Mastering Productivity and Processes with Mike Chastaine - Episode 37

In this episode, your host, Lara Quie, is in conversation with Mike Chastaine. Mike is an American award-winning lawyer, speaker and author of five books. He is a radio host of “Legal Ease” and a video blogger of “20 minutes with Mike.” He was an extreme endurance athlete and national ski patroller. He has been a criminal defence attorney for 37 years. He shares his story of setting up his own firm, making it a success and then selling it. Today he runs his own consulting firm guiding other lawyers on how to build a successful law firm business and how to live a full and fulfilling life. 

I hope that you enjoy this episode.

You can connect with Michael Chastaine at https://michaelchastaine.com/

And find his YouTube videos here: https://michaelchastaine.com/videos/

Transcript

Episode 37 with Michael Chastaine

[00:00:00] Lara Quie: Hello, and thank you for listening to the Legal Genie Podcast. My name is Lara Quie and I believe passionately that we only have this one short life. And we need to live our best life now. 

[00:00:45] Having recovered from a life-threatening cancer three years ago. I want lawyers to learn important lessons from movers and shakers in the legal industry. 

[00:00:55] The mission of this podcast is to empower and inspire you to create a better life for yourself. Whether that's by finding a mentor, pay more attention to your wellbeing, developing your skills as a lawyer or even moving forward in a new direction.

[00:01:14] You can find my daily posts on LinkedIn so please follow me there. Please also like and rate this podcast on whichever platform you're listening to it on. 

[00:01:25] I also offer one-on-one coaching on Fridays that cover personal branding, getting to the next level, productivity, wellbeing and so much more. So please do reach out to me if you would like some help. On with the show. I do hope that you will enjoy this conversation and take away some real value. Thank you for listening.

[00:01:47] Hello and welcome to the Legal Genie Podcast with me your host, Lara Quie. And this is episode 37 with Mike Chastaine. Mike is an American award-winning lawyer, speaker, and author of four books. He is a radio host of Legal Ease and a video blogger of 20 minutes with Mike. He was an extreme endurance athlete and national ski patroller.

[00:02:14] He's been a criminal defence attorney for 37 years, and today he's here to tell you his story of setting up his own firm, making it a success, and then selling it. Today he runs his own consulting firm, guiding other lawyers on how to build a successful law firm business and how to live a full and fulfilling life.

[00:02:36] So welcome to the show, Mike. 

[00:02:38] Michael Chastaine: Well, thank you. I'm very excited about being here. 

[00:02:41] Well, it's great to have you on here. It's pretty early in the morning here in Singapore, 8:00 AM but I'm bright and chirpy and ready to hear all about you. So, Take me back to your childhood, where you grew up and what kind of family you had.

[00:02:56] Okay. So my father was in the Air Force. I was born in Japan travelled all over the country. I went to 13 schools and 12 years which. There's pros and cons to that, but I moved all over the United States ultimately finished high school in the San Francisco Bay area and finished high school there.

[00:03:19] Went to college in a place called Cal State Hayward, which was a small college in the Bay Area, and then went to law school at Santa Clara University. So, yeah, moved around quite a bit and I was happy to be in a spot where I didn't have to keep moving. 

[00:03:32] Lara Quie: So what inspired you to go into law in the first place? Did you know any lawyers in your family or around your family? 

[00:03:39] Michael Chastaine: To be perfectly honest, I went to law school because I didn't want to get a job. Back in the day when I was in college. College was very cheap and law school was not that expensive, certainly relative to today.

[00:03:56] And I just wasn't that interested in getting a nine to five. I, didn't really know any lawyers. I didn't really know where the law would lead me. But it's, it seemed like an interesting path for me. And fortunately, I think I really found my calling, so I got lucky in that regard.

[00:04:15] Lara Quie: It does sound lucky, yes. Cause it sounds like you did go in rather blind, but it is worth taking a chance and obviously it's a very well-respected profession. It's known for job stability. It's known for a good standard of living. So it's definitely worth giving it a try.

[00:04:30] So tell me about your early experiences and in terms of qualifying as a lawyer in the United States. What did you have to do for that? 

[00:04:40] Michael Chastaine: Well, I, did okay in college. I wasn't a straight A student, but I was very involved in our community.

[00:04:48] So, I was the president of the ski club. I was vice president of the student body. I helped start a fraternity, so I was very involved in all of that. And I think that was part of the resume that got me into school. It was interesting as I started meeting my classmates, my very first year of law school most of them had never seen a B in their entire life.

[00:05:09] They were all straight A students. And I really felt like I wasn't burdened by that. Anyone who's been to law school knows it's graded on a curve. Not everybody's going to get an A and you got to be okay with that. And I was, and so, my aspiration was never to go into big law.

[00:05:27] My aspiration was to try to help people. That was really what I wanted to do. And I felt like that was a good avenue for me. I was kind of thinking about politics. I was thinking about a lot of opportunity. But I wound up at the public Defender's office in Santa Clara county which is San Jose, California, and.

