outside the plaintiffs world to intake. Family law firms are starting to think, okay, we got to start getting our head around the sales process and we don't have people. So we started this outsourced model. To be able to come in and do your intake, give you system on it. And, you know, it evolved to we were getting a lot of feedback from our consulting clients saying like, look, we like Cleo, let's say, but we hate these five things about it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:10:25 Can you help us build something? And so we started building a platform called Law Firm OS, which, you know, ended up being full on operating system for law firms. Case management leads the leadership team KPI tracking helpdesk like HR, all the things. and it we it was a quasi SaaS model where it was very customized for the firm and, but it allowed to fill in gaps where, let's say you did use Clio, but you wanted all these other things. And, that's a hard model and a fun model to do. but then, as you know, quite frankly, like AI as it's been developing now, it's like there's, you know, it's not it wasn't. Right. And so, Clio, this fall when they came out with all their stuff and they're new, like Clio work and everything, I told our clients like, look, I think you should go over there.

Chad Burton 00:11:24 Like, yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:11:25 Do it. Go. We're going to migrate you over there and, we'll work together in our own way.

Tyson Mutrux 00:11:32 But, I'm building software in that fashion. Doesn't make sense. You know, if you're not a full on software company. So we are. We've been kind of hovering between consolidating and this tech model and what we've moved to now and goes to it actually ties in nicely to the traction piece is, managed services like MSOs that you see in the medical space where you get, you know, some doctors that get together and, say like, look, we want to start a practice, but we don't know shit about how to run the business. And they hire a third party company that comes in and does everything for them, provides the tech, whatever, you know, the humans and everything. So we, for example, last fall, I guess we did October 1st, I was approached by a lawyer that said, hey, I'm bored with what I'm doing. and I want to swing big. And so we built a model. We combined eight of the leading family formation firms, adoption firms from around the country into one firm and launch that and run the operations.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:46 We'll spin it off internally as it makes sense. And but we like built the model. Run the show operationally right now. I mean, this week we're going live with an MSO and a new law firm model for where the MSO is running marketing, intake and operations for a network of firms mostly focused on plaintiff's employment pie. and some more complex business litigation. So we're still building the software. So we have an AI first operating system. But it's it's our version of it. Not like what is a firm want. It's here's how we're going to do this. Here's how agents fit into it. Here's how the latest version of something goes. And and so we're not building it to sell the software. We're building it to run these operations, which is kind of fun. That is different. And so I've taken out. Yeah. We're advising. I don't give a shit about traction or scaling up or any of these things. Now from the standpoint of advising law firms, because if if you're there, that's not a fit for us.

Tyson Mutrux 00:14:01 We're going for working with firms that are like big swing firms. Yeah. another firm came to us in. When was this? Last summer. family law firm and said, look, we're doing great, but I've got, you know, ten years left and I want a better exit. And I love this AI stuff. I don't know what to do with it. Ten x y firm for an exit or set me up to sell. So I was like, well, great timing because here's what. Because our MSO model has outside investment tied to it. So funding leads and funding marketing efforts, funding operations so that we can help those firms scale quicker with our team and our technology. And so we're with this guy now. We're rebuilding his entire infrastructure that had existed pretty much the same for about 25 years. Like amicus is in the conversation.

Chad Burton 00:14:59 You're kidding.

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:00 Me. We're ditching amicus in this in favor of an aesthetic model. This guy is great. And so. And we'll run the show with his team.

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:10 He's got an established team, and we'll operate alongside and help scale the firm that way. so that's a different way of. So law firm advisors a little bit, you know, to to vague from that.

Chad Burton 00:15:25 Way too vague. I mean, yeah, you were way more integrated. I don't know, I don't know, but integrated you were way more customizable for you customize things more for the firm itself. It seems that what you're saying is incredible. Although you have your unique, the what the MSO does is very unique in that it is very specific and that's great. I wonder why. Why aren't MSOs more common in the legal space?

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:49 I think they're they're coming quick. One probably the ownership issues are like law firm owners. You know, since we have that situation where, outside funding is still looked at. You know, outside of here, I mean, we're in Arizona here you can have with Avs, we've got non-lawyer ownership, although those are now coming under fire.

Chad Burton 00:16:12 Which is crazy how like you start to see people their companies leave the the ABS model.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:17 Right. Well yeah. Because you can also in Arizona, you know the Supreme Court got rid of fee sharing. And so you can it's now anybody can share a fee without the the regular parameters that we've seen, you know, so a family law firm can, you know, get a case from random person and say, hey, thanks a lot. I'm going to give you X number of dollars for your referral.

Chad Burton 00:16:45 You're kidding.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:46 Me. Yeah. They just erased the rule and it's about four years ago. 2021. wow. Yeah. So, that's so a lot of times when, because I've had people come to me and say, hey, I want help with creating abs, and you really talk to them. And it's like, well, you don't need an abs. You just need to you can split fees now, and there's no like it's not even that. There was a like some parameters put on it. The roll is gone. And so you know think about that. So you you you deal with this right from the standpoint of referrals.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:22 for cases. And, you know, you have to, you know, depending upon your jurisdiction make sure. Are they is that referring party or or are you involved enough. What is it? You know, what is that line as far as involvement to be able to properly share the fee. It doesn't matter. It could be. I send you a case and I maybe remember the person's name and you say thanks for the case. You do whatever you want. You can say, here's half the fee. Whatever you want to do with it, it's it's fair game.

