A real statement of your law firm's vision and values should do two things.

Most days it pulls people together.

The right hires, the right clients, the right work.

But some days it stops you from doing something you think you really want to do because it makes you realize that thing isn't actually right for the business and the team that you've built.

Of course, most firms only want the.

First one, and that's exactly why they have some SEO friendly mission statement that sits on their website but has never actually influenced a single decision the firm has made.

But the smart firms have the other kind, an articulation of their purpose and values that is as much about churning away the wrong things as it is about attracting the right ones.

My guest today, Jim Boatman, has built that kind, and he's going to share why he did it, how it got done, and the unexpected impacts it's had on his team and on himself.

You're listening to the Agile Attorney podcast, powered by Greenline.

I'm Jon Grant, and it is my mission to help legal professionals of all kinds build practices that are profitable, sustainable and scalable for themselves and the communities they serve.

Ready to become a more agile attorney?

Let's go.

So here's the thing about mission, vision, values.

They exist in a law practice whether anyone writes them down or not.

And most firms just have never gotten around to fully articulating theirs.

But there's a problem if you've never written yours down.

When a hard decision comes up, it winds up being a judgment call.

Maybe someone does a careful evaluation and everyone is aligned.

Or maybe someone who worked late last night and skipped breakfast shoots from the hip with an answer that feels right to them in the moment, but everyone else gives it the side eye.

So my guest today has put a lot of work into his firm's purpose statement, and as you'll hear, he thinks the ROI has been well worth it.

Jim Boatman is a litigator In Florida, about 30 years into practice, and his firm has a document they call the Blueprint.

It started out as one kind of thing and evolved into something closer to the firm's operating logic, the thing they reach for when there's a close call to make.

Hey, Jim.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

I'm excited to have this conversation.

So with you.

And I have talked about the reason I wanted to have you on right.

We first spoke, I don't know what was it, five or six months ago?

And context is irrelevant.

But one of the things you shared with me is that you've got this pretty robust document in your firm that you call your blueprint document.

And I'd love you for just to explain what it is and then talk a little bit about what it does for you and your team in terms of having this thing in your law firm.

Sure.

And thank you for having me on.

Really honored that you would ask.

And I love the content that you provide as a practitioner for almost 30 years.

It's so fresh and it's so helpful, the concept of the blueprint.

Let me just warn you that the whole God thing is going to come up a few times because I happen to be a Christian.

Okay.

And yeah, I'm one of these nutty people that actually believes that, like God tells me things.

And so if I use that vernacular and some listener doesn't buy into that, everybody has a muse of some sort.

It's either their own intellect or whatever they want to ascribe information gathering to that isn't reading that sometimes you just have a great idea.

But I'm going to ascribe the source of good information, I think accurately from my frame of reference.

So in any event, we as a law firm had a lot that we were doing very well and from a system standpoint and marketing, et cetera, but we were really having a difficult time recruiting.

Not that we couldn't compete with the best of them vis a vis the.

The firms that were our size and in the marketplace, compensation wise, but it was really just getting the word out about what we're trying to do because we do seek to run a law firm differently.

And so I figured, well, now how could we do this?

And I feel like the Holy Spirit gave me this idea about developing a document that would essentially be transparent, look into the DNA of our firm, everything from the history of the firm, how we split up a dollar bill among folks, what the partnership track is, what our values are, and then have a document that we could share so that potential candidates or anyone else, if they ever want to know what made boatman Richie tick, they would have the document.

So it kind of came as a recruiting tool, if you will.

Well, and there's so many things that I can respond to just there.

Number one, the God thing.

To your point, right.

Everyone's got inspiration from somewhere.

And I happen to think, you know, and you and I talked about this, right?

I. I was a religion minor in college.

I think of myself as sort of this.

I joke that I'm a fundamentalist agnostic because I find so much beauty and truth in so many different religions that I fundamentally don't think I could pick one.

So.

And that's just where I come from.

And different people get different ideas.

But I also love this idea.

The original context being recruiting, among other things.

I'm a Deadhead.

Right.

And so there's a great line from one of the Grateful Dead songs.

It's, the bus came by and I got on, and that's where it all began.

And this is it.

Like, this is you kind of describing your bus.

Right.

If.

If you get this document in front of somebody and they look at and they're like, yeah, man, this seems pretty cool.

I want to be a part of this.

That's great for you.

If they read through it and say, you know what?

This doesn't really jive with me, that's a great answer, too.

