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- [00:01]
A
Are you tired of the marketing guessing game? Does your website feel more like a digital billboard than a client magnet? If you're nodding along, you're not alone. And it's time to stop the uncertainty and start getting real results. Let's talk about your marketing spend. Are you just shelling out money every month and crossing your fingers? Do you ever wonder what impact your marketing is really having on your revenue? Well, it's time to take the guesswork out of the equation with Rise Up Media. We've been working with them for over a year and, and the feedback from our fellow members has been fantastic. Rise Up Media is here to take your marketing to the next level. They'll even perform a full audit of your online presence, giving you the good, the bad, and even let you in on what your competition is up to that you're missing out on. And the best part, there's no obligation, no catch, no pressure. If you decide to work with them, their contracts are month to month. That's right. No long term commitments tying you down. So what are you waiting for? To learn more about how Rise Up Media can transform your firms, visit riseup media.com max law and rise is spelled with a Z. Riseupmedia.com max law.
- [01:20]
B
This is Maximum Lawyer with your host, Tyson Mutrix.
- [01:29]
A
Hamid, I want to start with the three part power model that you have, which I think is a really cool concept. What was the core problem you were actually trying to solve for law firm owners at the time with that?
- [01:42]
B
Other than we need no more business was like, after you get it. The second thing was no, I need a army now to work on these cases and clients and everything. So everything came basically as a challenge being having a affordable, skilled, reliable resources to be able to get the job done. So I ended up, when I was doing the consulting part is like, stop everything, let's go hire some people so when we get this thing done, we can get it worked out. So, so, and the staffing has been terrible. We're in Southern California. It's been very hard to find qualified, affordable, reliable legal staff to work in the firms. And then it spread all over the place. From New York to LA is the same, it's the same challenge. So because of that I started saying what does everybody else does in other industries? And I found out that they're doing global staffing. And I said, why not? Let's try this. But it wasn't successful because they were doing like sales people or support people, but not skilled, higher skilled staff. So we started a Lego soft by Identifying and training global staff to be able to be placed within the law firms in the industry. It was hell because people were just saying like, I don't even trust the guy sitting in front of me handling my CRM and my client information, the medical record, the HIPAA stuff, no way. So some random person in this other country, I don't even know where it is handling it. It was a big challenge trying to get them to do this.
- [03:23]
A
Well, explain first what the three part power model is.
- [03:27]
B
Okay.
- [03:27]
A
Because I think it would be helpful for people to understand what it is.
- [03:30]
B
Sure. So we started with the first part of the pie, which being a local staff. The second part that was added on was a virtual staff to complement the local staff. It didn't mean you get rid of all your local staff and add the second piece of the virtual staff to it. And now with the evolution of the AI, now the 1/3 needs to be AI, 1/3 virtual, 1/3 in house. So God knows this pie from three parts, how is going to go to four pieces. But for now it's like a three piece local virtual AI.
- [04:03]
A
When you first started, did you ever think that AI would be part of the pie?
- [04:08]
B
Not this fast. I did because I come from 20 plus, 25 years of tech. I worked and live in Silicon Valley for 20 plus years. So I knew that the data and technology and automation is going to make a huge impact. But I would have never guessed it goes this fast. The last two transitions I was personally involved with was like the dot com era when all the dot com came and said we all going to shop online. No way in hell we're going to do that. You know, and now we do. So it's the same thing. It's just this implementation of the AI is going like probably 100x faster than anybody expected.
- [04:44]
A
You know, I remember in high school, so like, you know, late 90s, early 2000s, I graduated in 2001. I remember a best friend of mine, he was always talking about AI back then and it was from like the X Files. I remember him, he loved the X Files and he loved, he talked about AI and to me it was like this urban legend that was. Or it was like believe it in ghosts or believe it in aliens or something like that. Where I was like, yeah, right, that's, that's never going to be a thing. And then I'd say, I don't know. 2020 Kashif Ahmed, he's our CTO, he and I started to talk about AI and then we started to work with a big four accounting firm to develop because they were already starting to develop AI. And then 2022 comes along and boom, everyone gets caught up. And it was one of those things for me. It was kind of frustrating because I thought we were so far ahead of the game. But I wonder for you, when did you realize, okay, this is happening faster than we thought it was going to be?
