 really excited to be here to just talk about project planning and getting your project off to a good start. So much of the work that we do really is about that pre-planning before we actually work the project. So we have speakers here today from Maryland Legal Aid who are gonna talk about their process of the rolling out of project. And we're gonna start off first with some key principles. So welcome everyone and thank you for coming. So just some reminders. Remember please meet yourself during the presentation because we are recording. So for you to type your questions in the chat box and we're gonna work, we are going to answer questions at the end. Oh, I muted. Can you hear me? We can hear you now. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. So just a few reminders and we appreciate you. So what we're gonna cover today is we're gonna just start talking about, okay, what is a project? Think of the overview of the project life cycle, project planning here from Maryland Legal Aid about their experience and have time for a question and answer. Now we really wanted to start really from the basics, honestly, because we wanna try to create within our community just a basic understanding of what are projects? What is project management? And how do we have successful projects? So a project, we're getting many of these principles from the Project Management Institute and you can find a lot of great resources online, but projects are a temporary effort. Remember, think about time limited to create value through a unique product, service or results. Now, all projects have a beginning and an end, right? They have a team, they have a budget, they have a schedule, they are unique, they're different from normal operations, although you can create projects around specific aspects of your operations within your organization. And projects conclude once the goal is achieved. And what is project management? Project management is these specific knowledge, skills or tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people. Project management can be done in a variety of ways. When we talk about tools, project management can be done with a pencil and paper. Project management can be done with a whiteboard. Project management can get done with a lot of different ways with different types of their tools, their software, their resources. We don't want you to feel limited in your ability as organizations and legal aid providers to deliver quality project management because you don't have specific software. So why is this important for us? Because we want to try to keep projects and deliver them with the expected outcomes on time and within budget. And we have limited budgets, so we have to be able to use that money that we receive to have the most impact. We also know that you all are working very hard to achieve for our communities and these projects are helping to benefit our communities. So what is project manager? A project manager is a person who you're intentionally or by circumstances asked to ensure that a project team meets its goal. It's like an owner. They're managing how you're gonna use the different tools, different techniques and their approaches and the needs of the project. Now, you don't need an official project manager, right? It's okay, but there are specific skills that are needed to engage in this work. And so those transferable skills are planning and organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, controlling costs. I know that many of you on this call have those skills, right? And so we're just gonna use those skills in the furtherance of achieving our project goals. So what's the project lifecycle? I worked on this with the group that I work with where we're trying to think about, what's the project lifecycle? And we realized they were broken down to multiple steps. So we wanted just to think of a project as sort of it has a life. It could be a circular, it could be linear, but let's think about it in that way. So we're initiating the project. Prior to initiation of the project, what you may do is research and you're gonna learn more about Maryland legal aids experience and the research that they did to start to determine that they were going to engage in that project. So in the initiate the project phase, you're defining the goals, right? It's definition. That's the process that you're going through right there. What are the resources that are needed? You're thinking about risks. You think about who are the people who should be involved in this project? Then you're making a plan, right? You're gonna make the plans that you can achieve the goals and that plan can be broken down into tasks, deliverables, but you really gotta think about there's work before you do the work of the project before you work the project, right? I hope that you noticed that on here we have four different parts phases and executing on the tasks which is like working the project is only one part, right? So we execute in complete tasks. We monitor progress, try to keep our team motivated, remove any obstacles that hinder progress. We also think about like what are some times within that period when we wanna get buy-in from the stakeholders who may be part of the project or who may be beneficiaries of the project goal and then closing the project out. This is a really important phase and many people don't sort of put it into their plans and part of this is we're evaluating how the project went, you're getting feedback, you're getting, you're learning lessons. Like what lessons did we learn from this project? Within our organization, we call this our post-mortem. We're gonna close the project and we're gonna try to figure out what should be learned from what we were trying to achieve. Project planning. Now, why do you do it? Like big picture and you're gonna hear the