Building a Law firm with control, clarity and confidence in an unpredictable market

(0:00:07) Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Dominate Law Podcast where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Don Adesha, and today's episode is one every law firm owner needs to hear. We are tackling one of the biggest threats to your practice, the gap between your current workload and your future capacity. Before we jump in, a big shout out to our sponsor and growth partner, Equa Marketing.

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(0:01:18) Now, into today's conversation, redesigning your law firm for 2026 systems, pricing, and tech that scale. We will move through the four pillars of redesign, modern leadership, scalable infrastructure, high trust delegation, and performance intelligence. By the end of this episode, you will walk away with a real blueprint to shift from reactive firefighting to strategic scaling.

(0:01:47) Joining us today, two world-class experts, Gary Mitchell, author of The Lawyer Mind and founder of OnTrack Coach. With three decades in business and 20 years coaching attorneys, Gary knows exactly where the hustle breaks and where systems begin. And David Awad,

(0:02:05) attorney, software engineer, and investor in companies like SpaceX and XAI. Joining us from the Dubai Future District Fund, David lives at the cutting edge where legal expertise meets technical innovation. Let's get into it. So my first question is to you, Gary. Which leadership patterns are failing law firms today and why are they breaking under current market volatility?

(0:02:31) Well, I'd actually revise the question a little bit because I don't think it's anything different today than it has been over the last 30 years. The model of the law firm owner or founder, managing partner, being the bottleneck, as you intimated in the introduction, will not work for growth. Now, the problem is, and it's not a criticism, it's just pure fact, that lawyers don't like to let go of control. This is a major issue for law firm owners, okay?

(0:03:00) the trust factor, having the faith in their juniors to do the work properly. We'll get into the delegation later, which is a key component of how you let go of control. But the key components of the typical law firm owner today are they retain too much control, they don't delegate enough,

(0:03:20) They're perfectionists. This all comes together. It's part of the why they don't want to give up control is because the perfectionist syndrome. Again, this is not criticism. This is why we hire lawyers. Highly analytical, critical. They fix problems. They prevent problems. This is the way they are built, okay? This is the way their brain works. And I've been talking about this for years. It's in the book, The Lawyer Mind, The Psychology Behind, The Way the Lawyer Thinks.

(0:03:49) And the hard part here is, Don, and I know David knows this, being an attorney and a very forward-thinking entrepreneur, those skills that make for an excellent and brilliant attorney are diametrically opposed to the skills that are required to be an excellent entrepreneur and business owner.

(0:04:10) absolutely opposed and this is the hardest part of my work when i'm starting to work with a new client we we talk and it's like a conversation around do you do you realize how you process information do you realize how you think and the lawyer mind is designed for the negative right to prevent problems fix problem it's all like when you think about in the realm of things it's really a pretty negative place to be um psychologically and to

(0:04:37) You're smiling, David. I think you're definitely aligned with this. Whereas the entrepreneur is kind of more like a coach like me. I'm both a serial entrepreneur and coach. And we're thinking more in the positive, in what opportunities exist. We're not looking at, I mean, we have to obviously look at the downside and what hurdles or challenges will be on the path.

(0:05:03) But it's a different way of thinking, right? And one is not better than the other. We all need each other. That's the bottom line, right? The trouble most law firm owners face, and it's like attorneys too, especially when they're starting out, is they try to do everything themselves. And what I help do is I help grow their team around their strengths, fill the gaps left by the weaknesses, which are the things they procrastinate on because they hate them, right?

(0:05:32) I mean, lawyers are no different. They are human beings. Some people may disagree with that statement. I know, but they are human beings. I've realized that every human trait that we all have, lawyers have it a hundred times over, right? It's exaggerated, like perfectionism, procrastination, control. I mean, you name it. These are human traits, right? Lawyers just seem to have them on supercharge, right?

(0:05:59) So, I mean, here's the bottom line. Do you want to be brilliant and rewarded for your brilliant mind or do you want to grow business? Which one? Because if you want to grow business, you are going to have to let go some of that control. Now, I've got strategies and tips. I'm not just saying, you know, you wave a magic wand.

(0:06:22) and let it go. No, you've got to be strategic and methodical, get the right people, build the right systems. And we can go into that throughout the webinar. But this is the number one. I feel it's the number one barrier from a law firm owner who gets

(0:06:38) up to maybe two or three million in revenue a year. And sometimes by accident, as you brought up in the introduction, Don, but they get there and then they'd hit the ceiling. It's like they're at their own capacity. Whoever they have on their team right now, they're all at capacity. Everyone's at capacity. There's no room for growth.

(0:06:59) So we'll talk about that more in the scaling and the systems, right, David? And I'll probably leave more of the tech stuff to you, although I have some ideas on that area as well. But there's my first take on all this.

(0:07:13) Sounds good, Gary. Yeah. Did you want to add something there, David? There's one fun thing. Gary covered a lot of this. One thing that was kind of fun for me in the leadership context was you have to really suffer to figure out exactly how to delegate. The mindset is accurate.

(0:07:35) I like to tell people because I'm an attorney and a software engineer and also an investor. So all three of my jobs are to assume that everyone will betray each other and everything will go wrong and the software will break, right? So all three of the jobs. So I'm three times worse than that. Yeah.

