Building Better Systems for Your Law Firm with Jason Ebbens

Jason: I'm going to be brutally honest on this. Coming into a retreat, I dread it. I do every single time. But at the end of it, I am more recharged than I have been in the past three months since the last retreat. I think it's just because it's such a long day, but so much gets done. And I'm exhausted at the end, but so happy to be exhausted.

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Melissa: Welcome to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. Thank you for tuning in this week again. We have from Jeff Lewis Law, Jason Ebbens.

Jason: Hello. 

Melissa: Thank you so much for being on this podcast. 

Jason: Of course. I'm excited to be here. 

Melissa: I am excited too. You're the main man behind Jeff Lewis and Jeff Lewis Law, meaning you're the ops guy. 

Jason: Yes. 

Melissa: But you are also a very experienced paralegal, which is what you used to do, and you sort of morphed over time. 

Jason: Yes, yes.

Melissa: So, yeah, maybe share a little bit about that, how long you've worked with Jeff, what that journey's been like, and where you are now. 

Jason: So I've been a paralegal for about 15 years altogether. I've been with Jeff for 14 years now. We debate the year how long because he always just says 15 or 20. And so yeah, I think it's 14 now. I've been with Jeff. But yeah, I started out as a regular paralegal. I was still pretty brand new at that time. I had only been a paralegal for two years or so and gained my skills and all that kind of stuff. But then I have management experience from other jobs in the past before I was a paralegal. 

And that kind of just melded into what I do today because I was just, I know what to do. So I took over the operations of the firm, and it's been a great experience since I kind of took over because now I can see more on what's going on and I understand more, and I think it helps the firm move forward.

Melissa: Absolutely. You were, you were always like the linchpin behind the scenes when I first met Jeff, but he mentioned on his episode that he didn't really bring you into the fold of the work that we were doing with Jeff and for the firm until at least a couple years. 

Jason: It was like, yeah, maybe three years ago. 

Melissa: Like you've been… 

Jason: Three and a half. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah, I think it has, it's definitely been over three years, I think, now. And that did make all the difference because you were the person behind the scenes that was running the reports that he would provide and, but then in retreats, we would try to be figuring certain things out, and it's like calling you. So eventually, and to your point, you were more of a manager. Like that was starting to happen naturally, so it just made sense. 

Jason: Because it wasn't just me and Jeff anymore, because we were, you know, hiring paralegals and hiring a new attorney. So there was more people to manage, beside just myself at the time. 

Melissa: Yes. Yeah, definitely. And just at the outset, because I don't want to forget to say this later, you're a really good manager. 

Jason: Oh, thank you.

Melissa: The way that you work with people and help get them up to speed, you, I don't know, it's just obvious to me when we talk about the conversations that you do have, just how you care that the team is supported, that they have what they need, and you have expectations. And also, I think I've seen you on a journey just getting a little firmer in a great way about expectations, where there's accountability and stuff like that, that they've responded really well to. 

Jason: Absolutely. In a former life, I wanted to be a history teacher. So I can still kind of do that today because of that, with the management of the people. So I really enjoy it. I really do. 

Melissa: Yeah, very cool. Well, we talked to Jeff on the episode about, which you were sitting right here for, so you saw the whole thing. But for the listeners, we talked to Jeff on his episode about AI and how you're using it in your workflows.

But what I realized in that conversation, even before we started recording that conversation was, when it comes to understanding and discerning the tools you want to use and how you want to use them from a privacy standpoint, you had a big hand in helping get that understanding so that you guys felt confident with the path you were going to take. 

I would love to hear, I can ask more specific questions, but I think I would just like to hear how you approached that and what did you learn that made you comfortable with what you chose. 

Jason: So I'll start with we ended up choosing Claude. And I just basically looked at them all, and I looked at what type of security that they would have. None of them are HIPAA compliant. That's, you got to know that at the very beginning. But there's different levels based on how much you spend with them. So there's, we ended up choosing Claude because they had higher encryption. 

So when you get into the team's tier, you get better encryption, and it's like, it's far and away above even their next tier down. So that was a huge, oh, that's awesome. That's a green flag for me to go.

