Tim McKey — From CPA to Law Firm Consultant; Fixing the Leaks Costing You Millions and Adding Value to your Firm

Voice Over (: 00:00

The most dangerous place you can be as a trial lawyer is to think you've got it figured out.

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I'm still trying to get better. I still have the passion for it. I believe in it.

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Everyone can learn to do what I do.

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And yet there's a group here that continues to get extraordinary verdict. Trial Lawyers University is revolutionizing educating lawyers to be better trial lawyers. It's been invaluable to me.

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Trial Lawyers University, where the Titans come to train. Produced and powered by LawPods.

Dan Ambrose (: 00:30

Okay. We got Tim McKey with us today. Tim, recently we've crossed paths, but since I've been in the business for about what? Probably about this industry of education, going to a lot of conferences, I think for about 13 years. I've always heard Tim's name around, but only recently got acquainted with him and really learned what he does, but just heard about him a legendary kind of status. So Tim, you run this to consulting and the founder of it. Is this true?

Tim McKey (: 00:56

That is absolutely true. But I founded it with a good friend named Chad Dudley about 16 years ago. In 2018, I bought Chad out because he and his partners bought a marketing firm and some of our clients thought that was a conflict. It really wasn't, but Chad and I, for the optics, decided that I would buy him out and we're still very good friends and still consult with he and his firms. Yeah, Vista has been around for 16 years, doing operational and strategic consulting for plaintiff law firms, been in over 300 firms in that time period.

Dan Ambrose (: 01:30

Give us a little bit of insight in your background on how you, because you didn't just wake up one day consulting law firms, but how'd you get started into this field, the specialized field?

Tim McKey (: 01:39

Yeah, great question. First of all, I'm a CPA. I'm not a lawyer. When I graduated college, I took a job with Deloitte, which back then it was one of the big eight firms. Now it's all merged together and I call them the final four now, the large CPA groups. But I was a traditional accountant, a tax guy, believe it or not, for about 18 years. And around the year 1999, I started really feeling uncomfortable with just what I was doing day-to-day. I felt like we were doing a lot of keeping score, but we weren't really affecting the score. And my partner and I and the CPA firm at that time decided we would like to help businesses become better. So we converted that CPA firm into a consultancy. We didn't throw the baby out with a bathwater. We were still doing taxes, preparing taxes and doing financial type consulting, but we moved into operations, how systems and processes within businesses work.

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And we started a consultancy that was basically a general business consultancy. We got away from all hourly invoicing and billing and went to project type billing. And one of the firms that, for lack of a better term, drank the Kool-Aid with us that we were working with in the CPA capacity, happened to be a plaintiff personal injury law firm. And when we dug in and started looking at their systems, they started getting what I'll call traction. They started measuring operational matters, if you will. We called it operational metrics, intake statistics, case management, contact, client contact, those kind of things. And we got a lot of traction there. And that's when Chad Dudley came along as the COO of that particular firm. And he gave a talk at a conference about how we looked at intake and intake statistics, the strategy for intake scripts and those kind of things.

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And a lawyer said, "Hey, can you come help us?" And Chad called me and said, "Hey, let's go to XCity and help this firm." Or he said, "Do you want to come?" And I said, "Yeah, I think that'd be great." Vista was born. It was all word of mouth. It's still mostly word of mouth. We do do some marketing now, but again, we've been in over 300 firms and 15 years evaluating their operations and helping them de- bottleneck, if you will, and become better at delivering the services to their clients. That's our mission.

Dan Ambrose (: 03:54

And in pursuit of this mission, how big is your team that helps coach and consult these law firms? What's your team look like?

Tim McKey (: 04:03

We have a total team of about 16. We have some contractors that help too, so it's a little bit bigger than that. We have seven operational consultants that have an array of clients that they work with specifically. And I can't even just say that we have consultants without giving you a little bit of their background. They're all experienced. They've all come up through plaintiff law firms. They've been intake people, they've been COOs. They've worked even as receptionists and worked their way up the ladder to legal assistants, paralegals. All of them have significant experience in the plaintiff area. And we've developed over the years our systems and processes that we look at and deliver. We always assess though before we consult. I mean, we don't have a cookie cutter that we come to firms with. Every firm is unique.

