Grow Your Law Firm Ep. 156: One Tool, Lighter Caseloads (Full Episode)

Imagine that you can get just one tool that's going to decrease your case manager's workload by 25 to 50%. But imagine you have four case managers, and now you can go down to three or maybe even two case managers, or you can grow your pipeline by 50%. 100% of your case managers are going to still be able to handle it. Not a problem. Imagine if that tool also improved client satisfaction to care of most of communications that can be automated, created better cases, better demand letters, and got your higher case values increased by 20 to 30% on average. Imagine what you would do with your law firm if you got all of those benefits from one tool. Well, you don't have to imagine. I just got to interview Kenny Eliason of Quilia. Quillia is exactly the tool that does all of that. Check out this podcast episode, and by the way, in the sea of so many different AI tools that we see now, like how do you decide which tool is good for you, which tool you should invest into? My filter, my reader, what I'm listening to is like how much can this tool improve our operating costs? Can it lower our operating costs or can it expand our operating capacity without increasing our costs? If it can do one or the other by substantial percentage, I'm interested. I want to hear more about it because I want my operations to run more efficiently, either cost me less, or be able to do a lot more with the same cost. So Quilia does exactly that. So tune into this episode, enjoy it, especially if you're in PI, but other practice series as well. And if you see a ton of value in it as I do, sign up for a demo. I'm literally pitching it because everything that Kenny shared just makes so much sense from operating standpoint, financial operating standpoint, as it will make your law firm much more efficient and you'll be able to do more with less or a lot, a lot more with the same. Enjoy the episode. Hi there. I have a small but really meaningful favor to ask you. You know, I watch at the stats on our YouTube channel and Spotify channel, wherever people, most people listen and watch our podcast and I see that over 80% of everybody who listens to it regularly is not a subscriber. I'm asking you to subscribe to this channel and the reason for that is my mission and the mission of my team is to help as many small law firm owners to learn how to transform their law firms into better businesses and so they in turn enjoy better lives. When you hit subscribe button, you tell these platforms that this is content worth listening, worth viewing, and they in turn will show it to many other small law firm owners and hopefully help me fulfill our mission of helping them create a better business and enjoy better lives. So would you please do me this favor? It would mean the world to me and hit the subscribe button and my promise to you is that I will continue to work hard at creating good content with practical ideas that help you and your teams grow better law firms. Thank you. Welcome to Grow Robot. Just have an awesome guest with me here today. Kenny Illison of Quilia. Welcome to show. Hey, what up? Thanks for having me. You said my name right. Good job. Well, glad I asked before we hit the record button. So, folks, the reason why I really wanted to have Kenning on this podcast is as you know, if you have listened to this podcast for any number of episodes or maybe for many years, I as a business owner operator and my business wholly depends on having other successful law firm owners around us. To me, success looks like this. You hit your number one profit goals. Your revenue is growing and you're optimizing your operations because in the world that we live in today and we're recording this at the very early Q4 of 2026, or Q2 rather, April of 2026. I think that the profit margins are going to compress because law firms are getting in a tougher fight for clientele. Those law firms that optimize their operating costs, meaning they can deliver their service for less money, less operating costs, fewer employees, more optimized promising operations, the processes. What's going to happen is they are going to be in a position to reduce their fees and at some point they will. And once they do those profit margins are going to compress and for you to be in business and be successful. Your revenue is growing, your profitability is strong. In one to three five-year timeline, you will have to optimize or you will be in decline until your business dies. Just because everyone is looking at the optimization now today, it's not an option anymore. It's a must have. And I first heard you on another podcast last two years ago and I was fascinated by Quillier, the product that you built and how much time it saves per employee. I think the claim was two to four hours in time savings per day, which is astonishing. To me, it's like you're saving between 25 to 50 percent of operating costs on an employee because you're freeing up that much time. And how your tool puts client in the driver's seat of many communications, how it improves quality of the service, which in turn should increase number of clients satisfaction, which will hopefully lead to increased number of costs. So tell us how you came up with the idea because I know that you use the scientific method. And what does the tool actually do to produce such astonishing results as cutting to the four hours per day? Shout out to my entrepreneurs and shout out to you for knowing that I did use the scientific method. So I spent the better part of a year interviewing about 100 different attorneys just talking to them about problems that they have in the law firm. And this was back in 2022, so this was before AI even started compressing costs like you were talking about. Over the course of about seven different ideas, a recurring thing coming up, but I didn't know what to do with it and tell about the 60th interview. And that was the frustration everybody has with clients. If you're an attorney and you're not filling it, then your staff definitely is. And if your staff is filling it, then you're probably hearing about it from them. But clients are tricky, man. They've never done this before. They're new to this process. They probably won't ever do it again. They're also very busy people. And so I started