Chad Burton 00:17:52 What are your thoughts on that?

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:53 I think it's great. I think it's because it does it it allows one. I think that the market probably has worked itself out in the way that people aren't going to give up a lot of money, you know, and it could be a good marketing tool. So let's say you, have, you know, Billy has done this over time in, you know, when you have her on, where they I think I forget the numbers on it, but, you know, send somebody a check and say, thanks for the case.

Tyson Mutrux 00:18:29 They don't ask for it. They just send it to them, because that's a great marketing tool from the standpoint of, like, let's say you send them a $300 check or a new case. That person is going to be like, well, I'm going to, you know, I can retire now off of this money. It's not that kind of money, but it says to the person like, oh, well, let me make sure they're top of mind. That's not a bad thing. I barely I gave I gave them a phone number and I know that they're going to be taken care of because that firm does a good job. And and so it's a great marketing tool I think. And, you know, I can't imagine firms, you know, over correcting and giving away too much money because that would be stupid from a.

Chad Burton 00:19:07 Why don't law firms put up billboards and say send us a case will send you 50 bucks?

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:12 It'd be smart.

Chad Burton 00:19:13 I mean, can you legit do that in Arizona?

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:15 As far as I know?

Chad Burton 00:19:17 That is interesting.

Chad Burton 00:19:19 I if you are an Arizona law firm, I'm very curious to see if that's something that you could do, because I mean, why? I mean, why wouldn't you. Well, yeah. Why would you not do that then?

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:28 Right. And I mean, I don't know, I don't think there's any advertising rules on it, but there's no like, Limitations on the split.

Chad Burton 00:19:35 Now I have I will say this. I have my reservations, and I'm trying to figure out if this is my bias because I'm a lawyer, or if it's because I don't know. I'm sure there's some bias tied to this. I my reservations about this are that you're not referring them because they're the best lawyer. You're referring them because you're getting money out of it. And that is my concern. unless unless it was, you paid them a, like some sort of percentage of it, like on an injury case, like. Right. You're going to send it to the best lawyer because they're going to get you the best cut.

Chad Burton 00:20:06 Right. Right. Now, if you're getting a flat fee, that's different. so that's because that's where my reservations are on it. So, I mean, you're kind of operating in the Wild West. It's kind of interesting.

Tyson Mutrux 00:20:16 It is it's interesting out here. And the the challenge where I see it is as I work with firms around the country, you know, I don't I don't work with a lot of Arizona firms. Most of my firms are elsewhere. And you can't do the same things. You know, I would work with a firm and take a percentage of operations to run their show. but you can't do that anywhere else. Like from the standpoint of, any other state at this point.

Chad Burton 00:20:45 So I want to know more about this. MSO because the we work with a lot of doctors because of personal injury that are involved in MSOs, which kind of my understanding what it's an MSO like. For example, let's say we need an MRI facility, we need an ortho like standard. Here's here's like the standard case, right? They usually need like, chiropractic care, chiropractic care or physical therapy.

Chad Burton 00:21:11 They're going to need an MRI. They're going to need an ortho. they're going to need someone for pain management. Right. Those are like the the typical stuff. Yeah, a lot of times are these these MSOs in Saint Louis that used to go to them and they'll kind of they've run all the operations, and then they have these doctors that sometimes are owners of the MSO part part owners, or they're just contracted with them. Right. So you have this this, these. This one little unit, and they kind of run everything. And then the doctor comes in, does the evaluation, does the treatment. And that's all the doctor really does. Correct. So how does yours work?

Tyson Mutrux 00:21:46 So ours is early but it's you know, it does have a lawyerly answer. It depends. So in some scenarios it is. we've got everything. We're going to employ the staff and rent it, employ attorneys and rent it to the law firm.

Chad Burton 00:22:07 rent it to the law firm?

Tyson Mutrux 00:22:08 Yeah. Like a like an employment relationship or like you have a staffing companies where, you and I've done this.

Tyson Mutrux 00:22:18 I've actually, I've done this for a tech company in the past. Years ago that did not have a US president's presence. They didn't. Weren't set up in the US yet. So we we hired a salesperson for them, employed them and then they paid us for their time. And so we kind of rented them out to them. And so they did sales for them. Same model where, you know, we can because we have the infrastructure from, you know, payroll and, you know, benefits and all the things that, you know, maybe the law firm, especially the one that I'm thinking about is new. And so we're keeping because we're starting. We're we're raising it from scratch. Like literally this morning I was giving feedback on the website for it to go live today. Wow. And so that law firm is going to be real lean on purpose lawyer's website. and, you know, payment processing. But everything else will be run through the firm and or through the MSO. And, and so we'll, you know, employ, the staff will employ the lawyers that are W-2 lawyers.

Tyson Mutrux 00:23:30 That and then the firm will pay. You know, reimburse us for the costs on that. So that's that's the extreme where like the case management software, the operating system that we're, you know, creating as an AI first, like we're just because we can we're just like, all right, we'll make this a genetic. We'll do all the fun stuff that's new and meaningful. and so that's on that aspect of it. Other ends of it are, you hire us to work with your existing team, and our team will complement and fill in gaps where they are. And we may you'll have existing technology and we'll integrate in if you don't want to just kind of wipe everything clean, we'll operate within that system and put our tech on top of it and integrate in which, you know, because part of this is a big interesting experiment because it's new. And so I don't want to and with technology changing so fast with, you know, every week we're seeing like, well was SaaS did well, this one came out with this view.

