461. The Tech Stack That Was Costing TORKLAW Cases—And the AI-Native OS Built to Replace It | Jim Andresen, TORKLAW & LawWorks

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[00:45] As your firm scale, so does your software stack.
[00:47] And it takes this system here, a case of management tool there, and before you know it, nothing talks
[00:51] each other.
[00:52] And so you have to make adaptations when you end up with Zapier, Spaghetti, and you end up with spreadsheets all over the place to fill in gaps.
[01:01] You have copy and paste errors and sync issues.
[01:05] That disconnected mess is causing you time, money and cases.
[01:08] Today, Jim Eddreason's COO of Torclaw and founder of Law Works is showing us how he tore down those text silos and built a unified AI native operating system from the ground up.
[01:18] This is First Launcher Mastermind. I'm Chris Strire, founder and CEO of rankings.io.
[01:23] The Elite Performance Marketing Agency for First Launcher Law Fremms. Let's get into it.
[01:29] I guess this big picture, you know, what is law works? Give me the through line, what it is, and then we'll kind of jump in there.
[01:37] It's simple. It's an AI native breaking system designed specifically for law firms like ours.
[01:42] And it's a web-based system.
[01:45] It's not generic sales force.
[01:48] We don't have licensing issues and limitations
[01:51] that are put on us by some of these other add-on type of systems.
[01:57] And so we get to imagine it from the ground up.
[01:59] And so we did that.
[02:00] We built it specifically.
[02:02] As you said, I wear a couple of hats
[02:04] and we built it specifically for Torclaw.
[02:06] And we know that there's a lot of firms
[02:07] that operate similar to us or would like to.
[02:10] So we are going to open that up to the wider world and make it available to anybody that wants to use it.
[02:15] We want it to be a flexible thing, but we have some pieces in place to help you stay focused and not get lost in all the opportunities and options that are available.
[02:27] So you've said your biggest breakthrough was to fix in just one department.
[02:31] It was recognized as a real problem, the gaps between you know,
[02:34] What was the exact moment or metric that made you realize the connective tissue, the connecting your systems was broken?
[02:40] I've been doing this for 13, 14 years, something like that. Over time, you begin to accumulate different products, different tools, to achieve a result.
[02:51] result. And so if you're firm, you're going to have an intake system, you're going to have
[02:57] a case management system, a phone system, you're going to have a messaging system, you're
[03:01] going to have marketing channels that are all scattered all over the place. And so which
[03:06] the result of that is, sometimes have disparate systems that don't connect at all. And you
[03:13] find that some vendors, some systems lock you in and you don't share out. And so your data
[03:19] is siloed into their system.
[03:20] And so what you end up with is your people have
[03:23] to become the connective tissue.
[03:24] And they have to do the work.
[03:25] You have to copy and paste.
[03:27] And they have to migrate files over and bring it back.
[03:30] And then you find out that the data types don't match.
[03:33] And that the systems, the way it's constructed,
[03:37] doesn't work with another system.
[03:38] And so you have to make adaptations.
[03:40] And you end up with Zapier spaghetti.
[03:44] And you end up with spreadsheets all over the place
[03:47] to fill in gaps and you have copy and paste errors
[03:50] and sync issues.
[03:52] And it's something that has been present
[03:54] and have but it reached a boiling point probably
[03:56] three years ago.
[03:57] And we couldn't get our data out of our case management system
[04:00] in a way that we could report on what was coming from our intake
[04:04] system.
[04:04] And we were having a hard time navigating
[04:07] and we had people working just on building reports
[04:09] to be able to tell us where the problems were.
[04:12] And by the time that the report was ready,
[04:14] it was now a month out of date.
[04:15] And so we thought they're just going to be a better way.
[04:17] And we went looking and we explored a few options.
[04:21] And we ended up getting to a place where we needed to solve it ourselves.
[04:26] And so we hired some very smart people.
[04:28] And we started building what is law works today.
[04:32] Yeah, let me dig into that.
[04:34] So there's the lead document domo, lead document file,
[04:38] like domo kind of combos, pretty common.
[04:41] And not the ring centrals and Amazon connects.
[04:44] and then you got the sales force a little bit more open, maybe they're doing the Amazon Connect,
[04:48] different phone systems there, a little bit freer, use on the API and the ability to plug
[04:55] in the things, what was the tech stack that you were kind of Frankenstein and together and
[05:01] what were some of those limitations that you ran into? Sure, so I'm not wanting to bash anybody.