- [05:42]
B
Exactly about two and a half years ago I created a company called LawPractice AI. So basically 100% AI for law and development, integration, all that stuff. So when I started explaining it to the people, people said, oh, so you're creating another CRM? I'm like, no, no, no. And I said no. So you're using ChatGPT? No, no, no. So even just explaining it was like, never mind, just wait until I have it, I show you. Because explaining it is going to, I'm going to lose you explaining it. So about two and a half years ago when we opened up that company as part of legal soft enterprise called LawPractice AI, it is now basically completing that third piece of the pie that I mentioned and about not only creating a platform that we can train our staff and virtual and local and everybody to use it so they can optimize their work and reduce any redundancies and things like that. And now we're just. This year we launched the first part of it and we continuously launching, but it's basically going to be what we call it, the AI Law firm operating system because it is going to be a system to operate the firm. The biggest AI issue we have, Tyson, right now is overwhelming with solutions like you go to one of these conferences or you look at some YouTube channels or you do anything online like I'm interested to know about AI intake by end of the day I'm so overwhelmed and not making no decisions because I got into eight different solutions. They all mean different, they're hard to understand, there's hard to do. So I'm saying, you know what, I'm just going to wait until the dust settles. So because of that I noticed that we want to make it one single platform through the entire law firm AI platform. Everything that they need is in one place, one platform. Just like your CRM is. Imagine disguise between filevine, Clio, Lidify, all these other people. If they tell you, oh, I only handle your pre litigation cases, but then what? I gotta go get another software for litigation, add a software for lead management. I can't do that. So that's why they become a full CRM is the same Exact concept for AI. It can be people like even up saying, I have a demand AI and this guy, the intaker says I have an intake AI and then I have a litigation support AI. So how many softwares I need to subscribe to and how many of them do I need to learn? And the toughest thing, how do I get my people to actually use this stuff? You know?
- [08:11]
A
Yeah.
- [08:12]
B
So that was a solution that we tried to solve by not getting people overwhelmed with the AI impact.
- [08:19]
A
You are so right. So we. I've got a Wednesday live show that I do inside the guild. And it's something that for a while, every time I would report on something new when it comes to AI, I would also try to test it out. But it got so overwhelming for me that I just, it just couldn't do it. I couldn't test everything. It was. It was so freaking frustrating. And there are so many things. Although I do feel like lately things have slowed down a little bit when it comes to AI. It's not as rapid fire as it was about a year ago.
- [08:47]
B
No. I think you slowed down looking for because you got tired. So you're not as interested. You're not the greatest target audience anymore because you're not hungry. You got enough.
- [08:59]
A
Well, we're so engrossed in it. I don't know if it's. If I've had enough because we are, we're doing new things with it. We're just not using so many tools. That's the key. But you, you touched on something that I find pretty interesting because I. Ever since I became a lawyer. Right. So 2010 is when I became a lawyer. And I remember being so frustrated with why isn't there a like a one software that does everything right? And for some reason in the legal space and I don't know if it's like this in every industry, but you got to have 40 different softwares to do anything. And that just seems insane to me. So I guess for you, has that always been a frustrating thing for you that there's 20 different softwares in all industries?
- [09:41]
B
It is. That's why people, by the way, like Salesforce or HubSpot are successful and they grow crazy is because they eliminate one of the first thing that they do. They eliminate 100 different Google Sheets and Excel sheets and the tracking sheets and 18 software on the side of it. So when you buy one of these software and the solution, you end up replacing bunch of other things that you shouldn't have to use, pay for and they're not connected either. So I cannot do part of my business work in this here and then over here and then they're not connected. And how am I going to move the data is just. And how am I ever going to do any analytics if I don't have all the data connected into a relational system?