Tyson Mutrux 00:24:45 Everything is going so crazy. Like I don't want to get locked into a platform. I want to, sure, but I can't because everything's changing so fast. And so the, we are experimenting with these different models because people are coming into us in different places as well.

Chad Burton 00:25:04 Does this work with both litigation and transactional firms?

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:07 Yes.

Chad Burton 00:25:08 Is it easier with one or the over the other?

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:10 No, they're the same. They're both hard.

Chad Burton 00:25:12 So this is really hard for me to comprehend with that part, because I would think that litigation would be much harder because of the I. And maybe I'm completely wrong, but it seems like you need more people for the litigation type firms, at least with the way we operate, because, I mean, you're you're dealing with. You got the prelude side, which is drastically different from application side. Yeah. And so to me, it seems like you would need a lot more people. So it would just be more complicated.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:36 It can be. And I think it depends on where the firm's at.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:41 So if there are, you know, the, the firm that I mentioned that, you know, the amicus 25 years of running off of, you know, an in-house server and, they've got an established staff, but the way they want to grow, they don't want to hire a bunch of more people. So we'll keep that team in place. It's litigation firm and grow around them. And there's buy in from the whole team. They're all interested in it because they know that their roles get to change and evolve. They know that it's helping. The goal is to help with longevity of the firm. And what happens when that founder or that central person decides to dial back and, you know, for, let's say, 40 years, all the work has come in because of that person's name. They know that the handoff will be better over time. And so there's this exit strategy for the owner, but also longevity for purposes of the team. And they feel better about it because they're part of it too.

Chad Burton 00:26:48 All right. So you're going in let's say I've got so many questions about this because you go in, you're meeting with the law firm owner okay. They're the type that's very hesitant to really relinquish any sort of control over certain things. let's let's make it a criminal defense firm, because that's usually very heavy on the personality. Right? So how do you pretend like, like I'll pretend like I was back in the days when I was doing criminal defense, and so ask me the questions you would ask the law firm owner to try to assess how you'd best be able to help the.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:26 Well, the punch line on this is going to be this is not a good fit for everyone. So what you're talking about there is like, you know, if, you know, if the, the questions go along and you, you realize up front I don't bring this up, up front. I just had a conversation with a guy on Friday. I didn't know where, like, it was a we were connected.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:50 I forget how we got connected, but it was a very specific thing. It was like intake or something, but the conversation was not about intake ultimately. And, you know.

Chad Burton 00:28:00 Interesting how that happens all the time.

Tyson Mutrux 00:28:02 And, but at one point when I realized what he wanted, I brought up the topic and he's like, oh, I just got an offer from private equity last week. I'm going to reject it because it's really he's like, well, maybe I'll reject it. He told me about it and he's like, that's a bad offer. And he's like, that's what my wife said. I'm like, yeah, so but we got there. And so the, the issue like with a criminal defense lawyer, for example, or, you know, somebody with control is, you know, what do they want if they want, you know, if their goals are, you know, within the next 2 to 3 years, I want to hire an associate. I'd like to work a little less.

Tyson Mutrux 00:28:41 I want to make more money. It's like, well, what kind of money? Well, I could use, you know, I'm pretty happy where I am, like, you know, another 50, 100,000 a year, like small swings, which are fine, and that's okay. And that's going to be the vast majority of firms that this topic is not coming up. But you know what you should do? You should just ditch everything and turn it out like it's not even it's not even a real conversation at that point. And that's not fair to say. Like, because they don't want it and that's okay. So just understanding where the firm is going. And if you have somebody that has this, you know, I've tried everything. I've hired 18 different coaches. I have three of them going now. I switch my software every year. I get it. I get the shiny object piece. And part of, my world is I've built the ability to analyze shiny object stuff as part of my business model.

Tyson Mutrux 00:29:48 So I don't hate that. But that doesn't work for everybody. And so if you're doing that, like you're going to be disappointed because there's no like, you know, none of this, even what we're talking about is some kind of little, you know, magic wand. There's a lot of work that's going to go into it. And if you've just screwed around with a whole bunch of different things, it's not going to be a good fit because you got to be serious on it, and you probably aren't making enough money to actually invest in the concept. And that's okay. Not everybody is looking for that. Not everybody is looking for, you know, a scaling up model. They're happy, like, because they get to go home and, you know, at a certain time and they're doing all the work. Maybe they have a paralegal or something, they're satisfied and that's cool. But that's not going to be a good fit for this because it's going to get wild because we're going to change.

Tyson Mutrux 00:30:45 You have to be ready to kind of not know what's going to happen. You're going to give up that control. You're going to turn things over to others. And that's tough.

Chad Burton 00:30:57 All right. Talking about wild, let's get crazy for a second because I want to talk I want to pivot to AI. I know you mentioned a little bit, but I really want to ram things up a little bit here. So is it possible, do you think, to run a fully AI law firm right now? And now you've got to have the law firm assume you've got to have the law firm in most states where you've got a lawyer at the head. Okay. So you need one human. Be the lawyer. Is it possible? And if so, what does it look like?

Tyson Mutrux 00:31:31 the answer is I think. Yes. And it's so close. Like, what does it look like? I think it is. it looks different almost week to week. Now.