why. You're gonna hear the why from Marilyn Legalade which is gonna be really exciting. And then the what? What are the deliverables? What are the expenses? We're thinking about what's the scope of the project? Because we wanna make sure we try to stay within scope and try not to be aware of scope. We wanna think about cost because we wanna make sure that we try to stay within budget. This is really important for us, right? As we're thinking about how we're going to report to our funders, how we're going to report to our key stakeholders and when there is a start date there is an end date. Sometimes we go over our end date but we have to plan for that. We have to think about that, right? Because if we go beyond that end date we're still exerting resources and those resources could be people's time. It could be a lot of different things. So we do have to be very cognizant of that timeframe. And who does the work and also who benefits from the work? Who are the key stakeholders that need to be part of this process? And how are we gonna do it? Like what processes are we gonna use? Are we gonna use for instance if we might create a product plan in Excel we may want to map out the project in that way. We may wanna use a software like, I don't know, Asana. We may wanna use different ways that we can communicate and we can stay on task and ensure that we are delivering on what we were trying to achieve. So let's hear from Marilyn Legal Aid because they're gonna give us the real life example of how they did this. All right, good afternoon everybody. My name is Chi-Gi Okia Kamibo. I am a Deputy Chief Counsel at Marilyn Legal Aid and I oversee the legal work in half of our offices statewide. And joining me today is Natalie Coley Lawrence. Natalie is the Chief Attorney for what started out as our Baltimore City Intake Services Unit and has morphed into the centralized intake unit for the statewide operations. So you'll hear from both of us throughout this presentation. Okay, so as we kind of embarked on this idea of centralized intake and really going forward with it, I realized, and we realized we really need to know why are we doing this? We need to know what is our vision? And so that was really our step one. What is the vision, the why of the project? Why is it necessary? What's the history? What's the history of intake services trying to do a centralized intake system? What is the history of the desire for it and the need for it? What is the need in general? Why and how will the project help and who should be involved with the project? You really wanna answer those vision questions because that helps you formulate your processes and identifying the goal, your players, all of that comes into play when you're talking about the why and the vision. Next slide. The clear vision is important. You need to identify resources. You really need to get buy-in. So what we were thinking of undertaking would be a big, big change for legal aid and how Maryland legal aid has done intake in the past. And buy-in is super important when you're proposing change. We wanted to, the vision, clear vision is important for meeting the goals of the project and for overall success of the project. Okay, so our why kind of started from the reports from the PQV that LSE did in 2014. And in 2020 or 21, when I was reviewing the PQV, it kind of was a little shocking to read that they thought our intake was disjointed and confusing. So as a proud Maryland legal aider, I was adamant that we were not disjointed. So we set out to kind of see if they were right. So we have 12 offices across the state and each office conducted their own telephone intake. However, the client's experience was different depending on the office you called. It appeared that in the past, legal aid had discussed a centralized intake. Many years before I joined legal aid and it was just discussions and never really materialized. However, it also seemed to us that centralized intake was a best practice for legal aid programs across the country and it was recommended. So what we did was we created a survey that we sent out to all of our offices and asked them to explain how intake happens. So we have a few examples of what was reported in different offices. So this is the first example. And so the client calls, they get some basic information, they send an email to a bunch of people with that information and then the client is put on the list and then they're called back to get more information. And then we have to check the conflicts and discuss with attorneys in the office. If it's something we don't do, then we call them back and give them a referral and then later paralegal completes the intake. R-H-O-S-L-C. And then an email is sent to the intake team and at some point that week, the cases are assigned and if there's a determination that we couldn't take the case, then the case is rejected. So as you can see, it's pretty drawn out. And one of the issues is calling people back often has challenges because they might not answer or they might be busy or they're in the store. So that was one of the offices. Next slide, please. So the next office that support staff collects the general information and then emails it to a paralegal. They contact the clients and complete that intake process. And then the person is assigned to an attorney. The attorney then calls, gets more information and then it sends to the supervising attorney who finally assigns that case to someone else. Again, it's a long process before the clients gets a resolution as to whether we're actually gonna represent them. And as many of you know, many of our clients do not call with months or weeks to spare. So sometimes their cases are coming up in the next week or two. Next slide, please. So after getting that initial survey, we put together a team. So the team was myself, three