hearing this and I started thinking, man, what if I could help? And I was doing an interview with a guy and he told me, hey Kenny, let me tell you about my favorite client. And it was this guy that documented everything in a spreadsheet and called text before and after appointment. It's just kept the attorney super aware of what happened. And then at the very end, he handed him the spreadsheet. He basically was like, I basically printed it off and submitted it to the insurance. It was super dope. Like, okay, that's interesting. And then I flipped it and I said, tell him about your least favorite client. And he rattled off all the complaints that I've heard for forever. They don't call, they call too much, you know, either end of that spectrum is a problem. They disappear for weeks at a time. They don't do what the doctors say. And I started saying, what if I could help the clients do their job better? And end starts coming all these thoughts and ideas about how when we're, when we're in a law firm setting, we have a willing participant that wants to help. They want, they may want this outcome more than you want this outcome. They want it to be a good outcome. Every client does. They are unable to help in the current state of things without calling and asking for what to do next. They have no bearing on the outcome. They just do what they're told. And sometimes they don't even know if that they're told to do something and they don't know how to go through with it. So I started thinking about how can we help the clients, the willing, uneducated participant on the case who has a vested interest in the outcome, how can we enable them to be better? And, you know, pre AI, we started building tools where it was like, okay, basically like a super smart journal where we could start helping the clients know, I use journal because that's what we relate to. We've done that in the past paper journals. There's a digital journal that feeds right back into the case management software. We can automate some stuff and it's kind of grown from there. But the whole premise being let's enable this client to be the best client possible, making your staff's job better, your job easier, no more gaps in treatment, less problems to go argue about if you have to go to litigation or mediation and improve in the entire flow of the case. So that's kind of the high levels that help kind of lead to what you were talking about there. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. That that is really awesome. So whenever I think about user experience and maximizing user experience, I ask people like, if you had a magic wand, what would this look like? So it sounds like you asked that question many times. I did that very word for word. Yeah, yeah, I did. That was the interesting thing. They said, man, it'd be great if my clients just did the work themselves, you know, like, oh, the awesome magic wand. And that's that's kind of the goal of what we've set out to build. Yeah, it's very interesting. So in all professional services, this is like part of it, right? The pain of working for a client who is going through this, like you said, possibly the first time, possibly the only time in their lifetime. Like, God forbid, I had a major, major accident in 2004. Consider that I walked away life. I was wheeled off in an ambulance, spent number of days in hospital, five surgeries within a few years. This was the only time when something like that happened. Not a founder button, but something that's really serious. I hope it never happens again. It's been 20, 22 years. The case took a little over three years if my memory serves me, right? I think it wasn't just about three years, give or take. So phone calls, this is mid 2000s from 2004 till sometime in 2007, phone calls, maybe some emails, maybe some text messages, but all of it, absolutely everything. Manually, manually, manually, and I think my journey and the staff of that the journey, they have to do just about everything. I mean, yeah, and you think about, you were one of how many cases did they have, too. That's the problem with the firms, like even the best intentions can result in a disconnect on the client side like that, because most of them are overworked to a degree, maybe not overworked, but there's a lot to do. And so it's hard to remember to call Sasha every couple weeks and check in on him, which is just a nature of the business problem, which was one of those things we set out to fix too. You see that a lot? Okay. So I think in all professional services, not just law, mistakes will happen. There's the human element and we're not perfect, we're not software, we're not machines, we're going to make mistakes. So how exactly does your product reduce the workload where you said that you free up between two to four hours per day per employee? And how does that improve the product? How does it improve user experience from the client side and on the flip side from the law front side? Yeah. So right now, if you look at your case managers, a lot of their day is spent almost 50/50 where they are taking care of client outreach, whether that's follow-ups from previous calls or making those outbound calls that they know they're supposed to make. About half the day spent doing that and then the other have spent calling insurance companies and trying to make doctors do things or whatever it might be in a personal injury firm, that is. The side that's on the client side, we almost remove entirely because the clients, they work nine to five as well and so it's an inconvenient process. They might call you and of course you're busy so they leave a voicemail and then you're going to call them and they're going to be busy because they work or they have stuff to do and it's just never convenient. The phone, even the text message system, which is different from when you were in the in your car accident, still requires some back and forth where what we've done now is at their convenience whenever they want the client side, the client side experience now, they can jump on the app and add information, see what's going on with the case. It's very transparent. They feel like they know what's going on at any given moment rather than having to check in with the with the law firm, which is how like everything works now by the way. We don't go to target without