B (2:48)

operations, I think, I mean it really depends on the individual because I mean, that's where I mean, we could read a million books on how to run a business.

A (2:58)

There's a lot of them, There's a

B (2:59)

lot of them out there and they're all really saying the same thing with a different edge to it. But the. I think it really depends on the individual because I think there are some that can pull off both. Some that have been doing this long enough that they figured out the sweet spot of I want X number of cases and I'll do the five to 10 big ones that I like. The clients I really want to work with and then I work on the firm the rest of the time. Some people are awful at working on the firm and know it, so then they bring in somebody else. But that's a hard one too because especially if the firm is focused around the founder and that name is around the founder, you're going to go 2, 3, 4 attempts at finding that practice manager. Because the people that you think may be internal first, like, oh, this person's been with me for a while. They're, they get it, they get me. Well, they may suck at managing others, they may be really good at the job they had, but then you promote them up and it doesn't work. And so I think it really is, it really depends. And that's where you have these conversations with people that have read, let's say, let's go with traction, let's go, let's hit shots or something. Drinking game for saying different buzz terms. But if we go traction or eos, people are like, I need an integrator. That's where people default to like, you're not ready for that. Or you like, no, you don't because you don't have your act together. Or you're the, you know, you're really good at this, so don't hand it off. So it really depends on the individual.

A (4:39)

It's interesting what you said about that too because you hear people talk about, they, they'll, they'll just adopt a phrase or some sort of methodology. And I don't think that there's Any perfect book out there. Like, I've always been a fan of scaling up. I mean, I'm. I'm a fan of traction. It's not like I'm against it, but it has forced people to think, oh, I need. I need a visionary and I need an integrator. And I think that's kind of nonsense. I think it works for some. It doesn't work for all. I think that if you want to scale. I think that traction's a really difficult model to scale in because you make it so one or two person focused where you have the visionary, and usually it centers around the visionary, you know, and. And I think people like the phrase visionary.

B (5:26)

You know, it sounds cool.

A (5:27)

Oh, it sounds really cool.

B (5:28)

Integrator sounds lame. And like, you know, like, you do work. Visionary is like you sit around with your pipe and you. Your bourbon, and you're just, you know, listening to music by the fire, thinking of big thoughts that people are going to do for you. Like, it's just.

A (5:43)

Yeah, and I think that there's a. I think there's a real problem with that. And so I actually wanted to get your thoughts on that, whether you were. It sounds like you might be in the similar. Same a thought, but I just didn't know if you had any thoughts on that.

B (5:54)

Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's the case. And I think trying. And I. When I started doing this a long time ago, I tried implementing these different concepts to say, hey, here's some good tools. Let's do this. Traction without, well, I guess, scaling up. Although I like the Vern Gino thing where I saw some blog posts somewhere where Vern's like, listen, Gino was my student and, you know. Yeah, basically, like, this blog post is like, you know, he's. He's kind of a whiny, and I, I wish him the best, and he's done great things, but still, like, I'm. I got this a little bit better.

A (6:32)

Well, it is interesting you say that before you finish your thought is that there are some overlap. Definitely some overlap. But it's the. The basic principles actually are quite a bit different. Like, if you. If you actually were to read scaling up and study it versus traction, it is. They're. They're. They are. There are some definitely radical terms for sure.

B (6:52)

And I first looked at scaling up after traction, and actually you were talking about scaling up, and I saw, you know, I was like, oh, I'm gonna go take a look at that. And now, quite frankly, now, like, you don't need those books. What you need to do is go to Claude or ChatGPT and say, hey, here's my issue. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish and which is, you know, people that work with firms like me like that. I love that now when I get to have those conversations and say, here's the things I've been working through. Because now it helps you focus in on really what matters, because you can say, look, I want to run my firm like Vern would with scaling up. Here's what I've got. Tell me everything I need to do. And so anyway, the fitting people into the model, I, as I was talking about earlier, coming back to that, I tried it for a while, but then it just. Most people that are looking for that help either are going to hire true consultants that do just those models. And I looked at that once because I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll just do this. And then I think it's like a franchise for EOS and 100% it is. And I talked to somebody on it. It was, it was kind of. It was a very short call. She's like, all right. I'm like, well, do I have to just do this? And she's like, yeah, you only do Eos. It's exclusive, and if you do anything else, we'll pull your franchise. I'm like, ooh, okay, this is not a good fit.

A (8:15)

Well, okay, so this is a really good point too. Like so. And I think that part of the reason why law firm owners are drawn to Eos is because it is like you have this one or two people that it centers around, and so they're kind of drawn. Oh, I want to be the person. But think about this. Okay. If you look at scaling up, if we just compare this to this is. This is a. I think this is a great topic for this conversation because EOS is. Is that more. You got center based sort of leadership.

B (8:41)

Right.

A (8:41)

When it comes. And I us, you have leadership teams and all kind of stuff, but it really does center around one or two people. That's not how scaling up is built. Scaling up is more like you're building a company.

B (8:50)

Right, Right.

A (8:51)

And what's interesting to me is that you have people pushing EOs, but it's also franchise based where you have these individual people that you have to rely on. Like the. They're the ones that. I can't remember what they call them. Traction coaches. I can't remember what they call them. But. But I think there's another term for it.

B (9:08)

Yeah. There's a. Implementers, implementers. Because I still get their emails like, join this call. Like, I just remember this lady that I talked to. I, I feel like I offended her when I was like, well I'm not gonna do that. And she's like, you're an idiot.

A (9:20)

Well, okay, so think about this. Like, so you were, you were dependent on an implementer. But if you look at, go outside the legal space, go outside of really like go look at the big, biggest companies. Are they dependent on a third party to help them run their business? Sure, they might hire consultants every once in a while for one offs. But you're not completely dependent on an implementer, correct? Not at all.

B (9:42)

Right. You're hiring internally. That's at some point. Because it doesn't make sense.

A (9:46)

So how. As if you are a, you're a law. Law firm advisor, I guess. Is that how you. I think that's what your LinkedIn profile says. As law firm advisor.