- [10:25]
A
I'm very curious if you have. I kind of want to get into your brain a little bit because I wonder when you are you're designing these new platforms because I mean you've done a lot in the tech industry, but in the legal tech especially. So when you're developing a new product, what is your process for making sure that you're creating something that is all encompassing? I guess for what that attacks the problem that you're trying to attack is.
- [10:53]
B
One of the first things we learned in the tech industry. I was there when they invented a laptop. Seriously. I work at a company who had a patent on the flip top of the and nobody could ever get away with not paying loyalty to Philip the laptop. It's called Grid System.
- [11:09]
A
Incredible.
- [11:10]
B
San Francisco Museum of Tech Art. The thing is that what you learn in the Silicon Valley makes it very unique place is that everything starts with a problem statement. What's the problem? So you go around for example, just thinking what are the problems for businesses, for organizations, for communities. You start with the problem statement, then you identify a solution to that problem that is doable, not imaginary. And then you're sizing out the market and adaptability of that solution into the market. There's no point of finding a solution to little tiny market that it takes 10 years to implement. It's like, no, I'm not interested. So market sizing, market implementation, adaptability to the solution that you identified to the problem that you picked. You pick a problem, you find a solution.
- [12:08]
A
Interesting. Have you ever actually tell I know this had to has had to have happened before where you come up with there's an issue that you keep seeing in, you know, maybe the legal industry, maybe it's another industry and you think oh I know that tech can solve this problem. Has there been a time where you've encountered one, a problem that you thought tech could solve it and actually tech made it more complicated or made it worse.
- [12:32]
B
Sometimes it feels like it made it complicated and worse, but it really isn't because one either didn't got implemented properly, is not being used properly or you had a wrong expectation from it. Those are the three causes that creates a disappointment that didn't solve the problem.
- [12:51]
A
Okay, tell me more about that because I think that that's an important lesson for people.
- [12:56]
B
All these gadget, software or hardware that comes out to the market and they never make it through is a good example. Every one of us have bought a service or a product or a device that we thought it was going to fix the problem but either didn't fix the problem or the problem wasn't really a problem, it was imaginary problem. You know, it's like, but somebody naturally lazy I can't fix it doesn't matter what kind of a thing I do is naturally that way. You have to really justify the problem that you have encountered and then putting yourself in the position of the actual people who having the problem not from sitting from the outside and says oh, they're very unorganized and they need a piece of software. No, go in there and see how does the work goes. Face the challenges yourself and find a solution that solves your own problem. Being yourself in that organization. So when I went to law, the first thing that I noticed it's like seven, eight years ago, it was like I always made this statement even in my book I said it. I said if you let them alone, they'd be still wearing their pagers waiting at the fax machine for their next fax number. Leave them alone, see what happens. That's exactly what's going to happen. So that basically means adoptability for this crowd is difficult because you guys go to law school, you get taught from constitution law to everything else. It's just like books, laws, case studies, case law and all of that. They don't teach lawyers anything. In a way. I have one lawyer in my house, my son, my other one is getting lawyer next year. So I grew up in house still now is like they don't show anything about technology, business, finance, marketing, innovations, acquisitions, nothing. So it's a problem statement itself.
- [14:40]
A
You're so, you're so right. I had this conversation today actually I was having this exact same conversation where I feel like inside the Maximil community it's very common for people to know what AI is and how they're implementing it. But you step outside of our little atmosphere and. And you've got, you've got lawyers that are practicing and like have they have very little idea what AI, what you can do with AI. It is quite mind boggling how many people are just letting AI is going to bulldoze them because they don't know what's going on. It is such a fascinating thing to me.
- [15:14]
B
65% of all transactional law firms going to go away.
- [15:17]
A
Wow. So you think it's that you think it's that high.
- [15:20]
B
I guarantee it.
- [15:22]
A
Wow.