Chad Burton 00:31:44 It is. That part is really frustrating.

Chad Burton 00:31:46 But yes, you're right, it's.

Tyson Mutrux 00:31:48 Oh, I've, the, as we've kind of talked through this stuff and, you know, this probably should not be a topic of your conversation with Billy, but she gives me so much. She's like, just, you're not going to solve this. Like, I mean, I will come up with the right solution, but I finally had to, like, go and say, okay, look. Things are changing so fast. The right model. You know, I need, you know, to think about this from the standpoint of If you're going to set somebody up on it, what's the right platform to be able to be nimble and move around?

Chad Burton 00:32:23 Because what's that platform right now? Right now as of today. Today.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:28 Well I'm like and I, I went I this was a tough one but I, I'm building on notion. We're using notes.

Chad Burton 00:32:36 Really.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:37 Which sounds leftfield.

Chad Burton 00:32:38 It sounds.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:39 But.

Chad Burton 00:32:39 It's. Yes I would not you would have if you would have given me 50 guesses.

Chad Burton 00:32:43 I wouldn't have, wouldn't put notion in there. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:32:47 so yeah, I've wrestled with this a lot, but their AI approach is that where they've, I don't need to use. I like I'm wasting money on ChatGPT now because I don't use it. I mess around with it when I want to compare cloud versus ChatGPT versus notion, but it's got its own mod and you can pick models within it. Yeah.

Chad Burton 00:33:09 What about Gemini?

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:10 Gemini is in it. but yeah, use I mean, we use Google Workspace and so, the, Yeah, we're building on notion, and they, just I've been using this in beta, but they've got custom agents that they just released generally yesterday that allow you to, you know, manage anything, manage your email, you know, reach out, you know, draft marketing content based on a slack conversation that somebody, you know, hearts with a reaction that will trigger, you know, an agent to go out and do whatever you want on it. It you know, they've connected it to outside sources like we use stripe.

Tyson Mutrux 00:33:52 It can go manage stripe with custom agents now and go out and you know, you tell it, you know, I need you to create a new customer and send out an invoice. It'll do it.

Chad Burton 00:34:03 Have you have you played with club yet?

Tyson Mutrux 00:34:05 I have not I did not like I've read about it I, I haven't used it, you know, but it's what in the part of the reason why I didn't jump into it? One is focus trying to make sure, because I've been wrestling with this. And the reason part of the reason I landed on the notion model is it is the same concept, minus the local nature of it. They host it. And and so I've been really trying to focus in and as I was, because we're building these concepts with these firms and you can't just bounce around all the time you need to have. And so what I did was I looked at all the major players and say, okay, here's, the, the landscape, which platform has the the AI theory, the AI execution model that fits with what we're doing? Sure.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:05 And that's where it was like, we've used Airtable forever as a back end.

Chad Burton 00:35:09 People love Airtable.

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:10 It's great. And they've they're a big player. Part of the reason you gotta you gotta also got to choose somebody with like a lot of funding too, because like, I, I love the startup world, but at the same time, you know, everybody's becoming irrelevant real quick. And if you don't have a track record, then, you know, we're just, you know, screwing ourselves over by adopting some tech on that.

Chad Burton 00:35:34 And I'm going to ask you about legal tech in a little bit, because I'm very curious about what your thoughts are and what's going to happen with legal tech, because there's so much money flooding into it. But right before I want to ask you about Nardin, have you played around with any idea at all?

Tyson Mutrux 00:35:45 We use it a bit. We primarily use our main tool on that front is make or things like pipe dream or Whale Sink that have kind of broader sinking as opposed to just kind of narrow tools we use on like a couple projects that are like real specific.

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:05 We've used it.

Chad Burton 00:36:06 Yeah, because that's where we've we've leaned into Nan, although, what's got me really interested in Gemini in Google is the ability to use gems and all that. Right. Which is like. But like you were the what you were talking about with everything is changing and you want to have something that's a dependable platform. I feel like we're so early in this and people probably think, oh, we were we are three years into this whole four years because it was 20, 22 and it all just kind of changed. We're still at the big like just at the very, very beginning. We're at the finish line or at the starting, starting line of this. And but like building a sustainable platform, I feel like you all like you didn't you didn't mention Claude in any of your stuff. I think part of that is they don't have, like, this, this universe of things. Right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:36:54 So part of the reason why I landed where I have is and I've had this conversation with Claude, like, because I've my chat history is probably like real stupid on this topic because it's like, I know I talked to you about this a month ago.

Tyson Mutrux 00:37:10 I would like to revisit it and you know and I.

Chad Burton 00:37:13 Therapist.

Tyson Mutrux 00:37:13 Right. I know I had this conversation with Claude last week to say, you know, because it gives its recommendations. And, you know, I use different platforms for their recommendations because, you know, air tables, AI was like, yeah, you should definitely use Airtable. Obviously. Cool. Thanks. Thanks, Airtable. That's, they released a super agents platform that's, super agents. Com or something. That deep Research produces these really cool, presentations and documents on the whatever topic you want. Sure. So, I was asking, what platform should we use in the MSO concept? And yeah, of course it was like, you should definitely lead with Airtable. I'm like, cool. You know, Airtable does it.

Chad Burton 00:38:00 No, you worked with Airtable.