[00:05:48] Again, I sort of fell into it. That was my calling. I had great mentors who really taught me how to practice law, and, I had a great deal of success. At the Public Defender's office, I was the youngest member ever of the, special trials unit. I was doing death penalty cases by the time I was 30.

[00:06:08] So it, it, really fit for my skillset. I wasn't the smartest guy there, but I was clever and I understood how people thought and that allowed me to understand how to be persuasive. 

[00:06:21] Lara Quie: So you mentioned you had lots of mentors as a podcast we're very keen to encourage young people to have mentors.

[00:06:29] How did those mentoring relationships come about?

[00:06:33] Michael Chastaine: Well, so I, had one mentor in particular, a man by the name of Brian Czech Meister, who's probably the smartest person I'd ever met. And for whatever reason, he took me under his wing and he let me work with him and, look at the, motions that he filed. I would go to court and watch him.

[00:06:53] I also spent a great deal of time just hanging out with older more seasoned lawyers and listening to their war stories. I mean, we used to go to this bar and I would hang out there and I would listen to the things that they did that worked for them, the things that didn't work for them.

[00:07:11] And that was a great learning experience. I'm, not sure that's, I would necessarily recommend that for everybody. But for me it really helped me see two things. One people would open up and, actually talk about the concerns they had, the fears they had.

[00:07:28] The strategies that they used that sometimes didn't work. But I also saw for a lot of these guys that they weren't taking care of themselves. They were drinking too much. They were stressing over things. And that ultimately led to one of the books that I wrote called "Legalese the Ultimate Guide in How to Survive a Law Practice".

[00:07:48] Because I, didn't want to fall into that trap. So while it was nice to listen to the war stories, I also realized you got to take care of yourself, you got to get enough sleep, you got to eat right, everything in moderation. It was very formative and I was I was just a sponge.

[00:08:04] I just would listen and keep my mouth shut and listen and learn as much as I possibly could.

[00:08:10] Lara Quie: That's very interesting. It does sound like you were proactive in seeking out these older mentors and positioning yourself so that you were there to listen. I suppose it's more difficult these days, especially cause people don't tend to go to bars and drink as much as in the past. Lawyers would go to their old drinking hole and it would be quite easy to know where to go. 

[00:08:33] But certainly somewhere like Singapore, that's not really the case. So it would be harder to do that. But there are lots of cafes where one might be able to invite an older lawyer from your firm to go for a coffee and just really have an interest in their career. How they managed. I think that natural curiosity is what's needed in a young person who wants to learn that always learning mentality. 

[00:09:01] Michael Chastaine: And with Brian in particular, we would go and lift weights and so we'd be in the gym and we'd talk There was one lawyer that I would play racquetball with and again during the course of that, before, during, and after, we would talk about cases and I would ask questions and then just shut up and listen. And so, there's a lot of different ways that you can expose yourself to it.

[00:09:25] But the, thing is, you got to be open to it. You got to be humble enough to realize that when you come out law school, you don't know anything. All that law degree gave you was the right to practice law, but to think that you actually know anything I mean, I've been doing this for coming up 38 years now, and I run into young lawyers.

[00:09:46] We hire young lawyers and, they come in and they think they know it all. And I'm like, dude, you're never going to make it. Because you, don't know anything. You, just really don't. I think part of that is, is being humble and, listening and, even if you don't agree to just put it in your toolbox because you never know when that situation's going to come up and you might be able to use it.

[00:10:14] Lara Quie: Absolutely. And so when you had started that career, what did you do next? You were in a small firm. Tell me a bit about the journey from that firm into your own practice. 

[00:10:28] Michael Chastaine: So I, I was a public defender for almost 17 years. We were living in the Bay Area, so this was in San Jose.

[00:10:36] And this was during the.com boom where prices of land and everything were just, homes were just crazy. So my family and I decided to move to the Sacramento area, and I joined a very prestigious firm. and stayed with them for about six years.

[00:10:57] And, it just became at, the end of five years, it became apparent that it wasn't a great fit for me. So I decided to open my own firm. That was never really the game plan. I really hadn't wanted to do that. But I did. And in all honesty, I struggled for a while because I didn't have the business mentors. 

[00:11:20] I'd never had a real business. So I went a number of years really struggling. And then decided to start investing in business mentors. Spending the time and the money reading the books I mean, there, there's a million books out there you read and I read a , vast majority of them.

[00:11:39] And then I would spend time with other people who had done what I wanted to do, which was to build a million dollar law firm and. By just following their direction and, listening to them, and again, being humble enough to realize that I didn't really know very much about it.

[00:11:58] I was able to put the systems into play so that, it began, working very successfully. All the while, continuing to maintain the high level of service. That was really important to me. I mean I am a very good lawyer. Been chosen, one of the best lawyers in the country many, years in a row.