(0:07:53) But it's pretty accurate. I think the one thing that was really helpful, especially in the age of AI, which I assume perhaps we could just copy paste the phrase AI over and over again and replace all of my dialogue with that for the webinar. But the one thing that was very helpful is if you do the agent thing correctly,

(0:08:13) you will be writing a lot about exactly how you think and what you want and where it goes and why. And you're attempting to not just write what are the things involved, you're also attempting to encode judgment. And judgment is the key thing, right? If you can teach your associates judgment or your employees judgment, then you can also enable them to do things the way you want them to, the way any professionist would. Mm-hmm.

(0:08:41) That has been one fun learning that I've come away with, having tried to hire a few people at this point and struggling, let's say, with that. Yeah.

(0:08:53) Really appreciate that insight into it as well, David. And like you said, Gary, you know, we want both the brilliance and we want to scale the business. So hopefully we'll figure that out by the end of our discussion here tonight. And you're using the word and, Don. You've already been trained. Good for you, man. Okay.

(0:09:15) That's right. I had practiced with Gary already. So, David, my next question is to you. Where have firms misapplied technology or systems and what specific breakdown revealed the gap between that intention and execution?

(0:09:32) Oh man, there's so many problems. Okay, so let me put it this way. You have to have I to use AI, right? When we say, like if I say, for example, like I know what X is supposed to look like, I have a sense of judgment. I know what a good output looks like. So in the software context, maybe an attorney will walk over and be like, oh great, I could build a software tool

(0:10:00) tool to do this. I'll go ask Claude to do it. And then Claude writes the software. Great. Now, maybe it moves the new file, maybe generates the template onto my desktop. But I have no idea how the software works.

(0:10:13) Because I'm not a software engineer. And I'm not a programmer. That's not to say you can't learn those skills. But I can't read the code that it produced for me. I can only see the output it made. That's a problem. That would be a bad thing. And the same is true as you go for everything you might want to do, whether it's AI or not. If you don't have a sense to evaluate and influence the content that is produced for you,

(0:10:40) and have a sense of what it looks like when it's good and what it looks like when it's bad, and then create very, very clear verification steps for every possible step of the way. If anything, if labor turns to nothing, if the cost of labor goes to zero, then the cost of verification goes to the roof. Because if you can verify a correct output and the cost of generating output is zero,

(0:11:06) well, then that's a completely different kind of problem you're solving for. So that's the first thing to bear in your mind, just in general, whether you could hire, like if you could hire a million attorneys for free and you had one client who showed up and said they wanted one brief or one demand letter. Well, if the attorneys were all free, you would tell all of them to do it and then just take the best one. How do you figure out which one's the best? That's now your problem. So that's the kind of,

(0:11:33) psychology that starts to emerge when I talk to clients, I do a mix of freelancing along with my law practice. And when I'm talking to people, they'll say something like, oh, great, like I can kind of AI my whole practice. But if you don't have a strict definition of what that means, and you don't have all of these things about how you work documented, and you have to do the work, right? Like you have to literally write it all out. If you don't, all of these concepts we're talking about, like,

(0:12:02) who I am, why I work, who are the people I'm affiliated with, why do I care about them, what do I do when an ambiguous opportunity is available?

(0:12:13) You know, maybe I always tell people I want Delaware for my governing law clauses. And I always know that the other side is going to put their state. And so we're always going to compromise. But if I don't write that out, then that's a mistake that has to come up in that verification step. So you have to be able to know not just what good looks like, but then you have to start thinking in systems of...

(0:12:35) how do I create those verification steps? And that, to answer your question, no attorneys are good at that. None of them, actually, in my experience. Well, if I could jump in on one thing, David, what you're saying really...

(0:12:50) It actually is quite ironic because you have to instruct AI to the same level and degree of specificity that you have to when you're delegating to your juniors. You have to be very, very specific with your request for what you're looking for, all the elements, what needs to be included, what is the outcome you're after. I mean, you have to be very, very specific. And

(0:13:13) Yes. Like people are learning, right? People are learning. But if I had one tip for people that are new to AI is practice getting as specific as possible. Use AI. Actually, here's a tip. New one just came to me. Use AI to practice your delegation skills so you can do better with humans. There you go.

(0:13:33) Sure. I have a fun one to add on top of that. Once you start getting down the skill rabbit hole, you start to realize, you start to warp your mind a little bit to, I am now the bottleneck, right? Yeah, exactly.

(0:13:49) And that was already the case with the law firm too. But now I start finding myself saying, okay, whenever I'm working on anything, it's, is there a way to construct a system or a set of skills so that I do not have to be the person that is currently doing whatever this thing is that my hands have to be involved in doing? Exactly.

(0:14:07) Sometimes you really have to bend over backwards to make that happen. But every time you can do it, it's worth it. Then you can also ask a fun question, which is how much does it cost for an employee to do this versus what's the equivalent token cost for an agent to do this or for this to be automated. And now every decision, every item of work that must be done now has an ROI calc that previously did not exist, that now exists, which is, is there ROI or is there more ROI?

(0:14:34) in having the attorney do it or having the agent do it. And sometimes that will not always be the agent. That's absolutely not the case. Because you can give certain tasks to agents like, hey, I mean, I don't know, what's a good example? Hey, here's a workflow, go research every possible published opinion in the 11th Circuit Court that could be related to this issue.

(0:14:56) And then transcribe them all into Markdown files so that you can reference them. And then go and reference all of them with this set of facts and write out a brief for me. That does not always work super well unless you have good tools to verify those and you can think in that way.