Dan Ambrose (: 04:50

Since every firm is unique, when you go to consult a firm, what are some of the processes that you start to analyze to look at to say, "Hey, can we move the needle at this place or would this not be a good..." Because I mean, nobody wants a customer that's not a good fit because if they give you money and they don't get a measurable movement, then they're not going to be happy and they're not going to hire you again. In fact, they might say bad things about you. So to make sure a firm's a good fit, what are the type of systems or metrics you look for?

Tim McKey (: 05:19

Well, look, a firm is a good fit for Vista. If they want to deliver their services more efficiently and effectively to their clients, if they want that, then they're a good fit. The things, the specific areas that we analyze, they're really 10 key areas, and I'm going to probably miss some when I name them here, but does the firm really have a vision? Do they have the right people in the right seats? Have they identified positions within the firm? How are they handling their intake procedures? What does case management really mean for a firm? What are the systems that walk a case as it matriculates through the law firm? How do they look at that? What's their human resources and training look like? What type of technology are they using? Are they getting good financial reports in their accounting area? What about their physical plant?

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All those things are what we evaluate and help them improve to best practices and help them innovate. We're now beginning to look at the AI areas. The cool word out there now is what is your tech stack? What do you have in technology? Those things are just a tool. They're not the be all, end all, but there are some very good tools out there that help you help the firms become more efficient and effective. And we've become familiar with a lot of those, but people still run them. People need to have systems, processes, know what their goals are, and then be held accountable to that. And that's what we helps firms do, identify where the bottlenecks are, create systems for delivery of their services, and then a system to hold the team accountable to do that. Through reporting, we use case management systems. We build our own dashboards.

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We call them where managers and owners and even team members can have a snapshot of their responsibilities and how they're doing. So those are the things that we see that are very important. And over the years, we've helped develop best practices in these areas. So it's a very comprehensive approach, but we don't come with a cookie cutter and say, "Hey, you've got to do absolutely this or you're stupid." That's not it. Our goal is, well, we say first we take the hippocratic oath, Dan, first do no harm. So we come in, evaluate what's not working and then help them correct that and implement a system to change. That's what we do day in and day out.

Dan Ambrose (: 07:36

I think it would be fair to say on top of these things, is most days, I'm sure you say, but if you don't hire Dan Ambrose as your trial coach, now that's just stupid. But other than that, everything has to be- Other

Tim McKey (: 07:47

Than that.

Dan Ambrose (: 07:48

Other than that, there's a variety of different services. Okay, perfect. Everything else is custom. Good to hear. Good to hear. April 21st through 25th in Hermosa Beach, California, we're hosting a bootcamp where you will train in the fundamental skills of trial, witness prep and direct, cross-examination, performance skills, which are opening statement and closing argument and jury selection or voir dire, depending on where you live. We're going to focus on eye contact, voice control, emotional state control, hand and body movement, glance control, creating space amongst other skills. And then once you learn these skills, we're going to apply them to your case. So at the end of the day, it's an investment and a case expense. This program will fundamentally change your life. There's this term of private equity that's affecting, that's all I hear about these days from the Bob Simons and my different colleagues who are more into the business aspects of this and this alternative business system, so they're called ABSs.

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So I know you're involved in that. So what's your take on this ABS type format and the future of our industry?

Tim McKey (: 09:03

That's a great question. Very broad. And I'll try to narrow it a little bit. First of all, ABS's alternative business structures. The definition behind that, and this is just, I guess Tim's layman definition, it's a law firm in a state or territory that allows a non-lawyer to have an ownership position within that law firm. Arizona has it, Puerto Rico has it, Washington DC has it. But right now, those are the only states to my knowledge that recognize the fact that a non-lawyer can actually own a piece of a law firm. It causes some complications because other states, some states have specifically said, if you're a lawyer in my state, you can't associate with an ABS law firm in another state and share legal fees because that's unethical. It's really, in my opinion, I think that that model is probably going by the wayside. Another model that has come into vogue and-

Dan Ambrose (: 09:59

But let me ask you, why is that model going by the wayside, do you think? Because that's all the rage of it here.