[05:08] We are still unlyd rocket. We haven't migrated away from them. We have been a case peer shop and again
[05:15] I think that they built one of the more intuitive systems and I think it had a lot of
[05:19] a lot of strengths and it's an easy, easy one to get started with but we did find that we had our
[05:23] time getting our data out and still there. We're going to connect a phone system. We've had
[05:28] dealers direct with the Twilio. We built a lot of responses and we've tried a handful of AI
[05:34] voice systems to handle different things and it's a challenge.
[05:38] They've all got their strengths, but there's certainly some trade-offs with each choice you make.
[05:42] Once you realize that Franken's act is holding your firm back, the question becomes,
[05:48] how do you actually fix it?
[05:49] Jim relies that he didn't just need another app.
[05:51] He needed a single, end-end operating system that could track a case from the first ring all
[05:56] the way to the settlement.
[05:57] By bringing the entire lifecycle under one roof, Jim took back total ownership of his firm's
[06:01] data and finally, eliminated that dreaded vendor lock in. So are we talking like full life
[06:08] cycle or we talk in phone rings, the operating system has AI capabilities or it's like,
[06:16] you know, CRM, and project management, like, talk to me about operating system. Is it full life
[06:21] cycle in the end? Is it, you know, including intake? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's a great question
[06:28] And the answer is what it is and what it's becoming.
[06:33] But today, as it stands, we handle pre-lidigation litigation from end to end.
[06:38] And we're able to do document generation AI and able document.
[06:44] So I think even up think Eve and a right now,
[06:48] the team is building out the intake side of things.
[06:50] So by the time that it's in the hands of everybody,
[06:53] intake piece should be done.
[06:54] So the hope is that the belief is,
[06:56] is that from the first phone call all the way until settlement,
[07:01] we're going to be able to handle things and one of the cool things
[07:04] that the things I think is great about what we're building is,
[07:08] we don't want others to have the experience that we had,
[07:10] where you are locked into a vendor,
[07:13] we want you to be able to come free will go if you want to,
[07:18] and your data is your data.
[07:19] If you prefer the product that even up or Eve,
[07:23] or pick your document generation company,
[07:26] or whatever, we want you to be able to easily push it there, bring it right back in, and if that's
[07:32] for that piece, that functionality, if that's the solution that you prefer, if you were data,
[07:36] it's your cases, you do what you want with it. And so we really about providing the rails all the way across
[07:42] the life of the case. And we probably won't dabble into project management, but one of the things that we are
[07:49] doing is we built and are building out as a developer portal. And so that third parties with their
[07:55] tooling and opportunities can build on top of our system.
[07:59] In a fashion that is similar to like a sales force where you can build within the ecosystem
[08:04] and have your product offering available on the on the platform.
[08:08] All the underlying infrastructure is in place and so it's going to be a pretty versatile.
[08:13] The data is becoming more important than ever because now, you know, whether you're using snowflake,
[08:19] your BigQuery or what have you.
[08:21] It's now being formed as a basis for all the AI intelligence
[08:26] and decision making.
[08:28] Now we're, I never thought in a million years
[08:32] that a company like ours would be talking to snowflake, right?
[08:36] But here we are.
[08:38] It's a component of data housing.
[08:40] So where do you see the usage of data, make an impact,
[08:45] and just the importance of controlling that,
[08:48] and having control of that data.
[08:51] Where AI is that particularly right now
[08:53] as context is the thing that is shaping
[08:58] the quality of the output that you receive.
[09:00] And so when I think about data lakes, data warehouses,
[09:05] it's great to store it, it's great to be able to retrieve it,
[09:07] but you need to be able to pass it to something
[09:09] that can do something with it.
[09:10] And so for us, we want to have full control of it
[09:16] on our system so that we can pass it.
[09:18] to the models that are going to be making manipulating reading, learning off of it and writing from it.
[09:24] And so, our intention is to, you know, we have a structured data system.
[09:30] We have the ability to OCR pull structured data out of unstructured documents,
[09:36] place that into your, you know, your record of truth and source of truth,
[09:40] and then be able to generate documents out of that.
[09:44] And so that's something that we don't have now.
[09:47] I'm going to take now and recent recent our data,
[09:50] Torque Lausdata has lived on box,
[09:52] which is it's a universal file management system.