(0:15:16) And it's a hard thing to warp your minds to think in terms of those systems and use it consistently. So learn to use the skills and start figuring out how to build those pipelines of tasks and then turn them into reusable kind of Lego blocks, for lack of a better term.

(0:15:32) One of the one of the challenges I know we're not in delegating yet, but it's really relevant to this conversation is part of part of the challenge for attorneys is going to be remembering they can delegate to AI. Right. So I've been just I've been I've been training my EA. OK, she's not a lawyer, but she's a human being. I've been training her and I've come up with the slogan. The answer is yes. Yes.

(0:15:56) The question is, can AI do this? The answer is yes. Start there. Start with that. And again, I go back to practice. Use AI as your dummy for delegating. Get very specific to the follow-up. You have a conversation with AI. It's like having a human being right there. The other day I was producing something and it said, it's been a pleasure working with you. Let me know if you'd like follow-up materials for presentations and blah, blah, blah. And it was like, wow, this is fantastic.

(0:16:26) But the mindset of getting into the habit, and it is a habit, when the attorney is used to doing it themselves, automatically. One thing I told a partner years ago is whenever a piece of work comes across your desk, whether it be billable or admin, the first question you need to ask yourself is, who should do this?

(0:16:50) Don't assume it's you. Who should do this? In a matter of months, he built an incredible team. He got so good at delegating. He was only doing work he loved. He shared that on a coaching call. I laughed and I said, well, that's because you become excellent at delegating. You know, the secondary bonus of that, he became the go-to partner. All the associates wanted to work with him because he got so good at delegating and following up and grooming them and mentoring them. All the associates wanted to work with this guy.

(0:17:18) Right. So there's so many. This is and this is and right here. You take one issue and you can cover like two or three different challenges that you're facing at the same time. Mindset. Mindset. I really appreciated where that conversation really went. And I think that's the appropriate amount of time we actually need to spend on.

(0:17:41) AI, how to really think about it, what are some of the limitations of it? You know, I really appreciate it deeply, the contribution of both of y'all on that. Well, my next question really is to Gary, and this is more on the client side of things, right? So what shifts in client expectations are forcing law firms, owners to really rethink how they structure control and decision making? I think

(0:18:11) well one shift and i've been trying to hammer this in and it's not easy people have been talking about people have been talking about the billable hour for as long as i've been in the industry so over 20 years right here's a couple of facts about your clients okay and this covers not only the billable hour and the control and all that well the control comes by demanding face time by having your attorneys must show up in the office here's the fact

(0:18:37) Your clients don't care where the work's getting done or when it's getting done as long as it's getting done. And if you can give them value based billing, they can budget for it. So there is no negative surprises. Those are two main factors about your clients.

(0:18:52) Every single one of them. They may not tell you, but in the back of their mind, they want to see value. That's what they care about. And they want to see that like when something's big, it's a big problem. They don't want to be nickel and dime with a bill that itemizes like every minute of your day. They want the outcome. They want the solution. And again, they don't care if your junior is working at three o'clock in the morning and

(0:19:15) on holiday in aruba they don't care so there's two things there the control you got that's an example of letting go of a little bit of the control the talent the service should be the number one factor not where the work is getting done i think it's a huge mistake my last book was growing a law practice during covid19 i said like a broken record one great thing that came out of covid was remote work

(0:19:40) Now these dummies are bringing them back and demanding they're in the office. So you're, you're costing yourself more money with overhead. Your people are not happy. They were really happy and far more productive at home. They trained themselves on the discipline and habits to work from home. Right? So a single mom, she's taking care of the children. Uh,

(0:20:00) Any regular person, they may have a dog, they take a break, take the dog out. They do some meal prep. They throw some laundry in. It's a brain break, which I also recommend when you're getting to highly intellectual work all day long. It's far healthier, far more productive. You get better results. The clients are happy. So those are two things. That goes back to control, right? The lawyer wants control over the hour because it's measurable. It's solid. It's what they've always known. It's what they've always done. That's not what the client wants.

(0:20:29) The client wants value and they want the outcome. It's as simple as that. I love that.

(0:20:41) Focusing more on value-based and outcome-based results. And you know what? Here's the thing, too. Here's the end. Here's the end of this. One of the ends. The attorney is going to automatically think they're going to make less money. Wrong. Wrong.

(0:20:59) You're wrong because in the mind of that client that you've settled, you've set, you've solved a major, major issue for them that was preventing them from moving forward with their business. What do you think that's worth? What do you think that's worth to them? Did you build 30 hours, whatever your, your hourly rate? I bet it's worth far more than that. See,

(0:21:21) This is why I'm such a fan of value billing, because it shouldn't be about the amount of time. Here's the other thing. I think you've heard this, right? Pavarotti didn't make $2 million in an hour concert. Pavarotti made $2 million in a concert because he had spent 40 years perfecting his craft.

(0:21:42) You as an attorney and your juniors as well, you're practicing law your entire career. It's not how much time you spend on an actual item. It's how much time you've invested on learning and becoming the expert in your field. Shouldn't that factor into the pricing? So don't assume you're going to make less, that the client will be happier and you'll be making more money. And there's another and.

(0:22:07) There we go. Really, you know, there seems to be a self-confidence factor in there somewhere perhaps missing. Maybe we can get into that. Oh, there often is, right? Like, I mean, I've also worked, when I work with a new client, and I'm like, how much is your bill of power? And they tell me. And, of course, different markets, right, throughout North America. Absolutely.