[00:12:15] Our firm was selected the best criminal defence firm in Northern California two years in a row. I'm very proud of that. So those standards I wanted to keep, but it's also important that you make money. Because the, nobody wants a broke lawyer that, you know. So we built that system in such a way that it, ran based on systems and data.

[00:12:37] And, it still does. And even though I sold it that's what I sold. I sold the, systems and I sold the data. And I still consult with them. I'm of counsel to the firm and I continue to consult with them. And they had a pretty good year last year and, they'll continue to build on that.

[00:12:54] Lara Quie: So tell me a bit about these systems. What kind of things are you talking about?

[00:13:00] Michael Chastaine: So we have a system for everything. So, how the phone is answered, that's not just left to the discretion. There is a script how the intake goes, the questions that are asked at the intake. When we do the initial interview with a client we have a very a very systematic way of handling it.

[00:13:21] We have a, we have systems for the way the cases are handled. Every case is individual of course, but there are certain similarities to every case. And so how they're handled, how we bill the, entire client experience from the moment that they walk in the door, what do they see?

[00:13:39] What do they smell, what do they hear? How do we greet them? All of that has been predetermined. And then we measure it and see how it works we have lots of historical data, so we know what those numbers should be and if those numbers start to dip, we know where to look to, go, okay, well, is somebody not following the script?

[00:14:02] Generally, that's the problem, but sometimes the script gets old and you need to refresh it. So the message that we put out, what our website says, all of that stuff is, we, give a lot of thought to that. And then and then it's just a matter of following it.

[00:14:16] So when we, bring in a new employee, they don't have to, they don't have to guess. There's a whole manual, this is how you do this job and it's really the only way to do it in my opinion. And then having the data to continue to measure it how are we doing is the, we know the number of leads that we should get.

[00:14:35] We know how many of those should set appointments. We know what the show rate is. We know how many of those people should hire. And then that gives you the ability to say, okay, I want to make X amount of dollars, and you just reverse engineer. so you know how many leads you need to get in order to make X amount of dollars.

[00:14:54] I mean it's really is one of my mentors said business is simply a math problem. And once you have the data, you can pretty easily just plug in the numbers and know exactly what you have to do.

[00:15:08] Lara Quie: I think that when it comes to a law firm and systems, lawyers are quite detail orientated. . And so I can imagine that actually with these processes in place, they probably could get quite comfortable and, used to working with those. But it is something, certainly the data that you mentioned that's something that obviously is very much in common parlance these days or talking about data analytics, et cetera. But for law firms, it probably isn't something that people concentrate on. And I imagine that now with SEO and websites and the use of social media, et cetera, it is easier to have some metrics and measure.

[00:15:50] But when we're talking about, let's say 10 years ago before all of this technology what were the metrics like? So if you had 10 people walk through your door and have that conversation, how many were conversions? Who became clients? 

[00:16:08] Michael Chastaine: So our numbers are typically somewhere around 70% of the phone calls are qualified, which means they have a problem that we deal with in a jurisdiction that we deal with it in.

[00:16:22] 80% of those will set an appointment, 90% of those will show up, and about 30% will hire. So you just work those numbers backwards. I mean, that's traditional or historic for our firm. And, it varies from month to month. So you, you need to have a long a, large enough a large enough piece of data to, to do it.

[00:16:44] So usually we measure it 90 day increments. Because one day the phone may not ring at all and the next day the phone's ringing off the hook. We may go, a week without a hire and then the next day you get four hires. So you got to look at a large enough, over a large enough period, but all of that data is internal data, right?

[00:17:08] That's not stuff that you're getting off Facebook. Cause I don't trust any of the data that our SEO people give us. I don't trust the Google analytics, I trust our numbers because we track our numbers and we know you know what those numbers are going to be. and I also, one of the key numbers that most people don't track is what is your actualized hourly rate?

[00:17:36] So you may bill $600 an hour, but you know, if you collect 90% of your fees, you're doing quite well. And then you have the fees that you write off and the stuff that you know you, do, but you can't actually bill. So when you, once you know what that actualized number is. And our number has been pretty consistent over the last three years.

[00:17:59] Once we set what our goal is, then we know how many billable hours we have to do, and then, you know how many employees you need to have. So again it's, a math thing, but when you have the historical data and you know what those numbers truly are so as an example, I mean, I bill $600 an hour, but our actualized hourly rate last year was $237, so that's law clerks and other lawyers.

[00:18:29] A lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, I bill a say $500 an hour and I bill eight hours a day. Well, no, you don't. If you think you billed eight hours a day, then you just don't understand. I'm working with a client right now who, when I first started working with him, thought he'd bill eight hours a day.

[00:18:46] Now that he tracks it, it's two and a half hours a day. I was like, okay, well that explains an awful lot, right? That's why you're not, that's why you're gross is not what you think it is. But it's very liberating when you know those, true numbers. for your firm because somebody else's firm may be very, different and different practice areas are going to be different.

