Maximum Lawyer

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

In this episode, Tyson interviews paralegal Haley Binkowski to talk about what law firm owners are really getting wrong behind the scenes, and what to do instead. Haley pulls back the curtain on how overpromising to clients, poor communication, and constant “progress” without proper implementation can create chaos and burnout for your team.


She shares how boundaries with both clients and attorneys protect quality work, why overreliance on call transcripts and AI summaries is causing a “time tax,” and how half‑implemented tools drain productivity instead of saving it. Haley also walks through the training gaps she’s lived through, how she’s building a multi‑media training system, and why regular check‑ins and game‑planning with your A‑players matter more than you think.


They wrap by tackling uncomfortable truths: relying too heavily on one superstar, letting C‑players linger, and how an owner’s mental health and pace directly spill over into every person in the firm. If you want your team to stay, grow, and actually like working with you, this episode is required listening.



In this episode, you’ll learn:
  • How overpromising timelines to clients quietly creates stress, mistakes, and resentment on your team.
  • Why overreliance on call transcripts and AI summaries is adding a “time tax” instead of saving time and what to do instead.
  • How to stop drowning your staff in half‑implemented tools and start rolling out tech with real training and ownership.
  • What great training looks like from a paralegal’s perspective, including multi‑media SOPs and in‑the‑flow tooltips.
  • How A‑players experience C‑players, and why failing to address underperformance pushes your best people out.
  • Simple ways to transfer authority from attorney to staff so clients respect and communicate with non‑lawyer team members.
  • The check‑in rhythms and conversations that make team members feel heard, supported, and willing to speak up before they burn out.
  • The uncomfortable truth about your mental health as an owner and why you need to slow down if you want a stable, high‑performing firm.


Highlights
  • 00:00 – Why Tyson wanted a paralegal to call out law firm owners
  • 00:54 – The number one thing: healthy boundaries with clients and attorneys
  • 02:59 – Over‑promising, “time tax,” and overreliance on call transcripts
  • 07:16 – New tech, tool overload, and half‑implemented systems
  • 09:29 – How to actually roll out and adopt new tools with the team
  • 10:42 – Getting real feedback from the people using tools every day
  • 12:02 – Shiny objects, duplicate tools, and wasted subscription spend
  • 13:51 – The training disaster: moving from estate planning to probate
  • 15:39 – Building ideal training: docs, visuals, and click‑by‑click videos
  • 17:16 – In‑the‑flow training: tooltips and instructions where work happens
  • 19:03 – Boundary violations: after‑hours asks and “just one more favor”
  • 22:24 – Capacity, marbles in the cup, and reassigning work
  • 25:21 – A‑players, C‑players, and the cost of not acting
  • 26:47 – What makes great employees feel respected and valued
  • 29:02 – Letting paralegals help design the game plan
  • 29:56 – Why good people still leave good firms
  • 31:26 – Transferring authority so clients respect non‑lawyer staff
  • 33:32 – What owners should start doing in the next 30 days
  • 34:59 – What owners should stop doing immediately
  • 36:01 – The one thing owners don’t want to hear: slow down

🔗 Join the Maximum Lawyer community: maximumlawyer.com


🎟️ Get your MaxLawCon tickets: maxlawcon.com
🔍 Vet your vendors: beccaslist.co

Maximum Lawyer helps law firm owners build businesses, not jobs.


Connect with Hailey
Email: haley@amymcgarrylaw.com


Resources:

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 (00:01)
All right, Haley, this is kind of an interesting one because I was telling Becca that the idea was this, that I really want to interview a paralegal and have them tell us that all the things that law firm owners are doing wrong. because the reality is that the things that we do ⁓ affect you all greatly. And what makes the difference between whether we're going to succeed and fail a lot of times has to do with

how happy the paralegals are and the assistants are and everything else. So I'm going to jump in with my questions because I want to get to as many of these as possible. here's where I mean, really kind of cut to the heart of it. What are some of the things that attorneys do that make your job harder than it needs to be?

Haley Binkowski (00:54)
There's quite a few. My biggest thing is creating healthy boundaries, whether that's with the team or it's with the clients. So on a personal level ⁓ between employee and attorney, there needs to be a respect for time to allow for quality control, you know, allow to

catch mistakes and make sure that we're not missing details. And then there also needs to be kind of this boundary between the attorney and the client. Clients always have this sense of urgency. Things need to get done right away. You know, we see that, especially now with Amazon being able to deliver things right away to your door. Clients kind of expect that from people now as well. So making sure that attorneys don't over promise on deadlines, you know, I'm going to get it to you by the end of today.