(0:22:28) And I'm always saying, oh, that's too low. That's too low. And then we go to the value-based conversation, right? That is one thing you brought up, Don. Very, very common is lack of self-confidence when it comes to billing, for sure. And I think that has a huge factor why they don't want to try value-based billing because…

(0:22:49) On their side, they think they're going to make less, and on the client's side, they don't think the client's going to buy in, and it's actually totally opposite of what's true. The client would love to have this, right? So they can budget for things, and they'd be like, okay, John's going to be like, whatever, for this project, excellent. Okay, we don't have to worry about, John has a track record, it's going to get done, boom, off the worries of the CEO, right?

(0:23:16) Absolutely. And I'm talking corporate, but that's applicable in any practice. Family, right? You talk to your client and say, this is what it's going to cost, okay? It's kind of rough because it could go a little left. It could go a little right. I understand. But here's the boundary we're dealing with, right? Right.

(0:23:33) Oh, during that very stressful time, you just gave them a little bit of an ounce of rest assurance, taking more of the stress out of their purview. So I could go on and on. We don't have enough time. No, no, absolutely. Appreciate it. We must now look at the scalability of those things, you know, as Gary mentioned. And David, I think it's very timely and appropriate for this.

(0:24:01) Yeah, when it comes to scaling those operations that are so value-based, perhaps, how should leaders choose between speed of innovation and the stability of those systems? This probably depends a little bit. I'm not maybe the best person to ask for this insofar as I deal more with startups than I do a lot of traditional brick and mortars, right? So for the startups...

(0:24:29) If you were to look at the software engineering practices of startups, you'll find a good analogy if they were building a house is there'd be all these scribbles throughout the house and like missing rafters and like part of the roof would be gone and there'd be a note in the missing part of the roof saying, should we add this here? Maybe we're going to add a second floor, right? And they'll be talking to people about the front of the house and the back will be actively being built and rebuilt and then torn down and half of it won't be finished

(0:24:59) and it never actually is finished or delivered the way that it was originally imagined. So in that sense, it's probably very similar for small law firms. Having started one myself, it's not really that different. Also, we'll double down on the value-based billing. In the software engineering context, everybody loves the project-based concept. It just works better. But...

(0:25:26) Yeah, I think you're probably more often than not better off leaning on the instability side insofar as I think you, especially right now, like this wouldn't have been my answer if you asked me like five years ago, but the rate and speed of change with the tools that are available to be leveraged in the legal context are changing so fast that you're probably better off leaning on instability than stability and spending a little bit more time reinventing yourself

(0:25:55) for lack of a better word, whether that's in the form of delegation or trying new tools and what have you. Like if I was a lawyer who was not, I mean, I'm a software engineer, so I have a bit of an edge, right? But if I was a non-software engineer attorney, I think the most valuable thing I could possibly do would be to be constructing tools to make drafts of anything for me that I've ever produced for any client because those tools produce drafts and then I get to exercise the thing I'm really being paid for, which is my judgment.

(0:26:21) And then iterate on that again and again. So that's why I lean against stability. But there's certain things that you don't really need to innovate on. You don't need to innovate on where your law corporation is going to be. Never experiment with legal is the traditional advice for startup founders. Just stick with your Delaware C-Corps or your local LLC if you're not ready to raise money. Those are kitchen table basic pieces of advice.

(0:26:46) But on top of that, you're probably going to find yourself wanting to experiment with these tools again and again and start doubling down on how easily things can change. Especially because on the outside of the walls of your office, things are changing really rapidly. Not everyone is aware of them. It's still like there's still the normal things that apply like adoption curves and what have you.

(0:27:09) So it's not like there's all this very bizarre and very unhealthy hysteria about how AI will kill lawyers. I've been killed 11 times personally. I don't know about you, Gary. I've had several funerals. I'm still here. I'm still alive.

(0:27:24) So, yeah, I don't think the lawyers get killed by AI, but you do have to learn to adjust, not even just for your own automation. If you don't like automation, you prefer drafting it yourself, I think that's okay. But you have to understand what are the things that an ordinary person of average intelligence, everybody's favorite, what is an ordinary person going to do and what are they going to come to you having tried? Before...

(0:27:48) A lawyer might have said, oh, like a random guy who comes to me for his DUI or whatever. Is that guy coming to me after having done Google searches and like reading three websites and has no idea? Or has that guy gone back and forth with GPT for three or four hours?

(0:28:04) Maybe he comes in a lot more informed or maybe he doesn't if it's a much more obscure issue. Maybe you're getting a citation for flying a drone in an FAA protected area that was propped up for some random instance. I happen to have this come up. Somebody came to my desk with this, so I'll use it. Those are two completely different kinds of issues with completely different profiles of what information is available. And having a sense of that, right, the LLMs are stupid.

(0:28:28) But the LLMs are very good at making people think they're not, and they only have certain information available to them. So you should try those experiments and get a sense of what do the LLMs know if you just pull one up cold? What do they know if you give them a couple of books on securities law and then start asking them about Form D and Blue Sky filings?

(0:28:45) You will learn a lot about, one, what does an ordinary person know, let's say. I have a law review article on that. No one should rely on an LLM for the ordinary and plain meaning of any term, but save that for the law review. The idea that you can use the LLMs as a tool not just for your own automation, but to understand their limitations and use that to get some perspective on what legal information is being given out in the world. Before, everybody loves joking about Dr. Google and now Dr. GPT, the same thing here.