You've really nailed something there, because that was precisely the idea.

If this document resonates with someone, well, then there's a decent chance that they will come aboard.

And if they like who we say we're trying to be and they come aboard, well, then they'll be inertia.

That helps us manifest that.

Right.

Because they're going to hold us accountable to what we said we were.

It's like, hey, well, you gave me this document.

You said you were X, Y, Z, like, what's this all about?

So.

And that's actually what has occurred.

No sooner did we create this and finalize it and publish it.

We don't have recruiting anymore.

We have constant inquiries about people wanting to come and work for us.

And I could show you the KPIs on it.

It's been really, really amazing.

And so who knows how many people have looked at this document.

So, yeah, I don't want to work from quote, unquote, Christian firm, whatever that even means, which is totally cool.

But it has helped in that regard.

That's a good point on your part.

Well, and the other thing you just said, and it hadn't even occurred to me, but the accountability piece of it, I mean, that's really interesting.

I would venture, and tell me if I'm right, but it's probably not the parts of the document that have to do with pay package or this or that.

It probably is those upfront, the first couple of pages that talk about your vision, your values, why you do what you do.

I'm gonna guess that's probably what resonates with people the most and also is the thing that they most want to have accountability partnership around.

Right.

You holding them accountable and them holding you accountable.

Yeah.

To be sure, we're on the same page.

When it talks about dollars and cents, it talks about conceptually, this is the way that we look at a dollar and how we split it up.

And one of the things that we do early on in this document is we define essentially we tried to give them a sense of the psyche, the culture we're trying to create.

And with regard to the Christian nature of the firm, for instance, the Christian ness of the firm is actually in the corporate documents that found the firm.

But we try to have people understand that.

Look, I'm just going to read you a section very briefly from page five, which is right after you get past sort of how we became affirmed.

That's funny.

That's the one I've got up on my screen too already.

So it's the one that resonates with me.

These spiritual underpinnings produce an inclusive approach to people, employees, clients and others, and not an exclusive one.

The firm welcomes people of all faiths or no faith.

An individual's belief in the existence, non existence or name of God is between that person and God.

We just happen to believe in Jesus, who is open to everyone, affords free will and operates in sacrificial love.

We believe this is as sound a foundation as any other on which to run an organization, whether man made or God revealed.

So in other words, if you just take the stuff that Jesus sort of says that he's about, it's not the worst thing.

The guy, you know, hung on a cross said, forgive them, they know not what they do.

That's a pretty decent place to lead from.

So that's kind of our idea.

So we don't mind what your beliefs are and we don't take offense and we hire people from all walks of life because that's, that's how Jesus was.

But in leading with that in the blueprint, it sort of sets up because somebody might not get, get past page five, which is totally cool.

I would say it's almost designed to be that test, right?

If people get to page five and they're like, yeah, no, this is too weird for me too.

Woo, too, whatever, that's okay.

There's a lot more pages in this document and if you're like, yeah, I'm not going to commit to that, that's part of the trade off.

So I guess to the extent that like I'm not pitching my blueprint, the idea is, and we can get to how this helps with my professional agility, it's a document like, this is wonderful if you're trying to build culture.

If you're trying to be qualitatively distinct from other cultures.

Because if you're trying to recruit, people want to understand, like, why should I come and work for this place?

I'm going to spend more time with you than I am with my family.

Like, what makes me want to be here?

Yeah, well, it's funny.

I'll give another musical quote, which is the line from the musical Hamilton, which is, if you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?

Yeah.

So it's you putting up what.

This is what we stand for.

And we're not going to fall for a lot of stuff because we got this clarity.

Let me pivot for a minute, because the genesis of this document was in this recruiting and getting people, you know, on the bus as I framed it.

Tell me about how it, I guess, informs your day to day.

But also recruiting aside, what have you found to be the benefits of producing this articulation of your vision, values, principles, et cetera, around law practice?

It informs so much of how we run the organization.

We happen to be using eos, the entrepreneurial operating system, which probably know about.

And it's really critical if you have an organization that has to employ sort of managerial discernment and make decisions A, B or C to have a framework or a set of values within which to make those close calls.

And so this document helps in that regard, in that it does set forth the values of the firm.

It describes the qualities that we look for in people and digging deeper, like maybe into an area that you wouldn't normally see, because a lot of firms have values and instead of a mission and vision, all that.

Yeah.

With varying levels of quality, I would say I read a lot for a lot of law firm mission statements that are pretty milquetoast in their approach and.