Tyson Mutrux 00:38:01 It does. And I, I give it like, here's the list of things I've used. Here's what I like about them. I don't like about them. Here's what I think is missing.

Tyson Mutrux 00:38:09 Here's what I want you to have. So I do that. I do the same analysis with all of them and just give them kind of this information. But, I did try to create a model under with Claude, with its skills and everything, and it's like, no, I'm not, it's not. You don't do this. You gotta because it doesn't have a database behind it. Right? And now we can make much more simple databases. We don't have to be so complex with formulas and different things because of AI, but you still need the database behind it. And to store, you know, your matters in some fashion or, you know, tracking leads. It doesn't have to be as complex like we've been wrestling with. one of our firms wants some very specific sales data, and, figuring out the right like the data behind it is, is there's years and years of it. We have manipulated it so it matches because of all the different platforms, but mixing it together from a traditional database perspective is messy and it breaks all the time.

Tyson Mutrux 00:39:16 and it was last week. I was like, well, why don't we just use AI for take the messy database like you've got for different solutions? We, you know, the overlay of AI, AI on it allows us to get to the same end result. It will probably. You know, the interesting part about it is there's a there's going to be a cost factor to it. Totally because.

Chad Burton 00:39:37 It's minimal.

Tyson Mutrux 00:39:38 It's minimal. And you know, notion with its release of custom agents yesterday they it's been in beta. I've been using it since they first caught wind of like got access to it and May 4th they're like you have to pay with credits. Well no shit at some point you have to pay for this, right. And people are losing their minds like, oh, that's not fair. What? Like why why can't you just charge me a little bit more a month? Like. No, this stuff costs money.

Chad Burton 00:40:05 This is this goes back to the whole Google problem that they created back in the early 2000 when they made it free and they went to this advertising model and everyone got spoiled on it.

Chad Burton 00:40:14 And then they expect everything to be free. But it's got to be paid for in some way.

Tyson Mutrux 00:40:18 You gotta. And if you do it well, you know, I was doing that when I just saw the pricing for the first time yesterday. Like you're, you're, you're in as I've talked with my firms on this like we're not we're, we're, you know, using tech. But really what we're building is workers. Sure. And you know, which is a hard thing to get your head around.

Chad Burton 00:40:38 Really hard for people to get into their head around, like.

Tyson Mutrux 00:40:40 You know, we're going to build you hundreds of workers that are doing these things. and the, and as I was doing the like the, the analysis on, like the cost piece of it, it may be we may pay thousands of dollars a month in agent credits, but that's okay because of the workers were getting out of it. You know, because you're also not hiring these, you know, people to do these, you know, tasks.

Tyson Mutrux 00:41:12 So I think it ultimately ends up being cheaper, but it's hard for people to get their head around the idea of, hiring tech to do work. This is different.

Chad Burton 00:41:26 All right. So you mentioned data and AI and all that. Are there any tools that you recommend when it comes to analyzing data?

Tyson Mutrux 00:41:35 Oh good question. So that's that's a broad one. I it depends on where it's stored because data could be.

Chad Burton 00:41:44 Let's say a spreadsheet. Right. Okay.

Tyson Mutrux 00:41:47 well in that scenario. So let's say it's a Google sheet. Gemini is good. Sure. Using, you know, any of the LMS, whether it's, Claude or, ChatGPT, I think any of those right now are good, and most platforms have something built into it where if you do have a database where, let's say Airtable, it has its ability to analyze it. Their notion is not known for the database component. It's kind of viewed as a, you know, a place to put your notes and, you know, a fun little creative place.

Tyson Mutrux 00:42:25 But it has a strong database background to it and can look at different sources. One of the reasons I landed on it, and this is not a notion, pitch or anything, but, with its AI, it will look at OneDrive, Google Drive, your email, your calendar, all the things that are out there. And when I have conversations with it and I'm kind of working on ideas, it will tell me like, well, you had this conversation in slack in 2024. It will cite to it and it will remember these things and it goes out and just finds this information. And so it can analyze. So when we're talking about analyzing data, there's the structured data. That's your spreadsheet type stuff. And then there's the other stuff out there that's all related to it. It's all about context at this point which is real fascinating. So dropping a spreadsheet into Claude is a great way to get started. Or dropping multiple spreadsheets in the cloud and say, hey, how do I reconcile these three things? And how do they fit together? And now create a new spreadsheet that does X, Y, and Z just does it.

Chad Burton 00:43:40 You know, there was a you told my data the there was a conversation in circle that, for the association the other day and they were talking about like analyzing evidence and it could be written discovery, whatever. But it was sort of shifted towards, you know, written discovery for Pi firms or evidence or for criminal defense firms and being able to analyze video and all that really quickly. So you're not watching eight hours of video, right? Are there any tools that you've seen? I think trial kit is one. I think they were a sponsor of Max icon. I don't I I'm pretty sure that they were they had come out there last year. I know that theirs was really, really good. Have you seen any other eyes out there that that that are good at analyzing, like, evidence or discovering?

Tyson Mutrux 00:44:26 The the video part? I don't have a good answer on that. I mean, I've dropped a video into the traditional LMS and it will, I mean, they want transcripts to make it a lot easier on it, but, as far as evidence is concerned, actually they were working on a couple weeks ago was disclosures.