Tim McKey (: 10:04

Well, the ABS, and I'm going to contrast that with something called an MSO or a managed service organization, which is another way to have outside investors in. But the ABS structure, each state regulates it. If you're in, pick a state Kansas, Kansas does not recognize or allow, the Bar Association does not allow non-lawyer ownership in the law firm itself. So there's only one state, one territory in the District of Columbia that allows it now. That's a particular structure. Let me contrast that with what I think ... And number one, it's in vogue. I've been very involved with helping a client get an investor, an outside investor, a private equity firm, but they didn't invest in the law firm. And I'm going to explain this structure that's, I'll call it an MSO structure, where the law firm spends out or takes all of its non-legal personnel and assets out of the law firm and creates another entity called an MSO or a managed service organization.

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And then the law firm rents or pays a fee to that managed service organization for all of the support. Private equity has made an investment into the managed service organization. It's no secret that the Duley DeBosier Law Firm here in Louisiana where I'm based, has taken on a private equity partner in their operational MSO. The reason for that in their particular case was they want to grow. They want to be able to move into other areas. What's the best way to do that is, in their opinion, and again, I was part of their team who discussed the whys behind it, was to continue their growth to serve more and hopefully even be more effective than the management was in their single entity. So as soon as that transaction occurred, that MSO and the Dudley DeBoser guys are now looking for other law firms to do the same thing and come under their managed service organization.

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It's a way to de- risk, if you will, they monetize some of the asset that they had in all the services that they were providing, and also a way to grow by having private equity capital do the same thing with another law firm, but use the same managed service organization for the management area. So I know that's a very broad and simplistic view of it, but that model doesn't have to get state approval, et cetera, et cetera, because there is no ownership in the law firm that is outside of the lawyers. The ownership by the private equity or an outside investor is in the managed service organization, which simply provides service to the law firm. Just like someone who you contract with that answers your phone, that helps in demand writing. There's a lot of different services that contract with law firm. The law firms, this is one that just those services and the people are concentrated.

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So I hope that is a good overview and a comparison between ABS and MSO. And again, we are pretty familiar with how that works since we were very involved, and now we're representing some other firms that are evaluating this. I'm going to say one other thing, and I'm going to let you ask another question, is the fact that this has occurred now, it actually gives law firm owners another option for an exit strategy because they can spin off the operations, monitor and sell part of it to whoever, private equity or someone else, monetize part of their wealth that was tied up in their law firm, but also have an opportunity to ride, if you will, on what that MSO does into the future. But it gives the law firm owner an opportunity to grow in their area or actually to exit. They could, depending on age and what that person wants.

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Again, going back to operations, an exit strategy for every firm may look very different. So again, it's not a cookie cutter. The role that we played mostly with the Dudley DeBosier transaction was helping them decide what's best, what is their best option and why? And there's a lot of consideration and they feel like I believe they made the right choice, the best choice for them. It may not be right for everyone. I'm certainly not here to say, "Hey, you've got to do this. " But I am saying you should be aware that this is out there now because this is going to create more competition, it's going to create larger networks of firms, et cetera. So I hope again that that explains it a little bit.

Dan Ambrose (: 14:36

And you talked about your involvement with the deadly deposier private equity transaction. And I know that you and Chad and you brought some other folks together. Your folks are doing an event in Baltimore. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that for people who are more interested in this aspect of the law business?

Tim McKey (: 14:54

As we sit here now, we're in mid-March and early May, May the 7th, the exact Vista is putting on event called A Seat at the Table. It's going to be in Baltimore at Camden Yards. I have a cocktail part of the evening of the 6th and then the event from 9:00 to 4:00 on May the 7th. But what we're doing there, this is an educational event. I'm going to be talking about some of the things that I've talked about here. What is an MSO? What may be the benefits for your particular firm? Chad Dudley and the equity partner that they brought in are going to be there talking about their transaction, the reasons behind it, some of the technicalities. We're going to have ethics attorneys that are going to present because they're ethical questions that everybody brings up. "Hey, are we sharing legal fees with non-lawyers?