B (9:54)

I don't even, I haven't looked at LinkedIn in a while, which is a. Somebody told me the other day, they're like, your picture is so old. I guess I gotta go look it. So it may say that.

A (10:04)

Oh, it does. And that's. I noticed we were actually not connected on LinkedIn, which I thought was hilarious. Oh really? Yeah. We've known each other for years. Right.

B (10:11)

Probably because I don't use it, but that's.

A (10:12)

I'm the same way. If I want, if I want to be abused by a bunch of spam messages, I'll go on LinkedIn.

B (10:18)

Right, exactly.

A (10:19)

That's what I'll do.

B (10:19)

So many questions.

A (10:21)

How do you, how do you avoid that stigma as a, as someone that advises law firms, whenever you have things like that out there that may be like, well, I don't want to have to freaking pay you like non stop to help me with my firm.

B (10:33)

Well, that goes to kind of how our models evolved. Like I like, yes, advisor is fine. Like, you know, ChatGPT is an advisor now or Claude or pick your favorite version of it. I mean, one of the things that I've enjoyed about our model is that it's evolved a lot over time. I mean, when Billy and I started at modern law practice, probably eight years ago or so, there was the consulting component and then we had this outsourced intake.

A (11:03)

Yeah.

B (11:04)

Because at that time there wasn't a lot of attention being paid outside the plaintiff's world to intake. Family law firms are starting to think, okay, we got to start getting our head around the sales process and we don't have people. So we started this, you know, outsource model to be able to come in and do your intake, give you system on it. And you know, it evolved to we were getting a lot of feedback from our consulting clients saying like look, we like Clio, let's say, but we hate these five things about it. Can you help us build something? And so we started building a platform called law firm O.S. which you know, ended up being full on operating system for law firms, case management, leads the leadership team, KPI tracking help desk, like hr, all the things and it we, it was a quasi SaaS model where it was very customized for the firm and but it allowed to fill in gaps where let's say you did use Clio but you wanted all these other things and that's a hard model and a fun model to do. But then as you know, quite frank like AI as it's been developing out, it's like there's, you know, it's not, it wasn't right. And so Clio this fall when they came out with all their stuff and their new like CLIO work and everything, I told our clients like look, I think you should go over there. Like yeah, do it, go. We're going to migrate you over there and we'll work together in our own way. But I building software in that fashion doesn't make sense know if you're not a full on software company. So we are. We've been kind of hovering between consulting and this tech model and what we've moved to now and goes to it actually ties in nicely to the traction piece is managed services like MSOs that you see in the medical space where you get, you know, some doctors that get together and saying like look, we want to start a practice but we don't know shit about how to run the business. And they hire a third party company that comes in and does everything for them, provides the tech, whatever, you know, the humans and everything. So we, for example last fall, I guess we did it October 1st, I was approached by a lawyer that said, hey, I'm bored with what I want I'm doing and I want to swing big. And so we built a model. We combined eight of the leading family formation firms, adoption firms from around the country into one firm and launched that and run the operations. We'll spin it off internally as it makes sense and. But we built the model, run the show operationally right now. I mean this week we're going live with an MSO and a new law firm model for where the MSO is running marketing intake and operations for a network of firms mostly focused on plaintiffs employment, PI and some more complex business litigation. So we're still building the software. So we have an AI first operating system, but it's. It's our version of it. Not like what does a firm want? It's here's how we're going to do this. Here's how agents fit into it. Here's how the latest version of something goes. And so we're not building it to sell the software. We're building it to run these operations, which is kind of fun. That is very different. And so I've taken out. Yeah, we're advising. I don't give a shit about traction or scaling up or any of these things. Now, from the standpoint of advising law firms, because if you're there, that's not a fit for us. We're going for working with firms that are like big swing firms.

A (15:02)

Yeah.

B (15:03)

Another firm came to us in. When was it? Last summer, Family law firm. And said, look, we're doing great, but I've got, you know, 10 years left and I want a better exit. And I love this AI stuff. I don't know what to do with it. 10x my firm for an exit or set me up to sell. Said I was like, well, great timing. Because here's what. Because our MSO model has outside investment tied to it. So funding leads and funding marketing efforts, funding operations so that we can help those firms scale quicker with our team and our technology. And so we're with this guy now. We're rebuilding his entire infrastructure that had existed pretty much the Same for about 25 years. Amicus is in the conversation.

A (15:54)

You're kidding me.

B (15:55)

We're ditching amicus in this in favor of an agentic model. This guy is great. And so. And we'll run the show with his team. He's got an established team. And we'll operate alongside and help scale the firm that way. So that's a different way of. So law firm advisors. A little bit. You know, too too vague from that.

A (16:18)

Way too vague.

B (16:18)

I mean.

A (16:19)

Yeah, you were way more integrated. I don't know. I don't know about integrated. You were way more customizable for. You customize things more for the firm itself. It seems that. Which is, I think, is incredible. Although you have your unique. The. The. What the MSO does is very unique in the end that it is very specific. And that's great. I wonder why. Why aren't MSOs more common in the legal space?

B (16:42)

I think they're they're coming quick one probably the ownership issues are like law firm owners, you know, since we have that situation where outside funding is still looked as know outside of here. I mean we're in Arizona here you can have with ABS's we've got non lawyer ownership. Although those are now coming under fire.

A (17:04)

Which is crazy how like you start to see people, their companies leave the, the ABS model, right?

B (17:09)

Well, yeah, because you can also in Arizona, you know, the Supreme Court got rid of fee sharing and so you can, it's now anybody can share a fee without the, the regular parameters that we've seen. You know. So a family law firm can you know, get a case from random person and say hey thanks a lot, I'm going to give you X number of dollars for your referral.

A (17:36)

You're kidding me.

B (17:37)

Yeah, they just erased the rule and it was about four years ago. 20, 21.

A (17:42)

Wow.

