004. Kanban Board Essentials for Lawyers

When somebody hires a lawyer, what are they really looking for? One mainstay of being an Agile Attorney is delivering customer value consistently, so how do you invest your time and experience in your practice now to create an environment that prioritizes client value in your firm? 

Discover how you can pivot in your law firm to provide the kind of value your clients really want from you. I’m giving you tools that will help you expand what you’re able to offer your clients, aside from advancing their legal matters, to meet their human needs without neglecting the social and emotional complexities that people experience when navigating the legal system.

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/6

Do you have numerous cases close to being completed but, because they are no longer urgent, they sit among the rest of your work and make you feel overwhelmed by all there is to do? Many firms overlook addressing this common issue as an opportunity to reduce the total amount of work in their system.

This week, I’m building on concepts we’ve talked about over the last few weeks to help you organize your law practice. I’ll cover two important concepts related to law practice management and how to prioritize where you set your and your team’s finite time and attention. I’ll also introduce new concepts to help you reduce administration overheads and close cases and tasks that are closeable in your law practice.

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/5

There is a wealth of tools out there designed to streamline your workflow, easy to pick up and capable of adapting in countless ways as you master them. A personal favorite of mine is the Kanban board.

We'll explore various board types, identifying the one that best meets your practice's needs and pinpointing bottlenecks in your process. You'll learn how to introduce useful complexity into your workflow modeling, understand the differences between Matter-level and Task-level boards, and decide which one suits your practice's requirements.

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/4

Are you hitting roadblocks in your legal delivery systems because of stubborn bottlenecks that disrupt the flow of work? It feels like every new solution out there promises smoother operations, yet often, they just end up shifting the problem elsewhere.

In today’s episode, I’m going to guide you through the most effective strategies for getting work to move seamlessly through your system again. We’ll take a close look at the bottleneck areas in your law practice and discuss why making improvements in the wrong areas doesn’t really cut it.

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/3

If you're feeling overwhelmed or overburdened in your law practice, it may be a sign that you're operating beyond your current capacity. But how do you know what that is? And how can you go from prioritizing intake and growth to focusing on delivering quality work within the firm's capacity?

In this episode, I provide tools to help you get back within a comfortable capacity and deliver the work you promised to clients and customers. You will discover how to think of capacity in a way that avoids feeling overwhelmed and instead lays the foundation for future clients, while also keeping the promises already made to your people. Start the process today of striking a better balance between your real current capacity and the commitments that you make in a way that is agile and free of burden.

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/2

Do you ever feel discouraged or overwhelmed by the amount of unfinished work in your law practice? Are you ever juggling so many balls that you’re worried something is going to drop and you may not notice when it does? 

Join me this week as I dive deeper into what the Agile Methodology is and how it can help you avoid the overwhelm that leads to problems and burnout. I share the four principles of Agile Methodology and how beneficial they can be for your practice and encourage you to slow down and think about what each of these principles means in the context of your firm or business. 

For full show notes, transcript, and more information, visit: https://www.agileattorney.com/1

Hi, I'm John Grant. I'm an operations expert on a mission to help legal professionals of all kinds build practices that are profitable, scalable, and sustainable for themselves and the communities they serve.

I created this podcast for law firm owners, in-house leaders, practice group leads, and really any other legal professional who wants to reduce overwhelm and gain better visibility and control over their legal delivery workflows. After all, you should be running your law practice. It shouldn't be running you.

Before I became a lawyer, my first career was with a wildly successful technology start-up, and I've spent the last decade applying the tools of modern entrepreneurship to help legal practices become more successful. Along the way, I've learned that a lot of the conventional wisdom around how to manage a law practice isn't actually so wise.

Each week, I'll draw upon my experience with agile project management, lean manufacturing, the theory of constraints, and other proven methods to help you improve not just how you manage your law practice, but how you think about legal services and the value you bring to your clients.

If you're ready to bust through your law practice bottlenecks and uncover ways to bring whole new levels of client value and get recognized for that value, please subscribe or follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

In this bonus series of the Agile Attorney Podcast, we are focusing on the Voice of the Client.  I am bringing you the stories of real people, in their own voice, talking about the challenges and successes they've had dealing with lawyers.  

Today you will hear from Jason, a maintenance technician at an industrial plant who represented himself through the majority of his divorce proceedings in Massachusetts.  Listen more to hear what happened to his original attorney, how he prepared for court and what his takeaways are from the process.

For show notes and more information, be sure to visit https://www.agileattorney.com/podcast

In this bonus series of the Agile Attorney Podcast, we are focusing on the Voice of the Client.  I am bringing you the stories of real people, in their own voice, talking about the challenges and successes they've had dealing with lawyers.  

Today you will hear from Dennis, a financial planner in central California. In Dennis's Case, he's not hiring the lawyer as a client, but he is "hiring" lawyers that he can trust to handle the legal work for *his* clients.

For show notes and more information, be sure to visit https://www.agileattorney.com/podcast

Delivering customer value is at the heart of being Agile. That’s why, in this bonus series of the Agile Attorney Podcast, I’m focusing on the Voice of the Client.  I am bringing you the stories of real people in their own voice talking about the challenges and successes they have had dealing with lawyers.  

Today you will hear from Amy who only has good things to say about the lawyers she works with regularly.  For me, it highlights what's possible when there's strong mission alignment and open lines of communication between attorney and client.  Amy also disavows me of a false dichotomy that I was trying to draw between lawyers and scientists so I will go ahead and take my lumps on that one.  Overall I really appreciate how she thinks about the role of her lawyers in helping her frame the important business decisions she has to make.

For show notes and more information, be sure to visit https://www.agileattorney.com/podcast