(0:29:14) One last thing also, there's an interesting note to be aware of for some practitioners, if you're thinking about this, it's coming to my mind now. There's a bill in the New York State Legislature that is objectively evil. And the bill's goal is specifically to ban users from being allowed to use LLMs for medical advice, health advice, legal advice, etc. So there's some very bizarre and rapidly changing AI regs in different states.

(0:29:43) Every couple of weeks, some lawyer gets Rule 11 sanctioned for citing a case that doesn't exist in their briefs. And all of these things happen, right? So it's just stuff to be aware of. And you want to be experimenting just to get a sense. So lean on the side of instability.

(0:30:00) and start really experimenting, take the extra time, which is why the value-based billing works even better because you're going to be, I don't like all the fear-mongering. It's just going to change and you're going to be able to get more done than you did before. But you're still bringing, you're bringing the same value, right? So give yourself this time and space to experiment and understand what kinds of tools you really build, what kinds of tools are out there because you're going to be using them pretty soon and understanding what they're good and bad at and applying your judgment, right?

(0:30:29) in order to bring it further. At the risk of going too long, that's my very long and roundabout answer to your question. Now, Gary, what does an effective delegation workflow look like from assignment through accountability in a growing law firm?

(0:30:48) Okay, sorry, I just want to go back to AI for one quick point. Go ahead. If you haven't heard of this, AI will not replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don't use AI. And the same goes for me as a coach. Look, AI will not replace coaches, but it will replace coaches that don't use AI.

(0:31:06) Lead generation, marketing, social media, workflows. There's so many opportunities to incorporate AI into your practice and streamline everything. Delegation. Okay. So the first mistake that lawyers make, and most people do make when they're delegating, is in their mind, they've done a task a thousand times. Okay.

(0:31:26) Okay. So they're giving instruction to their junior and they buzz through the instructions. They're not specific enough. Same goes for the AI. They got to learn. They're going to have to be more specific when they give AI the instructions. You must be crystal clear from the outset when you are delegating with instructions. Here's a couple of other points. You must make it clear that if they run into a snag, your door is always open. Come to you for help. Okay.

(0:31:50) A lot of juniors will feel intimidated or feel less than if they have to go back to the big boss for help. Well, in the long run, if they sit there struggling trying to figure out it's costing the client, it's racking up the client, it's taking time, they're missing the deadline, and it's not getting done. So clear communication.

(0:32:10) clear instructions, make sure they know your door is open. And if you haven't heard from them in some time, check in with them, be proactive, okay? Always have the open door policy, always. The first point is the most important though, because in your mind, you've done it a thousand times. So you're gonna buzz through the instructions, assuming they're gonna pick it up really quickly. Never assume, right? And if you do it properly, if you do it properly and you have the right people,

(0:32:39) You should only have to do it once. And with the right support and mentoring and feedback and encouragement, when you train that junior on that task and you've done it properly, you should only have to do it once. That's my quick take on effective delegating. Always keep the door open, open communication and make sure they know they can come to you.

(0:33:01) So when they don't pick it up after only being trained once on that task specifically, does that mean it's a problem from your side as a trainee?

(0:33:12) I would say look inward first, to be honest. Look inward first. Do a reflection. Ensure you gave the proper instruction. Like, see, there's another thing. At the end of the process, do a post-mortar with the employee. I mean, all this in your mind, you're thinking, oh, my God, all this takes time. But this task is going to be repeated 100 times in the next couple of years.

(0:33:35) Getting it right early on is going to save you so much money and so much time in the long run.

(0:33:43) Think of your time as investment when it's properly invested in grooming your people and delegation. Man, oh man, that's at the top of the list of lawyer faults. I don't know a lawyer that comes to me that says, oh yeah, my delegation skills are fantastic. I've got amazing feedback from my employees. They love my delegation. No, it doesn't happen. They're rushing through, they're making assumptions and they're not keeping the communication lanes open.

(0:34:14) There we go. Thanks. A few fun things that you might enjoy, Gary. So in software engineering, there's a principle of software development when a process fails. There's all these different ways something can silently fail. Let's say you have like eight steps in like a software workflow, right? And step six doesn't like get whatever website it's supposed to get, right? So it produces like blanks.

(0:34:38) So then step seven gets blank and then it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, right? But there's no error thrown. So by the time you get to step nine, it's been blank for the past three steps. And you don't know which step created the error, right? So there's this principle in software development called fail loudly for this exact reason. Like whenever you have code, your code catches the problem and it fails as loud as it possibly can. That's the basic goofy kind of description.

(0:35:02) And the exact analog also exists for law firms. So I had a firm that came to me and we set up an open claw bot for them. And we extracted, we wrote some custom code, pulled all of their emails that that partner had ever written to anyone. We indexed all of them and then we shoved it into an open claw and we named it after the guy. Right.

(0:35:22) We named it after the guy and then said, ask guy, right? Well, I won't blow him up here. But then that way, anybody at the firm who had a question because he was so specific about everything, but he wasn't super computer savvy and he hated writing. So we pulled all of his emails to get this thing to work. We shoveled it all into it. It's awesome.