B (17:43)

Yeah. So that's so a lot of times when, cause I, I've had people come to me and say hey, I want help with creating an abs. And you really talk to them and it's like, well you don't need an abs, you just need to, you can split fees now. And there's no like it's not even that there was a like some parameters put on it. The rule is gone. And so you know, think about that. So you, you, you deal with this right from the standpoint of referrals for cases. And you know, you have to, you know, depending upon your jurisdiction, make sure are they, is that referring party or are you involved enough? What is it? You know, what is that line as far as involvement to be able to properly share the fee. It doesn't matter. It could be I send you a case and I maybe remember the person's name and you say thanks for the case. You do whatever you want. You can say here's half the fee. Whatever you want to do with it. It's, it's fair game.

A (18:40)

What are your thoughts on that?

B (18:41)

I think it's great. I think it's because it does allow one. I think that the market probably has worked itself out in the way that like people are going to give up a lot of money, you know, and it could be a good marketing tool. So let's say you have, you know, Billy has done this over time and you know, when you have her on where they I think it, I forget the numbers on it but you know, send somebody a check and say thanks for the case. They don't ask for it, they just send it to them, because that's a great marketing tool from the standpoint of, like, you know, let's say you send them a $300 check or a new case. That person's not gonna be like, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm. I can retire now off of this money. It's not that kind of money, but it is. It says to the person, like, oh, well, let me make sure they're top of mind. That's not a bad thing. I barely. I gave. I gave them a phone number and. And I know that they're gonna be taken care of because that firm does a good job. And. And so it's a great marketing tool, I think. And, yeah, I can't imagine firms, you know, overcorrecting, giving away too much money. Cause that would be stupid from a.

A (19:52)

Why don't law firms put up billboards and say, send us a case, we'll send you 50 bucks?

B (19:55)

It'd be smart.

A (19:56)

I mean, can you legit do that in Arizona?

B (19:59)

As far as I know.

A (20:00)

That is interesting. If you are an Arizona law firm, I'm very curious to see if that's something that you could do. Because, I mean, why. I mean, why wouldn't you. Well, yeah, why would you not do that then?

B (20:12)

Right? And I. I mean, I don't know. I don't think there's any advertising rules on it, but there's no, like, limitations on the split.

A (20:19)

Now, I have. I will say this. I have my reservations, and I'm trying to figure out if this is my bias because I'm a lawyer or if it's because I. I don't know. I'm sure there's some bias tied in this. I. My reservations about this are that you're not referring them because they're the best lawyer. You're referring to them because you're getting money out of it. And that is my concern. Unless. Unless it was. You paid them a con, like some sort of percentage of it, like on an injury case, like.

B (20:45)

Right.

A (20:46)

You're going to send it to the best lawyer because they're going to get you the best cut.

B (20:49)

Right?

A (20:49)

Now, if you're getting a flat fee, that's different. So that's because that's where my reservations are on it. So, I mean, you're kind of operating in the Wild West. It's kind of interesting.

B (20:58)

It is. It's interesting out here. And the, the challenge where I see it is as I work with firms around the country, you know, I don't. I don't work with a Lot of Arizona firms. Most of my firms are elsewhere. And it's like, you can't do the same things. You know, I would work with a firm and take a percentage of operations, you know, to run their show, but you can't do that anywhere else, like, from the standpoint of any other state at this point.

A (21:24)

So I want to know more about this mso because the. We work with a lot of doctors because of personal injury that are involved in MSOs, which kind of. My understanding what that's MSO. Like, for example, let's say we need an MRI facility. We need an ortho. Like, it's standard. Here's. Here's like the standard case. Right. They usually need, like, chiropractic care or physical therapy. They're gonna need an mri. They're gonna need an ortho. They're gonna need someone for pain management. Right. Those are like the. The typical stuff.

B (21:54)

Yep.

A (21:55)

A lot of times there are these. These MSOs in St. Louis that you just go to them and they'll kind of. They've run all the operations, and then they have these doctors that sometimes are owners of the mso. Part. Part owners, or they're just contracted with them. Right. So you have this. This one little unit, and they kind of run everything. And then the doctor comes in, does the evaluation, does the treatment, and that's all the doctor really does.

B (22:18)

Correct.

A (22:19)

So how does yours work?

B (22:21)

So ours is early, but it's, you know, it does have a lawyerly answer, and it depends. So in some scenarios, it is. We've got everything. We're going to employ the staff and rent it. Employ attorneys and rent it to the law firm.

A (22:40)

Rent it to the law firm.

B (22:41)

Yeah. Like an employment relationship or like you have with staffing companies where you. And I've done this. I've actually done this for a tech company in the past, years ago that did not have a US President's presence. They didn't. Weren't set up in the US Yet. So we. We hired a salesperson for them, employed them, and then they, like, paid us for their time. And so we kind of rented them out to them. And so they did sales for them. Same model where, you know, we can. Because we have the infrastructure from, you know, payroll and, you know, benefits and all the things that maybe the law firm, especially the one that I'm thinking about is new. And so we're keeping. Because we're starting. We're raising it from scratch. Like, literally this morning I was giving feedback on the website for it to go live Today. Wow. And so that law firm is going to be real lean on purpose lawyers website and you know, payment processing, but everything else will be run through the mso. And so we'll, you know, employ the staff, we'll employ the lawyers that are W2 lawyers that. And then the firm will pay, you know, reimburse us for the costs on that. So that's, that's the extreme where the case management software, the operating system that we're, you know, creating as an AI first. Like we're just. Because we can, we're just like, all right, we'll make this agentic. We'll do all the, the fun stuff that's new and meaningful. And so that's on that aspect of it. Other ends of it are you hire us to work with your existing team and our team will compliment and fill in gaps where they are. And we may. You'll have existing technology and we'll integrate in. If you don't want to just kind of wipe everything clean. We'll operate within that system and put our tech on top of it and integrate in which, you know, because part of this is a big interesting experiment because it's new and so I don't want to. And with technology changing so fast with, you know, every week we're seeing like, well, SaaS dead. Well, this one came out with this. Everything is going so crazy. Like I don't want to get locked into a platform. I want to, sure. But I can't because everything's changing so fast. And so the. We are experimenting with these different models because people are coming into us in different places as well.