Nobody really deploys them when they're making hard decisions.

But with us, for instance, let's talk about compensation.

I don't know about you and your experience, but when I was a young lawyer, the whole compensation issue, it wasn't immediately fascinating.

It became fascinating as I sat down for, like, annual reviews.

And you experience the bait and switch, or they bring you in there, they're trying to make you feel not that great so you don't ask for too much more money.

And then I never really understood, like, what makes this all go around.

Well, we have described in this document how we split up the dollar bill.

It's real simple.

It's.

We split it three ways.

The first third goes to the worker, B, the middle third Goes to management.

And management means a lot of things.

Overhead and in the attorneys, you know, managing the file.

And then the last third is ownership.

So you split a dollar.

Well, we described with some level of detail how that looks.

So then when it comes compensation time and we're sitting down and we're having a conversation, I might open up the blueprint and say, okay, let's look at your numbers.

Let's figure out how you're doing with regard to collections or billing, et cetera.

And then let's talk about why you may be getting to the point where you should be sharing in this middle third.

Because you're starting to manage your own files.

You have people underneath you.

You're requiring less of management.

So again, that makes me agile, because I don't have to come up with the basis for which I would make compensation decisions.

It's there in a document that everybody can see.

And it's more than that.

Right.

I mean, as you're describing it and as I've read through it, you know, and flipping it over to, you know, how lawyers think.

Right.

When you're working on a case, litigating a case, and you find some prior law, you're hoping that judge in that case has articulated a standard of some sort that you can then sort of balance your facts against.

And so it's not just that you've said, oh, yeah, we've got this principle that we need X, Y and Z.

You're saying, no.

And these are the five things that we consider when we determine whether we are achieving this principle or not.

So you're taking it from a level of abstraction, which is important, right.

We want to articulate the value, but you're introducing a level of practicability.

It's like, how do we take that value and actually operationalize it and embed it again?

Maybe in our compensation to structure, maybe in our employee growth and tenure with the firm, maybe in how we work with vendors or other support people.

Right.

It can embed itself in a lot of different places.

And once you have a document like this, and I don't want to steal thunder from your last guest, because I know you've talked about AI, and I think to some extent people are maybe kind of sick of talking about it sometimes, but I've actually, I've been deploying certain AI in my AI, I will point it to.

This document is included within a clutch of documents that I call a master rubric.

And when we have decisions that we have to make, a hiring decision, maybe we.

Maybe we have 10 candidates submit the resumes.

I'll have my AI take the first swing at looking at those resumes and then comparing it to our blueprint.

And it's amazing how much discernment that will come out of that.

So that's another thing that in terms of having a document like this, it could help inform your AI as to how you're thinking.

It's like a huge prompt, if you will.

Yeah, well, it's funny, I'm glad you brought it up.

And I know, you know, the conversation I had, it'll be, you know, a few weeks ago now by the time this airs, but I think Marian Eamon is probably the one you were talking about and using the Agile approach and, and how that's so important because it forces this too strong a word.

It strongly encourages some disciplines, some practices, and I think going a step further, getting to the point where you can articulate some things that's useful regardless of whether you're using a tool like AI or not.

But to your point, as you get into more familiarity, more comfort with AI, you can start to sort of, by giving it these frameworks, it can become sort of an accountability partner also and not an infallible one.

Right.

We've gone and there will be an episode between Marian and this one where I talk about some of the fallibilities of AI and stuff that we need to stay on top of.

But either way, it's a good feedback loop.

It's interesting.

I mean, one of the half jokes or criticisms that I make sometimes of some lawyers who are adopting AI is you've spent hours and hours trying to write the exact perfect prompt for your AI.

How come you didn't do that for your people?

And I think you started with getting this document in a place that was right for your people.

And it turns out that it also happens to be a really useful tool as you get into the particular way you're using AI.

Yeah, because we, you know, when, when I started creating this a few years, AI wasn't even a.

You know.

Exactly.

No, right, that's what I mean.

And like prompting gives direction to AI.

Another benefit of a blueprint type document is that people often set out and they have an idea about culture or trajectory or direction in their organization.

But you have a good intention and you start down the road and pretty soon you find mission creep or you just start losing your way.

And when leadership puts the amount of time and effort into creating a document like a blueprint, puts it out there and then refers to it and relies upon it it sort of keep.

It helps keep you to your true north.

And then if you decide that, or if there is sort of a collective decision or, or.