- [15:22]
B
Is going to go away. Let me tell you what happens here. And the transactional law to me is estate planning, bankruptcy, family law with no contested divorces, corporate formations, essentially everything transactional immigration for sure. Because there is no lawyering being done. Is it creating a process, creating an application, filling out bunch of forms, providing a whole bunch of documents, summarizing the documents, analyzing it and predicting what's going to happen next and submitting it somewhere to court, to irs, to whatever for Family law is all going to be done with AI. So I mean, what does the immigration firm today? In fact we developed a immigration thing called USimmigration AI that wipes out the entire staffing requirement of the immigration law for 18 different visa types. No receptionist, no intake, no case manager, no paralegal at all. All done within the AI and it's getting released like in 30 days. So that's one element. The second element is all the big boys in tech, the Amazons and the Googles and so forth, they're all getting into law right now via the ABS program. I don't know if you know about that.
- [16:37]
A
Oh yeah, it's. That's definitely been on our radar for a while.
- [16:40]
B
Yeah, I have one. I've been an owner of a law firm since four years ago. I was the first one in California who got licensed in Arizona to have a law firm as a non attorney. Yeah, just for the heck of it. I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't practicing anything. But I just got tired of people telling me, well, you're not even a lawyer or you never owned a law firm, whatever that was just to prove a point.
- [17:03]
A
So I really want to stay on the subject because I think you probably have caught the attention of several attorneys right now listening to this, the immigration types, the. I think that the immigration attorneys might give you a little bit of pushback that there's more lawyer lawyering whenever it comes to interviews and things like that and deportations.
- [17:19]
B
No. 3%. 3% of the cases needs lawyering. 97% is non lawyering.
- [17:25]
A
And then the transactional lawyers, I have been asking them casually because I. What I don't want to do, I don't want to be sound alarmist, but what I do, I've said that there's going to be a shrinking. That would be my prediction. There's definitely going to be a shrinking over the next 10 years and it's going to be bigger than what people think. 65% is huge. But the transactional lawyers, I've been asking them just kind of casually, you know, are you worried at all? And no one's told me, yes, I'm worried, and I'm kind of surprised by that because to me, those are the firms that are ripe for AI to just demolish.
- [17:58]
B
It takes it over. I give you a perfect example. Last year I was a speaker on the bankruptcy conference. There was a 360 bankruptcy attorneys present. And I was a speaker and I said this, and it shook up the room to the point where they said, what? No, I said, okay, give me example of the case type, like chapter 7, 11, 13, whatever. Give me an example right now. That AI cannot go through the entire process better than you do, faster than you do. We did like six or seven examples, and they all lost. Because everything they did in the course of doing the bankruptcy, AI did it better, faster, smarter.
- [18:37]
A
Yeah, bankruptcy is another one, I think. If it's. If you're talking about just. I mean, you're. If you're talking about just breaking it down like ones and zeros, it's a lot of. It's just data, right? It's just data.
- [18:47]
B
All data.
- [18:48]
A
Yeah, it's. And where. I think there is a. There's a little bit of a buffer in, like, practice areas like mine where there's personal injury and we have litigation. There are going to be fences being placed around things like courthouses. Where there is this, there's going to be arguing. That's what's going to happen.
- [19:04]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I'm talking about like an API is all the prelate, which is intake. Okay. My intake here right now, AI will do. I have. Within the legal style, we have about 1800 virtual intakers placed into 600 law firms. And my intake, AI next year will do better than they do. So I'm basically replacing my own people. Right. Because it does it better. So on the PI intake, done, document collection, done, case analysis done. AI Setting up appointments with the medical providers and following up and make sure the treatment happen and the medical records are provided. AI Summarizing the medical record, creating chronology, creating a demand. AI you know, creating a demand, sending it out, confirming it, and taking the offer in AI. So I would say 65 of pre lead on PI is going to be AI.
- [20:00]
A
I don't disagree at all. Actually, I agree with you heavily. That's why I've been working on something on my own. Just a little project I've been documenting, and I. Maybe you can help me with it.
