How Helixon Law Firm saved 100s of hours a month and increased client close rates by 30%

The Law Office of Will M. Helixon is a military law firm with 17 lawyers. It defends soldiers and veterans in everything from court-martial trials to disability appeals. The founder, Will Helixon, served 26 years in the U.S. Army, including 16 months in Afghanistan. He has practiced law for 34 years and still tries cases himself.

Will has built over 40 apps on Hercules to automate his firm's work. Thanks to Hercules, Will has increased client close rate by 30%, saved 100s of hours a month, and saved thousands of dollars on other software vendors. Will has never coded before.

Hercules allows me to build apps that replicate what I do. Anyone in my practice can now have my institutional knowledge just by using the app I build.

Improving close rates by 30% by automating client proposals

Previously, it would take Will about 5 hours to write a full client proposal. Each proposal is 10-20 pages and requires detailed case law, personalized defense strategies, and careful organization. Due to workload, Will could previously only prepare proposals for the top ~50% of potential clients. Proposals often took days to finalize and send and were frequently not as detailed as Will would have liked.

Today, Will has automated his entire client proposal process with an app he built on Hercules. Each proposal is more detailed, more personalized, and delivered to clients faster. He can now send a polished proposal within 40 minutes of the first call. Importantly, he can send a proposal to 100% of potential clients, not just the 50% he thinks may convert. Will estimates that the increase in proposal speed, quality, and quantity has improved his close rate by 30% more clients. Given engagements can be $5,000 to $75,000 each, a 30% higher close rate translates to substantial new revenue.

I'm on a telephone call with a customer, and then 40 minutes later I send them an email with a detailed proposal, and they're like, how the hell did you do that?

Saving 100s of hours a month by automating internal operations

Will's firm charges flat fees. Every extra hour on a case cuts into his margin. A lot of his company's work is slow, manual, and case-specific. Case packets for board meetings can take 6 hours to prepare. Retirement-loss calculations require custom Excel models that can take hours. Even cleaning up weak appellate briefs from junior lawyers can take over 50 hours. Across 17 lawyers, these tedious tasks add up to hundreds of hours of non-revenue generating work a month.

I built an app to automate creating the legal packets we give to military boards. It used to take me 6 hours to make a packet. I can now do it in about 15 minutes.

To solve this, Will has built a suite of over 40 apps to automate all parts of this business. He has apps for preparing case materials, calculating client-specific consequences, analyzing documents, generating board packets, and more. Will now reflexively builds an app for everything: if he believes he will do a task again, he will build an app for it. Work that used to take hours can now be done in minutes by anyone on his team. Every app he builds is an asset he owns, and the time savings compound.

Replacing a $1.5k SaaS vendor

Will has even replaced a $1.5k SaaS vendor with Hercules. His firm previously used Whova, a third-party conference app, for its annual firm conference. The app worked, but it was expensive and inflexible. The base package was ~$1,500 for 20 users.

Will rebuilt the app himself on Hercules. It manages schedules, faculty info, attendee messaging, CLE materials, and event logistics. Rebuilding it on Hercules was over 10x cheaper. It also allowed him to fully customize the app to his and his firm's needs. He can update the app at any time, support more users for free, and even reuse the same app next year. Replacing the vendor with Hercules saved him thousands.

Why would I pay $1,500 when I could just build it on Hercules?

Why Hercules

Hercules allows Will to turn his domain knowledge into working software in minutes. Will has never coded before. Across all the different platforms he tried, Will found Hercules to be the simplest to use, fastest to launch, and easiest to share with his team. Will also appreciates Hercules' immense focus on security. A confidentiality breach could cost him his legal license. He trusts Hercules to build secure, compliant, reliable, and scalable apps that he can use internally and with his clients.

Hercules lets me turn my ideas into apps without developers. My first app was a parole and good-time credit calculator. I was amazed. I immediately thought: what else can I build?

What's next

Will is planning to continue to use Hercules to increase his revenue and save time. In the immediate term, he's planning to use Hercules to optimize his company's website with SEO content. He plans to offer educational content and even build interactive client-facing tools like an ROI calculator to help someone decide whether they need a civilian lawyer. Will also believes Hercules has created so much value for his firm that he's even planning to license his apps to other law firms as a new revenue stream. As Will puts it: "I'm not seeking much with Hercules, just world domination."