[09:55] Our cases lived in case peer had a hard time getting our...
[10:00] data, a case peer, our unstructured data from box and then pushing it to, you know, one of
[10:04] these demand generators or, you know, medical summer,izers, whatever the function is that we're
[10:10] looking for. And so it's a manual thing where we're pushing it and we're pulling it back and
[10:15] and it takes time and we, we people are the connection that we make mistakes and the end tool that's
[10:23] doing the work is lacking some of the broader context because missing pieces of that. And so,
[10:29] So we want to be able to control that, be able to pass that cleanly to a model that's going to be doing that work.
[10:35] One of the things that we were building,
[10:37] law works is that other firms that will be able to be on the platform will benefit from the wider
[10:43] ecosystems, so we'll still be passing your data as your data and it doesn't get shared with other firms.
[10:48] But we will be able to benchmark and see how you are comparing compared to other firms.
[10:54] or there might be elements where we can share insights where provider extra provider why on average
[11:02] reduces their bills by this month, much in this is favorable in these situations and be able to say,
[11:07] you know, just how are you tracking comparative to others and find identify opportunities,
[11:13] identify bottlenecks and that are common where you're an outlier identify where you're an outlier
[11:19] compared to what's common. And so I think that the collective intelligence is an interesting
[11:23] opportunity that doesn't exist, at least not for us. And the platform that we've come from.
[11:28] And so I think that that's a interesting thing there. Yeah, see all the just amazing benefits and just
[11:35] massive unlocks for the future, having control of that. And you know, there's going to be more
[11:39] more capabilities that arise every day. Just the pace at which new developments are occurring is
[11:46] it's exponential. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean, just, you know, I said on X, you know, Twitter,
[11:53] whatever we call it these days, and every day there is just a breakthrough, a new, a new product,
[12:00] a new opportunity that just unbelievable that the pace of innovation and yeah, it's crazy. And so to be
[12:07] able to connect all those pieces together is really what we're hoping to do, and I think really
[12:14] and unlock some opportunity for firms from owners and the future of law.
[12:28] Once your operations in tech stack are actually talking to each other, you finally have the
[12:32] infrastructure to scale. And Jim knows the thing you're too about scaling. As the COO of Torclaw,
[12:37] he has helped leave the firm's expansion into multiple, highly competitive markets across the country.
[12:42] I wanted to pick a spray on how to go toe to toe with the Legacy Billboard guys,
[12:45] why precision marketing is their weapon choice and how they assemble the right teams to execute
[12:49] that vision. I kind of wanted to switch over to Torclaw. I mean, you've been COO, you're background
[12:56] working with another big PI firm in the past. So you've had different go to market strategies in order
[13:02] to acquire leads and you know, Torclaw multi-state into big markets. So you know, how do you think about
[13:09] how moving into other markets, how do you think about a go-to-market strategy and trying to break
[13:14] into these markets that have had people doing broadcast television and the billboards for
[13:20] years? How do you think about trying to go into these markets?
[13:24] I think you got two different games that get played right? You got the billboard guys and they
[13:31] are known by name and sometimes that's a positive and sometimes that's a negative.
[13:35] I've always thought that the more targeted approach, paid search, organic search,
[13:41] word of mouth, reputation, type referrals. It's always been the precision approach and it
[13:49] may be higher cost per touch point, but the acquisition price, as long as you can make the numbers work,
[13:56] usually it has benefited us. In terms of going to market, we, at least in the early days,
[14:04] is really like, can we find a license to turn it to work here and can we acquire a license?
[14:09] And so we would get somebody in the firm, you know, by acquisition or by just going through the process,
[14:16] we'd get a license and pick your state and we can function and we can operate,
[14:20] we could do whatever the minimum thing was, we had to set up an office there,
[14:23] we had physical location and we'd target and be positioned with our marketing,
[14:28] see what work there is.