Or something that motivates change, then you go back to your blueprint, your DNA, and you can change it or structure it.

I just think it.

It helps people stay on.

On mission.

Yeah.

Well, okay, so there's a few things I want to reference.

I mean, one of them, the last thing that you just said, I think is so important because that scope creep or mission creep is so easy to have happen in a law practice.

And I think in part because of the natural curiosity and even, you know, one of the benefits of being a lawyer in a lot of practices is we get to learn new stuff.

And it's fun.

We like learning new stuff.

Oh, this client has this super weird problem, and it's going to have to cause me to go learn this other area of law.

And I love that.

Right.

Because it exercises my brain.

I get to use my judgment.

I get to draw connections that maybe I wouldn't have drawn before.

And that's all super important.

But then there's this funny thing that can happen sometimes.

It's like, well, now I've learned this whole practice area.

I should add that to the webpage.

I should add that to our services.

And you do it almost automatically, and it's totally natural, and it's often very appropriate.

But if you're not doing it in a measured and intentional way, then you can wind up with this death by a thousand cuts, where it's like, okay, what kind of law do I practice now?

Because there's the stuff I used to do that I knew I was really good at.

And then there's this new shiny object that I'm really interested in that creates for me from a workflow standpoint, that bugs me a little bit because designing workflows that are supportive of different practice areas is really hard.

From a marketing standpoint, that's harder because the more different things you do, the harder it is to target to that ideal customer profile.

That's saying, you know, yep, that's who I want.

This is the right problem we solve.

And so I'm rambling a little bit, but I think the blueprint that you have, you're not going to update it just because you learned a new piece of information on a Thursday.

You're going to sit down with your partners, you're going to be intentional about.

Is it time to make a change here that we need to incorporate?

That's right.

And you've Actually just given me an idea for a new section of the blueprint.

Because we don't have a section that sort of plants a flag in the ground about who we are.

And it is like, what we do.

I don't have that in there, interestingly, because quite frankly, I have suffered from the shiny thing syndrome a couple of times.

Opened a title company because how hard can it be?

Title is six figures later and three years of really struggling and wasting resources.

I don't have a title company.

You know, we try to bring in transactional partner, but we have decided and it hasn't been blueprinted.

We are a litigation boutique.

That's what we do.

We crush litigation.

We like it.

It has a certain rhythm to it.

We're all litigators, and that's what we are.

And so you've actually just inspired me.

I really feel like I want to put a section in here about this is who we are.

So if you're a young person and you want to come learn about transactional law, we're not going to be where you want to come.

I think I'm excellent.

No, that's why I love having these conversations.

Yeah, it sparks ideas for all of us.

So tell me a little more than you've just done this big update, and I think part of the genesis of the update had to do with incorporating some of your values around AI Because I think I saw your old version, I've seen your new version, and I don't remember the old version talking about AI and it's probably because it didn't really exist at the time.

And without diving into the weeds about what it says about AI Tell me about what drove you to update it.

And then also, what's your process?

Do you update it?

Like, do you review it on a cadence?

Are you saying every two or three years we're going to really open this thing up and dedicate some time to it, or is it a little bit.

More opportunistic with regard to the cadence, I would say, well, first of all, in our firm organization, I'm the visionary.

For those who are not used to the EOS parlance, it doesn't mean that I sit on a mountain and meditate.

The visionaries, you just kind of the top of the chain who casting vision is there.

So I've been the one.

This is kind of my baby, if you will.

It's not that I.

Then now superimpose it because I. I'll develop an idea, I'll talk on my leadership, and we'll build it out so the cadence has been sporadic.

Sometimes I'll have inspiration, but it'll just take me a long time to get to the actual section built out.

So.

But specifically with regard to the AI piece of it, and the reason we wove that in is we do an annual vision meeting and sometimes the annual vision meeting, that's kind of the.

It's like if I've had ideas throughout the year, I definitely want to bring forth the latest iteration at the vision meeting.

Because if I've been inspired by whatever source to create this new thing, then we should probably talk about it.

Like a year ago I came up with the idea or we deployed sabbaticals separate.

And aside from pto, which we have a defined amount, we give everybody in our firm four days of sabbatical and sabbatical.

I describe why we do this, the whole concept, et cetera in the document.

But you'd want to be able to talk about that.

That's a perfectly wonderful thing to talk about at a vision meeting.

Well, and just to put a quick code on it, a very Old Testament concept, right.

