← Becker Business
Becker Business
Building a Client-First Law Firm with Michael Weis and Michael Burney of Weis & Burney Law Firm 9-15-25
00:23:48
In this episode, Michael Weis and Michael Burney, Partners at Weis & Burney Law Firm, share their journey of founding a boutique corporate and transactional practice. They discuss client service, practical problem-solving,
Loading summary
Transcript22 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business Podcast and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by two brilliant corporate transactional attorneys who founded their own firm a couple of years ago after being in practice for a long time. One disclosure, I've known one of the lawyers for almost 40 years. Brilliant, brilliant lawyer and accountant by background. The other one is his partner and great colleague. We're going to talk today with Michael Weiss and Michael Bernie of the Weiss Bernie Law Firm. Let me ask each of you to take one moment to introduce yourself and then you started your new firm about a couple of years ago. Just to give us a couple moments on what it's like to start a law firm today. I know you were practicing lawyers for a long time, had a great client base. Michael Weiss, why don't you kick off and talk to us. First a quick introduction and then second a little bit about the opportunities and challenges in founding a law practice. And then Michael Burney, I'll ask you the same question.
- [00:59]
B
Thanks Scott, and thanks again for the opportunity to be on your podcast. We really appreciate it and looking forward to it. My name is Michael Weiss, I'm an attorney in the Chicago metro area, an accountant, CPA by trade, went right to law school and have been practicing corporate and transactional law for 37 years now. Our practice is primarily in the corporate M and A governance, commercial real estate, transactional space, representing closely held companies, private equities, investors, financial stakeholders and legal issues of transactions and everything that goes with that. We tend to be generalists and work in many industries, healthcare technology, distribution, logistics, professional services, media and so forth. Our client base is usually has some Chicago area connection. It's how we generally start relationships but follow our clients wherever they may go. Mike and I decided to build a very common sense law firm a couple years ago focused on evolving client needs and client demands and responsiveness. Clients these days expect their lawyers to be really on the spot and in tune with what their needs are and their time demands and being in the service business, we have to be there for them, be knowledgeable, experienced and efficient all at the same time. And we decided to streamline, create a firm streamline to meet those goals and really cut out a lot of the unnecessary things that we have learned over the years that really don't add to the client experience for a law firm. And it's worked out well for us and thankfully the phone keeps ringing.
- [03:24]
A
God bless you and the work that you're doing. It's really remarkable. Michael Bernie, could you take a moment and introduce yourself and talk to us a little bit about. You talk a lot about client service and high client expectations and making sure you're doing great care of clients in a very practical, smart way. Michael, Bernie, can you talk a little bit about your approach and your thinking there and also just introduce yourself?
- [03:47]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, my name is Mike Burney. Yeah, Mike Weiss. And I started Weiss Bernie at the beginning of 2024. We had worked together for a couple years at a previous firm and they were going through some transitions and, and we looked at where we were at and looked at what, what were our needs being served, you know, by, by our affiliation there and what was, what were our clients getting from the affiliation with, you know, a previous firm and what do they get from their other firms? Because we recognize that, you know, we, we don't, we are not the one stop shop for everyone. You know, we, you know, we're, we're not going to be doing somebody's divorce, we're not going to be doing their litigation. We can advise, we have experience in that, but that's not where our skill set lies. And I think that, you know, where, you know. So my background is that I grew up, my father is an attorney. He was a partner at a mid sized firm in Chicago. So I sort of grew up on his knees seeing the stress and the importance of, you know, the primacy of client needs. So that's second nature. But you know, I also, you know, grew up working in the mail room, working as a paralegal, assistant working as a paralegal. You know, just if something needed to be done, it needs to, it doesn't matter who, who you are, the job gets done. There's no, you know, put humble yourself and get the job done. I remember one time at a prior firm where it was 6:30 at night and I was putting some FedExes together and I got chastised by a partner why an attorney shouldn't be putting FedExes together. And it was like it took two minutes. What's the big deal? I should have had a secretary stay late for two hours to put FedExes together. That's crazy. Like I can, I can fold a piece of paper and put it in a little window. I can peel the sticker off. I have those skills.