[14:29] you know, it's interesting to see how tactics actually deploy in one market work or don't work
[14:36] in another and where the opportunities lie. And sometimes you think, boy, that's working great
[14:41] in Illinois. I'm a great mette California and it just falls flat. By his version,
[14:46] personality differences and what's compelling to the client and what they're looking for. And so
[14:53] you find the language that speaks to them and so you know, you run a very successful marketing firm
[14:58] and you've got to kind of find all the pieces that line up and when you find that the targeting
[15:02] with the messaging and it connects and your intake team is hit non-point and in terms of matching
[15:08] the messaging and it's returns well for you and then obviously you get to have your team actually
[15:15] delivered the results in the end. But we're simple people and we don't over complicate it in terms of
[15:21] making something work and one of the things that Brazil and his brother, Carosho, and Torclaw,
[15:25] they're not afraid to try things. And so we've always been a firm that will try things and
[15:30] be okay to fail and try the next thing and when something works we will write it until it doesn't
[15:35] work and had to the stable of things that work and as things drop off they drop off maybe we'll
[15:40] revisit them maybe we won't. That's great. Love that mindset and I think you gotta, you know, do the
[15:46] bullets before bombs and do the testing and find out what works and you're right because some,
[15:52] You know, you take Google Ads, Google Search, and it's auction-based.
[15:57] So if one market's lighter than another and you know, like a throw off your
[16:02] caq and you know, well, it could be anything.
[16:04] It could be broadcast television radio, whatever, depending upon what saturated, what's
[16:09] not saturated and and your competitors messaging, like what resonates like what
[16:13] you said.
[16:14] So that makes sense to me for sure.
[16:15] You know, what other in regards to, you know, working in organization of the size that you've
[16:21] worked at. What other common bottlenecks you see is it hiring? Is it talent? Talent is always an issue.
[16:29] You know, you want to get day players, but there's different levels like finding the pre-lit attorney,
[16:34] or the litigation attorney, talking to me about some of the other common bottlenecks that you see.
[16:39] The bottleneck moves. I think that's the biggest thing is, you know, you solve them once, but you actually,
[16:46] you just create a bottleneck somewhere else. And so, you know, my brain is limited to kind of the idea of a
[16:50] a pipeline and you got just the visual of where the thing pinch isn't and where it bloats
[16:56] and I don't know that there's any like a magic bullet to solve any of these problems.
[17:02] What I do think, you remember the movie, the Moneyball that came out, oh yeah, 20 years ago,
[17:07] something like that.
[17:08] Billidine.
[17:09] Yeah, the idea is that you go out and you acquire value.
[17:14] And so you know, I love the idea of eight players and they're great in their fantastic
[17:18] and you can get some high value people that maybe they don't have the right experience level,
[17:25] but they're intelligent and problem solvers and maybe you've got somebody who's got experience,
[17:30] but can't get a thing across the line, you're against, just can't get that final piece of
[17:35] execution. And so you find that people that can complement each other and the high value and the things
[17:40] that you can coach and you bring those people in that talent and it's easy to say and harder to
[17:45] that's actually achieved, but we don't just go for A players.
[17:48] I mean, that's the dream I'd love to find.
[17:50] The A plus people across the board.
[17:53] But sometimes you can find the new guy, the fresh out of college,
[17:57] the excited about everything, the executor guy that is willing to be
[18:02] a little scrappy and just get it done.
[18:03] And you construct a team and sometimes it's a little rough around
[18:08] some edges and they get things done.
[18:10] And so I love the puzzle of it.
[18:13] hate the process of it, but constructing a team is a fun thing to do.
[18:17] Well, Jim, if our audience has any questions for you and wants to connect, what's the
[18:21] work learned more about law works? What's the best way to get in touch?
[18:24] Email is probably the best. Jim at Torclaw, if you want to talk about adding all things
[18:29] operation in a law firm, Jim at Torclaw.com. Jim at lawworks.com, if you want to talk about
[18:35] the operating system or being a part of our customer base and you have to be awesome to
[18:41] and they connect with people on my own smartphones.
[18:43] Amazing, Jim, thanks for coming on the show.
[18:45] Thank you, Chris.
[18:46] Appreciate it.
[18:50] A massive thank you to Jim Andre,
[18:51] some for sharing his brilliant strategies with us today.
[18:54] When you finally get your tech stack talking,
[18:55] your team can stop doing the manual data entry
[18:58] and get back to what actually matters,
[18:59] winning cases and driving revenue.
[19:02] Taking control of your data and adopting a money ball mindset
[19:04] to build your team,
[19:06] are just operational upgrades that are the foundation for serious growth.
[19:10] At rankings, we believe your marketing should be just as precise and data driven as your firm's operations.
[19:15] If you want to partner with an agency where excellence is the standard and proof beats promises
[19:20] at an over to ranking.io, I'm Chris Strire and we'll see you next time on Personal and Dream Mastermind.