When I know, that's not quite possible, especially if you're already meeting with three or four other clients that day. So that's my biggest thing is just healthy boundaries in the workplace.

Tyson Mutrux (02:07)
So something that our case managers do, which I think is really funny, and it's not something I ever asked them to do, but they look at the transcripts of my calls with clients and they just double check to make sure that I've not over-promised something, which is pretty funny because I think attorneys are pretty bad about saying, because we have these aspirational goals, we want to get this done by a certain time, certain date, and in our brains, it's completely reasonable in reality, the people that are actually doing a lot of the

work, it's not. So I wonder if there's anything that you all have as as non-attorneys that you all have developed internally to sort of protect yourselves kind of like that like how our case managers look at the transcripts. Is there anything that you all have developed internally where you've ⁓ kind of shielded yourselves from some from some of those mistakes that the attorneys might make?

Haley Binkowski (02:59)
Absolutely. So this has been kind of a work in progress between me and my attorney. So I had switched over from doing estate planning to probate to very different work areas. ⁓ And when I kind of took it over, before I was presenting the case to my attorney or before I was setting up those appointments with my attorney and the client, I would tell my attorney, hey, I think A, B and C need to get done.

Here's what I think those estimated timelines are going to be. If you feel like the situation is more urgent, please tell me beforehand so that I can allot the appropriate time. And if things need to get moved around, please tell me if A, B, and C are more important or D, E, and F are more important. So setting kind of a list of priorities, but also knowing what that workload is going to be before my attorney sets it up with the client.

Tyson Mutrux (03:57)
So you had mentioned communication before. That's something I actually wanted to ask you about. I mean, you obviously gave the example of over-promising, but other than that, what are some examples of what bad communication from attorneys looks like?

Haley Binkowski (04:12)
So from client to attorney or attorney to client, there is often this level of legal speech ⁓ that my attorney kind of falls into. She will start getting on a roll talking about, especially with the estate planning documents, what certain documents mean. And then I go into like a signing and they're like, hey, like she explained it, but I didn't fully understand it. So now I'm in a signing.

having to kind of re-explain the documents in layman terms, ⁓ which kind of is a little bit of a waste of my time during the signing, but for the comfort of our clients, I still do it. And then from attorney to paralegal, ⁓ there is sometimes a lack in notes ⁓ and a reliance on those transcripts. So...

We've started recording all of our phone calls, which is wonderful. I love being able to backtrack and find out that information if something is missing. However, there has been this ultimate reliance on the transcripts and a decrease in note taking. And now I am having to go back almost every single time to go into the transcripts and find that information that I am missing. And that is a waste of my time. And then also if something isn't clear,

I'm having to then go and ask my attorney about 10 questions and there's that time tax. You know, those little questions take up time for both of us when we could be doing something else. And while we can, there are solutions to it. So we've been starting to feed that stuff into ⁓ private AI boxes to create better notes. Sometimes AI doesn't always get it right.

So there's still that time tax of going in being like, hey, this is what I have from our private chat. Can you just make sure that everything is correct? Or I'm still having to go back through the transcript to make sure things are right.

Tyson Mutrux (06:13)
I cringed a little bit whenever you said that because I am totally guilty. I will tell you my notes are very minimal and then the transcript, I rely on the transcript. Before I would rely on the Ring Central, we've switched from Ring Central, but I would rely on their note summary and it was garbage. It would not summarize, it was like it was another call or something. It was the wildest thing. So I think that's a really good one. I think that that's a...

those of you attorneys out there, you're over relying on your transcripts. And I like the idea of the time tax too. I think that's a really good thing to point out. So now here's the thing. This is a great segue into another thing wanted to ask you about. Because I actually thought transcripts was something that would be super helpful. it sounds like it might not be as helpful as I thought.

Haley Binkowski (06:58)
Okay, thanks a lot.

Tyson Mutrux (07:06)
Are there some other things that attorneys are doing that they think they're being helpful with but actually creates more work or confusion for you other than the transcript thing?