A (25:24)

Does this work with both litigation and transactional firms? Yes. Is it easier with one over the. Over the other?

B (25:30)

No, they're the same. They're both hard.

A (25:32)

So this is really hard for me to comprehend with that part. Cause I would think that litigation would be much harder because of the I. And maybe I'm completely wrong about this. It seems like you need more people for the litigation type firms, at least with the way we operate. Because I mean you're, you're dealing with, you got the pre lit side which is drastically different from litigation side. And so to me it seems like you would need a lot more people. So it would just be more complicated.

B (25:56)

It can be and I think it, it depends on where the firm's at. So if you there are, you know, the, the firm that I mentioned that, you know, the amicus. 25 years of running off of, you know, an in house server and they've got an established staff. But the way they want to grow, they don't want to hire a bunch of more people. So we'll keep that team in place. It's litigation firm and grow around them and there's buy in from the whole team. They're all interested in it because they know that their roles get to change and evolve. They know that it's helping. The goal is to help with longevity of the firm. And what happens when that founder, that central person, decides to dial back and you know, for let's say 40 years, all the work has come in because of that person's name. They know that the handoff will be better over time. And so there's this exit strategy for the owner, but also longevity for purposes of the team. And they feel better about it cause they're part of it too.

A (27:06)

All right, so you're going in, let's say. I've got so many questions about this because you go in, you're meeting with the law firm owner. Okay. They're the type that's very hesitant to really relinquish any sort of control over certain things. Let's. Let's make it a criminal defense firm because that's usually very heavy on the personality.

B (27:29)

Right.

A (27:30)

So how do you pretend like. Like I'll pretend like I was back in the days when I was doing criminal defense and so ask me the questions. You'd ask the law firm owner to try to assess how you'd best be able to help the.

B (27:43)

Well, the punchline on this is going to be, this is not a good fit for everyone. So what you're talking about there is like, you know, if, you know, if the, the questions go along and you, you realize upfront. I don't bring this up upfront. I just had a conversation with a guy on Friday. I didn't know where, like, it was a. We were connected. Forget how we got connected. But it was a very specific thing. I think it was like intake or something. But the conversation was not about intake ultimately. And, you know, interesting how that happens all the time. And. But at one point, you know, when I realized what he wanted, I brought up the topic and he's like, oh, I just got an offer from private equity last week. I'm going to reject it. Because it's really. He's like, well, maybe I'll reject it. He told me about it and I was like, that's a bad offer. And he's like, that's what my wife said. Like, yeah. So. But we got there and so the, the issue, like with a Criminal defense lawyer, for example, or, you know, somebody with control is, you know, what do they want? If they want, you know, if their goals are, you know, within the next two to three years, I want to hire an associate. I'd like to work a little less. I want to make more money. It's like, well, what kind of money? Well, I could use, you know, I'm pretty happy where I am. Like, you know, another fifty, a hundred thousand a year. Like small swings, which are fine. And that's okay. And that's going to be the vast majority of firms that this topic's not coming up. Like, you know what you should do? You should just ditch everything and turn it, like, it's not even. It's not even a real conversation at that point. And that's not fair to say, like, because they don't want it and that's okay. So just understanding where the firm is going. And if you have somebody that has this, you know, I've tried everything. I've hired 18 different coaches. I have three of them going now. I switch my software every year. I get it. I get the shiny object piece. And part of my world is I've built the ability to analyze shiny object stuff as part of my business model. So I don't hate that. But that doesn't work for everybody. And so if you're doing that, like, you're going to be disappointed because there's no, like, you know, none of this even. What we're talking about is some kind of little, you know, magic wand. There's a lot of work that's going to go into it, and if you've just, you know, screwed around with a whole bunch of different things, it's not going to be a good fit because you got to be serious on it. And you probably aren't making enough money to actually invest in the concept. And that's okay. Not everybody is looking for that. Not everybody is looking for, you know, a scaling up model. They're happy, like, because they get to go home and, you know, at a certain time and they're doing all the work. Maybe they have a paralegal or something. They're satisfied and that's cool. But that's not going to be a good fit for this because it's going to get wild because we're going to change. You have to be ready to kind of not know what's going to happen. You're going to give up that control. You're going to turn things over to others, and that's tough.

A (31:01)

All right. Talking about Wild. Let's get crazy for a second because I want to talk, I want to pivot to AI. I know you mentioned a little bit, but I really want to ramp things up a little bit here. So is it possible, do you think, to run a fully AI law firm right now? Now you've got to have the law firm assume. You've got to have the law firm in most states where you've got a lawyer at the head. Okay. So you need one human. Be the lawyer. Is it possible? And if so, what does it look like?

B (31:33)

The answer is I think yes. And it's so close. Like, what does it look like? I think it is. It looks different almost week to week now.

A (31:44)

It is. That part is really frustrating. But yes, you're right, it's fr.

B (31:48)

Oh, I've. The. As we've kind of talked through this stuff and you know, this probably won't. Should not be a topic of your conversation with Billi, but she gives me so much. She's like, just, you're not gonna solve this. Like, I'm like, I will come up with the right solution. But I finally had to let go and say, okay, look, things are changing so fast. The right model, you know, I need, you know, to think about this from the standpoint of if you're going to set somebody up on it, what's the right platform to be able to be nimble and move around?

A (32:21)

Because, well, what's that platform right now? Right now, as of today? Today?

B (32:25)

Well, I'm like. And I, I went, I. This was a tough one. But I, I'm building on Notion. We're using Notion.

A (32:34)

Really?

B (32:34)

Which sounds left field.

A (32:36)

It sounds.

B (32:36)

But it's.

A (32:37)

Yes, I would not. I did. You would have. If you would have given me 50 guesses, I wouldn't have. Wouldn't put Notion in there.