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"Well, you're really not because you're just contracting, but we're going to get into the details. There's been ethics opinions on that. We're going to have the top ethics lawyers in the country there. We're going to have the merger and acquisition attorneys who helped create the documents there. There's also, we're going to have an investment bank, the major sponsor, Citizens Capital Markets. Esquire Bank is also going to participate with us here because the commercial banking can also have a role in some of this. So it's an educational, nobody's really selling anything other than," Hey, these are the experts. If you want to get it done, here it is. "But it's not a hard sell event, it's an educational event. We're going to have private equity firms that are attending and we're going to have law firms that are attending. Private equity is getting as much education as the law firms because this is a very new area for them as well.

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So it's going to be a big event. We're excited about it, excited to host it, but also excited to educate. And that's one of the things that we do so people can make well-informed decisions.

Dan Ambrose (: 16:45

Join us April 15th and 16th in Hermosa Beach, California at the TLU Beach House. We are doing a two-day witness prep and direct examination workshop. The witness prep will teach you not only how to get your clients to remember their stories, but to relive them, and then the direct examination so the jury just doesn't hear the story, but they experience it, they witness it. And this is right before Nick Reilly's Trial by Human in West Hollywood, April 17th through 19th. So come for the witness prep, stay for Trial by Human. We'll see you there. After that, about a month after that event, you're coming to TLU Beach for your inaugural visit, which we're very excited about. We've got extra hotel rooms next door because of the extra crowd we're expecting with ... Sometimes we get celebrities to come to our thing, so now we have to make a proper accommodations because you're going to be doing two teaching sessions.

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One is going to be a one-hour lecture format. Tell us what people will gain by coming to that lecture that you're doing on Thursday.

Tim McKey (: 17:53

Yeah. First of all, I'm not one of those celebrities, but I will be there.

Dan Ambrose (: 17:58

Well, maybe not to everybody, but to me you are, okay?

Tim McKey (: 18:00

Okay. Well, look, my one-hour lecture is going to be going through the characteristics of the top performing firms in the country. What do they do operationally? What do they do financially to set them apart? Again, we've been in over 300 firms now and had the opportunity to see and witness lots of different types of operations within law firms. As I said before, we don't come to any firm with a cookie cutter, but we have noticed and taken note that there are certain things that the top performing firms do. And I want to define top performing firms. Okay. It is two things. One is they deliver their services very efficiently and effectively. Throughput, efficient meaning fast, effective, meaning getting the right dollars. So we usually don't say efficient without effectively following it because fast for fast sake is not good. If a case needs to be slowed down, get an expert, all those type things, there are systems that you can put in place to make that happen.

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I'm going to be talking about what the topming firms do to get more clients and to increase their average case values. So that's what that's about. I'm going to go on to the next phase or you want to talk about the next day.

Dan Ambrose (: 19:14

Well, but then on Friday, you and your team are doing a six hour business operations masterclass. So how are those six hours segmented in? What will people gain out of each hour to improve the operations growth of their firm?

Tim McKey (: 19:31

I'm going to tick off the six topics we've got included, and then I'm going to come back and maybe elaborate just a little bit. We're going to be talking about intake, which is a huge component of capturing cases to bring into your firm. It's deceptively complex. And we're going to talk about how to handle incoming leads, the best practices, what statistics, those kind of things. Then we're going to talk about case management, how the cases matriculate through the firm. What things should your case managers, paralegals, and lawyers be doing? We're not talking about case strategy, Dan, at all. We're just talking about the questions that should be asked, the timeframes that should be measured and that type of thing. We're going to also spend some time on leadership because firms of any size have leaders that are heads of departments. And even if you're a very small firm, you're actually leading yourself.