Tyson Mutrux 00:44:51 You know, every state's got their thing. So discovery you're producing your, you know, pleading to go and your client's giving you a bunch of garbage and uploaded it to the file. You've got that eight page document that is eight pictures, and they.

Chad Burton 00:45:07 And those are the worst. Right.

Tyson Mutrux 00:45:09 Yeah. So you've got all this stuff and you've got to, you know, organize it, rename it base, label it and create the pleating. And there are, you know, startups that have done this. You know, there is Supriyo, which is mostly on in the plaintiff's world, did a little bit of family law work for a while, and they were working on disclosures. And a firm we work with was using that. And it struggled at first because it was early. This was a few years ago too. So it was kind of early. And they struggled with getting this stuff together. Sure. we did the same exercise last week with Claude and dropped a folder in and said, here's a template for the discovery.

Tyson Mutrux 00:45:52 Do it and it. Yeah. More words, but it Bates labeled it organized, renamed. created the pleading and it was great. And so that it was doing the kind of work of a paralegal. And then you could also ask it about the analysis of what's in there, too. I think the analysis part for documents is becoming real easy. Video, I think is harder. But, the, the document component to it is just becoming any of the platforms will do that. it's got to obviously be careful with making sure you're not sharing the information and.

Chad Burton 00:46:27 Click through all the click all the right buttons and click the.

Tyson Mutrux 00:46:29 Buttons and get over that issue and recognize that. But yeah, it's I think it's becoming real easy on that front where. So in that example, there was a startup that was trying to tackle this problem 2 or 3 years ago, and it was struggling with it. And now you can just be like, hey Claude, like just do this and it's a lot easier.

Tyson Mutrux 00:46:49 So I think it's just becoming easier and easier to do it.

Chad Burton 00:46:52 All right. So this is going to lead to the legal tech conversation that I wanted to have, because I think that the legal tech companies have a massive problem. They have a really massive problem that for some reason, private equity has not figured out where like they're dumping all this money in. But what seems to be the shift is away from these individual softwares, right. Let's say use Clio or File vine or practice Panther, you name it. Right. That's like a small, tiny component now of the overall system. Now the system seems to be okay for this thing over here. We're going to use a little bit of let's see we'll use N18 okay. We'll maybe use some make for over here. So we're kind of stringing things together to solve this overall firm problem. And the practice management softwares are now the smallest component out of all of it. And the things that they have to offer are not what we need. And so I wonder what your thoughts are because it there.

Chad Burton 00:47:57 And right now I can. I went out and did it. I was just playing around. I wouldn't use bolt. I took bolt, probably 3 or 4 months ago. I was like, I'm gonna see if I can rebuild. I can build a case management system that I like myself, and I did it. We're not using it. We're using it as a playground. Right? To to actually we'll build components in it. How do we like this? How do we like it fits with how do we how do we like how it fits with other things. And then we'll take that thing and put it into our software. Right. Because we built our own. So that's why I think that they've got a massive problem. I don't I don't know what your thoughts are on this.

Tyson Mutrux 00:48:28 I think well, I don't disagree with you, but it also is, you know, we are in a profession that is not going to ditch things that are comfortable. And it's I don't think it's reasonable that, you know, that firms are going to start all of a sudden, like, not everybody's going to build their own stuff.

Tyson Mutrux 00:48:48 I love that you build your own stuff. That's that's fun. And but it takes a lot of work. And, not everybody's interest in that. Most people are got into this to practice law to serve clients and, fill in the blank of other industries. Accountants, like doctors, like the MSO model were talking about it earlier. Yeah. They just want to treat patients. They don't want to deal with it. Like whether their coffee or lease needs to be renewed or firing a receptionist like, that's, they just get in and get out and do do the work. I think the, the real issue that we're starting last week or whenever Claude released the legal plug in and I forget was it was like $200 billion in value of legal tech software immediately after the legal plug, something.

Chad Burton 00:49:37 Like, I hear.

Tyson Mutrux 00:49:38 Who knows what that means? Yeah, whatever. The point is, though, like whether that's a real number or not, it means, oh, okay. Well, this what how is this going to play out? And the, And then it allows you to start comparing, you know, Clio work to Claude doing the same tools, and they're going to do different things.

Tyson Mutrux 00:50:00 And so you have to you get into what you're talking about, of you have to start figuring out what works best for you in very specific circumstances. And now you're using all the stuff we're going from this, you know, can you run your operation off of this one thing, Clio file vine because it used to be a file vine user, right? Yeah. And,

Chad Burton 00:50:22 I love vine. I still I like the people at File Vine.

Tyson Mutrux 00:50:25 Yeah, I mean, I, I saw a demo with a firm that was, you know, it's a they have like a platform that's industry agnostic. And they were thinking about file Vine and we, I watched the demo. I hadn't seen it in probably about a year. And I was like the the AI stuff they're doing, it fits nicely together. It looks really good. But at the same time, you know, demand letters now are medical. Medical. Like telling a person that you've lived and breathed this. But watching the amount of lawyers that have struggled with demand letters and medical records and how to summary and finding the right people to be able to do the work and all like even like a couple years ago, like I had firms that they were like, we can't get our medical records together and we can't find people to do this.