(0:35:39) Yeah, and then we said, okay, just ask this bot. And the bot was right like 70% of the time because we had so much email from the guy telling other people how to do it over and over. And he was usually pretty particular when he gave instructions like you were talking about. So it's kind of a fun memory for me. And one other note that came to my mind while you were talking, with startups, usually the advice is don't hire until you absolutely have to.

(0:36:04) I have the opposite advice, absolute opposite advice. Yeah, you know, I think it's a fun one because the software engineers would say, do everything you possibly can with the software and the tooling you have before you have to hire another engineer to teach them. But you've got the opposite because you're thinking about it from a completely different style of working, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. I admit, I don't know software development companies, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(0:36:32) But no, that's one of the biggest mistakes lawyers make in solo practice, law firm owners make, is that they're not hiring the right people, enough people doing the right things. They're trying to do too many things. And I'm always like, okay, let's break. I'm a fan of keeping things simple. Do the math.

(0:36:50) Okay, you're still doing the billable hours. So what do you charge an hour? How much do you charge an hour? And you're doing this? Yeah, yeah. Classic. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. How many hours a week or a month, a year? Add that up. You could hire a full-time EA, not just an admin assistant, an executive assistant, right? Right.

(0:37:11) You don't have to get an admin assistant, whatever. And it's pennies on the dollar. Do the math. That was my exact. Yeah. I was actually asked this was I was on an entrepreneur podcast the other day and I was actually asked, what is the number one mistake entrepreneurs make? I said, that's it. Not hiring soon enough. I made the mistake myself. The best thing I ever did was hiring an EA. Right. We can you can. Here's the thing. You can have it all, but you can't do it all on your own.

(0:37:40) You know, David, as you know, it is a chicken. It's a it's a it's a dance, right? Chicken and egg. Absolutely. You got to see some revenue potential. But if you're if you're busting yourself on your billable hours, you're generating the revenue to be paying somebody 30, 40, 50 dollars an hour and not your 700 dollar an hour rate. I mean, do the math. Really? Wow. You're leaving so much money on the table.

(0:38:07) I had a fun analogy for this. I used to tell people it was the equivalent of share buybacks. When your stock is underpriced, then you can buy your time back at this cheaper price. And it's an instant win, right? Because if you know your book, you're trading at a 70% discount to book, just buy the shares.

(0:38:26) You have the cash, buy the shares immediately because you have an instant 30% ROI. What's the point? Which is why share buybacks are so popular in public markets. And it's the same exact thing with your own time, right? Like the soon as you can buy yourself out of a job, the better. Absolutely.

(0:38:44) I think in the software context, it's kind of funny now that we're roasting it. I think the problem is the theory that everyone loves to try to automate as much as you possibly can. And for the software engineer, hiring somebody is like admitting defeat. Different mindset. Different mindset. And that's why you have to schedule your complimentary meeting with Ekwa, who can help you with running your own law practice and get your marketing straight and right.

(0:39:13) Absolutely. Book your session today. Absolutely. Go ahead and book your session today to really figure out how you can truly scale on your marketing side and figure out your growth. But I really appreciated these two sides of the same coin, you know, of thinking about when to hire, right? Yeah. When to hire is critical. Yeah.

(0:39:36) You know, here's my formula for solo lawyers or lawyers building a practice law for most. When you hit 60 percent of your capacity, you need to start looking because by the time you hit 80 percent, that only leaves you 20 percent of your time to properly train who you hire. Because if you don't follow this formula, you're going to be at 100 percent by next Tuesday and not have any time.

(0:40:00) And then you're going to revert back to the thing you've always done. Oh, I'll just do it myself. So you continue the rat race. You're in the office till 10 p.m. every night. You're working weekends. You never see your spouse. You miss your daughter's recital and your son's soccer game. And it keeps going and going and going and going. 60, 80, 100 rule.

(0:40:18) Okay. Now, David, I really want to get from your perspective as well. I feel like it got a little bit lost there. Why do you really believe that, you know, you shouldn't hire unless you really, really need to? And how would you say, you know, from your perspective, when you should make a hire?

(0:40:40) Yeah, like Gary said, it's kind of a different mindset, right? If you come at this from the software engineer's perspective, the software engineer would say, I should be able, like the whole reason SaaS businesses work is because you get 80% EBITDA margins and you can raise money off those EBITDA margins and then you can draw, like, it's a different style of business acquisition. The revenue is recurring. It's not a service-based model, right? Blah, blah, blah.

(0:41:04) But the classic thing that the software engineer benefits from is that once you get the process and the software right the one time, it works forever. And so if you have to hire somebody to do some part of your business, it meant you couldn't automate it. It's a very weird time right now because the big debate is how much of any given business can be automated. Some people believe the answer is 100%. Other people believe the answer is 90%. Some people think it's 50%.

(0:41:30) And some people are better at using AI than others. And now we have a little bit of a bizarre game of chicken going on. Because if a software engineer is really good at using AI, they'll kind of do what the quants do. They're not going to tell anybody. Because why would you? You'll keep it to yourself. So the incentives are now adverse a little bit. If you get really good at automation, why would you bother telling the company about it? Because then they're just going to go and run your automations and then give you more work to do. Why would you do that?