Haley Binkowski (07:16)
Yeah, and this is more personal to our office. I know a lot of other law firms have the reverse problem. My attorney loves progress. She loves looking at all the new tech. She loves trying to find the next best thing to make our jobs easier. However, there is such a drive for progress that implementation of this technology isn't seen all the way through. ⁓

we're not receiving full training on it or we're not using every feature. So we have kind of put a stop to it. We kind of all had a meeting and we were like, Hey, like we love this. We love that you want to make our jobs easier. However, there needs to be some kind of step in the middle before we fully implement this. So whether that's going to the office manager and one of our more tech savvy paralegals and saying, Hey, do the demo on this product. You know, most of these companies offer free demos.

Let's do the demo. Let's see if it's worth it. Let's see the people who are using it every single day, if they find it worth it. And if it is, then we'll work more on implementing it, but we're not going to implement more than one tool at a time. And if we're switching systems, we're going to wait until that system is fully switched over. Especially if you have people who aren't as tech savvy in the office, implementing multiple tools at the same time can actually decrease their work product because they're getting frustrated.

trying to learn all these new tools and it's taking them longer.

Tyson Mutrux (08:47)
This is a great topic because the question I hear all the time is like, how do you get your team to adopt these tools? Yada, yada, yada. I do wonder, like, so let's say you've had that initial meeting where the attorney has done it right, where they run this tool by you. You're like, OK, yeah, great. This will work. Let's implement this.

That is, there's a big gap between that point and then actually full adoption for the full team. So do you have any advice for us on how to get the team, to get them on board with whatever new tool it might be? It may not even be a tech tool, maybe something outside of tech, but any advice on adoption for the employees?

Haley Binkowski (09:29)
Yeah, so I generally recommend having one person be in charge of the adoption process, know, creating the training material, one or two people creating the training material and then schedule a time in the workday or plan for a working lunch and have people have everyone sit in on it and have that one or two people go through everything. Be like, okay, this is what the tool is for. Here's all the different features it can do.

here is how we're going to implement it. Here's the general tasks that need to happen on a regular basis, and here is how it's going to integrate with our other tools. So if you're adopting a new phone system and the transcripts now need to be saved, know, walking them through that process.

Tyson Mutrux (10:17)
When it comes to getting feedback from you all, features that you want, and the way I always kind categorize features are things that we need to have, things that we want to have, and things that would just make it amazing, like just blow your doors off. I do wonder, what's the best way of getting feedback from you all about tools that you want or features that you want?

Haley Binkowski (10:42)
So it depends on the individual. I know there's some people in the office who are very relaxed and just very go with the flow. You don't want to find the person who's a little bit more, I don't want to say high strung, but someone who's a little bit more demanding of the features or someone who is in there all the time. So previously I was handling all of the document augmentation programs. So we were using ⁓ NACLY.

And my boss was like, hey, there's all these other document documentation programs out there. You know, what does NACLY do that you like and what does it do that you don't like? You know, find that person who's in it every single day and just kind of start picking their brain.

Tyson Mutrux (11:28)
How guilty are we of adopting tools that we think are going to be super helpful, even if they're fully implemented and they're not, like they're not helpful at all. I'm probably guilty of that myself, but ⁓ so you work with Amy McGarry, she's been a long time.

guild and now association members. I do wonder, and so this is maybe more specific to Amy, how guilty is she of adopting tools that she thinks are gonna be super helpful and then ultimately there's not? Because it's just not a tool that you won't need.

Haley Binkowski (12:02)
Very guilty, very, very guilty. Um, and that is why we kind of set up that process of she needs to have someone else approve it before she gets it because she was getting these programs and then we were kind of like testing them out. Things were being halfway implemented, like I said, and it just, things weren't working out or we were like, Hey, you want it for these reasons. However,

You know, this program already does that. We're just not using.

So she's very guilty and it's thankfully calmed down a little bit now that we've put that stop check in there.

Tyson Mutrux (12:46)
Well, it's good too because things like that can also run up cost too. next thing know, you've got a bunch of things that you're spending money on that you're even using. So it's smart to have someone else look at things too. Second eyes, because I'm guessing, because I'm guilty of this too, I'm guessing that Amy's probably signed up for things that she completely forgot about and that you had to later on go ahead and cancel. That's my assumption because that's how I am.

Haley Binkowski (12:52)
Yes.

Yes, yes. Our office manager, Sydney, ⁓ when she kind of fully stepped into her role as office manager was going through the expenses and she's like, you're paying for this, you're paying for that. She said, we're not even using those anymore. And then you've been talking about getting off this program for like over a year now. Let's actually get off that program.

