The Agile Attorney Podcast

When Jeff De Francisco noticed his less tech-savvy colleagues billing more hours for the same estate planning work, he uncovered an injustice that would reshape his entire practice. The disparity was…

Knowledge work hides in ways that physical work never could. That invisibility creates a dangerous pattern: you say yes to one more matter and before you know it, your entire team operates beyond cap…

In this episode, I’m diving into a concept that may be quietly hindering your practice: technical debt. In short, technical debt occurs when you take shortcuts to save time, but they end up costing y…

In this episode, I’m revisiting the concept of delivery debt: the promises you’ve made that remain unfulfilled. Just like financial debt, taking on too much delivery debt can snowball and overwhelm y…

In law firms, a lot of time is wasted when work gets passed back and forth because the deliverables aren’t meeting the expected quality standards. This happens when tasks are considered “done,” but t…

Task engines are quietly draining your law practice's productivity right now. These hidden culprits show up as certain case types, jurisdictions, or even internal projects that generate a lot of task…

AI tools in legal workflows are making waves, but are they really the productivity boosters they’re cracked up to be? While these tools can help speed up certain tasks, like research and drafting, t…

Summer brings its own pressures - family obligations, vacation planning, and the nagging feeling that your practice needs constant attention. The temptation to squeeze in work between beach trips or …

Law firm owners often feel overwhelmed by their financial statements, staring at QuickBooks reports that seem to tell only half the story. The disconnect between having financial data and understandi…

Legal teams face a unique challenge that factory floors and software developers rarely encounter: managing dozens of active matters simultaneously while dealing with constant interruptions from clien…

Back in the early 2000s, software teams started embracing a new way of working that turned conventional project management on its head. Instead of trying to define everything up front and push massiv…

A Japanese automobile factory floor in the 1950s might seem worlds away from your law office, but the visual management systems that transformed Toyota's manufacturing process hold powerful lessons f…

In law firms across the country, I'm seeing a concerning pattern emerge when one attorney adopts Kanban and Agile methods while their partner - often from an older generation of lawyers - resists the…

A concerning trend I've noticed both in my own practice and among my clients is that the rise of AI technology is making it harder to accurately assess our true capacity. Between constant marketing m…

We don’t talk about overcapacity enough in legal practice, especially not the hidden ways it erodes performance, burns out your team, and stalls your cases.

In this episode, I take a closer look at w…

The impact of trauma in legal practice extends far beyond individual client interactions. From law school through retirement, lawyers face unique psychological challenges that can fundamentally alter…

Is your law practice truly profitable? Not just cash-flow positive, but actually generating the kind of profit that allows you to serve your clients well, take care of your team, and live the life yo…

If you've ever tried to turn one of your documents or templates into something repeatable, you probably already know it is harder than it looks. Whether you're looking to streamline routine documents…

It’s easy to say lawyers need to “be more adaptable” in today’s shifting tech and economic climate, but real adaptability isn’t about working harder or reacting faster. It’s about responding intellig…

What makes legal writing truly effective? It's not just about knowing the law—it's about knowing how to communicate it. In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Jonah Perlin from Georgetown Law Schoo…