- [05:44]
A
One of the things that Michael, you mentioned about that is so important because I think clients are so sick of every time they talk to somebody saying I need 13 other people to help on this and I need to talk to my secretary, I need to talk to my assistant. That person versus I'll just get it done. And that same attitude translates into how you provide legal services and talk about that a little bit, because you're very hands on, both you and Michael Weiss with your clients.
- [06:09]
C
Yeah. I mean, certainly this is not. Yeah, we're not rushing headfirst into a burning building. But not everything requires. Stop everything. Let's set up a call two weeks from now. Somebody has a question. Let's address the question. Let's ask the questions. Oh, hey, you've got this issue. Send me the notice so I can take a look at it. Maybe there's something, you know. You know, I love it when a client says, hey, I got this thing, and I don't know what it means. Do you mind taking a look at it and letting me know what you think? It's like, absolutely. Like, that's great. Thanks for, thanks for letting me be a trusted advisor. You know, I, I, you know, thanks to my relationships with other clients, get exposure to, to things that somebody in their own little silo might not have seen. And, and, you know, that's part of the, the client experience that we try to deliver at Weissburne is, is quick and responsive and comprehensive advice that doesn't require calling a papal conclave to decide what the task is going to be. Because at the end of the day, everyone's situation is unique, but it generally fits into some sort of predefined paradigm. So let's figure out what paradigm we're working with and how do we look to that paradigm for guidance for how we move forward. You know, not losing track of the fact of what is the client's ultimate objective Here you got a nasty notice from a, from someone purporting to be a lender. Okay. Is it a valid debt? Let's, let's, let's find out about that. Okay. This is, somebody bought some bad debt, somebody got some incorrect information. Let's make the problem go away. You know, the goal isn't the process. The goal is the goal. And, you know, and I think that's what we try to be. Goal and results drip. Results focused and results oriented.
- [08:00]
A
No, no, I love that. And trying to make the complex simple and take care of things versus trying to draw them out. Michael Weiss, talk a little bit about, I mean, you're one of the most business savvy people I know. Great trusted advisor, great leader. Talk a bit about the importance for your clients of both being a great lawyer, but also being a good, really trusted advisor that they know they could count on and trust to give Them straight shooting advice. Talk about that is an import of building a law practice, building a client.
- [08:31]
B
Base to be a business lawyer these days, and probably in the old days, you know, there's two words to that, the business and lawyer clients. It's in any transaction, in my experience, it's really not about the legalistics. You know, clients expect, you know, they're, they're hiring a law firm, they're going to make the contract, quote, unquote legal. They're going to be protected. You know, the clients will read it. But they're relying on the lawyers, 98% for the legal. You know, they haven't done the research on how this will hold up in court or they're, they're relying on you. What they're really interested in is, is business goals. You know, I want to get this transaction done because I, you know, I want to grow this business. I want, I want to add this revenue and, you know, doing transactions myself and the accountants. And you don't necessarily have to be an accounting major or do deals. You know, you have enough experience at this, you get it that, you know, it's really about the business goals and the clients expect their lawyers to overlap, you know, to be a great lawyer and protect. That's a given. But give me some input on business issues. The clients are saying to you, either expressly or impliedly, like, give me your comments. What do you think here? What do you think? We have this issue. Is this material? You know, is this not material? You become. We become part of the team with the clients, internal folks, you know, controllers, CFOs, operational people, the clients accounting background, everybody becomes a team. And it just, you know, based on the industry and experience with that industry, you know, who's navigated what. Yes, you're our lawyers, but we want, you know, our goals, we've expressed our goals. Help us get there and we want your input. In my experience, and I've worked with a lot of lawyers, either in the same firm and in other firms, the lawyers that don't differentiate themselves and don't become somewhat business advisors, you know, are not as valuable to their clients as those who are. And in a lot of these things, there's no black and white answers, but, you know, be part of the discussion. As a business lawyer, our clients demand and expect that from us. If you just say, well, hey, I'm the lawyer. That's a business issue. I don't want to get involved. Which was sort of the attitude when I first started as a young lawyer, you know, they don't get involved in business issues. I've learned over the years your clients, they want you to get involved in business issues, express your opinion, raise the issues. Because these transactions are financial exercises. They're not really legal. The legal piece is just intangible to and part of the process. But it's, it's all about business. So they expect us to be understand what's going on in the marketplace, read up, understand, you know, some of the accounting, the basic financial statements and so forth and it all aspects during the due diligence process of an M and a deal or governance. The clients want input as to where the the business issues are and they expect all their professionals to sort of overlap and wear different hats. And that's what the value we at Weiss Bernie try to bring and are expected to bring.
