How Law Firms Can Get the Most Out of Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell: Leverage an Overseas VA Strategy
Oct 10, 2024
As a law firm owner, are you constantly drowning in paperwork, losing valuable time to tasks that don’t grow your practice? In his bestselling book Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell lays out a powerful blueprint for how entrepreneurs—yes, that includes you, attorneys—can reclaim their time by hiring strategically. One of the most impactful ways to do this is by leveraging an overseas virtual assistant (VA) for administrative tasks.
Here’s how you can apply the key principles from Martell’s book to your law firm by building a smart admin VA hiring strategy:
1. The Buyback Principle: Hire to Buy Back Your Time
Martell's core idea is that you shouldn’t hire just to grow your business—you should hire to buy back your time. For law firm owners, this means outsourcing tasks that drain your energy or aren’t directly related to your expertise, like practicing law, and focusing on high-value work that drives client success.
Why an overseas VA?
Admin VAs can handle tasks like document management, scheduling, invoicing, and more for a fraction of the cost of hiring locally. This allows you to "buy back" time without breaking the bank. Overseas VAs, especially those who charge under $10/hour, offer a cost-effective solution for administrative tasks.
And for the record, here’s what Dan says in his book about assistants:
If you don’t have an assistant, and your body tenses up when I mention hiring one, I get it. My coaching clients bring up nearly every imaginable excuse the moment I suggest hiring an assistant.
- I don’t have enough for them to do.
- I can’t afford an administrative assistant.
- Why don’t I just do the work myself?
- I want total control over my business.
- I don’t have a system for them to follow.
- I worry other people may think I’m lazy.
- I don’t feel like I’m busy enough to deserve one.
- How could a trust a stranger to manage my personal inbox?
- I’m nervous about having an assistant in my personal affairs.
- It will take more work (and more time) to teach someone how to help me.
I’ve heard ’em all. Here’s the truth: if you want to see your business explode, if want to truly apply the Buyback Principle, hiring an assistant is non-negotiable. It’s the first hire every entrepreneur should make. Every hour you spend on admin tasks […] is an hour robbed of your business, family, and dream life.”
2. DRIP Matrix: Delegate, Replace, Invest, and Produce for Maximum Efficiency
Law firm owners often face an overwhelming number of tasks that can lead to burnout. Dan Martell’s DRIP Matrix offers a framework to categorize your daily responsibilities, helping you decide what to delegate, replace, invest in, or focus on producing. Here's how law firms can apply the DRIP Matrix to reclaim their time:
Delegate (Bottom Left)
The first quadrant is about delegating tasks that don’t excite you and don’t directly make you money. These are the low-skill, repetitive tasks that drain your energy, like scheduling, invoicing, and managing emails. This is where an overseas admin VA comes in. A VA can take over these tedious tasks, freeing you to focus on high-value work while reducing your burnout.
Replace (Top Left)
The "Replace" quadrant contains tasks that generate income but don't necessarily energize you. These could be tasks like billing or document preparation. While important, they can often be outsourced or handed over to a trusted team member or VA. By replacing yourself in these tasks, you free up time to focus on more exciting, higher-value activities.
Invest (Bottom Right)
In the "Invest" quadrant, you’ll find activities that light you up personally but may not make you money immediately. This might include personal development, networking, or hobbies that rejuvenate your energy. Delegating tasks from the "Delegate" and "Replace" quadrants gives you more time to invest in yourself, which in turn benefits your law firm in the long run.
Produce (Top Right)
The "Produce" quadrant is where you want to spend the bulk of your time. These tasks not only generate revenue but also energize you. For a law firm owner, this could include high-level strategic work, important client consultations, courtroom appearances, or maybe certain marketing aspects of the firm. These are the activities that move your business forward while also fueling your passion for the work. By focusing on the "Produce" quadrant, you create a positive feedback loop: the more you engage in these high-value tasks, the more money and energy you generate, allowing your firm to grow sustainably.
3. 80% Done by Someone Else is 100% Awesome
This principle is gold for law firm owners. You don’t need to micromanage every task—done is better than perfect. In fact, aiming for perfection often leads to wasted time and bottlenecks, slowing down both your work and your firm’s growth. Dan Martell’s 80% rule encourages you to let go of the need to oversee every detail. An admin VA can handle 80% of a task, and in most cases, that 80% is more than enough to keep things running smoothly.
By delegating, you’re freeing up your time for more important matters. That extra 20% of the task, which you might feel only you can handle perfectly, often doesn’t even make a significant difference in the overall outcome. Instead of getting bogged down with small details, you can allow your VA to handle the majority of the work, knowing that any minor imperfections won’t impact the success of the task.