Tyson Mutrux 00:51:16 Well, now it's like it's clicking the button or not even clicking the button. It's just making sure the information is there and it just does it and it writes it and it's not. And that those are great looking features in Phil Vine, but anyone can do it without you. Drop it into your favorite little chat feature and it will get it done. So the interesting part is, and this is why that conversation I had earlier is like, can I just use you, Claude, to solve all these problems? It's like, no, I'm not there yet. I'm not. But it will be because you drop one legal plug in And that's what did that disclosure concept that I was talking about, analyzing the data, doing the paralegal work on things. I think yeah, it's it will shift and those that are, but everybody's positioned differently. So if you think about Cleo for example, they do payment processing. Now think about the the I remember at a Clio con years ago, Jack announced something like billions of dollars of invoices are getting processed through Clio every year.

Tyson Mutrux 00:52:23 Meaning like clients are paying law firms for billions of dollars.

Chad Burton 00:52:27 Well, they're using law pay at the time, right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:52:29 They would probably be using Lafayette, but now they're using Clio Pay. That's you know, you're going to run out of users for lawyers. Same with, you know, my case has always been this, you know, second class citizen, you know, behind Clio. Sure. Yeah. you know, right or wrong and, you know, with, Lapierre picking him up. You know, now you have payment processing. Sure. And so it's it's that part of the model isn't going away. You know, payment processing needs to be there for, you know, most firms that are, you know, on the plaintiff side, the. And so those models stand. So that's and they can experiment around it. It's those that are where a database with a nice front end and will manage your tasks. And you can see your clients all in one spot. Those are going to become less and less relevant real quick, because if they don't have a catch or a hook that allows keep somebody, they're like, why bother?

Chad Burton 00:53:33 You know, it's funny about my case.

Chad Burton 00:53:35 Every, every my case user that I know loves it. They love my case and they.

Tyson Mutrux 00:53:40 Love the client portal.

Chad Burton 00:53:41 Yeah. It's there's. And so I've always been surprised by the fact that it's not been more, more commonly adopted. I think what Cleo did that was the smartest thing that they did is they were early, but they kept their prices low. I don't know if their prices are earlier now, but I remember early on they were super cheap. And so they what they did is they built up this army of people. I'm assuming that Cleo is the most used platform. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I'm assuming that it is. Do you think it's probably. Probably is.

Tyson Mutrux 00:54:12 I feel like it is the largest one. Yeah.

Chad Burton 00:54:16 Yeah. So like they they probably have the biggest database of users. And so they kind of have all these people that they were able to build their platform on get better. And then they probably just I'm guessing they probably have increased their prices over time.

Chad Burton 00:54:30 which gives them just a massive advantage because a lot of the like, if you compare them to like the five lines of the world, five lines, pretty expensive. I mean, it's pretty expensive compared to a lot of the other platforms.

Tyson Mutrux 00:54:38 Yeah, and the Cleo is I'm trying to think with if you use like grow manage I want to say 150 ish a month. Cleo work is another 200, but that's legal research. That's replacing Westlaw and Lexis, which is going to be cheaper, or the Cleo work will be cheaper on that. but if you think about it from the standpoint of employee savings and time savings and efficiencies and stuff like, then it makes sense. You know, it's kind of like the with the custom agents and having to pay for AI credits if you're, you're kind of replacing other costs on it, but then you also have other models that are coming out or not coming out, but that exist where even up Eve, I think I think they're one of them I know is charging by case.

Chad Burton 00:55:38 I know that they spend a ton on marketing because they I get gifts from them and it's like, I like Not cheap stuff like their canvassing lawyers with gifts of stuff like holy crap. And I've not used them. I mean, like, they everyone that I talked to both about even even up and Eve, they, they say nice things about them. They say really good things about them. So it sounds like they're doing good work. I just know that they've got to be spending a ton of cash right now, right?

Tyson Mutrux 00:56:04 yeah, I it sounds like it. They they'll get you.

Chad Burton 00:56:07 Well, let me ask you this. Let's say you've got an 18 year old. I.

Tyson Mutrux 00:56:11 Do have an.

Chad Burton 00:56:11 18 year old graduate. Well, I'm going to give you. Okay, then let's stick with the 18 year old. I didn't know your. I know your kid was that old. Yes. Wow.

Tyson Mutrux 00:56:20 I know, that's crazy.

Chad Burton 00:56:22 Okay, so you gonna turn there like, I want to go to undergrad, and I want then I want to go to law school.

Chad Burton 00:56:27 Okay. What advice do you give to them?

Tyson Mutrux 00:56:32 My 18 year old you don't give any advice to because she knows everything.

Chad Burton 00:56:36 Well, I'm gonna make you give advice.

Tyson Mutrux 00:56:37 But what? I, She's actually thinking about this. She's thinking about marketing and then law school. It's kind of the latest that we've heard. the you know, the answer is, I don't know, because, I mean, we're watching it. We're watching these things evolve. But the gut feel right now is the the jobs that are going away are more or getting evolving even more are the legal systems and the paralegals, the case managers. Those are what are being, you know, really automated a way. You can't currently, you know, send a robot into court. You can't send them the negotiation piece. The analysis is getting helped out a lot. You know, if you've got some things, but the human interaction part, it's just all the roles are being narrowed down to. Can you really interact with humans? Well, and because we can, you know, have AI intake, call out and talk with adjusters or update your clients on things.