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So we're going to talk about leadership skills, soft skills in dealing with clients and dealing with your fellow team members. We're going to talk about something in the financial area. We have a fractional or part-time CFO service that Vista offers, and that is usually getting into ratio analysis of financial information. And I'll give you an example. What is your cost of lawyers or attorneys to your gross revenue? What is that ratio? What is the cost of your support team to gross revenue? What is your marketing cost gross revenue? We're going to get into the details and what healthy numbers look like, how you measure things, how do you look at profit centers? So we're going to dig into that in the accounting financial discussion. Then we're going to talk about operational reporting and accountability. These are huge because we believe that you really cannot scale or grow your firms efficiently without having good operational systems in place, but also behind them have an accountability system to hold your team to continue to do and perform at the highest level.

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And we can get into how that works. It's reporting usually through case management systems or other methodologies that we help create to make sure that, hey, your paralegals, legal assistants and attorneys are asking the right questions, are getting the results that they want, and there's a system and a process to that. And then I'm going to spend the last hour on the merger and acquisition and succession planning part. We touched a little bit on another option right at the very beginning when we talked about the MSO structure, the investment from outside, whether it's private equity or not, some type of outside investment. It may be law firm to law firm. These things, it's very fluid. But again, just to go back to what I'd said earlier, the advent of the MSO structure, private equity coming in, being involved in that as we were, gives us a little bit of behind the curtain look at another option that's now come up for law firm owners to look at succession and what they want to do with themselves, their life, their stakeholders, their family.

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All of those discussions are very, very important. So we're going to hit on that in the last hour. So those are six topics. There's a lot of detail that's going to be in there. I'll have not only me here, but several of our team members that are experts in these areas, and it'll be in an interactive session. We want that. We want questions, and we're excited to be there.

Dan Ambrose (: 22:54

Join me and my mentor, David Clark. May 27th through June 2nd in Huntington Beach, California for a dark arts bootcamp. This program will change your life. Dave will teach you about neural linguistic programming, conversational hypnosis, embedding stories in the unconscious mind. He changed my life and he'll change yours, and I'll coach you on your witness prep and direct, cross-examination, performance skills for opening statement and closing argument and voir dire. These days will change your life. Come for the bootcamp, stay for TLU Beach, the greatest conference ever. So Tim, how many years do you say 16 years you've been focused on law firms? How many legal events do you think you've been to?

Tim McKey (: 23:46

If I were guessing, I would say 75 to 100 over the years, whether I was speaking or attending, but it is a little bit frustrating to me that I haven't been to TLU because we heard so many good things about it. We're excited about coming this year.

Dan Ambrose (: 24:01

Let me just tell you why you should be excited, because you should be excited because this year is going to be different than any other year because this year starts out on Tuesday, June 2nd with Ed Serenboy hosting a surf camp. So you get to surf a little if you're the kind of guy or a little pickleball. And then that night Binch is hosting a dinner for 300 people, bought out the restaurant and the pool area. So it'd be like an indoor, outdoor dinner. That's going to be cool because that way you get to meet a lot of folks and then we're going to do assigned seating so that way people aren't just sitting with their people they came with or get to know new people, which is the whole idea is to network, get to make new friends. And on top of that, everybody that's coming, including you, I don't know if you've done it, but we asked to submit a personal bio.

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The story of who they are in the first person, in addition to being a consultant, in addition to being a trial lawyer or person who runs Trial Lawyers University. So that way people helps them get connected. Then the next day and Wednesday, we're having a breakfast for everybody at the Lorea that would like to join us for breakfast, a la carte. And then there's just workshops that day. But that afternoon, Ted Wacker's hosting a golf outing, Supio's doing pickleball and Kurt Zane is doing a little go- kart racing. So it's their social aspects too. Then that night we have our opening registration party from 5:30 to 8:30 so that way you don't have to stand on the line and be bored because it's probably like a thousand people there this year and we don't want people waiting around because nothing is worse than waiting in line.

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You want to be doing something, networking, having fun, meeting people, talking to your friends. So that way with a three-hour registration process, it actually starts early in the day as people arrive. So that way there are no lines, but then every night from 8:30 to midnight, the lobby turns, because we buy out the entire hotel too, that makes it different. I mean, how many legal conferences have you been to with about the whole hotel? Probably not too many.

Tim McKey (: 25:46

Zero.