B (32:42)

Yeah. So, yeah, I've wrestled with this a lot, but their AI approach is that where they've. I don't even use. Like I'm wasting money on ChatGPT now because I don't use it. I mess around with it when I want to compare Claude versus Chat GPT versus Notion, but it's got its own mod and you can pick models within it.

A (33:03)

Yeah. What about Gemini?

B (33:05)

Gemini's in it. Yeah, use. I mean, we use Google Workspace and so the. Yeah, we're building on Notion and they just. I've been using this in beta, but they've got custom agents that they just released generally yesterday that allow you to, you know, manage anything, manage your email, you know, reach out you know, draft marketing content based on a Slack conversation that somebody, you know, hearts with a reaction that will trigger, you know, an agent to go out and do whatever you want on, you know, they've connected it to outside sources. Like we use Stripe. It can go manage Stripe with custom agents now and go out and, you know, you tell it, you know, I need you to create a new customer and send out an invoice. It'll do it.

A (33:53)

Have you, have you played with Clawbot yet?

B (33:55)

I have not. Okay. I did not. Like I've read about it. I, I haven't used it, you know, but it's what. And the re. Part of the reason why I didn't jump into it, one is focused trying to make sure. Because I've been wrestling with this and the reason. Part of the reason I landed on the notion model is it is the same concept minus the local nature of it. They host it and, and so I've been really trying to focus in and as I was. Because we're building these concepts with these firms and you can't just bounce around all the time. You need to have an. So what I did was I looked at all the major players to say, okay, here's the landscape. Which platform has the AI theory, the AI execution model that fits with what we're doing?

A (34:53)

Sure.

B (34:53)

And that's where it was like we've used airtable forever as a backend.

A (34:57)

People love airtable, it's great.

B (34:59)

And they're a big player. And part of the reason you gotta also gotta choose somebody with like a lot of funding too, because like, I love the startup world, but at the same time, you know, everybody's becoming irrelevant real quick and if you don't have a track record, then, you know, we're just, you know, screwing ourselves over by adopting some tech on that.

A (35:18)

And I'm going to ask you about legal tech in a little bit because I'm very curious about what your thoughts are and what's going to happen with legal tech because there's so much money flooding into it. But I want to ask you about Nadan. Have you played around with Nadan at all?

B (35:30)

We use it a bit. We primarily use. Our main tool on that front is make or things like Pipe Dream or Whale Sync that have kind of broader syncing as opposed to just kind of narrow tools we use on like a couple projects that are like real specific. We've used it.

A (35:50)

Yeah. Because that's where we've. We've leaned into N8N although what's got me really interested In Gemini and Google is the ability to use gems and all that.

B (36:01)

Right.

A (36:01)

Which, but like you were the, what you were talking about with everything's changing and you want to have something that's a dependable platform. I feel like we're so early in this and I, people probably think, oh, we were, we are three years into this whole four years because it was 2022 and it all just kind of changed. We are still at the f. Like just at the very, very beginning. We're at the finish line or the starting, starting line of this and, but like building a sustainable platform. I feel like you all, like, you didn't, you didn't mention Claude in any of your stuff. I think part of that is they don't have like this, this universe of things.

B (36:37)

Right. So the part of the reason why I landed where I have is. And I've had this conversation with Claude like because I, I've. My chat history is probably like real stupid on this topic because it's like, I know I talked to you about this a month ago. I would like to revisit it and you know, and I. Therapist. Right. I know, like I had this conversation with Claude last week to say, you know, because it gives its recommendations and I use different platforms for their recommendations because you know, Airtable's AI was like, yeah, you should definitely use Airtable. Obviously. Cool, thanks. Thanks. Airtable, that's. They released a super agents platform that's superagents.com or something that Deep research produces these really cool presentations and documents on the. Whatever topic you want.

A (37:29)

Sure.

B (37:29)

So I was asking it, what platform should we use in the MSO concept? And, and yeah, of course it was like, you should definitely lead with airtable. I'm like, cool. You know airtable.

A (37:39)

Does it know you worked with Airtable?

B (37:41)

It does. And I give it like here's the list of things I've used. Here's what I like about them. I don't like about them. Here's what I think is missing. Here's what I want, you know, to have had. So I, I do that. I do the same analysis with all of them and just give them kind of this information. But I, I did try to create a model under with Claude with its skills and everything. And it's like, no, I'm not. That's enough. Don't do this. You gotta. Because it doesn't have a database behind it.

A (38:07)

Right.

B (38:07)

And now we can make much more simple databases. We don't have to be so complex with formulas and different things because of AI. But you still need the database behind it and to store, you know, your matters in some fashion or you know, tracking leads. It doesn't have to be as complex like we, we've been wrestling with one of our firms, you know, wants some very specific sales data and figuring out the right, like the data behind it is, is there's years and years of it. We manipulated it so it matches because of all the different platforms. But mixing it together from a traditional database perspective is messy and it breaks all the time. And it was last week I was like, well, why don't we just use AI for it? Take the messy database. Like you've got four different solutions. We, you know, the overlay of AI AI on it allows us to get to the same end result. It will probably, you know, the interesting part about it is there's a, there's going to be a cost factor to it totally because Minimal. It's minimal and you know, notion with its release of custom agents yesterday, they, it's been in beta. I've been using it since they first caught wind of like got access to it and May 4, they're like, you have to pay with credits. Well, no shit, at some point you have to pay for this. Right. People are losing their minds. Like, that's not fair. What, like why, why can't you just charge me a little bit more a month? Like, no, this stuff costs money.

A (39:39)

This is, and this goes back to the whole Google problem that they created in the early 2000s. They made it free and they went to this advertising model and everyone got spoiled on it. And then they expect everything to be free. But it's got to be paid for

B (39:51)

in Subway, you got to. And if you do it well, you know, I was doing that when I just saw the pricing for the first time yesterday. Like you're, you're, you're. And as I've talked with my firms on this, like we're not, we're, we're, you know, using tech. But really what we're building is workers.

A (40:08)

Sure.

B (40:08)

And you know, which is a hard thing to get your head around.

A (40:11)

Really hard for people to get their head around.