opening an app. We don't go to gas stations without opening an app at this point and we know what's going on with our account in any of those places and so this is just the lived experience that everybody expects now and so giving them that tool, giving them that transparency, helps the client now not have to make those phone calls. They don't have to reach out as much. So back to the the client side. So we've saved them, improved the client experience in that way and saved them a bunch of time and convenience of nine to five or whatever they can do it at night when they're sitting in there. I did not really understand like what does it do for the client? The the app helps them track everything that's going on in the case and know what needs to happen next. Easiest example for a personal injury case is their appointment tracking. So they have to go to appointments throughout the case and as they go to those appointments they need to they log them or they auto-track them in here by taking a picture of an appointment card. We automatically add it to the calendar. All that good stuff happens for them and then we remind them as they go as that appointment approaches we remind them to go then we then we check in with them after the appointment happens make sure they went see if they got released. All they do is check a little box released and then they're they're on their way and then we're notifying the PI firm is there any indication to the client does that happen automatically or does someone from all automatically. So all automatically so none of this has to be connected to memory. But there's a notification they get the app I assume that and I saw it that that Quillier your app integrates with all major practice management softwares right? Yeah so on some of the case you integrate it's very easy to integrate within but super easy to integrate with Quillier sends an email notification to the client says hey grab this app sign up for it we're going to communicate through the app it's going to send you reminders so nothing is forgotten it will ask you how you feel today your pain level on a scale of zero to tell me think all of those things that are usually done by humans. Yeah exactly. By your app. 100% what happened we feed it back to the law firm. What if what happens if they do not actually if they do not tap the app and say my pain level is 7 today will it send them another reminder. Yeah so we check we have we keep track of when what their cadence is what they're kind of updating at and if they miss a beat or if they haven't updated in a certain amount of time then they get a push notification that says hey I haven't heard from you in a little while come and update the app let us know how you're filling or whatever the status item is that it's almost like when they open it it's almost like a for lack of different words like a social media feed that changes every time there are different tasks to do every time they open the app upload we notice you haven't uploaded your property damage photos why don't you throw those in here it's been a while since you did a case journal do that one or a pain score or your appointments are out of out of date you know whatever it is it kind of changes depending on what's going on with the case and so they just open the app do what it tasks them to do takes about 30 seconds everybody's on track they're up to date i'll fit back to the law firm what does the law firm have to do to set this up with this specific client or is it nothing like as long as you put in all the right data into a clear or whatever you're using for practice management is that all automatic or is there a bit of setup that happens for every case not the first time but the every case depends on the case management software but if like with Clio it's as simple as adding them to the case as long as they have a cell phone number in the system we'll text them it's all done via text to to initiate we'll text them an invitation they log in no password and they're done filevine there's a button you just click invite it sends them text they're done so no big setup we import all of the information that we need out of the case at that point of import and then we populate it inside the app the client sees it they can adjust it if they need to and then we feed it back to the law firm how would the client know or how would the app rather know when they have their medical appointments or is it just a regular cadence that they need to commit to there's three different ways an appointment can get added into the app one is and the most popular one is by the client and actually there's two ways a client can add it they can just take pictures of appointment cards we automatically extract all the information and add it to the calendar so as they get those or however they get their appointment they just take a picture they can add them themselves which is literally probably 80 plus now of how appointments get into the system attorneys can add them obviously so if they have a IME or something special that they need to send a client to they can stick it on there the client gets a notification all that happens and then the third way is the providers actually can add appointments to the software directly via an integration or via their own portal access so three ways that it can happen so very very minimal human involvement very minimal most of the human involvement is on the client side which back to the original statement is a willing participant that often doesn't have enough to do they often don't know what to do and so this gives them that here's what to do on your case here's the next thing yeah when when I was a client again 20 years ago I knew very very very little about what was happening how little like every few months if my memory stores me right every few months there would be a phone call or an email letting me know that I need to do this next thing and if I wanted to know anything about the status I would call them back and say like where do things stand I expected that that case would take a while to go through the system but I was like never ever and fortunately I was in the position where like that money although it was a considerable sum like that money was not going to change my life very much so much but for a lot of people getting that settlement check is