- [12:39]
A
And Michael, let me ask you this follow up question. I'll ask Michael Fernie this question as well. It seems like in an AI overloaded world, in an information overloaded world, that gap that you folks fill of being able to be great business lawyers, but also advisors and trusted advisors is the most important role today because there's so much overload and people need to filter through all of it. And if somebody actually talk to them and work with them through solving their problems. Talk about sort of where you see AI versus the role of the business lawyer and the trusted advisor. Take a moment theater and then I want to ask Michael Burney for the same, really the same question.
- [13:23]
B
Scott, I think that's a great, great question and we certainly get asked that question all the time in the last year or two. AI for certain aspects of law I think will be more significant and important than other aspects. And the sort of the day to day backroom work of deposition analysis or deposit or deposition abstract or lease abstract I think that could be. AI can be very helpful and sort of condensing information, written information. The question mark on AI and I am certainly not a a tech genius by any stretch. I question on you know, sort of the human judgment piece where will AI help or not help? And I think we will see. I read studies every once in a while that I think it, you know, a year ago it said 50% of the lawyers will be replaced by AI and I just read something a couple weeks ago, well that's down to maybe 17%. It'll really be interesting but I don't know how you replace the feel, the judgment, the sensing, the mood, the experience. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I really do think AI for sure will be very helpful in the backroom legal tasks of, of condensing documents. But I will say before we turn it over to Mike Burney, that some form of AI has actually been around for a while. You know, lawyers certainly use templates all the time and there are services out there that, that it condense documents. So I think AI has evolved and it's better than ever compared to what used to be AI, but it wasn't really called AI. But I don't believe, and I hope I'm not wrong, or else we're all, you know, we're out of a job. I don't believe it'll replace the judgment and feel of the trusted business advisor.
- [15:45]
A
You know, I think you're, you're right on, Michael. Bernie, can I ask you to add on to that answer about sort of AI technology and the need for what you folks do, which is really practical problem solving and business savvy advice. Talk a little bit about that.
- [15:58]
C
Absolutely, yeah. I, this is, this is a personal dichotomy that I'm still not totally getting my arms around. I have always been like the early adopters. Early adopter, you know, was standing in line for the first iPhone when it came out. You know, was, you know, the, I was 12 years old when we got the Internet in my house for the first time and my mind exploded with all of these new things and just figuring it out, wanting to know how it works. And yet here I am being much more technologically savvy than most and most attorneys and I don't touch AI at all in my practice. And maybe some of that is hesitancy, maybe it's fear that it'll show me that I'm replaceable. Basically some gussied up macros can do what I do. But I think my, my fear is that over reliance on an AI is going to, is going to lead to complacency and a softening of the hard skills that make us truly valuable. You know, I, I'm not. And, and to that, I mean, you know, I, I have clients all the time who will, who will ask me a question and in the question they'll say, hey, I just saw this online and it's a copy and paste from the, the Google AI, you know, auto summary of, of Google's results. And it's information that's like 80% correct, but then there's 20% that just kind of is nonsense or inapplicable. And, and I don't. Maybe we'll get there. Maybe we will. Maybe, you know, you know, what is AGI? What is the, a standard, the, the complete general into artificial general intelligence will get there and it will be able to make judgment calls. You know, putting aside the sort of whole black box issue of, of what are those judgment calls? You know, we can you one look no further than the many permutations of X's grok and the various answers it puts out based on the whims of its controllers for the validity of the information.
- [18:02]
B
But.
- [18:04]
C
I think it's a minefield. I think it can provide good information, but it also offers no in terms of just answering questions, AI doesn't offer any hedges.
- [18:15]
A
And you mentioned before as well, you talk about document production and document negotiation and contracts. At the end of the day you said this brilliantly. In a different discussion we had, it might be 100 different issues, but there's five to seven in most deals that really count, or most documents that really count or whatever that number is. And somebody's got to guide the client through, you know, what's the right outcome for us on these five to seven issues versus the other side. And I don't see AI in a sort of vacuum doing that without great legal talent and really smart, practical lawyers taking care of it. Any thoughts?