How it works in practice:
Imagine you have a VA managing your inbox or calendar. They may not respond to emails with your exact wording, or they might not organize your calendar in the precise way you would—but that’s okay. The key benefit is the time saved. By offloading these repetitive, time-consuming tasks, you could save several hours each day. That’s time you can redirect toward higher-value work, such as preparing cases, meeting with clients, or developing strategies that help grow your firm.
For example, if your VA is handling your calendar, they can set appointments, block off time for deep work, and send reminders without you needing to oversee every action. Even if they miss one small detail or schedule something slightly differently than you would, the overall impact is minimal compared to the time you’ve saved.
The 80% rule also applies to more complex tasks like drafting routine legal documents or managing client communications. Once trained, your VA can draft 80% of a letter or document, leaving only the most critical parts for you to review and finalize. You don’t need to handle every aspect of every task to maintain high standards of quality. By trusting your VA with the bulk of the work, you free up mental bandwidth and can focus on areas where your expertise truly makes a difference.
Ultimately, this mindset shift allows you to let go of the need for perfection, empowering your VA to take ownership of their role while you focus on the bigger picture.
4. Calculate Your Buyback Rate: Free Up Time for High-Value Work
One of the most practical concepts from Buy Back Your Time is the “Buyback Rate.” This concept helps entrepreneurs avoid hitting the “pain line,” the point where work-life balance falls apart. For law firm owners, this rate gives you a clear benchmark to determine when and how to delegate tasks, allowing you to grow your business without sacrificing your personal life.
How to Calculate Your Buyback Rate
Dan Martell explains that calculating your buyback rate starts with understanding your hourly revenue value. Here’s how you can do it:
-
Determine your annual income.
For example, let’s say you take home $250,000 per year. (Note: this isn't about your annual law firm revenue — it's what you pay yourself annually from the business.) -
Calculate your work hours.
Estimate the number of hours you work in a year. Let’s assume you work 2,000 hours annually (about 40 hours a week). -
Find your hourly rate.
Divide your annual income by your annual work hours. In this case, $250,000 ÷ 2,000 = $125 per hour. -
Divide by four.
To get your buyback rate, divide your hourly rate by four. For this example: $125 ÷ 4 = $31.25 per hour.
This $31.25 represents the threshold at which it makes financial sense to delegate tasks. If you can hire someone—like an overseas admin VA—at a rate lower than $31.25 per hour, you should delegate those tasks. And here’s where hiring overseas VAs becomes a no-brainer strategy. At under $10 per hour, overseas VAs typically fall well below your buyback rate. This means you can confidently offload administrative tasks like managing your inbox, scheduling, and billing, while focusing on the high-value activities that bring energy and money into your law firm.
By following this process, you ensure that you’re focusing your time on high-value activities (like client meetings and case strategy) and delegating lower-value tasks to a VA who costs far less than your buyback rate.
5. The Replacement Ladder: Start with Admin Tasks and Climb to Freedom
In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell introduces the Replacement Ladder, a tool designed to help entrepreneurs avoid getting stuck doing tasks that hold back their growth. The ladder illustrates how you can delegate responsibilities, starting with the most time-consuming, low-value tasks, and gradually moving toward delegating higher-level functions that free up your time and energy for strategic leadership.
How the Replacement Ladder Works
The Replacement Ladder is divided into six rungs, each representing different areas of your business you can delegate. The goal is to move up the ladder, starting with delegating basic administrative tasks and eventually delegating more critical business functions.
-
Admin (Bottom rung)
Feeling: Stuck
Ownership: Inbox & Calendar
Start by delegating administrative tasks such as email management, scheduling, and document handling. These tasks are easy to offload to a VA, particularly an overseas one, which makes this the perfect first step. -
Delivery
Feeling: Stalled
Ownership: Onboarding & Support
As you climb the ladder, the next step is to delegate tasks related to client onboarding and general support. This ensures that while your clients are well taken care of, you can focus on growing your practice. -
Marketing
Feeling: Friction
Ownership: Campaigns & Traffic
When you feel the friction of managing your marketing efforts—whether it’s social media posts or email campaigns—it’s time to delegate those responsibilities. Handing this off to a marketing VA or team can free you up to focus on high-value activities that bring in new clients. -
Sales
Feeling: Freedom
Ownership: Calls & Follow-up
As you climb higher on the ladder, delegating sales follow-up and client calls will free up even more of your time. This is where you start experiencing real freedom to focus on higher-level tasks, such as case strategy or client consultations. -
Leadership
Feeling: Flow
Ownership: Strategy & Outcomes
At the top of the Replacement Ladder, you are fully in your leadership zone, focusing on big-picture strategy and driving the outcomes that matter most for your law firm. By this point, you’ve delegated everything below, and you’re in a position of flow, making decisions that guide the firm’s direction.
