Implementing Salesforce in Legal Industries with Jason Adams

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In episode 6, Ben Miller chats with Jason Adams, Director of Operations at Hoglund & Mrozik. After joining the firm eight years ago, Jason introduced the team to Salesforce. Hoglund & Mrozik have never looked back. Today, they continue to push the limits through dynamic self-service processes like document collection, a long-established problem within the legal field.

There’s no stopping Jason. He is on a mission to complete Salesforce certifications and launch a partnership focusing on Salesforce implementation in the legal field.

Keep reading for all the highlights from this podcast, and find out what Jason knows are the biggest wins for using Salesforce in the legal industry!

Ben: Jason Adams! Welcome to Salesforce Radio. I am very excited to have you on the podcast today.

Jason: Thanks, man! I’m happy to be here.

Ben: Jason is the Director of Operations at Hoglund & Mrozik law firm. I’m excited to speak with you. You are different from the other guests that I have had so far. You and I have been talking since the beginning of 2023. I remember you approached Titan looking for a new solution for document generation in Salesforce. That is where our relationship started. From then on, we got through a project or two together.

This podcast is a little different. I haven’t had a guest on Salesforce Radio who has worked with Titan and the system. However, it’s not what we will focus on today, but I think it’s a great place to start.

Today, I want to hear about your journey into Salesforce and what you do at the law firm.

Every time we have spoken, you are either at Dreamforce or getting ready for Salesforce certifications. So, I know there is a good backstory here, and I’m excited to hear it.

Jason: I came to Hoglund & Mrozik 8 years ago. When I arrived, like most law firms, ours was technologically behind. We were still obtaining leads from email queues and calling them on a manual phone. These leads were tracked on a server-based CRM.

We started a long way off, but we implemented a call center solution, a lead queue, and many different things using typical legal software. We fought this battle for three years until I convinced everybody to look at Salesforce.

So we set up with Salesforce. One thing I figured out early is if you don’t have somebody in the business championing the product or taking the time to learn how to implement and make new things happen, you end up spending a lot of money on implementation partners down the road.

Nobody wants to use an implementation partner forever. So, I hit the Trailheads and became a 2-star ranger. I have studied and focused a lot on Salesforce. For example, I have done two consulting certifications plus my admin certification working on Platform App Builder. I learned everything I needed to make Salesforce successful for my organization.

Ben: So, when you joined the firm, Salesforce wasn’t on your radar?

Jason: No, I came from a call center background. Even replacing the CRM was not in my wheelhouse.

I started with upgrading the phone system with tech. From there, I moved up and advocated we use Salesforce after being at the law firm for a year.

It was that year and a half of dealing with legal-specific solutions that just did not fit the buck, especially regarding analytics, reporting, and automation.

Ben: Interesting! So, you had been in other positions before you got to Hoglund & Mrozik. Were you using Salesforce as an end-user in the call center, or were you on the operations side?

Jason: No, I owned my own call center for six years. I ran three call centers on the operations side before that, but I was not the administrator. I just told everyone what we will do and how to use Salesforce. However, I had no idea how Salesforce worked on the back end.

Ben: Were you able to make decisions about Salesforce in the past?

Jason: No, I would mostly count on the sales team, and we would use the client’s system. There was not much I had control over at that point.

Ben: So, in those situations, Salesforce is implemented internally by a partner using a managed package. What was that like?

Jason: Previously, I ran a team of end users on a system that was not mine. They were doing all of that on the backend in Salesforce Classic. I remembered it was an excellent system, and what we used at the time in the law firm was not very good. Those experiences pointed me in the right direction to Salesforce.

Ben: That is so interesting. So, then, arriving at your current position. What is your title, exactly?

Jason: Now, I’m the Director of Operations. When I came in 8 years ago, it was Call Centre Manager.

Ben: So, as a call center manager, you find these different systems used at the firm are not optimal. What happens next?

Jason: It started in the call center, where I would build intakes. These are new client forms created with Cognito Forms. We also used Zapier to push the form data into Cleo. We did a lot of automation within the call center, including hooking Pipedrive onto the front of Cleo. We also built solutions on software for other law firms. However, we found automation works but not as well as we would like it to.

We made a lot of progress going through that whole process. We learned a lot! But when we jumped into Salesforce, the amount of organizational structure that comes with good programming helped make things happen. It was a huge change for us. We haven’t looked back since.