Tyson Mutrux 00:57:46 But when the real hard stuff occurs, you need to be able to handle the personal nature of things and the analysis of it that goes beyond. Because everything we're feeding in to AI right now is not an original thought, but it's, you know, it's only as good as what you're doing with it. You know, if you say, like, help me do this and you don't give it any context or whatever, like, it's not, you know, garbage in, garbage out kind of idea, right? but the smarter you are about it and the better you're able to analyze things and jumpstart it, the more helpful it's going to be for you. So I don't I mean, I think I think the profession, you know, if you were 18 now and, you know, four years from now, you're applying from law for law school. Have we changed that much? Probably not. Because part of the you know, the thing is like, you know, Institutionally, while private firms may evolve, the institution is not going to change.

Tyson Mutrux 00:58:46 Courts aren't going to just ditch all their local rules and say, you know, we should have a unified system that makes it really easy for people to file on their own. no. What state was it was. Tennessee. oh. Who did I see on this? it's always good to tell stories. You can't remember the details. The. I think as a court in Tennessee, or maybe the Supreme Court released some forms for, for, pro se litigants and, but they put all these rules on it. Made it kind of an unusable model. And I heard some I saw some lawyer on some social somewhere complaining about it. It's like, well, if you're trying to help people, but you're, you're making it impossible for to actually do like you're not solving the problem. So like.

Chad Burton 00:59:36 True.

Tyson Mutrux 00:59:37 Access to people for people without lawyers is not going anywhere. Like it's going to be a problem for a while. So institutionally, lawyers are still like aren't going anywhere, right?

Chad Burton 00:59:49 I do think you're going to have to necessarily you're going to have to have a shift towards ones that truly are going to depend on humans, like litigation type stuff.

Chad Burton 01:00:00 So criminal defense, family law, personal injury, like it's just it's going to by necessity. it does make me wonder what's going to happen with like, estate planning firms and, and things like that that are very transactional. Right. do you have any thoughts on that?

Tyson Mutrux 01:00:15 I mean, I think that probably goes faster, you know, because and that's not new, right? Because we've had, you know, the fight over legal zoom is decade plus old.

Chad Burton 01:00:28 True, right. It's probably two decades, too.

Tyson Mutrux 01:00:30 Yeah. yeah, I guess it would be the, you know, but, you know, lawyers haven't gone away on that front. You know, they're still needed. But the the complex nature of being able to solve your own problems now is a lot easier with AI. Sure. so I think that is, you know, going to be in that you've got e note or you've got all these other Covid kind of kicked off a lot of those things that allowed for remote, you know, concepts that now keep evolving.

Tyson Mutrux 01:01:02 So I think though probably those are more at risk. I mean, this is the the trick with all this is that it's, if it's I think if it's more transactional, you're probably more at risk.

Chad Burton 01:01:16 But all right, so let's wrap on this. I want to ask you, let's say you've got a law firm owner that comes to you and they want your best advice. They're a solo. They've got the experience and all that. and they want to build a national practice. Let's, let's let's go with, family law. Okay. That's. I think that may be more in your wheelhouse. I know you deal with other others too, but I think with family law might be the most in your wheelhouse. And they want to be like a national firm. What is your advice, knowing the the sort of the environment that we're in now? What is your best advice to them as to how to start? Like what's the what's the bedrock of their firm.

Tyson Mutrux 01:01:58 And the bedrock of their firm is, you know, having, you know, a a core infrastructure that works well for you in your own place.

Tyson Mutrux 01:02:09 Like, if you can't function in your own jurisdiction or have a successful practice out of the gate nationally, it's not going. You got to prove it first. If you if we're talking about starting from scratch, that's where you got to go. And, there's lots of different ways people can go about this, but I think, I think starting out, if you're new to the profession, you say like, hey, you know, or you're not established in your world. It's a hard one to do. the family formation firm I mentioned earlier. Those were, you know, eight of the leading firms around the country that joined together. That is a lot, you know. Well, it's more difficult and, you know, easier in some ways because you've got a lot of established folks that have that network. I think you got to, like, get yourself right first, because we've seen lots of lawyer referral matching websites and stuff because you're really like, you got to get your firm in place, and then you've got to build your network to figure out who you want to work with.

Tyson Mutrux 01:03:14 Because just because you want to build a national firm doesn't mean that you are like you're going to find the right people for it. You still have to have the humans everywhere, to be able to whether it's, you know, you have to have the boots on the ground from a license perspective. You have to know the right people. And if you match with subpar people. That's not going to go well for you, and you're just wasting money and time. So you got to establish yourself, which that's an old school, right? That's I didn't say like, you got to build some robots and things like you gotta you got to be established. Otherwise there's not the credibility there.

Chad Burton 01:03:52 I think consistency is boring, and boring is what wins. That's that's the reality of it. so. And I don't know if you're on Becca's list yet, but we'll get you on Becca's list. if people want to reach out to you, if they have, if they're interested in maybe the MSO model, how do they get in touch with you?

Tyson Mutrux 01:04:10 LinkedIn.

Tyson Mutrux 01:04:10 I'm just kidding. You can try if you want to see what I look like. Maybe 12 years ago. glasses, big or face other things. Chad, at modern law practice. Com is the best way.

Chad Burton 01:04:24 Perfect. Like I said, we'll get you on Becca's list. if anyone has questions for Chad, make sure you reach out to him. He's. He's great. I've known you for years, so I appreciate you doing this, man. Really great. Love it.

Tyson Mutrux 01:04:33 So fun. Thank you.