Why Start with Admin?
Martell emphasizes that hiring an assistant is non-negotiable. The first hire you make should always be an admin assistant to handle your inbox, calendar, and other repetitive tasks. Once you’ve successfully delegated these low-level activities, you can move up the ladder, delegating more complex tasks until you’re free to focus on the leadership and strategy that drive your firm’s success.
6. Hiring an Assistant is Non-Negotiable
As you can see, one of Martell’s strongest points in Buy Back Your Time is that hiring an assistant is non-negotiable. Your first hire should always be someone to help with admin work—whether it's managing your inbox, scheduling, or handling repetitive tasks. Without this critical hire, you’ll constantly find yourself overwhelmed, losing billable hours to non-revenue-generating activities.
And here’s where the no-brainer option comes in: hiring an overseas VA for less than $10 an hour. If hiring an assistant is essential to your success, then finding a cost-effective solution is key. Overseas VAs allow you to quickly and affordably make this critical hire without stretching your budget. You get all the benefits of freeing up your time at a fraction of the cost of hiring locally, making this the smartest and most cost-effective way to buy back your time and focus on what truly matters—growing your law firm.
7. The Free Yourself Jump Start: Inbox & Calendar Management
Martell emphasizes that one of the quickest ways to reclaim your time and energy is by delegating your inbox and calendar management. These two areas are often the biggest culprits in draining your productivity. Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of allowing their inbox to control their schedule, reacting to every incoming message rather than proactively focusing on high-value tasks. This chaotic approach, as Martell explains, is like leaving the door to your office open for anyone to walk in and disrupt your day.
By hiring an assistant—especially a cost-effective overseas VA—you can implement systems like the Email GPS system. This ensures all emails are routed to a single inbox where your VA can triage, categorize, and respond to messages on your behalf. The result? A clean inbox, fewer distractions, and more time to focus on what truly matters.
The Email GPS system uses simple folders or labels to organize your inbox:
- ! Your Name: For emails only you can handle.
- 1. To Respond: For emails your assistant will manage.
- 2. Review: For emails your assistant needs your input on.
- 3. Responded: For emails your assistant has already replied to.
- 4. Waiting On: For emails requiring action from others.
- 5. Receipts/Financials: For financial or receipt-related emails.
- 6. Newsletters: For content you want to review later.
By using this system, your assistant can ensure that your inbox is no longer a source of stress or distraction. And with a VA managing your calendar, you can set clear guidelines for meeting availability, deep work hours, and personal time—ensuring your schedule aligns with your priorities.
Why an Overseas VA is the Smart Move:
Hiring an overseas VA for less than $10 per hour to manage your inbox and calendar is not just a smart move—it's a no-brainer. This approach allows you to quickly and affordably offload these time-consuming tasks, freeing up your energy for the high-value work that drives revenue. Many entrepreneurs worry that they "can’t afford" an assistant, but with the affordability of an overseas VA, this essential hire becomes accessible to nearly every law firm owner.
As Martell stresses, delegating your inbox and calendar is one of the fastest ways to "buy back" your time and regain control over your day, allowing you to stay focused on growing your business without getting lost in the weeds.
8. The Importance of "Playbooks" (aka SOPs): The Four C’s for Effective Delegation
In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell emphasizes the power of Playbooks—structured guidelines that help you delegate tasks efficiently. A Playbook is his term for a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that ensures consistency, accuracy, and scalability when working with a VA, especially when they are managing critical tasks for your law firm. By creating detailed Playbooks, you eliminate confusion and set your VA up for success.
Martell breaks down Playbook creation into four essential steps, known as the Four C’s:
1. The Camcorder Method – Record Yourself Doing the Task
The first step in creating a Playbook is to use the Camcorder Method, which involves recording yourself performing the task you want to delegate. This helps your VA understand exactly how to perform the task to your standards. You should:
- Film yourself completing the task using a tool like Loom.
- Narrate the process as you go, explaining each step clearly.
- Record the task at least three times to capture different scenarios or variations. This ensures your VA has a comprehensive understanding of how to handle any situation that may arise.
2. The Course – Outline the Steps
Once you’ve recorded the task, the next step is to create The Course, a high-level, bullet-point outline of all the steps involved in the process. This written guide complements the video training and serves as a quick reference for your VA. If you’ve used the Camcorder Method, this step will be straightforward as you’re simply documenting the steps you narrated during the recordings.