Ben: Wow! Tell me about the initial implementation and what you learned during that process? You mentioned earlier that it’s not good to be stuck with a partner forever.

Jason: Yeah! You are right. When working with good partners, enablement is key. It’s not that we do not want to continue working with implementation managers and help them. But we want to use money efficiently and get the most results for your buck.

If your firm can handle the day-to-day and little things, we can take the budget for managed services and make real improvements to systems that give forward momentum.

When we started out, I knew nothing about Salesforce. I was learning because I knew I would be the in-house guy dealing with Salesforce in the long term. I also knew the owners would not pay a managed partner for years.

So, I had my work cut out for me. I did have a consultant who did a very good job enabling and teaching me about:

• Flows
• Object Relationships
• The way that the system goes together

This experience started me on a Trailhead journey. I reached the point where the firm implemented Salesforce in the Social Security department and a portion of the Bankruptcy department. From there, we added another six and a half law types. I implemented those myself based on what I learned in that initial process.

Unfortunately, not many partners specialized in law firms have implemented systems. When you come to the table as a law firm, you know nothing about Salesforce. So, there are a lot of things that got built that we thought we needed but were not necessary. This is something we are hoping to do better.

Being a part of a law firm that has been through this journey of implementing solutions for ourselves and other law firms. We would now like to bring some of that expertise to the implementation partner space.

Ben: That’s really cool! I want to hear more about that at some point during this discussion.

You started with Salesforce 5 years ago. At this point, you are the CRM owner in the organization. Who else is on your team?

Jason: I have an account manager. I worked with her since the beginning at Hoglund & Mrozik. She is great at working with clients. We have an answering service where she has done a lot of:

• Project Managing
• Project Planning
• Communication

I do a lot of the technical work, but I also have a junior administrator on my team.

We also have a couple of partners, depending on how much work arrives. They help with the extra hours needed to get bigger projects done quicker with the guidance of legal expertise.

Ben: You mentioned that when you first rolled out Salesforce, it was for Social Security, one part of the law firm. Is that correct?

Jason: That’s correct!

Ben: Tell me about the first use case. What was going on, and what were you doing? Obviously, you don’t have to give away the secrets of the law firm 😄

Jason: No problem. One of the biggest advantages Salesforce brought to me was our updated sales process.

From the marketing intake, we could ask all the questions to see if clients were eligible for social security.

For the sales department, we could:

• Follow up on the retainer
• Get clients signed up
• Onboard them
• Receive initial payments

Automating this process with Sales Engagement, Cadences, and Omnichannel has been powerful.

Analytics has also been huge. Some of these tools that most mid-size law firms still use for personal injury, for example, don’t have reporting systems. What they do have is the capability to export a spreadsheet of data. If you are good at pivot tables and lookups, you can make something of it slowly. So, we were initially paying people to do that and spent hours putting reports together.

Good lawyers make data-driven decisions, and they base that on having an accurate reporting system. Where I find a lot of them struggle is focusing on how data is prepared and their process of getting data.

That seems to be a hurdle for a lot of law firms. However, Salesforce helped to put sides one and two together to get a full view of how well a business is doing.

Ben: Interesting! When you started out, how many users did you have in Salesforce?

Jason: We were pretty close to where we are now. We started with 90 users, and we are now at 115. We have gone up a little bit. But, you know, there was a huge labor reduction based on what we did in Salesforce.

Even things you wouldn’t think would be a big deal, like list views. We now we use list views to automate a lot of follow-ups. It helped to speed people up and make them efficient.

So, we needed less labor in the same positions. We could also do more for our employees that were excelling.

Ben: Wow, this is a great story, and I love speaking with law firms. There is a lot of space for innovation within the legal field. Even now, a very large percentage of lawyers do business the old-fashioned way.

When you mention data-driven decisions and when I think of some lawyers who are still on paper-based processes, it’s hard to imagine them making a data decision from that position.

Moving into something like Salesforce or any system that can crunch numbers and give you a 360 view of data adds a lot of value to a law firm.

So, what early wins did you notice from moving through different parts of the business?

Jason: It’s important to understand when we talk about the systems now, 5 years in. We do things like:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Predictive Models
• Follow Up on Case Files
• Identify the best employees to work on cases

We have been able to increase those rates. The mistake other people make when moving into Salesforce is that they see all these exciting things they can do. They want to do it all, and they want to do it all at once. This is not the best route to go.