Tyson Mutrux (13:12)
Yeah

I think it's a common problem. Let's talk about training a little bit, because I think training is, to me, it's extremely important. It's one of the most important things you can do as a law firm owner. But what do you think are the biggest gaps you see in how law firms train their teams?

Haley Binkowski (13:51)
Having ready to go training material. So I had mentioned before, I had moved from estate planning to probate. And I did not have the luxury of having a complete training manual or having the luxury of sitting down with the previous employee who was doing probate. So I was going from one area to a completely different area and having no idea of what I was doing. I hadn't even been cross-trained.

I had some very minimal contact with it and that was about it. So Amy had me sit across her desk for about three straight weeks for eight hours a day. Just every time she asked me to do something, okay, here's a million questions about why I'm doing that, what I need to do. And that could have been eliminated if I had had proper training material. There had been CLEs.

that had been thrown my way and those only offer so much information, especially considering that most CLEs are general based. It's hard to find state specific ones that are going to offer you enough detail to really get you to be able to do the job.

Tyson Mutrux (15:07)
I mean that's definitely not even scalable either. mean doing that with every single new pilot. To me that's a nightmare. I wonder if you could go back, so imagine you're going through that transition again where you're switching from one role to the next. If you could design the ideal training module, like what does it look like? Is it video based, text based, audio based? I mean what's the platform? Like give us, I want to know the scoop on what the ideal training platform looks like for you.

Haley Binkowski (15:39)
Absolutely, and that's actually something I am in the process of doing right now. ⁓ So I have pretty much created just one large master document and there's going to be multiple parts of this program. So there's obviously the basic knowledge, but along with that basic knowledge, there needs to be a why. Why are we doing this? Why are these the steps? Provide examples as to how these come into play. So.

why we're doing in test date versus test date, what is self-proof, what are all these different terms, how do they affect our probate, and then having either picture diagrams of our filing systems, how does the document automation programs work, having picture examples, and then there are training programs out there like Scribe where you can screen record and it records per click.

setting those up so that people have a video and a step-by-step process of what that's going to look like and how things should be entered. But I think having a multimedia training material is going to be the best option because people learn differently. So I'm an experienced person. I want that hands-on experience. I want to be able to see what I'm doing. Other people, like one of our law clerks, he's a reader. He wants to read everything.

So being able to kind of provide that training in a way that's going to work best for everyone is going to be the best option.

Tyson Mutrux (17:16)
Let me give you a tip that it's something we just started implementing a lot more than what we did before. Because we just built out our own case management system. we started adding, and this was a suggestion from my Amy, so my wife, but also our COO. And she's like, it would be really cool if you could like.

where certain things are in a file, you could click on something and you could see the training. So we've started adding tool tips all over the place inside of tasks, inside of actual files themselves that adds all these different things. So let's say you had questions on negotiations, right? So there's a tool tip for negotiation. There's a tool tip for the different types of insurance. And I mean, it's a full training module. So it's not just like, you know, like three paragraphs. I mean, it is a, you click on it's a full training module. It's really cool.

So that's just a little bit of give you a little bit of advice for me that as you're as you're developing that like put the trainings where they're needed that is that is just like I'll give you a more physical example of how that works and this is something I'd I'd seen a video about this years ago, but is this guy he owned like this manufacturing company and they put instructions everywhere. So let's say you're at the copier and you it says to you the copier is out of paper.

Well, have right there on the copier instructions on how to load the copier with the paper and where is the paper? The paper should be right next to the copier. All these kinds of things. So we in developing this case management system, we have been putting these tool tips in places like that with all those types of explanations so people know how to do all the different things instead of having to go back to the training manuals. It's been really, really helpful. So just want to give you that advice.

Haley Binkowski (19:03)
Yeah, absolutely, no, that's super helpful. because we use Airtable, we should be able to do that pretty easily. That's a wonderful tip.

