Attorneys Make Terrible Managers (And What To Do About It) with Wendy Wylde

Most law firm owners think their growth problem is a lead problem.

It almost never is.

In this episode of the Optimized Law Firm podcast, host Melissa Sanchez sits down with Wendy Wylde, founder of Matter Flow Advisors, to talk about the real reason firms stall out even when the leads are coming in: the owner is still the bottleneck.

Wendy spends her days inside law firm intake systems, rebuilding the processes that determine whether a lead actually turns into a client. Her take is blunt: firms don't outgrow their marketing, they outgrow their delegation.

What's in This Episode?

• Why lead volume is almost never the real growth constraint
• The difference between delegating tasks and delegating decisions
• How one client's constant system tinkering became his own bottleneck
• What good delegation actually looks like, in symptoms you can measure
• A simple test to find out if you're the bottleneck in your own firm

Three Key Takeaways

Lead volume is rarely the real growth constraint. Attorney capacity is. Firms invest in more marketing when the actual bottleneck is that too many decisions still route through the owner instead of the team hired to make them.

Delegate decisions, not just tasks. Give your team a defined outcome and clear constraints, like "anything under $500 doesn't need my sign-off," instead of dictating the how, and reserve your own calendar for the work only you can do.

Good delegation shows up as consistency, not busyness. Flat response times as volume grows, a steady follow-up cadence instead of bursts, and time actually opening up on the attorney's calendar are the real signals a firm has broken through the bottleneck.

Episode Chapters

1. The Real Growth Bottleneck: Why It's Never Just Lead Volume — 00:00
2. Why Attorneys Struggle to Let Go, and the Framework That Fixes It — 07:18
3. What Changes When Leadership Gets Out of the Way — 20:20

Full Episode Transcript

Melissa:

Welcome to the Optimized Law Firm podcast, where we talk about how to run a more enjoyable and profitable law firm. I am your host for today, I'm Melissa Sanchez, I'm the marketing director at Constellation Marketing. I am here today with Wendy Wylde. She's the founder of Matter Flow Advisors, an amazing person, really good at intake implementations and systems. So, Wendy.

Wendy:

Thanks for having me. So my day to day is meeting with law firm owners or marketing folks inside of these firms to help them update their overall intake system and automate as much of that as is useful for the firm. My day to day is literally stepping inside of law firm systems, talking to people who use those systems, and then building out improved systems so that law firms can capture as many clients from the leads already coming through the door.

Melissa:

As we know, if intake is not working, marketing is not working either. So as a person that works inside law firms every day on intake and operations, what's the number one thing you see holding firms back from actually growing?

Wendy:

This may sound weird, but I'm going to say what it's not, and then we can say what it is. But it's almost never about the lead volume. And I think that's really interesting because a lot of firms are like, oh, we've got to get a marketing agency on board, right? They want to get more leads. But so often it's about capacity, and specifically the owner's particular capacity, because too much of the firm still routes through them rather than handing that work off or delegating that work to the team that they've hired to do it.

Melissa:

Right. So it's almost like we're pointing towards a delegation issue in this case, very much.

Wendy:

Yep.

Melissa:

Is this just something that attorneys are usually aware of, or does it tend to be more of a blind spot in your experience?

Wendy:

I think that many attorneys that I work with, most of the attorneys that I work with, think that they're doing a good job delegating. And a lot of that is because they've built out something inside of Lawmatics or some other CRM, and they're like, yeah, I've done the work. My team is using the system, but the team is still coming to them for so many of the answers to questions that they themselves should be empowered to make. I see a lot of firm owners that still step in to do verification checks that a potential customer or client is qualified. And to me, that's just bonkers, that you would need the lead attorney whose name is on the door to approve somebody. That, to me, shows a lack of delegation. And of course, there's the desire to retain some control over the clients that they ultimately work with. I see that as a managerial problem because there's no reason for a lead attorney to be stepping in when somebody just called the firm.

Melissa:

Absolutely. So this actually leads into my next question. At what point does an attorney's involvement in day to day operations go from being an asset to being the actual problem, which is exactly what you were just saying? Do you have any specific case scenarios where this has happened?

Wendy:

Obviously, when an attorney is starting their practice, they are the asset, right? They've started it, it's their vision, they have something they want to accomplish as a law firm owner. But when you become an owner-operator, you have to start operating differently. I think that shift happens when the team grows just enough that the lead attorney has lost touch with every person's job and what they're explicitly doing. As soon as the attorney has another attorney on staff, or frankly even an intake person, an admin person, or a paralegal, they start to lose visibility into what's happening. And so they then become the problem, because they don't have eyes on all the problems anymore. Their team members have their own unique problems now. For me, that's the biggest observable challenge, when the firm owner goes from being an asset to being the problem.