The best route is to start small, like following up on retainer rates jumping up by 10% or getting rid of spreadsheets and turning them into dashboards or reports. You do these small things to get those first wins.

When you start to see momentum, you can add a second layer of:

• Sales Engagement
• Additional Data Analytics
• Extra Artificial Intelligence
• Mapping

It’s really important to go through the phases and not swallow Salesforce at once. Otherwise, it’s going to get overwhelming and you are going to get lost.

Ben: Do you want to tell us about any mistakes you have made?

Jason: Absolutely haha! There were a lot of them.

With cases and tasks, we were into the first year of using Salesforce before we understood the correct use of when to use a case versus when to use a task. It was just the way that we had set Salesforce up.

The biggest and hardest things to do when getting Salesforce going are pushing adaptation, following up on ensuring data is coming into the platform the way you think it is, and keeping everybody on board.

There are a lot of times when you don’t hear anything, so you assume things are good. The messages are not relayed, so people are building workarounds when they need them. That is the hardest part, figuring out where to use the following things to keep data solid:

• Validation Rules
• Frame Flows
• Automation

Ben: When I use Salesforce for cases or tasks, everything is a matter of implementation. With Titan, our platform is modeled on Salesforce’s abilities. There’s a lot of different ways to achieve things. Just because they all work doesn’t mean all of them are right or the best way for the user.

So, the user story is always important!

Jason: Yeah, it all looks cool, and Salesforce is, but you have to learn to walk before you can run.

I want to give you a better idea of my earlier mistake. I had to think about it for a second. In the first six months at Hoglund & Mrozik, I had to remove all the duplicate contacts and accounts. I merged a bunch of contacts who were different people together, and we had to manually go through 3,000 contacts because I didn’t have a backup.

I had to look through the change history and recreate them. It sucked, but we got through it, and we learned.

Ben: I am sure someone is listening to this and thinks that 3,000 merged contacts are nothing. Oh, man! But that’s where you learn. Luckily, I hope you were up and running, and people were already seeing some value.

Jason: Yeah, for the most part. We have come a long way with the users. They are more excited as we implement new things. Change is hard when you are used to doing the same job daily.

You can have the best implementation partner in the world, but you have to have somebody in your firm:

• To get people excited
• Show the employees how it benefits them
• Present how it makes their lives easier

If you don’t have that, it gets hard to have a successful project.

Ben: Are you that guy?

Jason: I am that guy!

Ben: Does every Salesforce user know you, and do they come to you for suggestions or improvements?

Jason: I have a junior admin now who fields some of those questions. He will bring it up to me when he needs my help. But for the most part, it has been me. They call or email me directly or contact me via the support ticket system we built within Salesforce for lower-priority items.

Ben: Do you have any stories of users coming to you for Salesforce changes or additions? Did you see any benefit from that?

Jason: Absolutely, all the time. The hard thing is that I don’t come from a legal background. I rely on them every day to show me where the wins and struggles are. I don’t tell them what to do to make their lives easier. They tell me their problems, and I find the solutions to make processes faster, less painful, and more accurate.

One of the big wins for us in the Bankruptcy department and for most law firms across the board is our document collection process. The Bankruptcy department uses this process for financial documents, and we have a document collection portal built with Titan.

This portal allows us to show a related object to the documents we are trying to collect. In the portal, the client can:

• See the content
• See a list of the documents the firm needs
• Check off their documents
• Upload documents

These documents are triggered back to us. It’s a very smooth integration that keeps our process simple. We also use the process in the Social Security department to follow up on medical records.

A lot of these processes that collect documentation can become cumbersome. By using Cadences, Sales Engagement, and the document collection portal, we have streamlined a lot of work for us.

Ben: It’s cool that you mention us. I remember you came to Titan for document generation, which was unrelated to document collection. Document collection is super cumbersome in Salesforce, and general file management is difficult, too.

Managing documents is something that a lot of people don’t know how to do in Salesforce. There is a lot that Titan can do in Salesforce now. We have released many features to manage files in Salesforce, and we can also do different actions with documents within flows. We can:

• Run virus scans
• Version documents
• And more

I must show you this stuff because managing documents is a pain for many people. It’s cool that you were able to figure out that you could also use Titan to upload documents.