Tyson Mutrux (19:13)
All right, so let's talk a little bit. We're going to go back to something you talked a little bit earlier. And it was about boundaries because I want to talk more about boundaries. So there is a I was actually just talking to an associate number two weeks ago where he had an issue. It's the same issue that I was having with an attorney a year ago where the attorney one of the attorneys in the firm was like

calling and texting employees at night needing things, right? Which was a clear, like that was a clear violation of boundaries. That's against our own policies and so this is something I had to deal with. was something that the association member had to deal with. And it can be a little sticky situation because the attorney thinks it's absolutely necessary. But obviously the case manager or the paralegal, they're thinking, well, I'm spending time with my family. I don't need to be bothered with this.

deal with my family but I do wonder though are there times where we cross the boundaries and we don't realize it we think that everything's good to go there's no issue with it but I guess how do what are some examples of where we think we think we're doing good we think that it's not no big deal but in reality it's really crossing the boundary

Haley Binkowski (20:36)
Yeah, I mean from personal experience, I haven't had Amy reach out to me out of ⁓ office hours if it wasn't like for a personal thing. ⁓ But I think where she feels guilty is assigning several urgent tasks at the same time or there is this sense of going the extra mile and which is not always feasible. So

For example, we have a lot of elderly clients and sometimes getting to our office is really difficult, which is totally fine and we make those adjustments, but we should be making those adjustments within office hours. ⁓ There have been a few instances where we have had to put our foot down and she's been like, hey, can you go to their house at like 6 p.m.? Now I have a daughter who's three years old and I don't want to sacrifice that time with her.

So I've had to put my foot down and be like, no, I'm not gonna go to the client's house at 6 p.m. Even though 6 p.m. is a reasonable time to make a house visit, it's outside of office hours. I was like, I can visit them during office hours. Or if you would like, could go during lunch. But after hours times is family time. Beyond that, I haven't had too many personal experiences with too much boundary pushing as far as time-wise.

Tyson Mutrux (22:07)
Good, I think that's a really good thing. Are there other times where maybe Amy crosses another boundary? Maybe it's not time-wise, but other boundaries where she doesn't even realize it?

Haley Binkowski (22:24)
There's been project expectations that...

there just not been like capabilities there to complete that project. And it's, let's use QuickBooks for example. So there was a specific project in QuickBooks that needed to happen and she had asked me and I was like, I don't have any QuickBooks training. She's like, well you'll figure it out. And I was like, ⁓ unfortunately that's not going to happen.

Tyson Mutrux (22:54)
You

Haley Binkowski (23:01)
⁓ Insane thing, had to put my foot down and be like, okay, you have someone else who is QuickBooks trained. Let's move that project to them. Let's see if they can complete it because I'm in the process of doing other things and I don't have the training. And there have been times where I haven't been the one to set the boundary. It has been someone else in the office to set the boundary, be like, okay, this person has about 20 marbles in their cup and they can't hold.

21. But this person only has 10 marbles in their cup. So let's maybe put that extra marble in the cup with 10 versus the one with 20. Or if let's say the person who has 20 marbles in their cup is getting overwhelmed and their cup is starting to overflow and they can't take another task, let's start divvying out those projects to the people who can take them.

Tyson Mutrux (23:55)
Okay, this is a great topic. I had not planned to talk about this, but this is great. ⁓ I know that I've been guilty of it in the past. I've got, luckily, people that are a buffer that prevent this from happening now. we're a firm believer in hiring A players and only A players, but sometimes people can turn from an A player to a B player to a C player. That can happen over time.

It just does. ⁓ Sometimes there's no explanation. Sometimes it's personal reasons, whatever. ⁓ there can be a tendency to basically rely too much on one person. And sometimes that's because you might have a teammate that is not performing at the right level. And then the firm doesn't do anything about it.

Like, so you've got the, let's say the C player, you've a C player in the firm, not pulling their weight. You've got the A players pulling their weight, but they're just, they've got the 25 marbles in their cup and they're really, their limit's 20. So from your perspective, and I'm assuming you're an A player, otherwise Amy wouldn't have recommended you for the show, so.

How frustrating is it to you to see the C player, and we're not going to pick on anybody specific, and this could be at another firm too, but how frustrating is it for you as an A player to see this C player, nothing being done with this C player, and you and the other A players pulling all the work, or doing all the work.

Haley Binkowski (25:21)
It's extremely frustrating. ⁓ And there's certain times where you can make allowances and there are times where you can't make allowances. ⁓ And now Amy's office is the first law firm that I've worked for, but I have done retail jobs and I've done customer service jobs and I've seen it in other workplaces. It's not even entirely specific to law firms. There's always going to be A players, B players, C players.

And it's always going to be frustrating for that A player and even the B player to see the C player not pulling their weight. And I think there needs to be a certain level of openness amongst the law firm owner, office manager, attorney, whoever it is that's going to be managing that and the A players and the B players and the rest of the team just to be like, Hey, I'm a little frustrated. I've noticed these things going wrong. I have

these projects and just have a game plan before you go into these meetings. You know, you're not there to pick on them. You're not there to point out all of their flaws, but you, if you are struggling with the workload you have and you're seeing something that your boss isn't, it might be time to bring that up.