Melissa:

So the team grows, the managing partner or the attorney is no longer having eyes on everyone. What are the symptoms that start to appear from your experience?

Wendy:

Yeah, so one obvious symptom, and then we can talk about how this shows up: attorneys wanting to have input into everything. You start to see that because team members are leaving notes for the attorney, leaving tasks for the attorney, or leaving review statuses inside their system for the attorney. Things from the team start to get delegated up to the attorney. Basically we see a triangle that goes upwards, rather than an upside-down triangle where each individual team member has their very unique tasks, knows exactly what to do, and doesn't rely on anybody. That's the main symptom. The other symptom I tend to see, and this sounds crazy, is that the attorney or managing partner knows too much about all of the leads. That's a little trickier, because sure, they're the lead attorney, they want to know about everything. But that's some indication that they're overly involved before a lead even turns into a client that the attorney actually has to do work for.

The other one I see a lot is attorneys who don't charge for consultations. I know that seems weird, in some practice areas you can't, a great example is personal injury, no personal injury attorney is charging for a consult. But if the attorney isn't valuing their own time, that's some indication they have a value issue, and it usually bleeds into the work their team is doing, because the team is struggling to value their time and charge a potential client for it. That's one indication there may be a delegation challenge, because they're thinking, "I don't want to charge, we might lose clients," and so they're not trusting their own process, they're not trusting their intake.

Melissa:

Right, that's a big delegation thing. And you mentioned trust.

Wendy:

I was going to mention, this is one of the most interesting things that falls into the symptoms: attorneys are taught to be adversarial. They're looking for the hole, the gap. They're trying to plug that up with legal documents or legal processes to protect their potential client. So they see things in an adversarial way rather than with warmth or a desire to get that potential client in the door. I'm not saying they're mean, but there's this interesting trust factor, because their whole degree, their whole training in law, is finding the problem, being adversarial, thinking in terms of win-lose. And when you're trying to delegate, it cannot be adversarial, it cannot be a lack of trust. You have to know that your intake person is going to handle the work, and that they're going to handle it in a way that meets your expectations. That frame, that lens they see the world through, can make it challenging to manage a team member. An intake person who's just learning, who's onboarded to the firm and done whatever training they need to do, you have to trust them to do the work, catch their mistakes, and give a recurring set of feedback, a time and place for feedback. But because attorneys are just looking for right, wrong, good, bad, that feedback loop tends to be a problem. That feeds into a trust dynamic.

Melissa:

So that actually leads into my next question, which is: do you think attorneys are actually capable of letting go, or is that just a personality trait baked into the profession?

Wendy:

I do think many attorneys have a hard time letting go, because control is a useful tool in law. Understanding everything, all the complexity, makes them feel very empowered. But if you can't let go, you cannot fully delegate, and you will always, perpetually, be doing more of the work, creating more bottlenecks for the team. Then your process slows down, response time gets slower. I do think some attorneys have a harder time with it than others, and what's been interesting for me is that the practice area they practice has more to do with it than anything else I can identify. Service-based attorneys, like estate planning, are coming from a very service-minded lens: this person needs protection, I want to create that for them, I'm serving them. In other areas of law, there's litigation, defense, protection of the client in a different sense. I do think the good managers tend to be a different breed of attorney, at least the ones for whom it feels natural.

But I do think any attorney can learn the skills of management, and learn to distinguish between their training, the adversarial side, versus "this is a delegation issue" or "this is a training issue." One thing I've actually learned more as a parent, but I see it show up a lot in legal management too: when someone who's learning something makes a mistake, our first instinct as humans is to say, "you did that wrong." What I learned as a parent is that a mistake is just information about what someone is capable of today, and it's now my job to close the gap between where they are and where we want them to be. You can't undo a mistake, you can clean it up, you can learn not to make it again. But to be a good manager, and to trust your own ability to delegate, you have to see the difference between a mistake and a training opportunity, even though they feel like the same thing in the moment.

Melissa:

Yeah, I'd say it's almost always not a human problem, but just a skill gap. So what's the worst version of this that you've seen, and what happened in that scenario? And I also want to ask you the opposite: what's the best version of this you've seen? I'm sure you've worked with attorneys who have really good managing skills, who are really good at running their business as a business.