B (40:13)

Like, you know, we're going to build you hundreds of workers that are doing these things. And the, and as I was doing the, like the, the analysis on like the cost piece of. May be. We may pay thousands of dollars a month in agent credits, but that's okay because of the workers we're getting out of it. You know, because you're also not hiring these people to do these tasks. So I Think it's. It ultimately ends up being cheaper, but it's hard for people to get their head around the idea of hiring tech to do work. This is different.

A (40:52)

All right, so you mentioned data and AI and all that. Are there any tools that you recommend when it comes to analyzing data?

B (40:59)

Oh, good question. So that's, that's a broad one. I. It depends on where it's stored because data could be, let's say a spreadsheet, Right. Okay, well, in that scenario, so let's say it's a Google sheet. Gemini is good.

A (41:14)

Sure.

B (41:14)

Using, you know, any of the LLMs, whether it's Claude or ChatGPT, I think any of those right now are good. And most platforms have something built into it where if you do have a database where, let's say, you know, airtable, it has its ability to analyze it. There notion is not known for the database component. It's kind of viewed as a, you know, a place to put your notes and, you know, a fun little creative place. But it has a strong database background to it and can look at different sources. One of the reasons I landed on it, and this is not a notion pitch or anything, but with its AI, it will look at OneDrive, Google Drive, your email, your calendar, all the things that are out there. And when I have conversations with it and I'm kind of working on ideas, it will tell me, well, you had this conversation In Slack in 2024, it will cite to it and it will remember these things and it goes out and just finds this information and so it can analyze. So when you're talking about analyzing data, there's the structured data, that's your spreadsheet type stuff. And then there's the other stuff out there that's all related to it. It's all about context at this point, which is real fascinating. So dropping a spreadsheet into Claude is, you know, a great way to get started. Or dropping multiple spreadsheets in the cloud and say, hey, how do I reconcile these three things and how do they fit together and now create a new spreadsheet that does X, Y and Z. Just does it.

A (42:57)

You know, there was a. You told my data the, There was a conversation in circle that, for the association the other day and they were talking about like analyzing evidence and it could be written discovery, whatever, but it was sort of shifted towards, you know, written discovery for PI firms or evidence or for criminal defense firms and being able to analyze video and all that really quickly. So you're not watching eight hours of video. Are there any tools that you've seen. I think trialkit is one. I think they were a sponsor of maxlocan. I don't, I'm pretty sure that they were. They had come out there last year. I know that their, theirs was really, really good. Have you seen any other AIs out there that, that, that are good at analyzing like evidence or, or discovery?

B (43:40)

The, the video part, I don't have a good answer on that. I mean I've dropped a video into the traditional LLMs and it will, I mean they want transcripts to make it a lot easier on it. But as far as evidence is concerned, actually the thing we were working on Kaboisco was disclosures. You know, every state's got their thing. So discovery, you're producing your, you know, pleading to go and your client's giving you a bunch of garbage and uploaded it to the file. You've got that eight page document that is eight pictures. And they. And those are the worst, right?

A (44:21)

Yeah.

B (44:21)

So you've got all this stuff and you've got to, you know, organize it, rename it, base, label it and create the pleading. And there are, you know, startups that have done this. You know, there was Supio, which is mostly on. In the plaintiffs world, did a little bit of family law work for a while and they were working on disclosures and Affirm, we work with, was using that. And it struggled at first because it was early. This was a few years ago too, so it was kind of early and they struggled with getting this stuff together. Sure. We did the same exercise last week with Claude and dropped a folder in and said here's a template for the discovery. Do it. And it. More words but it. Bates labeled it organized, renamed, created. The pleading, you know, was great. And so that it was doing the kind of work of a paralegal. And then you could also ask it about the analysis of what's in there too. I think the analysis part for Documents is becoming real easy. Video I think is harder, but the, the document component to it, it's just becoming. Any of the platforms will do that. You just have to obviously be careful with making sure you're not sharing the information and blah, blah, blah, the right buttons and all the buttons and get over that issue and recognize that. But yeah, it, I think it's becoming real easy on that front where. So in that example, there was a startup that was trying to tackle this problem two or three years ago and it was struggling with it and now you can just be like, hey Claude, like just do this. And it's a lot easier. So I think there. It's just becoming easier and easier to do it.

A (46:00)

All right, so this is going to lead to the legal tech conversation that I wanted to have, because I think that the legal tech companies have a massive problem. They have a really massive problem that for some reason private equity has not figured out, like they're dumping all this money in. But what seems to be the shift is away from these individual softwares. Right. Let's say use Clio or filevine or Practice Panther, you name it.

B (46:29)

Right.

A (46:29)

That's like a small, tiny component now of the. The overall system. Now the system seems to be okay for this thing over here, we're going to use a little bit. Let's see, we'll use N8N. Okay. We'll maybe use some make for over here. So we're kind of stringing things together to solve this overall firm problem. And the practice management softwares are now the smallest component out of all of it. And the things that they have to offer are not what we need. And so I wonder what your thoughts are, because it there and right now I can. I went out and did it. I was just playing around. I went and used Bolt. I took Bolt like probably three or four months ago. I was like, I'm gonna see if I can rebuild. I can build a case management system that I like myself. And I did it. We're not using it. We're using it as a playground.

B (47:18)

Right.

A (47:19)

To. To actually, we'll. We'll build components in it. How do we like this? How do we like. It fits with every. How. How do we like how it fits with other things? And then we'll take that thing and put it into our software.

B (47:28)

Right? Right.

A (47:28)

We built our own. So that's why I think that they've got a massive problem. I. I don't. I don't know what your thoughts are on this.