- [20:09]
B
That's the scary part, Tyson. Everybody is yeah, everybody, they take legal, medical, everybody's working on some AI thing.
- [20:17]
A
Well, no, it's not. Well, to me it's, I mean it's, it's ever. We're all working on the AI thing. I'm not building my own AI, that's for sure. But I, what I'm doing is I'm, I've created my own little playground where I'm developing an AI only firm, where it's just me. Right. I'm the, I'm the only human. And I wonder if, if you were to start from scratch, like let's say you and I were going to build this thing out, I do wonder what, what sort of framework you would build it on. What I mean by that is if I were just going to kind of pencil this out and like what, I guess, how would you attack it? Where would you start first? What elements would you include in it? I'm very curious as to how you would approach it.
- [20:52]
B
I will start with every position that I'm describing for my practice that I'm starting tomorrow. I need a receptionist. I need the intake here. I need a legal assistant. I write down what they're supposed to be doing, what is their job description, what is the KPIs, whatever. I write them all up because I want to go hire 10 people to open up a law firm. And then I start mapping each one of those position to the AI solution that is already exist. So receptionist, tons of AI receptionists. I don't need a receptionist. Intaker. Be able to speak 100 plus languages and work 24, 7. I got that. I don't need the intaker. Case manager to collect the documents, set up appointments, follow up with the client, give him a status. I got one of those AIs, so I don't need that. I go all the way up to like I need a senior paralegal for that big litigation case and I need the attorney to run it. So I basically do an elimination of all of those positions systematically, position by position.
- [21:53]
A
Yeah. Where do those jobs go, do you think? If there's going to be a 65% reduction in transactional firms, where do you think they'll go?
- [22:00]
B
I'm moving to the moon because it's going to be dangerous here. There's going to be such a. I mean you're seeing it right now even though nothing has happened really. You see all this huge layout from big companies like the IBMs and even tech companies like Oracle and so forth. They're not in hundreds anymore, they're in thousands. And nothing. The AI has hit that way, but now they're doing 3, 5, 10,000 layoffs at a time. Just imagine when the AI actually hits.
- [22:31]
A
Truly. And I mean it. Really, it's a big deal.
- [22:35]
B
I'll give you another example. My son works for a major software company and he only does enterprise sales, which means $8 million and above clients, right? And he's been doing it for like 10 plus years. And he just came back and said, hey dad, I think our jobs are eliminated because there was 17 of us handling 8 million plus clients, $8 million annual revenue per client, and all of them got laid off except me. I'm like, oh, how does that happen? He goes, automate the heck out of our jobs. I'm the only one left. And the AI is going to take over setting up the appointment, doing the demonstration, sending the contract, getting the contract back. I mean the whole thing.
- [23:17]
A
I am curious with your viewpoint on this. Have you advised your kids not to go to law school or just to put the brakes on law school?
- [23:26]
B
No, I basically said I have a sort of a patent and a thing called AI School of Law that when you finish law school, you go to the AI school a lot. You need to finish that one too before you go back in the field. Because having a law degree is not good enough anymore. It's basically giving you a license to be in law first of all. And then it gives you a license to cherry pick those high value cases, litigations that you want to do, but they're running the business and running a pre litigation group or whatever is all gone.
- [23:56]
A
Why do you think that so much money is flooding into legal tech right now?
- [24:00]
B
Because it is most outdated industry on the planet. It was, I told you. It goes back to the comment. I said leave the lawyer alone. They're still wearing pagers and waiting at the fax machine because they don't adopt anything new. They go to law school learning not to change or adopt anything. Follow the law, right? So it puts your mind into, I'm just going to follow, not lead, not change anything. Then they don't teach them to change or modify or upgrade the law. They just say, get it interpreted, follow it, make sure everybody else does. Right? So innovation is other law. The thing that make sure you don't do is innovate. Because you lose your license if you innovate.