[00:19:07] There's this big move here in the States for flat rate and, I think flat rates a, very interesting concept. But my question is how many people actually know what the correct flat rate is? Right? If they treat all cases the same. I mean, there's some cases, like for us driving under the influence, DUIs they're -pretty standard and so you can do a flat rate, but our high end cases they can vary from being a, 15 hour case to being a 300 hour case to, flat rate those cases would be unfair to the client and be unfair to us because we know what our data is and we know how much time we spend on cases.

[00:19:49] And know, my experience is that most firms, maybe big firms do this. I'm sure big firms do this, but small firms, solos and smaller firms, they don't track their time at all. And one of the things that I do for the bar is I do fee arbitration when there's a disagreement.

[00:20:08] And I just did one couple weeks ago where and, I know the lawyer, I mean, I know of him. Anyway he's, got a very good reputation. I think he's a good lawyer. He doesn't track his time. His accounting was horrible. And I wound up basically awarding the client back all their money. Because I couldn't see the work.

[00:20:28] It's like they used to teach us show your math, right? Well, he didn't show his math and he didn't have any way of doing it. And that was unfortunate, but had to go based on the facts that I had.

[00:20:41] Lara Quie: I think when we talk about law firms and the billable hour, it's such a bane of everyone's life and recording in six minute increments on the carpe diem. It's always very stressful, especially at big law firms where they have a 2000 or more hour target a year. It's very, difficult because, as you say, when it comes to actually billing that time, how much time does it take to create a billable hour?

[00:21:09] And usually it might take perhaps three hours. Of your time to, to be worth that one billable hour. And so it is about the math underneath, as you say, but I think many lawyers are notoriously bad at math. And they've steered clear of it for, reasons because they think that they're much better at the arts side of things.

[00:21:30] But ultimately, I think I've heard you say it's about the business of law. It's very much about your services are, legal services, but ultimately you are a business person. And very few lawyers do take that approach, especially when it comes to their own practice and the concept of business development. So I'd be very interested in how you, yourself went about business development and what you consider that to be. 

[00:21:59] Michael Chastaine: So for, me, it started with the switch from owning a law firm to owning a business that provided legal services. And once I integrated that and go, look, I own a business and now I need to actually make it profitable.

[00:22:16] I, have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders, which was only me, but still. And, I also had a, duty to my employees to make it profitable. I mean, if you don't make payroll there's people counting on you. And especially during covid, we were able to put away, we had a lot of money set aside for a rainy day, and boy, it rained, right?

[00:22:41] And we went through a lot of it. But that was the first thing I did that switch in my own mind, that I went from owning a law firm to being a business owner. The second thing is, I came to the realization that the firm and I are not the same.

[00:22:59] So I, separated myself from it and said, this is an entity that needs to be profitable. I get a salary. And, there's a there's a, couple really good books on this, but the importance of paying, especially in a small firm, the importance of paying yourself a salary. And so I get a salary for the legal work that I do.

[00:23:22] And if and since I've sold it right, somebody else gets that salary because they're doing that job. The profit of the firm is for the risk that I take as a business owner, and I separated those two things out which again, made it easier to sell. So, the, mind shift was very important. And then I would say the third thing is I got mentors to actually teach me what to do.

[00:23:48] And I listened to them and, I said, well that doesn't make much sense, but I'll give it a go because. What do I know? And then I would say the fourth thing is I read Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, and I followed it. and I, went out and got seven bank accounts and I divvied up all the money so that any moment in time.

[00:24:08] So I had a payroll account, I had a, an operating account, I had a profit account, I had a tax account, I had a rainy day account, and the money as it comes in and an income account. So when the money hit the income account, then everything got spread out into those things. So I knew at any given point exactly where I was.

[00:24:27] The challenge is if you have all your money sitting in a in an operating account, it might look like you're going out, Hey I, got all this money. Well, no, because Uncle Sam wants a piece of it. You need to set that aside, or you can get yourself in trouble. You got payroll coming up you need some new computers.

[00:24:44] You got all of these things. A bar card in California now is $510 bucks. I mean, it's not a great deal of money, but if you don't have it's a problem. There's bonuses and there's Christmas bonuses and there's all those then, and there's marketing and SEO and all these things that you're paying for.

[00:25:03] So once I actually had a real good handle, I could look at my bank account every day and go and know exactly where I was. And then it makes it easier to make good decisions. So we really ran our firm on data. It wasn't gut feelings. It wasn't how I was feeling that day. It was, this is the data, this is what I can afford to do and this is what I can't afford to do.

[00:25:26] And, I'll just tell you that once you get into that mindset, it works. It really does. 