B (47:34)

I think. Well, I, I don't disagree with you. But it also is, you know, we are in a profession that is not going to ditch things that are comfortable. And it's. I don't think it's reasonable that, you know, that firms are going to start all of a sudden, like, not everybody's going to build their own stuff. I love that you build your own stuff. That's. That's fun and. But it takes a lot of work and not everybody's interested in that. Most people are got into this to practice law, to serve clients and fill in the blank of other industries. Accountants, like doctors, like the MSO model. We're talking about earlier. Yeah, they just want to treat patients they don't want to deal with, like whether their copy or lease needs to be renewed or firing a receptionist. Like that's, they just get in and get out and do, do the work. I think the real issue that we're starting last week or whenever Claude released the legal plugin and I forget was it it's like $200 billion in value of legal tech software immediately after the legal plugin, something like that.

A (48:39)

It's high, huge.

B (48:40)

Who knows what that means? Whatever. The point is though, like whether that's a real number or not, it means, oh, okay, well this, what, how's this going to play out? And the, and then it allows you to start comparing, you know, Clio work to Claude doing the same tool and they're going to do different things. And so you have to, you get into what you're talking about of you have to start figuring out what works best for you in very specific circumstances. And now you're using all this stuff. We're going from this, you know, can you run your operation off of this one thing? Cleo filevine. Because he used to be a filevine user, right? Yeah.

A (49:20)

And I love filevine. I still, I like the people at filevine.

B (49:24)

Yeah, I mean I saw a demo with a firm that was, you know, it's a, they have like a platform that's industry agnostic and they were thinking about filevine and we, I watched a demo, I hadn't seen it in probably about a year and I was like the, the AI stuff they're doing, it fits nicely together. It looks really good. But at the same time, you know, demand letters now or medical. Medical like telling us a person that, you know, you've lived and breathed this. But watching the amount of lawyers that have struggled with demand letters and medical records and how to summarize and finding the right people to be able to do the work and all like even like a couple years ago, like I had firms that, that were like, we can't get our medical records together and we can't find people to do this. Well now it's like it's clicking the button or not even clicking the button. It's just making sure the information is there and it just does it and it writes it and it's not and that those are great looking features in filevine, but anyone can do it without you drop it into your favorite little chat feature and it will get it done. So the interesting part is, and this is why that conversation I had earlier Is like, can I just use you, Claude, to solve all these problems? It's like, no, I'm not there yet. But it will be because you drop one legal plug in and that's what did that disclosure concept that I was talking about. Analyzing the data, doing the paralegal work on things. I think yeah, it's, it will shift and those that are. But everybody's positioned differently. So if you think about Clio, for example, they do payment processing now. Think about the, the. I remember at Clio Con years ago, Jack announced something like billions of dollars of invoices are getting processed through Clio every year. Meaning like clients are paying law firms for billions of dollars.

A (51:20)

Well, they're using Law pay at the time. Right.

B (51:22)

They're probably using Law pay, but now they're using Clio pay. That's, you know, you're going to run out of users for lawyers. Same with, you know, my case has always been this, you know, second class citizen, you know, behind Clio, you know, right or wrong. And you know, with law pay affinity paying them up, you know, now you have payment processing. Sure. And so it's, it's. That part of the model isn't going away. You know, payment processing needs to be there for, you know, most firms that are, you know, on, on the plaintiff side. The. And so those models stand. So that's. And they can experiment around it. It's those that are, we're a database with a nice front end and will manage your tasks and you can see your clients all in one spot. Those are gonna become less and less relevant real quick because if they don't have a catch or a hook that allow keeps somebody there, like why bother?

A (52:21)

You know, it's funny about my case. Every, every my case user that I know loves it. They love MyCase and they love the client portal. Yeah, it's, there's. And so I've always been surprised by the fact that it's not been more, more commonly adopted. I think what Clio did that was the smartest thing that they did is they were early, but they kept their prices low. I don't know if their prices are now, but remember early on they were super cheap. And so they, what they did is they built up this army of people. I'm assuming that Clio is the most used platform. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I'm assuming that it is. Do you think it's probably, probably is.

B (53:00)

I feel like it is largest one. Yeah.

A (53:03)

Yeah. So like they, they probably have the biggest Database of users. And so they kind of have all these people that they were able to build their platform on get better and then they, they probably just, I'm guessing they probably have increased their prices over time, which gives them just a massive advantage because a lot of like, if you compare them to like the five lines of the world. Fileine's pretty expensive, right? It's pretty expensive compared to a lot of the other platforms.

B (53:25)

Yeah. And the Clio is, I'm trying to think with. If you use like grow, manage, I want to say 150 ish a month. Clio work is another 200. But that's legal research. That's replacing Westlaw and Lexus, which is going to be cheaper. CLIO work will be cheaper on that. But if you think about it from the standpoint of employee savings and time savings and efficiencies and stuff like then it makes sense. You know, it's kind of like the, with the custom agents and having to pay for AI credits if you're, you know, you're kind of replacing other costs on it. But then you also have other models that are coming out or not coming out, but that exist where even up Eve, I think, I think they're one of them I know is charging by case.

A (54:20)

I know that they spend a ton on marketing because they, I get gifts from them and it's like, like not cheap stuff. Like they're canvassing lawyers with gifts of. I'm like holy crap. And I've not used them. I mean like they, everyone that I talked to both about even, even up and Eve, they, they say nice things about and they say really good things about them. So it sounds like they're doing good work. I just know that they've got to be spending a ton of cash right now.

B (54:43)

Right? Yeah, I, it sounds like it. They, they'll get you.

A (54:48)

Well, let me ask you this. Let's say you've got an 18 year old.

B (54:51)

I do have an 18 year old graduate.

A (54:53)

Well, I'm gonna give you. Okay, then let's stick with the 18 year old. I didn't know your. I didn't know your kid was that old.

B (54:59)

Yes. Wow. I know.

A (55:01)

That's crazy. Okay, so you got an 18 year old. They're like I want to go to undergrad and I want. And then I want to go to law school. Okay, what advice do you give to them?

B (55:11)

My 18 year old you don't give any advice to. Cuz she knows everything.

A (55:15)

Well, I'm gonna make you give advice.