ChatGPT, at the time at least, didn't have anything like that. So that was, it was a no-go. I didn't feel comfortable putting any type of files or anything into ChatGPT, even if it was a public record. Because there's sometimes where the ChatGPT is training on your information, and you can turn it off, but it's automatically set to on, whereas Claude in the team's tier is automatically set to off. It does not train on your information at all. You have to explicitly say train on my information. So that was another green flag. 

Melissa: What are the rules, so to speak, for your team? And what's in my head is that whatever you say right now may change, because everything changes so quickly. But for where you are right now, what are the rules that they have to abide by? 

Jason: So everybody knows that we don't put any client information into Claude. Claude's really good at segregating out what folders it can use. It explicitly asks, "Are you sure you want to do this?" and things like that. And we don't connect it to our client files. Claude has its own documents file that it uses, and it stores everything that it has, and we can put things into that folder that we want. So it's completely segregated. 

Melissa: Meaning the folder is where? 

Jason: It's on your computer. 

Melissa: And you give it access. 

Jason: It's locally on your computer. It's not stored in the cloud at all.

Melissa: Got it. 

Jason: And everybody knows not to connect it to the OneDrive or the SharePoint or whatever, you know, we're using at the time. 

Melissa: Is that like the main thing? 

Jason: That is the main thing, yeah, because we don't want to have client information on this on any AI. But I do feel a lot more comfortable putting public filings into Claude now with that extra step of encryption. So. 

Melissa: So, that's for Claude. I'm guessing the other AI tools you use check the boxes because they're really meant for law. Is that fair to say? 

Jason: On, like CoCounsel and things like that? 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Jason: Absolutely, because it's the hallucinations when it comes to the CoCounsel. And Clearbrief, we use Clearbrief a lot. I use it a lot because it'll tell me, "Oh, this case can't be found. You might want to look into it." And sometimes it's just that they're not on the same type of server that we are for California law. Little things here and there. But yeah, it's all about making sure that every case site is real and says what it says. And Clearbrief will tell you that, "Oh, hey, it's real, but it might not be saying what you think it says." 

Melissa: Are there any friction points for your team as they're adopting AI? Like, what do you notice? I mean, they're used to working a certain way. You're asking them to work a little a different way, which arguably in many cases is easier to work this way, but it's still a behavior change. Have you experienced friction with the adoption and making sure everybody, it's their new normal? 

Jason: Not friction per se, hesitance, because the people in our office are very cognizant of the privacy part because of that presentation that Jeff gave that, you know, he tried to scare us all. 

Melissa: Were you there that day? 

Jason: Yes, I was. Yes. 

Melissa: Okay, will you give the listeners a little rundown of that? Because he doesn't normally scare them in that way. 

Jason: No, not at all. All it took, honestly, was him not joking all along the entire way. Because you know Jeff, he's a congenial guy, always making jokes, things like that. When it got to the serious parts, he stopped joking. And I think everybody could feel the shift in the room, like, "Okay, we need to pay attention right now." That's all it took, really. Yeah. But then at the end, it's like, "Okay, we're going to, if this happens, we're going to write you up," and up to termination. And Jeff does not throw the word termination around almost at all. So yeah. I knew it was coming, so I wasn't shocked really, but. 

Melissa: But it's good. I mean, you kind of, you really need to set the tone for what you're entering into. 

Jason: And now we have people going back to the no friction that are overcautious. That's the, I guess the friction that I'm finding is that some are overcautious. 

Melissa: Okay, got you. 

Jason: Yeah. Like somebody didn't want to connect Office 365 to it. 

Melissa: Okay. 

Jason: Because he was overcautious. And I'm just like, "Oh, well, we need to have that." I'm really disappointed that you don't have that at this point, because I use it almost exclusively for checking documents, you know, for grammar and punctuation and things like that. So. 

Melissa: Something else I want to talk to you about, other than AI, because you're really into it and it's making a big difference, I think, in your firm, is Black Box design. 

Jason: Oh, yeah.