Dan Ambrose (: 25:47

Zero. That's right. It's like you're almost like you're back in college, which is kind of fun in a way, but you're adults now and we're a little more sophisticated than we were hopefully when we're in college. And then so we have this gaming lounge in the lobby every night from 8:30 to midnight with two ping pong tables, foosball, a DJ and open bar. And the DJ happens to be a well-known DJ, Avich Ami, whose day job is trial lawyer. He's my nephew, Harrison works for my buddy. And then Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the agenda is very similar. From 6:30 AM to 7:30 AM, you can go out to the beach and do a beach workout with my friend Ed Serenboli, or you could go and do yoga on the ocean lawn with my buddy, Nick Wooldridge. And then from 7:30 to 9:00, we do a full breakfast for everybody with bacon, eggs, and fruit and everything outside on the ocean lawn with 12 top table rounds.

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So it's really easy to get to meet new people every day. And then class goes from 90 to 12:30, but we do take a break every hour for 15 minutes. So that way we have scheduled time to rest the mind up. And then from 12:30 to 2:00, we do a full lunch for everybody. And the food's fantastic, by the way. That's because it's the fifth year at the Fuicea. So we got it real dialed in with the hotel. And then lunch is from 12:30 to 2:00. So you got plenty of space, plenty of diningtime, lots of outdoor spaces and fresh air because I really don't like to recycle the air of Vegas. I mean, I know some people like to breathe recycled air, but I've been reading more about breathing and health and you have to have good oxygen to function well. But every night from 5:30 to 8:30, we have theme parties and the first theme is going to be the 80s track suit party.

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So just got Amazon just delivered my 80s tracksuit, so I should have worn it for the event, but I'm just getting ready, getting ready. And that's going to be the supios hosting that and we're going to buy not just a restaurant, but the bar above the restaurant called The Tree House and around the pool. And we got this great band coming called the Wayward Suns, or like an 80s cover band. And so I'm soaked about that. Friday nights, our friend Satch Oliver, the cowboy from Arkansas. So it's a western theme party. We had a western theme party a couple years ago. It wasn't the Satch Oliver party, but everybody dressed like Satch Oliver. So it's like, hey, might as well give him credit for bringing in the cowboy to California. Then Saturday is apres ski. So it's kind of adult swim, pool party, because we never had a pool party.

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Whoever goes to pool parties anymore. Well, we're going to have one for everybody who wants to join the pool party. And remember, just from 5:30, 8:30, but every night we have the lobby lounge. And then finally on Sunday, on Sunday, even though it's not an official day of the event, we're doing Sunday brunch for everybody who's still there that just wants to relax their way out of it, have a nice meal with her for new friends and then head home. And that's hosted by buddy Scott Frost. And besides that, we have five lecture tracks and seven workshop tracks. And that's also, so there's 12 choices every day. That is the most important thing about it all because people are getting specialized learning. They are getting to learn what they need, not what I think they need, not what you think they need, but what they know they need.

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And so when they're in these groups that they chose to be in, then they're all focused because you walk into so many of these CLEs and you look from the back of the room, I can see like literally half the three quarters of people aren't paying a lick of attention to what this person's speaking about. And as a speaker, that's kind of hard when you look out and you can see nobody's really paying attention to you. And I always make it me frustrated. But what I realized was it's not the audience's fault. It's the organizer's fault. They didn't give the people what they wanted. You got to give the people what they want. And when people are in these smaller groups with this focused learning, they build connections, they build relationships, especially in the workshops because the workshops are typically five to 10 people, depending on what the workshop is.

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A mastermind like yours is a little bit bigger, maybe 20 people. But those people, it's not just lecture, it's interactive. It's like, let me ask you, I got this pressing problem right now. And then everybody has these similar problems because they chose to be in this similar group. So those are the things that, besides, like I said, we have not just top trial law firms, but the very top trialers like Panish, Raleigh, Freed, McGinn, Maxi Shear, all these great trial lawyers coming from around the country and like John Romano and Ben Rabinowitz from New York. So it's really so great because it's at the beach. I mean, be Being at the beach is just ... Now I kind of live at the beach, so I just kept going to Huntington so much. I don't like to go home. I just want to be at the beach, so got to make it happen.