Wendy:

So I would love to hear both case scenarios. A really great one right now, that is a client where they seem to be able to delegate. The lead attorney has lots of other attorneys on staff, it's a fairly large firm, but what they keep doing is going in and tinkering with their Lawmatics setup, because the lead attorney keeps changing his mind about what the system should do. As I interpret it, what he's doing is, "oh, I don't like the way that's working," and rather than trust the person doing it, he wants the system updated. He's constantly making changes to the system and retraining. It becomes really difficult to understand: is this intake person not succeeding because I keep changing the system? Are they not succeeding because they need training? Is the system itself not good? He's not looking at everything from a holistic lens, it's "this is broken, fix it this way, that's broken, fix it this way." It's a lot of what I call whack-a-mole, just trying to solve things one at a time.

That's not good management. It's complicated for the team, it requires capacity to update the system constantly, and it literally created a bottleneck such that this attorney couldn't grow. He came to us and said, "I wanted to double revenue, we have the leads to do it, but I can't figure out why we can't grow."

Melissa:

That's very interesting.

Wendy:

Yeah, so that's one case we're working with now. What we've done is he's given us permission to cut off his team's access to the builder components of their system, and he has to come to me now for updates, so I can be a buffer to ask: is this actually a good business decision, or does it solve a "maybe" problem, not even a real problem, just him solving potential problems? So now he's not constantly chasing fixes that never needed to be made. We locked the system down, we're training the staff, we're not fixing anything until we can see how this system compares to the last one. The number of emails I was receiving about changes was another one of those symptoms. Why do you need so many changes? What's happening here? That's a clear issue we've been dealing with, and routing those changes through us as the agency is allowing his team to trust the process as it's designed, and know they don't need to be on edge every time their boss decides to change the work.

Melissa:

Now that we understand the issues, what does good delegation actually look like in a law firm?

Wendy:

I have plenty of attorneys, and I'm thinking of a great example right now. She came to us and said, "we're having a problem, I'm tired of being the bottleneck, how do we solve this now so I can build something that will work for the future?" Every time I made a suggestion, like "this will make it easier" or "this will make it more streamlined," there was no objection. The attorney was like, "absolutely, do that." A couple other things that particular attorney did: she had been taking consults herself, and she said "I don't want to be the bottleneck anymore," so she handed off all consultations to associate attorneys and pulled herself out of that calendar entirely. She understood these are small decisions she can make that pull her, one at a time, out of these bottlenecks, versus another attorney who's just throwing fixes at the problem instead of stepping away from it. So we see the ability to delegate, and trust that the system is working for them and for the future of the business, as a good managerial symptom.

Melissa:

No, we understand that perfectly.

Wendy:

And not just delegating trust to their team, but also trust to us. They found us, they hired us, because they believed we could accomplish what they wanted. That trust piece is what makes a good manager, it shows up in all the interactions, with vendors, partners, all of it.

Melissa:

So if there's someone listening right now thinking, "that's not me, I'm not the bottleneck," what would you say to them?

Wendy:

I'd ask a couple of questions, starting with: what do your nights and weekends look like? This is silly, but so many attorneys I work with, mostly solo practitioners or small firm owners, email me on the weekend. Just 2 or 3 attorneys emailing on the weekend, and I already know where they're at in their business. If you don't have time to do this Monday through Friday, that's an indication of a bottleneck. I'd also ask: if you took a two-week vacation, would leads continue moving through the intake pipeline without you, or are they stuck because you've inserted yourself into those touchpoints?

I'd say the first step isn't behavioral, it's actually documentation, because you cannot systematically fix anything without first understanding the system you're operating in. Just writing it down on a legal notepad is enough as a first step. The second shift is from delegating individual tasks to delegating decisions with constraints. Attorneys shouldn't be telling people how to do it, they should be saying, "here is the outcome we desire, and here are the constraints you have to work within." And then the third thing is really practical: being really clear about what needs to be run by you versus what doesn't. I can't remember the company name, or I'd cite it, but there was a case study I read about a company, not a law firm, where the owner was the bottleneck, and he decided to give the rest of the team the ability to make decisions so long as the cost was under $500. That was such a clear designation that once he made the shift, he was able to stop answering questions about service delivery or orders or any of those things. It empowered his team to just say, "there's a $12 solution, that's handled." Those sign-off tiers, helping the team understand what's within their capacity to decide versus what needs to go to the next level up, and in these smaller firms that next level is almost always the lead attorney. That's one real challenge to navigate: the approval process always lands back on your desk.