Jason: Yup, it was quick. Our solution is a full client portal so clients can:

All of these features are in the portal. I didn’t spend any extra money on it. It was great. We love Salesforce, but if you compare Titan to a product like Experience Cloud, which has huge fees for hosting regularly, it’s great. We absolutely love Titan. The portal integrates well with our system.

Ben: Very Cool! Back to you. When did you decide it was time to get a certification and put more time into becoming a Salesforce professional rather than a CRM owner at the law firm?

Jason: Dreamforce! There was no Dreamforce in my first year, but I wanted to take the admin boot camp in my second year. I wanted to be an admin to be qualified for my job. I wanted to make sure I knew everything I needed to know. I wanted to not make mistakes I didn’t know because I hadn’t bothered learning. So, I took the boot camp and passed the admin test at my first Dreamforce.

Honestly, even at the second and third Dreamforces, I had a couple of account executives approach me to provide consulting for law firms because there were not a lot of partners in the legal space. We discussed this internally and decided that if we want to be partners, we must get more certifications.

So, I got two consulting certifications, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. I skipped over the app Builder and the Advanced Admin, which I will return and fill in. That’s my journey, and I’ll keep going. I expect to be at six certifications by the time I go back to Dreamforce this September.

Ben: I like that. So, you have three more to go?

Jason: Three more to go!

Ben: Are you guys using Marketing Cloud right now?

Jason: I’m learning how to use it. We are using it for Journeys and some basic mail, but I think we can do a lot more with it. I just have to get the knowledge up.

Ben: Very cool. Tell me about that first Dreamforce experience. What was that like?

Jason: Crazy! I have been to conferences for call center week in Las Vegas and different legal conferences, but they are not the same. It’s an event where you learn a lot. Those boot camps are informational, plus the connections you make with Salesforce employees just by walking around are beneficial. The breakout sessions look at different products. Every time I go there, I come back excited about all the new things I need to do in Salesforce that I had never thought about. It helps build for the next few months and provides results. I absolutely recommend it.

Ben: I love that. So, all of a sudden, you’re Director of Operations and a CRM owner, but you are also a high-tech professional. Did you ever think that is where you were going?

Jason: No, no. I saw staying in call centers and management. I always knew I was good at processes. I just didn’t realize that something like this existed. Once I did, it fit like a glove.

Ben: It’s a great story. I want to hear what it means for you to have a consulting firm as part of the law firm.

Jason: We are working on the details. It will partner with the law firm’s partners, whether as a separate business or together. It is something still up in the air. We have to look at its legalities.

That being said, I am excited to help law firms avoid the rough learning experiences I had initially. Many solutions that go across law firms plug into different places, but they are very similar. Law firms run differently from retail or online shopping businesses. There is a lot of task management, and automation is huge.

Ben: Now, you are in a situation where the law firm partners see so much value in Salesforce that they are willing to have a relationship with a consulting partner to empower other law firms.

Jason: Absolutely! It hurts the industry when they are behind and working without data tools. We are competitive and want to change what this looks like in the industry. There is a lot of profitability and business potential. We also advertise for other law firms, so we have helped others make a difference for years and find ways to better their practices. We work in partnership with many of them, so it seems second nature to us.

Ben: It sounds like a more dynamic approach than other law firms have. I appreciate that story. What are you excited about in 2024 for Salesforce?

Jason: We have a law firm that we are working with to build solutions for projects. It’s going to help people who were affected by water contamination. We are talking with other clients about solutions, and I would really like to get the consulting side of things going.

Historically, I have spoken to account managers and executives, who have stated not hearing from law firms. Now, they hear about more law firms that are interested in Salesforce. I want to get in on the ground floor and see what we can do to help these law firms.

Ben: Yeah, that is a really great place to be. Anything else you would like to tell the audience before we wrap up?

Jason: Be sure you are ready for the journey as an implementation partner.

Ben: Jason, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate the relationship and want to see it continue to flourish. Thanks so much for joining. If anyone wants to contact you to discuss Salesforce consulting or anything else, where should they do that?

Jason: My email address is [email protected]. Otherwise, my direct number is 612 270 3257. Of course, you can always contact Ben, who will connect us.

Ben: Thanks so much, Jason! It’s been an absolute pleasure.

*Note: This article is an edited transcript of the interview with Jason Adams.

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