Melissa: Someone that you've learned from, his name is Andrew Zihmer from Vertex League. I would love to have him on the podcast someday. But maybe share with folks what you've learned and what you're implementing, because you've been having a lot of fun digging in. 

Jason: It's been the most fun that I've had in a long time. You know, law office can, it can get mundane, and this was something completely new that I could just dive into and wrap my head around. So the basic premise is when you think about AI, it's garbage in, garbage out, right?

So what this Mr. Zihmer has done is created these black boxes where, you know, there's an input in this side, and then there's a bunch of boxes inside that goes through processes and workflows, and it's multiple different things, and it's all, and it can be all automated, and at the end, it spits out what you want. 

So his first thing is to say, you know, you start at the end. Here's what you want to have. So for instance, I've created an intake black box. And at the end, we want it to be a signed client retainer. But within that box is everything that goes into getting that client signed from the moment that they contact us all the way through to signing. And it even accounts for everything that doesn't happen, clients that drop us, ghost us, or clients that we can't represent because this is not our area of law. There's different processes and things that get done within the black box that automatically are done, and you don't have to think about it too much. 

So we use, in conjunction with Notion, we use Zapier, so it's all automated, and all of our information is saved in Notion in a database. And so we can go back and look and say, "Oh, well, this person got us from ChatGPT. Okay, well, how many other people are getting us from ChatGPT and, you know, how are they getting us in those search results?" So all the data that we're pulling in gets put into a database, and it's all there for you. 

Melissa: In Notion? Your database is in Notion? 

Jason: In Notion. Yes. 

Melissa: Because you guys use Notion quite a bit. 

Jason: Okay. 

Melissa: Wow. And is it done? 

Jason: The intake box, yes, we're in the iteration point now. So it's, it's completely done. It's working. It's being used by our administrative assistant because she's the one that, you know, basically does all the leads. And we're in the iteration point because there's with such a big project, there's going to be problems here and there. And as she's coming up against them, she's letting me know and I fix them. So. 

Melissa: Okay, very cool. 

Jason: Oh, I'm so excited because there's so many black boxes that we can be doing in the firm. I've got I think three in mind that I'm currently kind of in the planning stages for. And one that's started already. But, well, there's going to be a marketing. I'm working on a hub. That's our what I call the hub and it's for everything in our firm. People in our firm can go to this Notion site that I'm creating and just click a button, and it'll make a document for you. So it's a big one. 

Melissa: What do you call that Black Box? It's the Hub Black Box?

Jason: That's what I've called it. Yeah, the Hub. The landing page. I call it the JLL landing page, but it's the Hub Black Box, yeah. 

Melissa: And then what's the third one? So there's marketing, the hub, 

Jason: Document processing is going to be another one. That one's not really thought out too deeply yet.

Melissa: The hub is really helping with the legal work. 

Jason: So a lot of these things dovetail together. So when I made the intake box, I had to create all these databases in Notion, and it so it took me a really long time to do, but everything afterwards, including client care later on after you know, we have the client and we're actually litigating their case, feeds off of those first couple databases that I created. So it's, you know, it stacks and stacks on top of itself. 

Melissa: Okay, so somebody is listening and trying to figure out why, like that sounds cool, but, you know, how is it different from when someone sits down to create a process? I'm guessing, tell me where I'm wrong, it's a framework to use to get the best processes for the ideal outcome that you are shooting for. 

Jason: Yes, with one caveat of there's a lot of automation in it. I've coded things using Claude AI to make things happen instantly. So a phone call comes in, and our answering service answers it, and they take certain information from the caller. All that information gets put into the database and then other things are triggered that's, you know, like for example, an automatic email will be drafted for our administrative assistant and it's there for her at 9:00 in the morning when she gets in to press send to that person. She doesn't even have to think about it, doesn't have to reread the email. It's all set up there and ready for her. So it's, it's the automation part that makes it completely different. 

Melissa: I've been having fun watching you have fun. It's so obvious…

Jason: I'm overly excited. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. And basically, is the firm one big black box? There's just these black boxes within it, and then there's boxes within those. 