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So those are the ways that it makes it very different. But now that you know that, so you get all fired up, I need you to get really excited. And it's very important that when you come to our theme parties, that way everybody gets to chat a little bit. That's what makes it different.

Tim McKey (: 30:22

Now, I'm going to interrupt you and say I'm excited because that's chockablock full of not only education, but fun. And part of our culture at Vista, it needs to be fun. So fun, educational, getting valuable insights that you can take back and implement. That's right in our wheelhouse. So I'm excited to be a part of it.

Dan Ambrose (: 30:40

TLU Huntton Beach is going to be the greatest event of 2026. There's going to be four lecture tracks, eight workshop tracks with the top trialers in the country. On Tuesday, June 2nd, there's going to be a golf outing and also a pickleball outing. That night, we're going to have a dinner at the Lorea. We're going to buy it out so everybody gets a chance to meet each other beforehand. And then during the conference, of course, we do a full breakfast, full lunch, and theme parties every night. This year we're going to be utilizing the pool area and the restaurant for more of the parties. And we're going to have an adult swim right one night, a Sacha Oliver party on Friday night. And the last theme party's going to be a 80s run DMC Adela jumpsuit. It's going to be the greatest. And last year we had over 800 people.

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This year it's going to be over a thousand. So if you want to be part of it all and you want to stay at the Pusello Hotel, don't delay because it sells out fast and then you're going to be in the overflow. Can't wait to see you there. TLU Beach.

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In the long run, everybody's coming here for one major purpose, and that is to make more money. And we make more money by getting new insights on our cases and better at our operations. But the third way we do it is to get bigger networks because people don't refer or collaborate on cases with people they don't know. They do it with people that they know and more likely people they're friends with because they're looking forward to the opportunity of working together, of collaborating create something great because it's fun when you like the people you're around and you're all thinking similarly and basically masterminding all the time, the ideas that come together and can get executed. That's what it's about.

Tim McKey (: 32:18

Yeah. I know a lot of our current clients and past clients will be there. So excited to see them as well.

Dan Ambrose (: 32:24

Be great because every conference, probably about 60% of the people have been before, about 40% are new. And always shocked this is if somebody's first time like, "How have you not been here before?" "I know I've heard about it. I wanted to come, but things come up. I got kids graduated. "I'm like, " These kids graduate. "That's one thing. But when people are like, " It's my wife's birthday. "I'm like, " That's not a good reason. Come to the conference. "I said," If you knew you were going to make $200,000 in the next year more by coming to the conference than taking your wife out for a birthday, would you come? "He's like, " Absolutely. "I'm like, " Well, you have to see it before it happens.

Tim McKey (: 32:54

"I'm not touching that one. I'm not touching that one.

Dan Ambrose (: 32:57

I'm just trying to give people proper perspective. But you talked about these different areas and I think the best way to talk about it areas is the mistakes that you see most frequently in these 300 firms you've worked with. What are the biggest mistakes you see on intake?

Tim McKey (: 33:11

Oh gosh, it's really not paying attention to it, giving it the attention that it deserves because measuring things, for example. I mean, we ask firm owners sometimes that of the leads that you get, how many of those do you actually want? What meets your criteria? Well, I'm not sure. And the ones that you want, you actually meet your criteria. How many of those actually become a client? And a lot of times, oh, we get everyone we want. And then we say," Well, do you measure that? "And then we find out that they're not measuring it. It's all kind of anecdotal, but those are the things that should be measured. We call the conversion rate, which is the rate that you sign up to the ones that meet your criteria. And once we do that, sometimes we find that maybe that's 80%. You're getting 80% of the ones that you actually want.

(: 33:59

And we know that the national average or the Vista average that we see the top performing firms are getting 93% or more. And that difference between 80% and 93%, maybe five cases a month. Again, I don't know what it is, but let's just say it's five cases a month. And let's just say that your average case fee is $10,000 to make the math easy. That's $50,000 a month that you're missing, that's $600,000 a year that your firm is missing. And again, that's just an example. I mean, you can take that to the next step, case management. We know that the top performing firms contact their treating clients consistently, usually between 14 and 21 days. And that drives case value because you learn new things. And that's not just by text or email, it's by communication. And then we know that toward the end of treatment that you need to talk to your clients.