- [18:51]
C
There's for sure, yeah. I mean, unless you wanted to create some sort of new GPT chatbot that was, you know, and, and you would train it through your sort of decision making heuristics, you know, you're, you're going to be getting someone else's judgment and you don't know who that person is and you can't probe it and you can't really ask it questions and you can't get to the why behind it all. It'll tell you what and it might be right, but at some point it might not be. And if you don't know why you were sent on the path you were sent on, you're going to have a hard time navigating back to, you know, to bring back a phrase to your true north. Again, what is it that you're trying to accomplish here? And I mean, I think that that's sort of one of the sort of. In these legal transactions there are some things that just necessarily need to be complex. Right. You have some sort of state or federal or local licensure that has processed, that has a process that you have to go through. Okay, fine, you have to do that, you know, but you know, you know, you've got documents that need to be prepared to transfer an asset to, you know, to assign a warranty to disclaim liability, what have you. Sure, I can figure that out. But is it going to be able to really speak to the nuance and is it going to be able to explain to you the implications of these things as it pertains to your particular situation, or is it going to be sort of a, you know, a Magic 8 ball of, of advice here, you know, a fortune cookie of, you know, you're, you should wear red tomorrow night. It will look good on you. You know, I don't know. I don't.
- [20:27]
A
But you really do need someone like Michael Bernie or Michael Weiss to sort of guide you through. Here's what people typically do on this provision, this deal, issue, this, this, that or the other, and then reach agreement with the other side on it too. Because it doesn't seem like you're going to replace WeissBernie and Kirkland with ChatGPT negotiating with each other at some point. You have to work through these things. It's almost going to have to work with the client to explain, here's what this actually means, here's what the impact is and so forth. So you're still going to, I mean, there's going to be a higher and higher premium on that human intervention and that ability to be a business savvy advisor is my sense of it total.
- [21:04]
C
And to dove to spring off from that point, you know, and when. I can always tell when somebody's been trying to, you know, stated a Holiday Inn Express last night and is playing lawyer themselves, courtesy of Chat GPT Law School. And it always takes four times longer to sort of get through, like, what is it trying to do here and how do I fit this back into what, you know, we're not here to reinvent the wheel, right? We're here to, to get the deal done. But it's like, what, why were these decisions made? Why is, how, how are these the, why are these the concerns that you had? Oh, I don't know. Chatbots said I should be worried about it. Okay, well, did you. Are any of these underlying issues at issue? Well, no. And it's like, okay, well, you know that. And it's, it's diplomacy, right? To say, you know, I truly believe that everyone wants to do the best they can, you know, and everyone, you know, I'm not going to know how to run somebody's business better than they run it themselves. I'm not, I'm never sitting from afar. It would take me years of, you know, working in someone's business to understand, you know, it the way that an owner and founder does as well, you know, but by the same token, it's going to take someone who hasn't practiced law, who hasn't gone through dozens upon dozens upon dozens, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of deals of transactions to understand the nuance, the give, the take, you know, and if the goal is to try to sort of develop the theory of mind, the ChatGPT is not going to develop a theory of mind. It's not going to help you negotiate better. It might give you some information, but I think it's just. It's so confident that it lulls people into a false sense of security. And that's, that's my overarching concern.
- [22:50]
A
No, I think, I think that's brilliant. As I see AI generate into so many more things, you see more and more that need for the human connector, the human contact, the human advisory to deal with things. It just, it just, when I look at sort of wealth management people, you know, of all the AI and all the chatgpt and everything you want, but someone's got to actually advise people as to, okay, I've seen this before. Here's what happens when it goes south. And make sure you're in a good spot just in case. And to talk through the behavioral side of things as well, to go with the optimization stuff as well. In any event, Michael Weiss and Michael Burney, congratulations on the founding a couple years ago of Weiss, Bernie, and your success. It's remarkable to watch what you're doing. I am so thankful for you joining today, the Becker Business Podcast and the Beckner Private Equity Podcast. Thank you very, very much for joining us.
- [23:38]
B
Thank you, Scott.
- [23:39]
C
Scott, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate this. Hopefully we can find a time to do this again.
- [23:44]
A
We would love.