[00:25:33] Lara Quie: And on the business development side, in terms of growing relationships with clients, I think you are in trial criminal defence type work. So you are not likely to get that many repeat customers hopefully, right? So, different from a corporate lawyer, say who could very easily get well in with an in-house counsel who provides them with work on a frequent basis, oh, I need to do this, that, and the other list, contract, et cetera. Yeah. So what does business development look like for someone in your position and what advice can you give to people who are also in litigation?

[00:26:11] So, for example, we are a barristers chambers our clients are mostly law firms. So partners in private practice, what kind of business development can they do? 

[00:26:23] Michael Chastaine: So the first thing I would say is, you got to have patience. You pop out of law school and you think you're all that and nobody knows you, right?

[00:26:32] So that's why I wrote five books. That's why I wrote the books. That's why I did the radio show. I did a radio show for almost five years. That's why I do the, podcast. That's why I have a YouTube channel. And it takes time. The, just throw one out there, nobody cares.

[00:26:50] Right? But if you do it long enough, I mean, I was in Stockton where I'm doing this trial, I do very little work in Stockton, but I was talking to lawyer there and he goes, oh, I've heard of you. I'd never met this guy, ever. But that's what you want, is you want people to start to know your name and get your reputation out there.

[00:27:10] And, that just takes time. My radio show, my books all the podcasts that I do. It's all about giving information. I'm not like, oh hire me, I'm the greatest things since sliced bread. It's about, let me tell you or share with you my experience just, like we're doing today.

[00:27:28] If somebody took the information that, that we're talking about today and just started to implement that their firm would grow I, can absolutely guarantee it, but oh, I don't have time to do a radio show. At the time that I was doing a radio show, I was doing expedition length adventure racing all over the world.

[00:27:45] I was a ski patroller. I was doing a Monday morning radio show, and I had a full on practice. So I don't buy, I don't have time. What I say is, you're wasting time. You're not using your time effectively. We all have the same amount of time, right? 24 hours for all of us. So what are you doing with your time and how can you be more effective?

[00:28:08] One of the easiest ways to improve your time management is to get rid of stuff. Stop doing the junk that you don't need to do. Right? Part of my story is I, mean at one point I had some employees and then everybody left and I was all by myself. And that was really the turning point for me that I hired a mentor and the very first thing he said to me is, well, why are you doing your own bookkeeping?

[00:28:30] Hire a bookkeeper. Okay, well, that saved 10 hours a week for me. So that was 40 hours a month that I saved and I hated it anyway. and it was done better. It was done correctly and I didn't have to worry about it. So I converted those 10 hours into about four or five billable hours. At, that time I think I was billing $300 an hour.

[00:28:49] So what's that five? That's $1,500 and I paid her four, so I was in the plus $900 a week. Well, once you understand that math, then you go, well, holy smokes, I'm not answering my phone anymore. I'm having someone else do it. And the rule now for me is I don't do anything that doesn't require a bar card.

[00:29:08] I hire somebody to do that because if I can bill one or two more billable hours, I pay for it. And, so, that's how you make it work. And, of course, the other thing is if, you got to rely on me to answer the phone, that's not good. Cause I'm not very good at answering the phone.

[00:29:25] I don't like answering the phones. I don't do all the follow up. But I have someone who does that, and then the client really feels like they're being treated well and our employees, they'll talk about the books and they'll talk about the radio show and they'll make me sound like the best thing since slice bread, which makes the client feel better, which makes them feel like they're getting the service that they feel that they're actually paying for.

[00:29:47] While I can focus on the legal thing, which is what I do well. So, that's all part of the marketing and that's all part of that branding. It's a big thing. It's not just SEO or I mean, everybody's trying to sell lawyers the magic pill. There is no magic pill. This is hard work.

[00:30:07] you got to be willing to do it. You got to, and you need to spend time thinking about it. What is your message? What do you stand for? Why are you even practicing law? Answer those questions and then everything else what are your core values? What is it that you, what do you represent?

[00:30:24] Not who do you represent, but what do you represent? And once people know that about you then, people show up. They go, well, I believe in those core values and so I want to I want to work with him. As opposed to, oh, it's just another guy trying to make some money.

[00:30:41] Lara Quie: Yeah, it's a very, competitive marketplace, especially globally, but in Singapore as well. It's very hard for lawyers to feel that they can stand out. They're all super intelligent with amazing degrees and all of that. 

[00:30:56] Michael Chastaine: Right, but that, that, that's just what got them there, right? Everybody who got out of law school and passed the bar is smart and they have a degree. So that doesn't distinguish you. What distinguishes you and, that's really the thing that, your, unique selling proposition. Why should I hire you? You need to ask yourself that question.

[00:31:14] Why should anybody go into their wallet and pull out a big chunk of cash and hire me? Answer that question, and then things start to fall into place. 

[00:31:23] Lara Quie: Yeah. It ultimately is about the client experience though, isn't it? It's how you treat that client, how you handle their case. Are you responsive?