chief attorneys and a member of our IT unit. We scheduled regular planning sessions usually early in the morning. So everybody was bright and ready to work. And we had frequent check-ins amongst us to kind of make sure everybody's doing what they were supposed to do before the next meeting came along. Next slide, please. Okay, so once we kind of did that initial looking at our system and we built the team, we moved into step two, which was really developing our plan. So vital for developing the plan was to get data. We needed to see how many calls the various offices, various 12 offices throughout the state received on average. Now Baltimore City, which is our biggest office, we already had a phone system in place so we could get actual numbers from those. The other offices had their own system. So we surveyed them for, I'm sorry, that's okay. For plan development, you know, you also wanna look at samples and other models. You wanna consult with maybe other programs or consult in general to see what is out there, what's been done. We needed to think about IT and logistical necessities and all throughout this process, staff feedback is important. So what we did, we considered the LSC recommendations, we gathered current data, we surveyed the offices, we looked at other programs. That was all what Chi Chi Okie did sort of in the background. The rest of us were kind of thinking through the process. As part of that, getting data, we tried to figure out exactly how many calls we received throughout our offices. So the Baltimore City units was kind of the outlier. They got 1400 calls a month. However, what we found is some of our offices didn't really track the number of incoming calls and the phone system wasn't capable of documenting that number of calls because every call came through a central office number and then they had options of maybe press six for intake. Most people didn't really press six, they might just press zero to speak to someone and then did the intake. So a lot of the numbers were estimates from the offices. So very few. I think the Baltimore City, Prince George's County with a two that were able to give us a little more solid data on the volume of calls. But on average, it looked like we were getting about 3,600 incoming intakes a month. So our guiding principles came from the LSE's characteristics of a telephone intake advice and referral system. So we hoped to kind of meet all these guidelines that LSE set out. One of the things we identified was the, a lot of our offices, when you call, the phone tree was a little too complicated. So they tried to be granular. If you call in for divorce or custody, press this domestic, but it was very kind of, by the time you got to what you wanted to select, you might have forgotten what you were calling about. So our goals were really to make sure that we aligned ourselves with these characteristics that LSE set out. So we came up with an idea or a plan of what we wanted it to look like. So we were gonna get a 800 number and we tried to find one that had a catchy name when you put it that way. And then we wanted to have a two-step process. So when someone called, the first person they spoke to would be a paralegal who will screen them for case type, conflicts, financial eligibility. And if they're eligible for our services, they will complete the intake there and then. And then we'll transfer them to an attorney queue and they get to speak to an attorney during that first call. So the attorney will get more information on the legal aspects, provide brief advice if that's what it calls for, or also recommend them for full representation. So after speaking to the person, if they think they need extended representation, then they will tell them that they're gonna refer their case to one of the offices for representation. And then the chief attorney or supervising attorney of centralized intake reviews all the intakes at the end of the day that's been referred for extended representation just to make sure we're actually sending the rights types of cases to the offices. And then it's transferred via a legal server which is a case management system to that office for representation. And what we found is most, I'll say about 95 or more percent of the cases we sent to the offices are actually accepted for representation because we've vetted them properly and they're ready for someone to just take it and run with it. So like I mentioned, our goals, we wanted to align with LSC. So we wanted to create an easier way to navigate the phone system. In our, while we were drawing it out, we went from about 15 or 16 options to three is what we have now. So it's, if you're a senior because we have a specific grant and we wanna kind of have someone that deals with the seniors, if you're a senior, you press one. If you're calling about a family law matter, two, any other legal matters, three. And it's kind of streamlined and you're still getting the same attorneys. It's just more of a statistical thing to track those particular callers. We also wanted to improve language access. In the past, if you called and you selected Spanish, you were sent to a voicemail and you leave a message. And then when the Spanish paralegal comes in or is available, then they'll call you back. That has its problems. So now we've integrated the use of language line. So if you call, no matter what language you speak, we can dial in language line and assist you in that call. We also wanted to have some uniformity of call scripts so that if you call with a divorce case and get paralegal A, they're gonna ask you the same questions that paralegal B is gonna ask you. And that also helps with when the attorneys are reviewing the case, they already have some basic information that they can just dig right in and give you the advice. And when we send it off to the offices