I mean it's literally, even though it's something that is part of society overall, that is genuinely from the Old Testament of the Bible.

Right?

Genuinely therefrom.

And the beautiful thing is man, when you deploy it in this modern world and you just go and you disconnect.

I'm talking disconnect.

You're not allowed to add it to a three day weekend.

You can't do that.

We're not going to pay you for that.

But anyway, so it is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

But getting back to the AI and why we deploy that, our motto, and this has been the motto since I, I opened the firm, it was just me and a laptop 20 something years ago, is truth guided and relationship driven.

So the AI issue really facilitates this relationship driven element, or at least a piece of it.

Because the way we are deploying AI, at least that I'm going to talk about for this purpose, is we use it to facilitate a regular communication among, in between our team members and to our client.

We have a rubric, we have a way of doing business that I've developed from Soup the nuts.

From the time somebody calls in to have a potential console through the closure of the file, we have a way that we want to interact and communicate with people.

Well, AI helps us meet the standard.

So that was the overlay.

We explain how it is that we're deploying AI to cause us to meet our own previously stated standard in a way that is better than we've been able to do it in the past because AI never sleeps and it looks at every email and it sees things and say, hey, you said you were going to do this in pursuant to your rubric, within five days of your initial consultation, you're supposed to have a team meeting, but we don't see that in play.

Or you're supposed to have a strategy later to a client, but all of that is going to serve the client.

That's one of the elements that we wove into the DNA of the firm through the blueprint so that people can understand.

I'm going to very briefly respond to your use of AI because I love it for two reasons.

Right.

One is it's a form of accountability partnership, which is, you know, we've talked about a couple times already.

But the other is it's a feedback loop.

Because if you find that the blueprint says, or the rubric says, we should be having this meeting within five days of this and we're consistently missing it, that's an important signal too, because we need to be able to say, okay, maybe we were overly optimistic, maybe we're having some issues where we're not prioritizing this highly enough, maybe there's something else, but at least it gives us a reason.

And because the AI is giving you that feedback loop and to your point, as long as it's plugged into an energy source, which is its own set of controversies, but that aside, it doesn't get tired, it doesn't get hangry, it doesn't waver, and for the most part it seems to do it in a mostly non judgmental way.

I want to come back a little bit to something in part of your genesis, and it's something that came to mind that I didn't quite hit on.

And you tell me if this is true, but articulating the values and actually setting the goal of saying, okay, I'm going to take these things that are floating around in my skull and try to commit them to paper.

Right.

Or at least put them in a format that other people can see that in and of itself helps sharpen your own thinking, I bet, yeah.

First of all, it's closing a loop because especially for a visionary, if you have these concepts, you're not supposed to keep them in your head, they don't do anybody any good.

And so just getting them out and on the paper, having other people read them, read them yourself, et cetera, it's extremely helpful.

And it starts maybe as a seed crystal, but then ultimately, if it can Develop into something that is kind of a guidepost and helps you develop a true north for your organization.

It's really critical.

But that's one thing I've just found over the last year and a half of.

I'm constantly trying to be open to new things that will help me, but the idea of getting open loops out of my head.

There's some really good books out there on that, and I'm sure you've probably read them all.

But there are lots of open loops in this blueprint that now have manifested really amazing upside.

I am a big believer in that.

And I think part of what I'm hearing is that it's no longer a gym document.

Right.

It is a firm document because the firm has engaged with it.

They have given feedback about it.

They've probably suggested any number of tweaks or maybe outright revisions.

Like, hey, this thing that you.

You thought you said, I don't think that's us.

You need to say it this way.

Right?

Or I would say it this way and maybe someone else says, oh, I would say it this way.

But whatever it is, through that conversation you come to some consensus and then all of a sudden you've got something that isn't, oh, yeah, Jim says, this is how we have to be.

It's no.

The firm really reflects these things.

I have two wonderful equity partners who are extremely different in their own rights from one another and from me.

And we really have a wonderful synergy.

And so, yes, absolutely, this is a document that has developed out of consensus.

I don't personally believe that leadership by consensus is always healthy, but it certainly is healthy envisioning and in manifesting forward thought, especially when you're including young guys who are going to be here running this ship after I'm not running it anymore, you better include those guys.

Well, and it's whole.

I mean, I've got a whole rift that I've done and I forget which episode.

I'll put it in the show notes.

But about law firm policies, and I talk about the same thing.