[00:31:32] Are you user friendly? Are you affable? Are you nice to be with? Are you someone who genuinely cares? All of these things, your own personality- they count for a lot and I think people don't focus enough on being a nice person. For lawyers a lot of it is about I need to be so professional, so efficient.

[00:31:58] They're paying me for this, for me to be speedy. It's like, well, actually no. I think a lot of clients, what they're looking for is comfort. They're looking for that feeling. I've made the right investment in choosing you. Because you care and therefore you're going to go the extra mile for me in my case. So long as you are good at communication, I think that's the biggest skill.

[00:32:23] So it's the listening to understand the problem and then it's the communication. Constantly updating your client on where you are, why you need to do something, how long something will take, why it costs this much. All of these things are about good EQ, so really that relationship. So a very, strong relationship of trust.

[00:32:48] And it, as you said, it takes time to build that. And I think that a lot of lawyers may be confused between when it comes to the concept of rainmaking. They think, oh, you have to be some massive extrovert person who wants to get on stage all the time and give lots of seminars. It's like, no, actually introverts are very good listeners.

[00:33:12] And often that is what the client is looking for. They're looking for someone who understands and can therefore help them. So you have to have a very generous spirit, so you do need to give a bit extra. So that's why the billable hour is difficult, isn't it? Because actually you want to be a lot more generous.

[00:33:31] Than your billable hour will permit. And I think that because clients are very conscious of the billable hour in those circumstances where you do have a bit of leeway to say, look, this is off the clock. Let me talk about this with you. Let's go through this. And, but also when it comes to being able to offer a flat fee, as you mentioned, also being able to really use your experience, look at the data as you said.

[00:34:00] if you are dealing with a case, how long does it usually take? How much profitability is in there? And then you can work out a flat fee that's going to give you that built in profit margin, and then also mean that you're going to deliver the service and give that client the comfort of a fixed cost.

[00:34:19] Because I think the fees are always the biggest worry for any client, sure. It'll just get out of control. 

[00:34:26] Michael Chastaine: The other thing I would point out is that if that's not your strong suit if you're just not great at that, you can hire people to do that for you. So, the lady who answers our phones, I mean, she's great and I have her do a lot of the calls.

[00:34:41] If she sells me or sells the other lawyers in our office, then people feel better about it. They don't necessarily need or even want to hear from me, they just want to hear from somebody in the firm saying, oh just a reminder, you got a court appearance tomorrow. Don't forget X, Y, and Z.

[00:34:59] Or, this is what's going on. It you got to play to your own strengths. And if that's not your strong suit, you should always be nice, obviously, and whatnot, but if that's not your strong suit, you can hire someone to do that. 

[00:35:12] Lara Quie: That's true. I think that it sounds like you have really mastered the art of outsourcing, recognizing where you add value, what you need to do, and then outsourcing all of the other things to people for whom it is their strength, as you said.

[00:35:28] So the lady who is really great on the phone getting her to do all of those phone interactions for you, et cetera, it is, it's about working smart and having the systems, as you say. But it sounds like you are a super, productive person. So what tips have you got for the busy lawyer who, always claims oh, I don't have time to write that article. How do you make time? 

[00:35:51] Michael Chastaine: Okay that's a great question. And so one of the things, first of all you, just have to plan your day. You have to plan your day and you have to plan your week. I do my weekly planning for next week on Friday . And the reason that I do Friday is it gives me an opportunity to look at how did I do this week?

[00:36:09] And if I missed something, I still have a chance to fix it, right? If you do it Sunday night or Monday morning, then you don't have a chance to fix what you might have missed. It's like, oh man, I forgot I needed to get that thing done. So I do it on Friday mornings and I look at everything that needs to get done and then I'd pick a spot for it. I've got time on Tuesday to do this. For me, I don't do jail visits anymore, but when I used to, those were a big time suck. And so I would have to block off three hours to, to do that. When can I do that and when am I going to actually be near the jail so I can save some time?

[00:36:44] So it, it's planning that and then time blocking saying, okay, I need to get this motion done and I'm going to set two hours and the phone's turned off. It's on my calendar. Nobody calls me, nobody comes into my office. Nobody's allowed to disturb me unless, as, I tell 'em, I said, unless the building's on fire and I'm the only person with a bucket of water, do not come in my office.

[00:37:09] And then we set up a time when they can. so when they have questions and they need guidance make yourself available, but you block these times off. And then you just laser focus on, doing it. Anybody who has their, cell phone on their desk, in their office is wasting time.

[00:37:26] What possible reason would you have your cell phone on your desk? It is a distraction by just existing. So it goes in a drawer, it goes in a briefcase. The key is to eliminate as many distractions as you possibly can, and you know what they are. If you have beepers and notifications and junk, turn 'em off.

[00:37:48] I only look at email once a day. Just because you sent me an email does not make it important to me. And I have a automatic responder which you may have gotten that, that tells you I only look at emails once a day, so nobody's caught by surprise. Right? And then I set aside time, okay, I'm going to go through these emails and, most of 'em is delete If it, if I think it's important, I'll stash it somewhere . 