for representation, they already have some basic information that they need. So we really didn't want to reinvent the wheel because we have a bunch of other things that we were doing. So we spoke to other programs across the country that had centralized intake. We got their manuals and procedures and their processes. And we used that to kind of figure out what would work for us the way we wanted to do it. So we used those manuals and processes that we found from other organizations to create a system that we felt would best suit what our needs were. We also asked our chief attorneys of our other offices to kind of give us inputs on what it is they think would be best based on what we've explained that we want to do. Most of them were positive, obviously not everybody likes change. So there was some hesitancy as to is this really gonna work? We've seen other places try it and they didn't work. And I think one of the biggest pushbacks was are you taking away our independence to make your decision as to whether we're gonna take a case in that office? And the answer is no, that's not what we're doing. We're gonna send you the case and ultimately it's your decision whether you have the capacity to take it. Next slide please. So, and then we moved to the IT. There's a ton of contact center software out there. There's the traditional services that still exists for call centers. And we wanted to figure out the best one for us. So prior to joining Maryland Legal Aid, I was the managing director of Maryland Legal Aid subsidiary that runs the court self-help centers. And part of that was a call center. They used Amazon Connect and Dexter. And since we're already familiar with the products, we went with it. It's easy to, so you could get someone off the street and I think in an hour or two, you can get them up and running on using Amazon Connect and Dexter. It runs in a browser, so you can walk from anywhere, you're not tied to the office. And in this day and age, I think it was very useful to us. And it's also cost effective compared to other providers we looked at, the monthly costs were reasonable for us. Okay, so once we did all that, you know, did our research, got our data, looked at other office plans, worked on the manual, looked at other manuals, got our IT together. It really was time to kind of implement the project. So you kind of review the product, get it ready to finalize, get staff trained, get them on board and continued feedback because that buy-in is very important for any kind of success. So what we did was I was really in charge of drafting the manuals. So it was very useful to have those manuals from the other programs to see what really looked like it would work for us, kind of weed out what wouldn't work for how we do things in our program and integrate it to sort of work alongside our bigger policy and procedures manual for Maryland Legal Aid. So I went through and developed a manual so that we had a really good outline of the procedures for intake services. In the manual, there's the hours, there is procedures for walk-in intake, what offices are supposed to do when they do have a walk-in intake client, how the call flow should go, what the paralegals responsibility is with the call, how it should be entered into legal server, how it's then transferred to the staff attorney that's going to provide the brief advice, how that brief advice is done, how the case is then marked in legal server as to whether it is something to be closed on advice or whether it's something that the staff attorney wanted to have reviewed for possible further representation. Also in the manual, we put resource and referral information for case types that we don't handle at Maryland Legal Aid. So it's all in one spot. We put in our scripts. So all those questions are in one spot. We put in how cases and to whom they go when they are to be transferred to the other offices. So really just thinking through the entire day in the life of handling centralized intake and documenting that so that we had a really good structure to answer questions and to present. So we planned after the manual was done and we got the IT all squared away. We've planned it and held a two day training for all staff. So the first day was substantive on that manual and policy and procedure. And the second day was hands on with the contact center. It was very successful. People I think left there with a little bit more security in what is expected of them with this new intake procedure. We are having it in Maryland Legal Aid. And because we have many counties and we really needed to ramp up staffing, we decided to do a soft launch. Our original plan was to try to as part of doing our research was to really try to use staff that we already had at Maryland Legal Aid. And they may be in different parts of the state but because it's a cloud based phone system they could log in from their own offices and do intakes. So we tried to identify where the intake paralegals were and in what office we did the majority of their work was intake as opposed to any kind of case handling paralegal. So we did get a few staff that way. So they were part of our original staffing for telephone intake. And we used also the Baltimore City paralegals when they weren't doing walk in intake. So we started with a soft launch. We decided to include five people. Baltimore City was the biggest. And we decided, okay, let's go with these and let's see how it goes. So we rolled everything out and had a start date and did it. And I think one of the good things about jumping in at the start date is we were all expecting the calls to be slow on the first day, but it wasn't. So everybody had to pitch in. I had never done telephone intake before that day and I had to figure it out on the fly. I had to do full intakes and it was helpful because then