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I hired Sarah Persich<\/a> to help with a Zapier<\/a> automation workflow. I knew what I wanted: two apps talking to each other.<\/p>\n She asked why I wanted them talking. Then she asked what happened before that handoff, what happened after it, and who touched it along the way.<\/p>\n By the end of the call, it was clear the connection wasn\u2019t my problem. The process feeding the connection was my problem. We built the automation eventually, but that wasn\u2019t the part that mattered.<\/p>\n And so this is not a Zapier<\/a> story. It\u2019s a story about a job nearly every small firm needs done, and nobody owns.<\/p>\n Gino Wickman named it in \u201cTraction<\/a>,\u201d his book on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Every company, he says, runs on two roles: a visionary and an integrator. <\/p>\n The visionary is usually the owner. Big picture, goal-oriented, drawn to shiny objects \u2014 this tool, then that one.<\/p>\n The integrator is the person who brings it back down to earth. Who asks how it would work with the team you have, and then makes it work.<\/p>\n Sarah calls herself a fractional integrator because she does this for several firms at once instead of one firm full-time. She spent years inside a law firm learning its systems \u2014 including a case management migration or three \u2014 before she started doing it for other people\u2019s firms.<\/p>\n (Read Brooke Lively\u2019s article on EOS here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n For small law firms, the reason is probably twofold.<\/p>\n With fewer than 10 lawyers, you can\u2019t justify a full-time hire for it. <\/strong>So the intake, the handoffs and the tracking quietly break down, and nobody owns them.<\/p>\n The bigger reason is that you can\u2019t hire for a job you can\u2019t name.<\/strong> Post an opening for an operations manager and you\u2019ll attract people who will run the systems you already have. That\u2019s a different job. It doesn\u2019t include telling you that the systems themselves are the problem.<\/p>\n I expected the role to get smaller with the advent of artificial intelligence. If AI can create automations, read documentation and troubleshoot error messages, why pay a person to handle integrations?<\/p>\n Because the integration was never the most important part. Deciding what should connect to what, in what order, and what \u201cworking\u201d even looks like for your firm \u2014 that\u2019s the critical part, and AI won\u2019t do it for you. It\u2019s a systems question, not a tech troubleshooting issue.<\/p>\n Sarah put it plainly when I asked her about this: A client comes to her wanting two tools integrated, and once she digs in, \u201cit might not be an automation issue. This might be more of a systems-related issue that you\u2019ve got to work these kinks out first.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the example that made this concrete for me.<\/p>\n Sarah works with a firm that handles a high volume of leads and records its intake calls. (Louisiana is a one-party consent state, so the recording was already squared away.) Before any AI showed up, she\u2019d done the unglamorous work: building a scorecard, defining what a good intake call sounds like, training the team on handling objections.<\/p>\n Then her client dropped an AI agent called Viktor<\/a> into the firm\u2019s Slack.<\/p>\n Sarah handed it the criteria she\u2019d already written \u2014 is the person building rapport, handling objections, gathering the information \u2014 and asked it to listen to the call recordings and grade each team member against them.<\/p>\n It came back in about 10 minutes with a rating for every person on every call. She figures that would have taken weeks by hand.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the part people repeat. Here\u2019s the part they skip: The 10 minutes only worked because the scorecard already existed. Point the same agent at a firm with no definition of a good intake call, and 10 minutes later you\u2019ll have a report that measures nothing.<\/p>\n The firm gets that report daily now. It grew from there \u2014 flagging leads that never made it into the case management system, then tracking follow-up attempts.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to read \u201cTraction\u201d or adopt EOS to get the benefit here. You just have to notice there\u2019s a job in your firm that nobody has, and that it isn\u2019t a technology job.<\/p>\n When you can name it, you can hire for it. And for small firms, you probably want to hire a fractional integrator, not a full-time one. Fractionally, for a few hours a month, you get someone who has seen how other firms handle the same operational friction points that you\u2019re constantly struggling with.<\/p>\n After you have that fractional integrator in place, AI can handle any mop-up work. So the lesson is: Solve the big problem first before you resort to using AI.<\/p>\n AI Note-Takers for Lawyers: The Recording Risk You Need to Fully Understand<\/a><\/p>\n AI Training for Lawyers: Why One Skill Beats Nine Prompts<\/a><\/p>\n Your Law Firm\u2019s Knowledge Is Trapped: A Chatbot Can Let It Out<\/a><\/p>\n How Using AI Skills for Law Firm Workflows Can Turbocharge Your SOPs<\/a><\/p>\n Why I Switched From ChatGPT to Claude (And What Finally Pushed Me Over)<\/a><\/p>\n Loom for Lawyers: Why You Should Be Creating Shareable Videos<\/a><\/p>\n Top 8 Tech Tools for Solo and Small Firm Lawyers to End the Chaos<\/a><\/p>\n AI Tools for Lawyers: Why You Shouldn\u2019t Stick to Just One<\/a><\/p>\n Our Fingers Can\u2019t Keep Up With AI<\/a><\/p>\n Image \u00a9 iStockPhoto.com. <\/p>\n Sign up for Attorney at Work\u2019s daily practice tips newsletter here<\/a> and subscribe to our podcast<\/a>, Attorney at Work Today.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ernie Svenson: I I hired Sarah because I wanted two apps talking. She asked why. By the end of the call, it was clear the connection wasn\u2019t my problem. The process feeding the connection was my problem. The post The Big Thing Your Small Firm Needs but Can\u2019t Yet Name appeared first on Articles, Tips […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal_matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Somebody Already Named It<\/h2>\n
Why Your Law Firm Doesn\u2019t Have One<\/h2>\n
You\u2019d Think AI Would Solve This<\/h2>\n
10 Minutes of Work, Months of Setup<\/h2>\n
The Bottom Line: Name the Job First<\/h2>\n
\nMore From Ernie Svenson and the 80\/20 Principle<\/h2>\n
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