Jason: Yes. And there's boxes within boxes within boxes. Yes. 

Melissa: It's very much like systems thinking, which you are, you're a systems thinker in my mind. 

Jason: Yeah, 100%. 

Melissa: So this is like up your alley. 

Jason: Yes. 

Melissa: Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, I need to have them on the podcast. I have a couple clients that are working on this for themselves. And I don't hear as in-depth as what I you and I talk about with yours, but they are, they're working really hard on it. 

Jason: It's a lot of trial and error to start out, for sure. But Claude AI has helped me get through it because I can just ask it questions and it helps me code things. It helps me walk through what I need to do in Zapier, because it's all very highly technical, and I'm not that highly technical. But I have a grasp on what to do, and it gives me the details step by step, and it's nice. It's really good. 

Melissa: You were talking about coding and one of the things that you worked on, some code, I think, to set up an automation to you have this almost like a accountability email that or post, Slack message that goes out every morning. But it was hard to, you had to manually do it every single day. And it was, everybody that's a producer in the firm has hourly billable standards, really. And so they know what those are, and there's some positive pressure that gets created because every morning for the previous day, it'll post where everybody stood, right?

Actually, now I'm thinking of a second thing I want you to comment on. But we'll start with the coding. Will you explain what you did so that you don't ever have to touch that again? 

Jason: I went into Claude and I, you know, I gave it a good prompt because, again, garbage in, garbage out. I don't put garbage in. I gave every detail that I wanted to happen from pull this number from, you know, this area on this spreadsheet and, you know, calculate this and then do this. And it actually goes into Clio itself and pulls out the numbers. So I don't even have to look at them. And it puts it in that spreadsheet that I had created that I was manually doing every day. It does it automatically.

And then it takes those numbers and posts it for everybody to see in Slack. And it has like a stoplight-type tier system. You know, red light, you're you're over an hour under your goal. You know, to date, you know, on average. And then there's yellow, you're within the hour, but 

Melissa: Your daily average. 

Jason: Your daily average, yes. And then green is, you're good. You're above your goal right now, so you're trending better than your goal. So, and it does it automatically every day, whether I'm working or not. 

Melissa: That's amazing. And it does the job. Like, there's a point to that, but it was getting tough to keep up. You have, you have other things going on. 

Jason: It would take me 20 minutes, 20, 25 minutes every morning. 

Melissa: That's so crazy. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So, partially, I wanted you to share that because I think people should get creative about the things that fall off their radar that really should be there, but it is tough to juggle it all.

Second thing, though, I think it'd be really great to hear you speak to the fact that you guys do that, and your culture is good at your office. And I think some people are afraid to have that kind of accountability for varying reasons, which I could throw some at you if you want to. But I would love to talk about like, why is it not a problem for you guys? Why are you, why do you not get nervous that somebody might not like that people see their hours or, I don't know, just talk to me about… 

Jason: We set the expectation at the beginning, period. That's it. You know, you come into our into this job, here's what we expect of you. Do it. It's that simple. 

Melissa: So it just shouldn't be a big deal. 

Jason: No. 

Melissa: It's so funny. 

Jason: If it's not an expectation at the beginning, it will become a big deal. Because you know, they're just going to do whatever they want. And then when you're like, "Oh, well, we need to do better than that." That's where the friction begins. But if you start at the top already, there's no friction. 

Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I hope listeners, it's just that simple. It's just that simple. There's a handful of firms that we encounter that they just cannot even fathom doing that where other people can see everyone's performance. And I, you know, I just I don't like, I never like their reasons good enough. I like have a tick about when they have these fears. I'm like, "Okay, well, these are not fears worth blocking you because, truly, your team," and you guys do have the work. It's not, that would be if you know that they are trying and they are unable to meet it. Okay. Okay. 

Jason: That's the next step though. If they're not meeting it, that's when I have to step in as a manager and help them. You know? It's they already, they know the conversation is coming.

Melissa: Yes. 

Jason: Everybody knows it's coming.

Melissa: Well, okay, wait. So I think we're talking about, I was going down like, let's just say for whatever reason, a firm didn't quite have enough work to for them to hit their target. 