you could see how it worked, but it was useful. I think kind of our final thoughts is the day you launch is just the beginning. We've had to tweak the process. The chief attorneys of the counties that we started the soft launch gave us feedback as to what worked for them, what they were looking for. And we were open to receiving that feedback and making changes if there were some things that we could change. We kind of opened it up and said, whatever you think will make this work best, we're willing to work with you to get there. We weren't, we were flexible, but we weren't willing to kind of give up. So if your suggestion was it's not working, we should go back to what we had. That wasn't something we were gonna be flexible on, but everything else we were willing to work with people to make it work. Like we've mentioned, change is hard, but continuing to kind of reach out to the affected offices, the staff, the chief attorneys and to kind of get them to contribute to the program, I think helps with buying because now they feel a little more invested in making it work. And so far the counties that we've switched, the chief attorneys have reported that it's helped their processes a lot more. They have more time to do extended representation cases and not just the brief advice. And they've kind of freed up their paralegals to do more substantive casework instead of just doing the intakes, naturally. Yes, and then the other thing with that, change is hard and fostering buy-in are, we decided to use the Baltimore city staff attorneys because they already were providing that same day brief advice, but our system before was allowed for specializing. So we had attorneys that only answered senior calls, for example, and some attorneys only answered family law. With this part of the change with centralized intake is we wanted to make our attorneys be able to cross-advise, to become more generalists. And that was a little bit nerve wracking for the staff attorneys. So we had to along with building the actual centralized intake system, really finding a way to build in this sort of cross-training and ability for people to be able to reach out. So we use Microsoft Teams for that. We have a couple of chat groups. We have a chat group for the paralegals, a chat group for the entire group, and a chat group for the staff attorneys. We have three supervisors to monitor all the chats. And we allow people to really feel comfortable asking any question. And it's been really great, actually, because the attorneys have been jumping in and cross-training each other. And we work well with the chief attorneys and other offices. They are there to answer questions. So it's been really good. So sometimes you kind of just have to power through the skepticism, as long as you feel confident that, number one, you kind of really thought it through, what is our process gonna be? And number two, that's where the flexibility comes in. If your process is maybe not the best that you're willing to say, okay, how can we improve it? We're still gonna do it. But how can we improve it? And how can we help you feel comfortable? So I've done that with the chief attorneys and other offices as well. I let them know you can run reports. We're not hiding anything. So you can run reports on what we close on advice. And if that's actually a case type that you wanted to represent in or you have any feedback, please provide me feedback. And it's been really a collaborative effort, kind of started out with the small group, planning everything, but we've tried to make the rest of it collaborative so that everybody feels that they're part of the system, not that the system is put upon them. I think that really is a good way to go into any project you do is that buy-in. Thank you so much. We're gonna open it up for questions. I do have one question about the timeline. Can you just walk me through the timeline like from the research to now, when did you start this process? Just so people have an idea of for planning purposes. So the process we started, I believe the first quarter of 21 and the soft launch was in August. So we've had a few months now and actually we expanded to three or four more counties on the 1st of February. So our goal is to hopefully by the end of the year have all the counties in centralized intake, but it all depends on staffing. And staffing has been a challenge during the pandemic. So our goal is to expand the paralegals to at least 20 and about 12 staff attorneys. So as soon as we get a little more on the paralegal side since they handle the first wave of callers that we have more counties. We're opening up to questions. You can put your questions in the chat. You can raise your hand. Now I will have more questions as I'm very interested. Oh wow, we're kind of waiting for our audience to warm up to our speakers. I was just wondering if either of you could talk a little bit about in the planning stages like the documentation throughout the project? Like did you decide how you would be documenting your decisions throughout the project? And you talked about the manual, that documentation. Can you just talk a little bit more about how you documented your project? We didn't really have a formal system of documenting like the ad hoc committee that we had we met. We did have some deliverables that we produced and we just saved those on our OneDrive. But we just worked. We sent out surveys. We kind of collected that information and put it together in a shared drive so that we could all access it and then discuss it at the next meeting. But most of it was debated amongst ourselves as to what we felt was the best way forward. It looks like we do have a hand raised. So feel free to unmute yourself to ask your question or you can type in the chat and one of us will read it for you, whichever you feel most