(: 34:52

All of these things should be measured and make sure that it happens. And you do that with reporting and training your team to not only do the job, but report that they've done it so we can then hold them accountable to doing those things. I mean, if you heard someone, if you were interviewing a client at the end and they're a treatment and you say," How are you really feeling? How are you doing? "And they say," Yeah, I'm okay. "If that's by text, you only get, " I'm okay. "But if it's in a conversation, you might say," Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like you're really okay. ""Well, I'm doing great, but I've got tingling in my left hand." Well, wait a minute, you've got tingling in your left hand, that can mean nerve damage. We need to do this, this, and this. So the systematic method of asking questions, reporting can be invaluable because you just possibly took a 25 to $30,000 case to a $200,000 case or more by just simply improving your business processes.

(: 35:48

It's not about being the best lawyer, even though that's important. Having good strategy and negotiation skills and all that, but just knowing that here are the processes that we put our clients through, these are the questions we ask. These are the things we measure is extremely important in all these areas. I could go on in the financial area, what are your ratios? I mentioned those a little bit earlier, and let's just say that we're, for lack of a better term, out of whack in some of these ratios, there are things that can be done to bring those back into a more reasonable ratio. And that's what we teach day in and day out, and that's what helps mediocre firm become good and a good firm become great and step up those performance standards.

Dan Ambrose (: 36:32

We're starting off the summer right, May 8th and 9th in Hermosa Beach, California at the TLU Beach House. We're doing a two-day witness prep and direct examination workshop. You will learn how to prepare your clients so they just don't remember their stories, but they relive them. And then we transition that to direct examination so the jury just doesn't hear the story, but they relive them, they experience them, they witness them. We'll see you there. I remember when I used to run my own law firm and I didn't run it very well, but what I hated the most was the business, the running of the law firm. I love being a lawyer, but this whole dealing with the people, dealing with the human beings, dealing with insurance and at that time was marketing with the yellow page was the only thing we did. There was no surprise.

(: 37:18

The SEO, any of that stuff was all new back when I had my firm back in like 2000. Dan,

Tim McKey (: 37:23

That's our plugin. That's why we can take that pressure off of a lawyer who wants to be a lawyer and we can help the business lawyer improve their business skills. Our plugin is, I mean, our tagline is that we're the business resource for plaintiff law firms. We're not going to help you practice law. We're going to help you run a better business that practices law. That's our job.

Dan Ambrose (: 37:45

Well, Tim, if people cannot wait to talk to you in person at TLU Beach, how can they get ahold of you before then?

Tim McKey (: 37:53

You can get us easily from our website, which is www.vistact.com. That's V-I-S-T-A, C as in cat, T as in Tom.com. It stands for consulting team. VistaCt.com or just T-M-C-K-E-Y@vistact.com.

Dan Ambrose (: 38:10

Sounds great. And then if anybody needs me, of course, my email's dan@triallawyersuniversity.com and my cell is 248-808-3130. And oh, a couple of things before I finish here. If anybody has a law student that wants to become plaintiff's lawyer, we are giving 20 scholarships to law students to come to TLU because obviously we need to build the next generation of people because there's a lot going on in this country that really, really need trial lawyers. And if anybody truly can't afford the tuition of TLU or these masterclasses, just call me and tell me the situation and we will make it work for you. So that's what we got going on. We look forward to seeing everybody at TLU Beach. And thanks for joining us, Tim.

Tim McKey (: 38:53

And also in Baltimore- Okay,

Dan Ambrose (: 38:55

How do people, what's the details on the Baltimore on the seat at the table?

Tim McKey (: 38:59

By this time this airs, it will be on our website and we're going to be all over social about the educational event called a seat at the table in Baltimore on May the 7th.

Dan Ambrose (: 39:09

Thanks, Tim.

Tim McKey (: 39:10

Thank you so much.

(: 39:12

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