(0:42:00) The programmers love to sit down and say, how much of this can I automate? And nobody really knows whether anyone can truly go exponential, quote unquote, meaning fully delegate themselves out of the role by defining enough direction. No ordinary attorney has to get to this point, but there's a bit of a lot of conspiracy theories about like, can somebody get to that point where they are fully 100% out of the business and giving the model enough judgment to generate its own tasks and whatnot. So to bring this back to the lawyers,

(0:42:30) I think for the lawyers, you can probably, because the nature of the problem is very different, let's say you treat it like a text problem. And I know that's going to sound a little goofy to say, but for the sake of argument, if you assume that what the lawyers have to produce is English text, that is a much less difficult domain to generate than software.

(0:42:52) And the verifiability is also harder. And the people who observe that text also are not as difficult as the software compilers where, let's say with software, if it doesn't produce exactly X, Y, and Z outputs with all of these configurations correct, it is wrong. And the final workflow or product will not work. But for text, if I accidentally cite a case that doesn't exist and no one knows or notices,

(0:43:19) It doesn't matter. So it's just kind of a funny paradigm to have in your mind. If you're a solo, you should actually try to get pretty creative about how much you can delegate. I talked to the patent people and the patent people tell me,

(0:43:36) Hey, David, that's great that you're a software engineer and a lawyer and you're getting into IP. That's wonderful. But if you want to do patent prosecution, all that work is getting automated away. The work of drafting complaints also getting automated away. There's a lot of weird conspiracy theories being believed right now. But it's true that the tooling is easier to get working around English text than it is around software engineering. So I think you should be ambitious in how much time. I like the 60-80 rule.

(0:44:06) because it kind of makes clear that 20%, I'll tell startup founders, like, what you really want to be doing is working on the business and never working in the business, but on it, right? So it's a similar idea, I'm sure. Like, don't end up getting your hands tied to your desk because what you really want is to be thinking, what are the changes I can make that drastically change either the number of... You're going to change the top line or the bottom line, right? That's it. So if you...

(0:44:34) the more you can do to change the bottom line through software automation, the more that value compounds with time. So I think you should try to get ambitious, but also you should also try to phone a friend. If that's not your skill set, you definitely don't want to be kicking yourself every day about that. And you're not going to be magically out of a job in two years or what have you. It's just a matter of sit down and figure out how to get the tools kind of adjusting for you. Like my top three would be just learn

(0:45:03) How to get bots to do the very basics, configure skills, configure custom agent profiles, you know, define a paralegal agent and even better define, let's say, a case law agent whose job is just to find you accurate cases or to get published opinions. If you can draft, if you can get custom skills, teach that agent how to access Lexus for you.

(0:45:25) let's say. Great. Well, now I can say, hey, go do this search, set up this compound query, blah, blah, blah. And now that agent can always do that for me whenever I have cases of certain kinds. And the last and the third one most important is figure out how to tailor custom context environments. If you can set up a tool that says, for example,

(0:45:45) Oh, every single case has this list of plain text files that are generated top to bottom for this case. And then the next case has these files and the next one has these. And you can get it to the point where you have tailored environments that your agents can tap for every case and for every matter you're dealing with. Now you've got a really magical formula. And I think most solos can get to that, right? Just those three things.

(0:46:07) Tailored contexts, custom agent profiles, and custom skill definitions. Those three things will get you very, very, very far. And so I think you can take... We can both be right, most likely, right? You can take a little bit of... Absolutely. I was just thinking that. Yeah. I was thinking that definitely...

(0:46:27) both David and Gary's side, they are not different. It's just different systems that you were talking about for implementation. So you should try to swing for the fences in terms of how much you can automate, especially while you're small and you have the bandwidth and the flexibility where if you make mistakes or make changes, they're not going to create massive backlogs and whatnot in the actual operating day-to-day cadence of the firm. That's been my experience.

(0:46:55) I think we'll figure out where he went. And until then, David, perhaps we have the final question for you. What evidence shows delegation is actually working effectively without reducing quality or client trust? And this is a great point to come back to because you mentioned way earlier on, how do you determine what is good?

(0:47:20) Yeah, exactly. My conspiracy theory is that we're all going to have to become software engineers. And it's not because software is so cool. It's because of what software engineering actually is, which lawyers also do. And it's a lot of fun because if you're an attorney, what you studied was the history of how people took complex concepts and broke them down into usable abstractions. The concept of property, the concept of an entity, which is either an individual or a corporation.

(0:47:49) C Corp LLC, whatever. And you said, how do I take complicated concepts and break them down into constituent objects with properties? You know, like a, what's a great example? In the Fourth Amendment context, you have litigation that emerges, hey, like, did the police officers search that guy's house?

(0:48:12) Well, a search is a word that has an intuitive meaning to you as a person. But if we looked at the law that has developed, suddenly there are specific things about what a search is. A search is an investigatory act intended to, let's say...

(0:48:33) I'm paraphrasing the exact definition. I don't remember the case. But a search is an investigatory act specifically intended to deduce evidence of criminal activity. Right. It must be rooted in a probable cause or a reasonable suspicion. Those two terms are also objects with definitions. Right.

(0:48:58) So we learned this historical way that's incredibly effective for how to do this. And then on the other side, what do the software engineers do? They go learn how to define these same ideas in computers, right? They say, hey, a file is a string of text, right? It's zeros and ones. The file has...

(0:49:16) you know, a size, it has content, it has maybe a location in a file system. The programmers then say, I'm going to define programs. Programs have objects. Objects are a more generic version of the concepts that the attorneys are dealing with. I can define an entity just, and I can call that entity an LLC in my code, right? So the attorneys have almost built it from the top down and the programmers build it from the bottom up.