Tyson Mutrux (26:39)
What would you say makes you feel respected and valued as an employee?

Haley Binkowski (26:47)
Listening. Listening is one of the biggest things I love. ⁓ I love when I know that Amy is listening to me because she acknowledges. She may hear the issue that I'm saying and whether she agrees with it or not, she will tell me. She is acknowledging that I see an issue and she is either going to tell me why she agrees, why she doesn't agree.

And or if we need to observe it a little bit longer, ⁓ listening, acknowledgement, and then game planning. Game planning, strategic planning, however it may be, if there are issues that I'm seeing or I'm experiencing, I want to game plan how to solve those problems. Whether I already have a game plan or I'm going to her, which I recently did, I was like, hey, you know,

Tyson Mutrux (27:25)
like that.

Haley Binkowski (27:42)
We have a law court going out to go study for the bar and I'm about to take on all of his cases. I need an assistant. I need someone to come in, back me up because that's a lot of cases for one person to take. and so at that point she was like, okay, let's bring in Sydney. Let's, let's talk about how to fix this issue. ⁓ there's been other times where I'm like, Hey, I'm experiencing this issue with the client. And she's been like,

She's like, that's not really something we can fix. It's kind of something we just have to deal with. But you know, if you want to reduce communication because you're having issues, let's maybe see if one of the people at the front desk can handle communications and we can reduce it just a little bit. Or if someone's being really difficult, know, Amy's going to handle all the communication from now on and they're just going to have to wait a little bit to fit into her schedule.

Tyson Mutrux (28:37)
I love the idea of the game planning because, well, one, can tell you as an employer, I love whenever an employee comes to me and they come up with a plan. I think it's just, it says a lot about them, but it's just great. But I can also imagine as an employee being a part of that plan where you can round table it and you're part of the process. It's got to mean quite a bit to you whenever they actually come to you and they want, they want your input on it.

Haley Binkowski (29:02)
Yeah, absolutely. I find that game plans actually work better when you're involving the people who are going to be carrying out that game plan on a day-to-day basis, because the attorney is not always going to be involved in that. So the attorney may have a concept of how that process works, but isn't experiencing it on a day-to-day. Whereas if you bring the paralegal into that game plan, the paralegal is going to be able to say, hey, actually, I do this on a day-to-day basis. ⁓ Whereas you think this is happening.

and that's not happening or that's not how it works or that's not how the communication with the clients work. So let's actually try to implement this instead or let's rethink that a little bit.

Tyson Mutrux (29:46)
From your experience, why do you think that employees leave a good firm or good company?

Haley Binkowski (29:56)
I've seen a few different reasons. ⁓ Oftentimes it can be personal. Their expectations of what the job is doesn't match up with what they thought it was going to be in their head. It could be that it's more work. It could be that the time requirements aren't quite what they thought it was going to be, or they're transitioning from doing a waitressing job to a paralegal job where the hours are set. ⁓ There is also...

difference in the way that clients talk to us as legal professionals ⁓ versus how they would interact in other businesses. I've seen that people get really frustrated and I always have to remind them, hey, these clients are coming from really hard situations.

If someone's hiring an attorney for something, usually means that something's gone wrong or they need help or there's something that they just don't understand. So having that empathy and compassion upfront with them is really important. And yes, they can, it can be frustrating sometimes. And yes, their emotions get the better of them sometimes, but we have to, we have to approach this with an open mind and consideration of where they're at in life. Yeah, there's, there's a million reasons, but I find that

Either the workload is just too much or client communication is just a little hard to take sometimes.

Tyson Mutrux (31:26)
So I've noticed that there is a difference in the way they talk to me and attorneys and to other, like non-attorneys. So like the way they talk to me versus the case manager is completely different.

Haley Binkowski (31:29)
Here we

Tyson Mutrux (31:40)
That could be, they could be rude to the case manager. They could be, they just maybe don't want to talk to the case manager. They just want to talk to the attorney. So how can we do a better job as attorneys of sort of over some of that authority to the paralegals, to the case managers, to the non-lawyer staff, so that the clients trust them enough to actually speak to them and speak to them respectfully.