[00:38:13] But the first request doesn't always get responded to because like Napoleon wouldn't respond to a letter for 90 days because the problems would just kind of resolve themselves. I don't wait 90 days, but I also think that things do tend to resolve themselves. So I oftentimes I will wait a few days and go, okay, well, did this take care of itself? Do I even need to deal with it? . So you know, it, there there's, things like that. I mean, Dan Kennedy, who is I think he's still alive, is the mentor of many of my mentors. He wrote a book on, the No BS strategy to time Management for Entrepreneurs.

[00:38:50] And it's a rough book. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there that I would never do. But boy, I, I used a number of the strategies that he put in there and you just start carving out 15, 20 minutes, a half hour here, and all of a sudden over a week you, you bought yourself a whole day. There's a number of strategies I, recommend that people should be reading books every single day, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes. And just take those strategies and put 'em in your toolkit. And what works today may not work tomorrow, but you know, you'll have another strategy. It's a long progressive thing. I mean, I've been doing this for 37 years.

[00:39:31] I didn't learn all of this my first year out of law. And I'm still learning. I still read constantly self-help books, time management books. I listen when I'm in the car, I don't listen to the news. I listen to, podcasts, and I listen to audio books all to, get better at my craft.

[00:39:49] And part of the craft is time management.

[00:39:52] Lara Quie: That's so true. Definitely time management. And as you say, there's so many distractions. And one of the biggest problems is the email, because you'll be there concentrating on something and then suddenly you realize, oh my goodness I, should look at my inbox. So you look at your inbox and then, oh no, you lose a whole half hour doing those replies.

[00:40:14] And of course, because you've replied, they then reply. So the more emails you do, the more emails you get back. So actually it's a very difficult ping pong game. And so yeah, you perhaps not being so on top of your emails is probably a good thing. And the phone, what with the WhatsApp and all of the different messaging platforms and all of these other platforms that are constantly taking our time and distracting us. That is very difficult because they say that there is the concept of multitasking, but really, The human brain cannot handle it. So you lose your concentration on one thing.

[00:40:55] It takes you time to get back into that flow again. So it is protecting that time. And as you say, being intentional, it sounds like you are very self-disciplined and you are very well organized about being intentional with your time. So being very protective of your time and space to say, I am going to do this piece of work in these two hours.

[00:41:21] And then going in getting in your vacuum, sitting down and doing it, and then putting time pressure on yourself to give you that concentration, get into that flow and do it. It is difficult in this modern world to do that, but it's possible, right? It is. And so a lot of it, as you say, is about educating other people.

[00:41:42] So with your autoresponder on your email. If, for example, you are somebody who wants to have dinner with your kids every night. Because of this hybrid work and everybody's got a laptop and we can all do stuff from home. If you tell everybody, "Hey, I go home at 5:30pm so that I can have dinner with my kids at 6:00pm, and then I'm back at work at 7:30pm, that is my golden time.

[00:42:06] I will not be available, but check in with me on email and then I'll respond." And if you tell everybody the same story constantly, they know that's how you work. And then they're like, oh, it's okay, he'll be back after dinner or he checks his email at 8:00 PM every night. So although I haven't got a reply, I know I'll get one later, et cetera. It's a lot about the communication, isn't it? 

[00:42:29] Michael Chastaine: Yeah, absolutely. And, it's just controlling your time and recognizing your own value. Just because someone has my email address does not mean that what they're sending me is important. The vast majority of it is just junk. And so, and even if it's work related so.

[00:42:48] I mean I've been doing this probably five or six years and the same way. And everybody just knows. So nobody gets all worked up about it. And if I know that something's going to come in like I know if the court's going to send me something I want to be responsive.

[00:43:06] But once a day's, enough it, really is . It really is. And then just organize what you got and delete what you don't need and, then move on. I mean, I used to have an Apple watch. I had to get rid of it because the, damn thing kept flashing stuff. I was like, w why do I want that?

[00:43:22] I don't want that. I want, so I have a little a nice analog, and so, yeah. Yeah. It's and I, do recognize I'm of a generation, when I first started practicing law, we didn't have computers. We certainly didn't have cell phones. And, so I just kind of went back to the old school of, well, nobody lost their mind, because they would mail me a letter and it would take two days to get to me, and then it would take me a couple days to send it. So I, try to treat things like, like snail mail. Would I respond to this? If this came in as, a letter, would I respond to it right away? probably not. So 

[00:43:55] Lara Quie: Yeah. So just as we're rounding off, have you got some final pieces of advice? So imagine yourself as a mentor to all of these listeners. What three pieces of advice have you got to give them today? 

[00:44:08] Michael Chastaine: So the first thing is that you need to read. You need to understand first of all, people don't necessarily believe what you believe or react the way you react.