B (55:16)

Right, but what I actually thinking about this, she's thinking about marketing. And then law school is kind of the latest that we've heard. The, you know, the answer is, I don't know, because there, I mean, we're watching it, we're watching these things evolve. But the gut feel right now is the, the jobs that are going away are more or getting evolving even more are the legal assistants and the paralegals, the case managers. Those are what are being, you know, really automated away. You can't currently, you know, send a robot into court. You can't send them the negotiation piece. The analysis is getting helped out a lot. You know, if you've got some things. But the, the human interaction part, it's just all the roles are being narrowed down to can you really interact with humans? Well and because we can, you know, have AI intake call out and, you know, talk with adjusters or update your clients on things. But when the real hard stuff occurs, you need to be able to handle the personal nature of things and the analysis of it that goes beyond. Because everything we're feeding in to AI right now, this is not an original thought, but it's, you know, it's only as good as what you're doing with it. You know, if you say, like, help me do this and you don't give it any context or what, like, it's not. You're not garbage in, garbage out kind of idea. But the smarter you are about it and the better you're able to analyze things and jumpstart it, the more helpful it's going to be for you. So I think the profession, you know, if you are 18 now and, you know, four years from now, you're applying from law for law school. Have we changed that much? Probably not. Because part of the, you know, the thing is like, you know, institutionally, while private firms may evolve, the institution's not going to change. Courts aren't going to just ditch all their local rules and say, you know, we should have a unified system that makes it really easy for people to file on their own. No. What state was it? It was Tennessee. Oh, who did I see on this? It's always good to tell stories. I can't remember the details. The. I think it was a court in Tennessee or may the Supreme Court release some forms for, for pro se litigants and. But they put all these rules on it, made it kind of an unusable model. And I heard some, I saw some lawyer on some social suburb complain about it. It's like, well, if you're trying to help people, but you're you're making it impossible for. To actually do. Like you're not solving the problem. So, like, true access to people for people without lawyers is not going any. Like, it's going to be a problem for a while. So institutionally, lawyers are still like, aren't going anywhere.

A (58:11)

Right. I do think you're going to have to necessarily. You're going to have to have a shift towards ones that truly are going to depend on humans, like litigation type stuff. So criminal defense, family law, personal injury, like, it's just, it's gonna. By necessity. It does make me wonder what's gonna happen with like, estate planning firms and things like that that are very transactional.

B (58:34)

Right.

A (58:35)

Do you have any thoughts on that?

B (58:36)

I mean, I think that probably goes faster, you know, because. And that. That's not new. Right. Cause we've had, you know, the fight over legal zoom as decade dec plus old.

A (58:48)

True. It's probably two decades.

B (58:50)

Yeah, yeah. I guess it would be the, you know, but, you know, lawyers haven't gone away on that front. You know, they're still needed. But the, the complex nature of being able to solve your own problems, you know, now is a lot easier with, you know, AI.

A (59:07)

Sure.

B (59:08)

So I think that is, you know, going to be in the. You've got e notary, you've got all these other Covid kind of kicked off a lot of those things that allowed for remote, you know, concepts that now keep evolving. So I think, though, probably those are more at risk. I mean, this is the, the trick with all this is that it's. If it's. I think if it's more transactional, you're probably more at risk. But.

A (59:33)

All right, so let's wrap on this. I want to ask you. Let's say you got a law firm owner that comes to you and they want your best advice. They're a solo. They've got the experience and all that, and they want to build a national practice. Let's, let's, let's go with family law. Okay, That's. I think that may be more in your wheelhouse. I know you deal with other others too, but I think with family law, it might be the most in your wheelhouse and they want to be like a national firm. What is your advice? Knowing the sort of the environment that we're in now, what is your best advice to them as to how to start? Like, what's the, what's the bedrock of their firm?

B (60:12)

And the bedrock of their firm is, you know, having, you know, a, a core infrastructure that works well for you in your own place. Like, if you can't function in your own jurisdiction or have a successful practice out of the gate nationally, it's not going. You got to prove it first. If, if we're talking about starting from scratch, like, that's, that's where you got to go. And there's lots of different ways people can go about this, but I think, I think starting out, if you're new to the profession, you say like, hey, you know, or you're not established in your world, it's a hard one to do. The family formation firm I mentioned earlier, those were, you know, eight of the leading firms around the country that joined together. That is a lot, you know, while it's more difficult and, you know, easier in some ways because you've got a lot of established folks that have that network, I think you gotta, like, get yourself right first because we've seen a lot of lawyer referral matching websites and stuff because you're really like, you gotta get your firm in place and then you've gotta build your network to figure out who you want to work with. Because just because you want to build a national firm doesn't mean that you are like, you're going to find the right people for it. You still have to have the humans everywhere to be able to, whether it's, you know, you have to have the boots on the ground from a license perspective, you have to know the right people. And if you match with subpar people, that's not going to go well for you and you're just wasting money and time. So you got to establish yourself, which. That's old school, right? That's. I didn't say, like, you got to build some robots and things. Like, you gotta, you gotta be established. Otherwise there's not the credibility there.

A (62:02)

Consistency is boring and boring is what wins. That's, that's the reality of it. So. And I don't know if you're on Becca's list yet, but we'll get you on beccaslist.co if people want to reach out to you, they have. If they're interested in maybe that MSO model. How do they get in touch with you?

B (62:17)

LinkedIn. I'm just kidding. If you want to see what I look like maybe 12 years ago, glasses, bigger face, other things. Chad. ModernLawPractice.com. it's the best way.

A (62:30)

Perfect. Like I said, we'll get you on Becca's list. If anyone has questions for Chad, make sure you reach out to him. He's.

B (62:35)

He's great.

A (62:36)

I've known you for years, so appreciate doing this, man. Love it.

B (62:38)

Thank you.

A (62:54)

If you're like most law firm owners, you don't struggle with hitting record. You struggle with everything that comes after. What to talk about next, how to stay consistent, whether any of it's actually

B (63:03)

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A (63:05)

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B (63:06)

That's the one part no one really teaches. That's what we're focused on at the YouTube Accelerator in Chicago this June. Not how to make one good video,

A (63:14)

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B (63:16)

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A (63:18)

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