(0:49:47) I think that's the right way to put it. And so as you use AI, what you start to realize is you have to build composable units of tooling that you can put this way, put that way.

(0:50:00) build up, build down. So maybe that's the real thing to take away. It probably is the case that the attorneys have learned the historical way of creating all of the abstractions we use in the world from the top down, starting with humanity and working down. And the software engineers have started with

(0:50:20) composable data and built up and now we are at this weird point where those two distributions of what was possible have hit at the tails of those distributions well now you have a lot of interesting stuff that becomes possible and so you will end up finding yourself whether you want to or not kind of becoming a software engineer because what is the software engineering do uh doing he's taking

(0:50:44) a field of complex information in front of him and turning it into a series of objects and abstractions that he can use in order to compose it, in order to create a representation of a particular problem in front of him. And then gets the software in one way or another to do what he wants. And what's happening with AI? The exact same thing.

(0:51:06) You say, oh, OK, like I have some software I have to write or rather I have this workflow I want to do. I want a tool that automatically writes briefs and I want it tailored for the 11th circuit. Right. Well, now we can do that. Right. We take a complex series of information in front of us and we say, what are these different things? How do they work? What are the relationships to each other? You're just writing it in text.

(0:51:31) and you're writing it in English. But the software engineers were just writing it in a formal language. We talk about programming like it's this magical thing. It's just a format. It's a format for objects that have relationships to each other. Certainly, if you're a functional programmer, you know how to do this. And that's what's really happening when you are creating these workflows and

(0:51:53) defining these things, whether it's for your associates or whether it's for your own day-to-day work. And it's kind of an interesting world that emerges, I think, if you put both of those perspectives in your head at the same time. It starts to feel a little magical. Certainly as you start getting the automations to work, you follow those three tips I talked about earlier, define agents, define skills, and then define custom contacts, you will be amazed.

(0:52:19) Amazed. Someone's level of amazement with AI is directly proportional to how much they are using it for complicated tasks, math, programming, research. It is insane. And I could go into more and more depth about it, but I don't want to go too long because we have to jump to our next sponsorship message from ECWA. Book your consultation today. Get your law firm on the map.

(0:52:47) Right. Absolutely right. Before we do that, actually, I really want to get a final, you know, key takeaway. What's the single most important redesign a firm owner must commit to by 2026? Hire me. That's your, there we go. Solved. Love it. No.

(0:53:07) I think the most important thing you've got to do is just sit down and say, okay, who am I? What's my relationship to all the work that I do? Can I define all of that in plain English text? And how much of that can I embed into an AI tool so that it can do what I want it to do?

(0:53:25) That is a very deep question. It is not easy. You will struggle. You'll find yourself accidentally becoming a programmer, but you'll also find yourself learning a lot about yourself as well. Because you're going to take what people are starting to do, and this is the real takeaway, if I could put it in one sentence, is create your digital garden. Create your knowledge base.

(0:53:50) Because what will happen is we will enter an era where knowledge engineering begins to emerge. People will have your own notes, opinions, thoughts.

(0:54:10) And then you will have your memories, cataloged interactions, memories, and whatnot also available to you on your machine. And then you will have external information, let's say books, articles, journals, and your ability to synthesize those pieces of information in different contexts.

(0:54:29) either as an attorney doing trademark law, maybe you're showing up in the 11th Circuit for litigation on what the meaning of landscaping is in that famous case in the 11th Circuit that I love so much. You will find that you can curate a knowledge base and learn the skill of knowledge engineering

(0:54:51) Creating a very structured hierarchy of what all of the information really is that is not just in your head, but that you are exposed to and that you would want to know if you could. And can you lay it all out in a machine for yourself and get it to think the way you would want it to? Embedding your judgment, context, integrity and values.

(0:55:13) And bundle it all together into a machine that you can use to provide value for the world. That is the big open question for the people who are really into this game, I think, right now. If that's something that's hard to do, I think it's a lot more doable than you think. And it would be... I'd have to really derail us to talk about how you do it. But it can be done. And it's going to be a big and interesting problem for everyone to figure out. But if you figure it out, you will go exponential.

(0:55:43) And what a powerful conversation that was. Massive thanks to Gary Mitchell and David Awad for the depth and honesty they brought to today's discussion. From the truth that a lawyer's biggest bottleneck is often their own need for control, to the case for value-based billing, to David's parting wisdom on creating your own digital garden,

(0:56:05) There is so much here to act on. If there is one line that captures this entire episode, it is Gary's. AI will not replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don't use AI. And the same is true for systems, delegation, and pricing. The firms that redesign themselves now are the ones that will lead in 2026 and beyond. And that brings me right back to our sponsor, Equa Marketing.

(0:56:31) Because everything Gary and David talked about today, building scalable systems, working on the business instead of in it, delegating what does not need your hands, all of that applies just as much to your marketing. Equa takes that whole layer off your plate and they do it with the same intentionality our guest talked about today.

(0:56:51) Their team will sit down with you, audit your firm's online presence, study your competition and walk you through custom recommendations to make sure your firm shows up where the right clients are looking. That session is normally $900 and it is completely free for our listeners. Book it at www.dominantelaw.com slash MSM.

(0:57:14) If this conversation was helpful, share it with one attorney who needs to hear it. And please follow the Dominate Law podcast so the next episode lands right in your feed. I'm Don Adisha. Thank you for investing in your future. We will see you in the next episode.