Jason: Oh, you're talking about holistically. 

Melissa: Yeah. And I think, so I think there's worries that, well, they may not be able to hit the number. Well, okay. Can we just try? And see what happens? And then if they are doing their best, that's kind of what matters, right? But also, to your point, if they are having trouble meeting them for some reason, and there's usually a decent reason, they have something that they do need help working through. They're trying to juggle, prioritize, it may need your help with that. I don't know if you think of other ideas, but what you just said is important for people to understand that they have to feel supported. This isn't like coming at them like this. It's, which for listeners, I'm waving, shaking my finger in the air. But you don't do that. It's more about like, "Hey, what's up?" 

Jason: Yeah. We did in the beginning. We did it that way. You know, like, "Oh, well, here's our goals," because when you came along, no, we didn't have goals. And all of a sudden we're just like, this is before I came in as operations, here's your goals. You got to meet them. And that was kind of it.  You know, and there was no discussion around it and you know, the why behind it. 

Melissa: It changed. It changed the game for you guys. It wasn't the way. 

Jason: Yes, it absolutely did. It was a sea change, completely. But now we're at the point where it's the expectation in the beginning and it always has been. And to the point of helping people, everybody's different. Everybody, you know, has their own struggles. Some people can't, you know, attention to detail is not their biggest strength, you know, the strengths and weaknesses of people. So you need to, when everybody knows that number at least, I have seen some people helping other people that aren't meeting their goals, not just me. 

Melissa: Right. 

Jason: So it, it makes it a team effort for sure. 

Melissa: Yes. Well, that's, it's really great. It's been neat to see just, I mean, every time you submit your numbers, it's like, "Yep, they're on point. Yep, they're on point." Like, that's generally how that goes. So, very cool.

Okay, we asked Jeff to give his two cents about like, "What's a retreat like?” for people who don't really know what a day like that is? What would you have to say? 

Jason: I'm going to be brutally honest on this. Coming into a retreat, I dread it. 

Melissa: Do you? 

Jason: I do, every single time. 

Melissa: Jeez, Jason. 

Jason: But at the end of it, I am more recharged than I have been in the past three months since the last retreat. 

Melissa: Okay. Why? Okay, why is that? 

Jason: So it completely turns around. I don't know why, because, you know, our numbers are good and, you know, we report to you, and there's no, like, we're usually talking through other things at this point because we've moved on from, you know, the base bedrock of our firm. You know, we moved on to more things.

So yeah, I don't know why I dread it. I think it's just because it's such a long day, but so much gets done. And I'm exhausted at the end, but so happy to be exhausted. That's how I feel about the retreats. 

Melissa: Very cool. Well, we love having you guys. We so look forward to your retreats. You know, I think it's the sense of humor is a big reason. You guys are just special anyway and the work you do is really cool. How you guys think is really cool, but the your sense of humor is really refreshing. And the days don't feel like a drag.

Jason: They don't. They don't. But again, brutally honest, it's my, I'm not good with numbers. Like math is just not my thing. And I know math, you love just putting everything into math. 

Melissa: I think you, I think you are very good with numbers. That's so funny. I didn't know you think that about yourself. 

Jason: Because I know you are. And our entire business is number-driven. So I mean, I have to be. Maybe that's why I dread it. I don't know. 

Melissa: Well, you do a good job. You set up systems for yourself.

Jason: That I don't have to touch. 

Melissa: Yes. And now we have, like, you just, you take screenshots of certain things and my team can run with it. So we've tried to lighten that load as much as we can when it comes to data. But you've built some really cool stuff to track. 

Jason: It used to take me an entire day to do KPIs to send to you once a month. 

Melissa: Oh my gosh. 

Jason: I'm going to do it tonight after dinner. 

Melissa: Because it's going to be that fast? 

Jason: Because it's going to be that fast now. So that we have fresh numbers tomorrow morning. 

Melissa: Yeah, for the month that we're in already. 

Jason: Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's so cool. 

Jason: That's how much it's grown.

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