[00:44:16] So by reading and I like self-help books, but you know, I also read a lot of novels. What I'm looking for is how do people react to different situations. And just put that in my tool chest when I'm doing a jury trial. And I've got jurors that I'm trying to select. How is this person likely to react to the message that I'm trying to put out?

[00:44:39] And then gear that message towards them. So that's the, number one thing is you got to you got to read. And you, need to read all the time. Number two is you got to get enough sleep. The secret weapon to high performance is enough sleep. I read a study and write about this in my book, that lawyers are the second most sleep deprived profession in the country.

[00:45:02] They're also the most unhappy happy profession in the country. And I think those two things are related. So getting enough sleep on a regular basis you'll just feel better, you'll perform better you'll, do a better job. So those will be two things. And then taking good care of yourself physically which is part of getting good sleep.

[00:45:24] When you put on weight and feel lousy and aren't taking care of yourself. You pay a price and ultimately your client pays the price. And so, I'm not saying everybody needs to exercise like I do but taking care of yourself on a regular basis will make a huge difference in peak performance.

[00:45:45] If you want to be the best lawyer that you possibly can be, you got to read, you got to sleep, and you got to take care of yourself. The legal stuff that'll come. that'll come along because the laws change, right? You go to seminars, you listen to strategies about how to do cross-examination or how to write briefs or whatever.

[00:46:05] And I guess the bonus one that I would say, and this sort of goes along with the reading is become a storyteller. Learn how to tell a story that people actually want to listen to because that's what you do as a lawyer, you tell your client's story. Why should they award him this money?

[00:46:23] Why should you agree to this? This is the story. And I, again, I had good mentors. I had a guy tell me early on in my career, "Mike, you got to learn how to tell a story". and that's part of the craft. And so that's why reading, how do other people tell stories? What is it about that book that you liked or didn't like?

[00:46:44] And learn those skills. So I think those four things if you just focused on that you know what I tell our lawyers is for any motion or any negotiation that you're involved in there's the how. So can they do what we want them to do? I mean, does the law allow it?

[00:47:02] Do the facts allow it? But that is secondary to the why. Why should they do it? Because even if they can, they're not going to, unless they have a good why. And that's part of the storytelling. Learning how to tell the story about why this is the right thing to do so that you have as close to a win-win as you can get to. Everybody walks away feeling like they did the right thing. 

[00:47:29] Lara Quie: So true. And that's really excellent advice and so easy to ignore. I think the pressures of corporate law in particular. Big firms, small firms, everybody is beavering away. They are neglecting their health. They're sometimes not eating meals.

[00:47:47] They're not drinking enough water, they're not getting enough sleep. They certainly don't have time to read for leisure. They are really on the verge of burnout unfortunately. And so it is about managing one's self. One's day. Planning, thinking about how you are going to block off time for each of these things.

[00:48:06] So, setting an alarm for bedtime. Making sure one hour before bedtime. So let's say you give yourself a deadline of 11:00 PM. So an alarm at 10:00 PM that goes off and says, bedtime's coming up. Start to think about winding down. Go brush your teeth now. Have your bath now, and then you've got half an hour to read something.

[00:48:30] Make yourself sleepy and then you go to bed, but you get your sleep. minimum, of seven hours every single night. And have a routine as well. It's not good to have irregular times. So Absolutely agree. So Mike, where can people reach you if they want to have your good advice on a more one-to-one basis?

[00:48:51] Michael Chastaine: Yeah, so I, I have a website, www.mikechastain.com. Chastain with an E on the end. I have a YouTube page that, you know, has everything that we've talked about. I've done a blog on that. And that's on Mike Chastain YouTube under Mike Chastain. And then my email address is Mike@michaelchastain.com.

[00:49:12] So I'm pretty easy to get a hold of. Don't expect me to respond immediately, but I will get back to you. And there's a lot of free material both on the website and on the YouTube channel. I try to do it every week, but it's probably more like every week and a half come up with a topic and, really deep dive into it.

[00:49:28] A couple weeks ago, I went through the most important books a law firm owner should read. And encourage people to listen to that because those are all books that changed my life and so yeah, I'm pretty easy to get a hold of. 

[00:49:39] Lara Quie: Well, thank you for everything that you do to help other people. You're putting out a lot of information and so we thank you for that- your YouTube channel or your podcasts and everything that helps others. So thank you for being a guest today. It was great to see you. Thanks, Mike. 

[00:49:55] Michael Chastaine: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed it very much.

[00:49:58] Lara Quie: I hope you enjoyed that episode. Do help others in the legal industry, particularly younger lawyers, who could benefit from listening to the podcast by sharing it with them. If you want to hear more, there are plenty of earlier episodes where other leaders share their stories and advice. 

[00:50:17] This podcast takes me a lot of time at the weekend to edit so please show your support and click on subscribe, and also give it a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Have a magical week ahead.