life-changing amount and they probably want to stay up to date and know that the law firm is actually working on the case rather than it's just somewhere in the aisle of other cases and I think that it's very very important so so will it also like gives them regular updates on the cases yeah is that correct yeah so of course we're using AI for a lot of things and so on one end there are phase messages so as the law firm changes their phases we send messages but like in your case once you get to that litigation phase we all know the updates stop I mean it's just so slow during a litigation phase and so what we do instead is we use AI to kind of summarize the status of everything they've put in along with their current phase that they're in and say hey you're still in the litigation phase here's what to continue to expect during this phase your law firm is doing things but they're often waiting for responses or they're following you know they're talking to the defense attorney whatever we give them a generic response based off of their context to let them know the things are still happening so I totally get how it saves numerous hours per day per case manager doesn't help anybody else within the firm save their time well yeah so a lot of what we're seeing is once a case gets to conclusion the treatment the treatment's over and now it's time to prepare the demand and you know argument argue argue for a settlement when you start getting that data and everybody's using AI to create demands now the big piece that we provide that is not other otherwise attainable is let me back up when we when we do settlements for personal injury we often talk about pain and suffering we use that phrase a lot the pain side I argue and I think others would agree that is the medical side that's the measurable impact to your physical body what happened at the as the result of this incident the suffering side though is a little trickier to find that's the pain scores maybe in the doctor records and maybe there's notes from the docs but really the suffering side is missing in the equations most of the time the suffering comes from qualia how it's impacting you know we're gathering the pain scores regularly the journaling and we're prompting them we have smart prompts that say hey we know you said you're a soccer coach how soccer going and so we can get that information back from these people regularly that says oh yeah I couldn't coach or I couldn't feel I didn't feel good when I went to practice or I had to do something under duress and that was a pain for me but I had to do it because I was gonna lose my job or whatever so then when you go to feed your AI demands whatever software you're using for that all the sudden you have this new storyline that now fits in the pieces between the pain that you're tracking with your demands and it really helps improve the value so back to your question how does it improve the staff's time other people if it's the attorney or whoever's preparing your demands now instead of having to hunt that stuff down it's presented for you nicely you don't have to go to the client to ask for that information it's just there along with you don't have to you don't have to argue for why clients missed treatment gaps why didn't they go because they happen far fewer um saving you a ton of time and explanations there too so there's probably more but those two questions also get sent to the client automatically or somebody on the law for automatically yeah it's all automatic yeah so when the client logs in it'll say you haven't logged a case journal and then when they open the case journal it has the prompts right there that says hey you've mentioned this before how's it going you know update us on the status of how you've been filling it's an average cost if you know what's an annual cost of having a case manager on staff depends on the market it can be anywhere from 60 a year up to 85 even 120 we've heard of firms paying you know over 100 for a case manager let's average it to 80 80 plus all the related costs benefits period taxes etc etc add another 30% on top of it let's say it's 105 so and they handle maybe maybe 200 cases on the high end more likely 100 cases on average i'd say at that price tag so relatively relative with small law firm that may have like three case managers can do away with two by implementing quile this is that sad part of the conversation i never want to be the doomer we kind of talk about that like it's it that is the reality but also maybe but maybe also you can do more with those same three people but yes that's what we're looking at but also i believe that you mentioned that with Quilia it builds better cases or the attorneys who pulling together all of that data and writing better demand letters because all of that data is now within their practice management software pushed to it by Quilia by increasing average case value i think by 20 to 30 percent you're now creating some additional cash flow that you could use to deploy new marketing do my drafting new clients generating more revenue and with the same three case managers you got substantially bump up case volume without increasing operating costs like humans who are actually working on case i assume it also in a way goes to the attorneys because now attorneys can do more with the same amount of time or you need to have fewer attorneys the sad part of that but fewer attorneys to do the same number of cases just because so much free time has been freed up unlocked yeah unlocked yeah the uh i mean you laid it out perfectly there's there's a lot of ways you can spend that new money you can work half days if you want if that's how you want to do your bible deer gig but right bible exactly but yeah that's that's the future we're seeing we also see solo firms accelerating because they can the attorney themselves can do a lot more with the tool like this than having to have a case manager if you don't if you think that you can just automate everything the the value of having an attorney will be reduced to like i don't know what i'm spending my 33 percent on because it looks like everything is just done by software so that high touch is more necessary today than it was a few years ago awesome thanks for sharing all the insights and and thanks for building this what sounds like an amazing tool