3. The Cadence – Set the Frequency
For tasks that are recurring, you’ll need to establish the Cadence—how often the task should be completed. Whether it’s a daily, weekly, or monthly task, make sure to include this information in the Playbook. For example, if your VA is responsible for sending out client reminders or updating billing records, be clear about when and how often these tasks should be done. Setting a regular cadence helps keep your VA on track and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
4. The Checklist – Ensure Consistency
Finally, create a Checklist that includes all the high-level items that need to be completed every time the task is performed. This checklist will help your VA verify that every step is covered and nothing is missed. For example, if the task is managing your inbox, the checklist might include categories like “Respond to urgent emails,” “Archive non-essential messages,” and “Categorize financial communications.” A well-structured checklist guarantees that the task is completed with consistency and accuracy.
Why This Matters When Hiring a VA:
When you hire an overseas VA, having well-documented Playbooks ensures that tasks are performed exactly as you would do them, even if you’re not directly overseeing every step. The Four C’s—Camcorder, Course, Cadence, and Checklist—create a foolproof system that empowers your VA to take on more responsibilities with confidence. By investing time upfront to create Playbooks, you can save countless hours later and scale your law firm more efficiently.
9. The 1:3:1 Rule and the 10-80-10 Rule: Empower Your VA to Solve Problems and Execute Tasks Efficiently
When you delegate tasks to an assistant, particularly an overseas VA, it’s important not only to give them clear instructions but also to empower them to make decisions and solve problems. Two of Dan Martell’s key rules—the 1:3:1 Rule and the 10-80-10 Rule—provide a framework for delegating effectively while still maintaining control over important outcomes.
The 1:3:1 Rule: Encourage Problem-Solving Independence
The 1:3:1 Rule is designed to reduce interruptions and foster independent problem-solving within your team. Instead of coming to you with an open-ended issue, your VA should present a clear and focused problem along with viable solutions. This process not only helps your VA think critically but also reduces the time you spend solving routine problems. Here's how it works:
-
Define the one problem that needs to be solved.
Encourage your VA to be specific and concise in identifying the problem. This helps focus the conversation and keeps you from being bogged down with vague issues. -
Offer three viable solutions to solve the problem.
Rather than expecting you to come up with a solution, your VA should propose three realistic options. This forces them to think creatively and weigh different approaches. -
Make one recommendation from the list of possible solutions.
Finally, the VA should recommend the option they believe is the best. This step ensures they take ownership of the decision, making it easier for you to give quick feedback or approval.
This method not only trains your VA to become a more critical thinker but also saves you time by narrowing the decision-making process.
The 10-80-10 Rule: Delegate the Middle Work
The 10-80-10 Rule is an efficient way to remain involved in key tasks without needing to manage every detail. It works particularly well for larger or more complex projects that require your input but can be delegated in stages. Here’s how it breaks down:
-
You do the first 10% of the work.
At the beginning of a project, you set the direction by outlining goals, expectations, and the high-level strategy. This initial input ensures the project is aligned with your vision. -
Your VA handles the middle 80% of the work.
Once the project is outlined, your VA or team takes charge of executing the bulk of the task. Whether it’s drafting a legal brief, managing client communications, or organizing case files, they do the heavy lifting based on your guidance. -
You come back in for the final 10% to add your finishing touches.
After the bulk of the work is done, you return to review, refine, and finalize. This gives you control over the outcome while freeing you from having to manage every single detail.
By following the 10-80-10 Rule, you ensure the project is completed to your standards without being overwhelmed by the process. This approach is perfect when you want to maintain control over key tasks but don’t need to be involved every step of the way.
Why These Rules Matter
Both the 1:3:1 Rule and the 10-80-10 Rule are invaluable when working with a VA. They empower your assistant to think independently, make decisions, and handle tasks efficiently, while still keeping you involved in the most important parts. By applying these rules, you can focus on strategic leadership while delegating the details, ultimately allowing your law firm to grow and thrive.
Conclusion: Unlock the Full Potential of Your Law Firm with a VA
Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time offers a proven roadmap for reclaiming your time and scaling your law firm. By leveraging an overseas admin VA to handle the repetitive and time-consuming tasks, you’ll be able to focus on what matters most—serving your clients and growing your business.
Ready to Buy Back Your Time? Let Us Help You Find the Perfect VA
If you’re ready to reclaim your time and focus on growing your law firm, it’s time to take the next step. At Skybreaker, we specialize in helping law firm owners like you find the perfect virtual assistant to handle your administrative tasks. With our VA Finder service, we do the hard work for you—matching you with high-quality, reliable VAs, so you can focus on what really matters without the hassle of searching for one yourself.
Don’t waste any more time on tasks that don’t grow your practice. Book a call with our Skybreaker team today, and let us help you find a VA that fits your needs and budget. Start freeing up your time, increasing your productivity, and growing your firm with confidence.