Melissa:

So we're seeing delegation as a very, very big issue in managing a firm, and next to it, the capacity of training your team to operate knowing that they're doing a good job within the constraints. So that leads into my next question: how does intake specifically change when the team members have the capacity to work properly and leadership gets out of the way?

Wendy:

Usually we see response times drop, because there aren't bottlenecks anymore. That's obvious and wonderful, and even as volume grows, that response time stays consistent, which shows empowerment on the staff's part. You see more follow-up cadence consistency, versus bursts of follow-up, because the team feels empowered to make those decisions on their own, so you see fewer fits and starts. And the attorney actually starts to get time reserved for the work that needs them, rather than the decisions that have to be made for leads, which is probably the most important thing to point out. If you're a law firm owner constantly thinking "when do I have time to work on the business instead of in the business," that thought crossing your mind may mean there's a managerial skill gap worth looking at. Even in my own business, before I built out all the systems, I found myself constantly doing all the client work and thinking, "why am I doing this?" It's because I hadn't taught anybody else to do it, I hadn't empowered anyone else to do it. That time, freedom, and availability on the attorney's calendar is probably the biggest indicator of success in delegating.

Melissa:

So what's one thing an attorney could start doing this week to close that skill gap in their firm?

Wendy:

I think it's probably as small as choosing a single recurring task that drives you nuts, and figuring out what tool can automate that task for you. If it can be automated, fantastic. If that task requires a human in the loop, write down the outcome that's expected and any constraints, without giving them the "how." Those are the two ways I sort of see it.

Melissa:

I love this insight you're giving us, because it's very practical, and it's something any attorney listening could apply this week. What's the one thing you wish more law firm leaders knew, as someone who's been in the intake business for years?

Wendy:

I'd say letting go isn't losing control. If it feels like letting go is losing control, then what you really need are defined outcomes and constraints so you can hand tasks off rather than owning them yourself. The work doesn't need to be done by you to be done really well. It's about learning to train people to meet your expectations, rather than trying to hire people who already meet your expectations. People say, "oh, I have this amazing new employee, they're going to crush it," and then even the good employee struggles. We want to make sure we're looking not just at who that person is, but what we've done to set them up for success, so staff becomes people you can hand off or delegate to, rather than owning everything yourself. Feeling comfortable delegating is really the key that makes all of this easier.

Melissa:

It almost seems like we've gotten to the conclusion that it's all about empowering your staff.

Wendy:

Attorneys who hire a bunch of employees who think like them create tunnel vision, because then nobody on the team has skill sets outside of that. The attorney is thinking strategically, using their legal training to see the whole firm. So when hiring an intake person, maybe you don't want somebody who's a perfectionist, you want somebody who's open-hearted and warm and can connect with a client on the phone, that's a different skill set entirely. You have to understand what skill set is actually needed for the role, and who you need to hire so they can fill it, rather than hiring more people like yourself. As a business owner, it's so easy to think "hire more of me, it'll all be easy," and then you do, and you wonder why two of those hires aren't doing well. It's because the role actually needed different skills.

Melissa:

Very interesting. Thank you for all your insight, Wendy. So tell us where we can find you, and a little bit more about how your business helps law firms.

Wendy:

Sure, you can find me primarily on LinkedIn, and if you like Instagram I'm there too, under Matter Flow Advisors. On LinkedIn I'm Wendy Wylde, and we also have our business account up there, so you can find me through that. You're welcome to connect with me personally, I'm the only one who answers my DMs, always me, just so you know. The way I help law firms: I step in, look at existing Lawmatics accounts or existing processes, and then help generate the system that would most benefit that firm. It's really asking all the custom questions so we can build a system that works the way you like to work, using the language you like to use, and offering insight, tips, and strategies to help reduce the dependence of the system on the firm owner or attorneys, or really anybody who's high-value, and increase dependence on other staff who can answer questions and move the work along. I think we love helping law firms. My greatest joy is getting to the end of a project and having a firm say, "this meets the criteria we set, and we feel good about how to use it." That's my favorite thing, seeing happy clients at the end of these engagements, with the systems working well.

Melissa:

Thank you, Wendy, thank you for sharing all your insight. Thank you for joining us in this episode of the Optimized Law Firm podcast, and talk to you soon.

Wendy:

Awesome. Thanks, Melissa. Have a good afternoon.