- [24:43]
A
That's very, that's, that's very true. Yeah, I, I've kind of had this thought and I've mentioned it to my firm a couple times where I said, you Know if we were to just all take off for a month, everyone in the firm and we just start building, right? We build the AI firm out. I think we could do it in about a month. Like a, a viable product, like something we could use internally. Not, not something we scale, not something we use for, you know, sell to other people. But I, I wonder what your thoughts are on that. Do you kind of the way you is.
- [25:14]
B
Because everybody thinks like you do right now and that's why we're having a big problem because this is what you're getting. I mean I say everybody can build an Excel sheet, but can anybody build a pivot oriented multi dimension Excel sheet that updates dynamically? That's what people need. But they say no, I can make you Excel sheet. AI is like, yeah, anybody sits on the computer for you can even use the AI to build your AI solution. You don't need, you don't even need to do anything. You just tell them build me one.
- [25:48]
A
Like, like for example, like you like Bolt or there's a few other ones like where like you can Vibe code it. I do want to know your, your view on Vibe coding where you can use AI to build, you know, other softwares. I, I am, what are your, what are your thoughts on that?
- [26:02]
B
It's not a scalable because when you go into the launching into the market and you get user experience, user retention, all the elements that make things. You know, there is a reason why Apple is Apple. They made it simple from day one. They make it something intelligent by gadget looking, gadget acting and there was a hundreds of others, cell phone creators or laptop creators, whatever is like yeah, putting one AI solution out there is fast and easy. Making it work for, for a large number of people without glitches, without you know, basically being stuck with the bugs and upgrades and so forth, that's a whole different game.
- [26:47]
A
I can tell you from personal experience that's, that's something we've experienced where we, we would build. We built out things that on the, on the end of it. So we got it about 90% of the way there. And then the last 10% had to be done by humans because of all the glitches and the were certain things we just couldn't. I mean I'm not a coder so I don't know, I don't know these things. But using the humans for the last 10% it did a really, I mean they did, they did a really great job for us. But the Vibe coding did an amazing job.
- [27:15]
B
Did you make it for Yourself or Pierce?
- [27:19]
A
No, we. We made it for Pierce. What. This is something we built. We. We built up Becca's list, which is a. It's a vendor ratings website where. Yeah. So people can go in and they. They can rate like legal, soft or any, you know, a bunch of other softwares. And that was something we started with Vibe coding. And then. So it's got. Everyone's got a login, they've got a link. You log in with LinkedIn and then we can. Then vendors can then sign up to get additional features and all that. And so it's, It's. It's not a super simple. What made it complicated was actually the vendors. If it was just the users, it was easier. But then once you added in the additional type of login for a vendor, that was. It made it way more complicated. And the Vibe coat. So we use. We did it on Bolt and that actually, it was really. It really struggled with that. But that's where the humans had to come in and fix it. And it took them quite a while to actually fix or not fix, but actually build up what we needed. But I would say it probably saved us tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, getting it up to that point.
- [28:19]
B
Of course, it's about the scaling. When you build something that is targeted for the hundred people or thousand people or tens of thousand people, the requirements changes and the pass or no pass becomes a lot more critical that I get a pass on this or I don't get a pass on this, because it's a lot more complicated now and it's a lot more mission critical. When you're building tools that is mission critical, like demand writing for PI firm or try to do demand writing for employment firm. That's why even nobody else has done it, because it's like, are you crazy? How do I even. I have experienced employment attorneys with seven years experience, they still can't write the right demand for an employment case. Right. PI is easy. You hit me, I had injuries. This is pain and suffering. Pay me. Employment is not like that. So when you're making it for those kind of environments, the target audience determines the complexity and the time and the cost of doing a solution. The more complex, the longer it takes, the more expensive it is.