Haley Binkowski (32:06)
Yes. So I have found that one of the biggest things Amy can do when she's initially talking to clients during the initial meeting is to say, hey, this is my paralegal. You're going to be talking to her on a regular basis. She is my trusted advisor in these matters. She's going to be relaying all communication to me. And before you see me, you're going to be talking to her. ⁓

Having that attorney vocalize that they have that trust in the paralegal often eases the client's mind. Sometimes if they're going in and they've never talked to me before or they've only had like a 15 minute conversation with me in which I'm going, this is a pre-screening. I'm going to run all this information by my attorney first. They may be like, ⁓ she doesn't know what she's doing or, you know, she's only like a step in the road. ⁓ Having that vocalized trust is really important.

Tyson Mutrux (33:05)
That's really good. All right, a few more questions. And I like these three questions. So I want to make this really helpful for people that are listening to this or that are watching this. So if a law firm owner wanted to make their team happier and more effective in the next 30 days, what would you tell them to start doing immediately?

Haley Binkowski (33:32)
I would say...

regular check-ins. And I know that's very broad, but a check-in may mean something different to each employee. So sit down and just ask them, how are you doing? How is work going? Are there things piling up outside of work that I may not be seeing that's affecting and you may need to ease back a little bit. Let's see how you are feeling and how you are doing. Is there something that's giving you a hard time?

case-wise that, you we can address. ⁓ We have weekly sit downs with Amy. Every Wednesday I sit down with Amy and I have an hour to two hours of her time, whether that's to go over cases or that's just to sit down and chat a little bit about life. know, my daughter just got potty trained. Woo, yay, that's one more thing off of my plate. You know, I feel less stressed at work because I don't have to worry about diapers, you know? ⁓

Just little things like that. It means a lot to ⁓ employees when their boss checks in. It shows that you care.

Tyson Mutrux (34:45)
Okay, so let's do the flip of that. What is something they should stop doing immediately?

Haley Binkowski (34:59)
I should say a lot about Amy that I don't have something like right off the top of my head. ⁓ Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (35:03)
That is good, yes.

Haley Binkowski (35:11)
Stop taking yes or no's as a blanket statement. ⁓ If someone says no or if someone says yes, explore it a little bit more, but don't just expect that to be the whole answer. ⁓ I know in personal settings, no, can be a whole sentence. In a professional, though, ⁓ no needs to be explained. ⁓ So let's explore it a little bit more.

Tyson Mutrux (35:39)
Okay, I like that one. I think that's really wise advice. I like that a lot. ⁓ Final one, okay. Let's say you got to sit down with every law firm owner for five minutes and you could tell them one thing they probably don't want to hear, but they need to hear it. What would it be?

Haley Binkowski (36:01)
Slow down. I had this conversation with Amy. Slow down. ⁓ The mental health crisis in the legal world is very well documented and I often find that the mental state of your attorney directly impacts the mental state of the office entirely. If your attorney is stressed and unhappy and overwhelmed

the rest of the office is going to be stressed and unhappy and overwhelmed. So if you find that the workload you've taken on is too much, or you know, there's just too much going on, slow down. Take one less case that week. You know, maybe see if you can get help or you need to redistribute work in a different way. But slow down.

Tyson Mutrux (37:00)
great advice. ⁓ It's really, really good. In other words, attorneys, you're stressing out your team. Your team's not stressing you out.

Haley Binkowski (37:07)
Hehehehehe

Tyson Mutrux (37:10)
Very good. Well, Haley, thank you so much for doing this. Really appreciate it. ⁓ I've learned a lot just in this short amount of time talking to you. I think it's really good. I've learned a lot about myself, to be honest with you too, about, maybe I shouldn't be doing those things. So really appreciate doing this. Tell Amy I said hello and thank you for coming on. If people want to reach out to you and say hello and basically just say, hey, thanks for coming on or asking you questions about things, how can they get in touch with you?

Haley Binkowski (37:22)
you

Absolutely, they can email me. ⁓ Do you want me just to say my email?

Tyson Mutrux (37:43)
Sure, go for it.

Haley Binkowski (37:45)
Yeah, so my email is Haley H-A-L-E-Y at Amy McGarry Law dot com. is A-M-Y-M-C-G-A-R-R-Y-L-A-W. So Haley at Amy McGarry Law dot com.

Tyson Mutrux (38:02)
we'll put it in the show notes as well so people will have it. Thank you Haley, really appreciate it.

Haley Binkowski (38:06)
Perfect.

Thank you so much, Tyson.