There may be one or two people that knows what the policy should be and why we should have it, but them casting it down from on high isn't necessarily going to be enough to get the rest of the team to.

To internalize and follow the policy.

And a lot of what I talk about is, number one, your policies should always have why statements in them because the why is more important than the what or the how.

Number two, the reason to have a policy isn't because you expect that someone is going to follow it to the letter time after time.

You hope that's true, but you can't reasonably expect that's true.

But what a well written policy does is, is make it so that when people trip and they fall, they at least fall in the right direction.

Yeah, if they trip and fall and then from a leadership standpoint, you have to address what happened in the fall.

If you have a policy, the policy sort of defines it and it helps guide how to pick the person up as well.

So that's good stuff.

Well, so what would your advice be?

Think back to yourself.

10, 15 Years ago, you're still sort of building this practice.

It's beyond just you and a laptop, but it's not the fully fledged.

Although I know you have plans to be even more fully fledged as well because that's in your blueprint.

Part of your growth plans is in there.

But for someone that's maybe a little earlier in their journey, they've started building a team, they've had some success in their practice area, but they're maybe feeling a little bit at sea.

They feel a little bit rudderless, directionless, whatever.

What would your advice be to that?

Law firm owner, managing partner, practice, group lead, you name it, to begin this process of getting something blueprint like out into the world.

Okay, so I'm going to not be evangelical in terms of, let's say, I would say that the best thing you can do is seek to find sources of truth that are dependable.

And so I'm going to pitch an organization.

You can decide whether you want to keep this in or not.

But there's an organization called C12.

I don't know if you've ever heard about it, but C12, it's a Christian CEO organization, it's worldwide and it's really cool, the rhythm of it.

And there are other a CEO roundtable organizations out there.

But it's the kind of organization where you go and you get around a table of other similarly situated people in terms of trying to run a business.

And it's a confidential environment.

And you'd spend a day, one day a month working on your business instead of in your business.

The sooner you can carve out time to work on your business and not in your business, you're on your way to developing vision, having ideas, having your blind spots recognized.

That's the main thing.

Because there's all different sorts of folks out there running business.

There's technicians, there's, there's visionaries there.

There's all different folks and it each one of us has our own strength.

And the sooner you can have other people sort of speak in to what you have going on to help you with blind spots, the quicker you will advance and achieve your manifest destiny, if you will, Whatever the highest and best ends are that you want to achieve.

All right, I love that.

And I'm gonna wrap it up there.

Let me summarize.

Cause here are the two things I pull out of that.

Which is, number one, you gotta make the time.

You've got finite capacity.

We could always work more.

We could always do one more round of revisions on the memo or the document.

Whatever we've got to be able to say, nope.

We are dedicating a day, a month, half a day, every couple weeks.

Maybe more, maybe less.

But whatever it is, you've got to carve out and protect that time to do the bigger picture work.

Number two, don't try to do it alone.

And I think there's maybe two contexts of that.

One's the one you mentioned, which is find some peers.

Find people that you trust that resonate with you, that you can learn from or that you can just have good conversations with.

And then maybe the other part of don't do it Alone is the one I talked about already, which is don't feel like you've got to produce a complete finished document before you start bouncing around with your team and your colleagues and your partners and everyone else.

Right.

This is something that really should be.

It benefits from feedback.

Right.

Closing those open loops, as you talked about.

Yeah.

We launch things all the time that are unfinished.

And having read the book about Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, there was a lot of.

You launch something and then you sort of engineer it as you go.

Because if you wait until it's perfect, first of all, you've missed engineering opportunities in its failures or in its observations or critiques.

And so those are all good recommendations for getting a blueprint started.

Great.

Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining me and for talking about your blueprint, your process, your firm.

It's been really great.

I hope to have you back sometime.

I really appreciate it.

It's been fun.

All right, that's it for this week.

Thank you again to Jim Boatman for joining me and for being so open about how his firm works.

If you found today's episode useful, please share it with a colleague or a friend who you think would benefit from a more agile approach to their legal practice.

Maybe especially one who's got a mission statement sitting on their website that nobody's read since it went live.

And then if you have any questions about the things Jim and I discussed or a topic you'd like to hear me address on the podcast, please shoot me an email at John granteenline Legal if you haven't already, please take a moment to rate or review the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or on YouTube.

It genuinely helps other people find this material.

As always, this podcast gets production support from the fantastic team at Digital Freedom Productions, and our theme music is hello by Lunara.

Thanks for listening and I will catch you again next time.