comfortable. Thanks. Hi everyone. My name is Carlia and I wanted, I would like some more information about the buy-in because I know that in projects that can be one of the crucial things that helps a project to succeed. And you were talking about the buy-in from the chief attorneys. And I was wondering how you kind of got them on board. And then my second question would be, how are you planning on monitoring the project progress? Okay. Thanks for that. So for the chief attorneys, I think the way we got buy-in was after we did the survey, we kind of laid it out for them. This is what we have. And when people see it we produce the survey results, we collated it like I showed you the examples. So when we actually showed people what they did and what we wanted to do, a lot of people kind of said, oh, that's going to be better. Doesn't some offices it took up to two weeks for someone to receive a determination as to whether we're going to represent them. And while that's how they worked in their offices, they never really laid out that process in writing and see how it worked from the client's perspective. So when we showed them what that information was, people were a little more willing to listen to see if we could make it better. And then keeping them updated on what we were doing and planning. And also I think part of it is a number of the three members of the committee were chief attorneys. So they were also able to talk to their colleagues outside of the formal meetings we had with the chiefs. So they were able to sell it without I guess me as the deputy chief counsel. It wasn't like their superior was telling them but it was someone that they worked with more closely was saying, this is going to be great. This is what we're planning. And we also invited all the chiefs to the training. So they were able to play with the software themselves and see how it worked. They were able to listen to the training that the staff attorneys and paralegals got. So they had a lot of more confidence that we were gonna do good work. So I think that helped. And I don't know if many of you are kind of familiar with Maryland, but it has very rural areas. It has very urban areas. So there's different cultures and we're trying to bring all that together. So some of the chiefs were worried that we might lose that cultural touch in let's say Western Maryland and the mountains and people were used, they knew who they were calling. So when they called the legal office in Western Maryland they knew who works there. So they were worried about losing that personal touch. And those were things that we kind of explained that if there were any particular characteristics of their areas that they wanted us to be aware of, we were happy to kind of train the staff on things to look out and also willing to kind of adjust on the fly if there was something particular going on in their part of the state that they wanted us to be aware of. We were open to working with them on that. So I think that's from my perspective on the buy-in. Naturally, I don't know if you have any additional thoughts on that. No, just to sort of expand on that. Recognizing that change is hard. I think that we worked a little bit harder for that buy-in. I think that it's important to be able to, and I think we did a good job of that, but when we were ready to launch we actually had a solid plan and a solid project to present. So unlike in the past, when there were attempts to kind of centralize things within the state of Maryland among various programs and also within Maryland legal aid it was always just sort of hard to visualize never something concrete. So we made sure that we had a very concrete, well-thought-out project to present. And I think that helped with the buy-in. It was like, okay, they really thought that through. And just a lot of open communication I'm always available. As part of that, I've created a county chart. We don't want things to be as they were before where they were so different among the different offices. We do want some uniformity so offices don't have that option to make everything completely how they had it before. But if there was something special that they had or a special client to look out for whatever I created a chart where I could put that in and then give that to all of staff so they could see right away, oh, this person calls Allegheny County all the time. Here's a little hint about them. And not to overdo it. I don't wanna have 17 different things on charts along with the manual and make it very complicated for staff, but I'm at least letting the offices know we get it and we want to accommodate that in something tangible that I can show them, look, we've made the chart so everybody's got this chart. So I got part of the question of monitoring. Amazon Connect has a lot of data so we can keep track of the number of calls, how many calls have been abandoned, staffing levels. So we are able to, we can look at the data and decide, for example, when we expanded to the few counties that we did in February, we were able to look at that data and see that we could absorb this more number of calls from where we are now. So we naturally reports on her data monthly so we can keep track of what we're doing if we have areas of improvements and then we go from there. Can I ask, do you do any surveying of the callers post call? Right now, we does. That's something we plan on starting soon because the software has the capability of doing the surveys, but as a whole, Merrily League hasn't generally done surveys but we're working on starting those soon. So from the chat, someone is asking what plans, what platform are people using? So if you all would like to share if you guys use the specific platform to track the entirety of the project or if you have any insight on that. We did not. We didn't use any of the project management. We used a lot of Excel to kind of track what we're doing to calendar events and deadlines, but we didn't have a particular project management program that we used. That's not a problem. Like Keske was talking about in that intro, you can do project management and project planning in so many ways. I think it depends on who's leading the project, the personalities and the people involved. There are a lot of tools that are very helpful out there. For me personally, I like old school. I make a folder and there's spreadsheets and documents and calendaring and that works just as great as long as you're attentive and you keep updating those documents. But there is some great suggestions in the chat so make sure you check those out. I would think those things kind of depend on the project that you're undertaking as well. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the longer the project, the more important those tools are because there's a potential for people that are involved and no longer be at the organization for the project to shift a little bit when you have a project that's spending years, sometimes things shift. So I definitely agree with you Natalie that it just depends on the magnitude of the project. Does anyone else have any questions or any... We have a really nice comment. I really appreciate your implementation of the actual project and your process through engagement of your staff. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was a really great project. I love how I'm just research-based. It just seems like I'm really impressed by that one. When you talked to us about that earlier. Yeah, absolutely. Can we revisit that a little bit and talk more about your initial research? Because I think that sometimes we get so excited about the possibility of a new endeavor that we kind of just are so ready to dive in that we kind of rush that research component. So if we could just revisit that a little bit and just talk about what did that look for you? I know you said you talked to some other league leads. Maybe you could give us some insight on how those conversations went. Like what were you looking to gather during that process? Well, I think one thing I found was all the programs we spoke to were very willing and happy to talk to us about what they do. And I don't think we're looking for anything particular. We just said talk to us about your program. How do you do what you do? What works for you? What would you change? So we just listened and took notes on what they do and then kind of discussed it within a group and said, well, we like this part of what they do. We don't think this will work so well for us. And the things we liked, we kind of made a note of and we kept talking to people. So in the end, what we came up with was kind of a mix of all the different programs we spoke to, so to create what worked for us. And I think with the research, we did a lot of research because we knew we were gonna have a million questions thrown at us when we introduced this project to our teams. So we wanted to be able to answer pretty much any question and optimism that we might face. So we wanted to have, well, this is how we're gonna do this. It's a little different from what we do now, but it really isn't. We're just doing it in a more streamlined way or this is what we're trying to achieve. So we wanted to get all that information and educate ourselves before we went out and try to convince other people to buy into the project. I think the research as well is good for your own buy-in, right? You come up with this idea of a project like, great, we wanna do centralized intake. Does it even make sense? How many calls do we get? How much staff are we gonna need? Is this even a possibility? So once you start researching and actually looking at numbers, you start in your own mind realizing, well, this could work and this does make sense and we can maybe handle it or we need more staff. So I think the research is just, it's good all the way around so that you are coming up with a project that makes sense and that will work, but also that you feel you can manage and handle because you have the data there to show you that, yes, this is doable. And if your data shows, no, it's not doable then that's valuable as well. Then you shift gears and think of maybe another processor, another procedure that will work. And we found there's some programs out there that you could put in your expected number of calls in a day and it gives you an idea of what your staffing should look like. Obviously as legal aid programs, we have restrictions on how much money we have. So we kind of aim to reach the optimal staffing level but we also understand that there will be some wait time. Figure out what might be acceptable is also a very tricky thing. So we keep an eye on how long the people wait before they hang up. You get some people that are a little itchy that will hang up within a minute, but the average is normally six to 10 minutes before they give up. So we try to tailor the number of staff we have towards that. We're sharing that and circling back on that with us. I think that's really helpful to think about the research component and making sure we give that enough time and attention. Kiskan, do you have anything for our speakers? I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here and for walking us through this. This is exactly how we want it to go for this year, right? We really want to think about sort of grounding ourselves in the why and thinking why are we doing this first? Having that research, that background information and really like engaging with our different stakeholders. So I'm really excited to have this opportunity to hear from you about your experience. So thank you. Thank you for having us. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.