- [29:26]
A
Very true. So something that's been a cool little thing for us is. So we used to use infusionsoft, which is now keep, you know, years ago and what the thing we like to do now, it's kind of a concept that they had. They had like a sandbox where you could play around with and you didn't deploy it, or once you deployed it, it would go into your account, but you could kind of create the sandbox to play around with. And one of the things I did is I built out inbolt. I built out a case management system with no intention of actually deploying it. But what we're able to do with it is that we have our own case management system and we play around. We use the one that I built out to play around in kind of like our sandbox and then we use it to test out different features. And if we like those features, we then will deploy them into our environment, which I think is, it's a fun way of using it without actually trying to fully deploy it inside a bolt.
- [30:21]
B
Right. But imagine even yourself and your firm the way things are going. The way you're developing some stuff, using some stuff, customizing some stuff a year down the road when you have a sandbag of all of this stuff in it and then now you're trying to get five of your employees to use them properly.
- [30:41]
A
Well, and that's where we are. That's why, that's why we have our sandboxes separate. We deploy it. Here's, here's how we do it and this is I think why it works. We take the things, the features that we, that we like and then we will deploy those to the entire firm one at a time where they test those things out. So by the time that it gets to them, we've already tested it out on, on the, in the sandbox. Then they can that part. That's why it works is because it's not, it's not like we're like deploying all these different little bells and whistles all at one time.
- [31:09]
B
Yeah. In the tech industry we call it alpha testing. So you're doing alpha testing after you release it and then you do beta testing which you're giving it to other bunch of other selected group of people to test it right before you do production release. But getting back on this AI initiatives with the legal is going to be practice type by practice type implementation always PI is top of number because it has the highest number of cases. Money investments, open mind about growth and business. And then basically the next contingency practice is like employment and then maybe workers comp. Then maybe a little bit of a mass tort it be a bit before it gets into. I have a friend who works for a big, big law employment defense and they have some major, major clients and they just got notification from clients that if you're using AI for any of these segments, like creating a demand motion, the discovery summary and so forth, we're not paying your hourly bill. Yep. So that was like a 30% cut on the revenue immediately because this Fortune 500 company was my client who says, look, if you're using AI, I'm not going to pay you whatever $1200 an hour fee because you just use AI for it.
- [32:33]
A
And I know there are courts creating. There are actually court rules that have been released already across the country where if you use AI to create even part of your pleading, you have to disclose the fact that you used AI to create all or part of your pleading, which is really interesting. What are your thoughts on that?
- [32:54]
B
Look, they trying to protect a few different things. One is like what I talked about is this billable hour thing. If you bill me for 10 hours at $2,000 an hour rate and you use 15 minutes of the AI to generate everything, somebody should protect me as a client of the firm. The second is that protecting the client from the fully AI generated automatic outcomes that is not audited. No regulation, no auditing, no nothing. And I just submit it to the court or whatever and it blows up and you're like, oops. I mean, so there needs to be regulation and protections and stuff around the AI. And I think we haven't seen much at all. Just like chat GPD changing that. They cannot do medical advice, legal advice, financial advice. There's going to be lot more of that to come that is going to limit their advisement.
- [33:48]
A
Yeah, I do agree with that. I think it's an interesting thing that's happening and no one really knows what's going to happen. But I've got a question related to that for you because you were one of the earliest champions of virtual staffing in the legal space because you clearly saw something that other people didn't see at the time. And I wonder, is there something on your radar right now that you're seeing that you're like, oh, that's going to be a thing. Is there, is there something that you're seeing right now that no one else is seeing?
- [34:20]
B
I like to think so. That's why it keeps our momentum going. We're like you said, we're the largest provider in that segment and there is a reason, because we have a 96% retention on the virtual staff that we place in the firms. Yeah, it is about 28% higher than your local staff. So we keep them longer than you can in your own office.
- [34:42]
A
Well, okay, so I'm gonna. Not like, I'm not gonna let you off the hook with that. Let me, let me rephrase my question. What are you seeing now that you. That other people aren't seeing when it comes to tech or anything at this point? Because I, I want to get, I want to get your prediction on the.
- [34:57]
B
Record is that the law firms, for most part, going to be running 80% of the operation. With AI, it started from marketing all the way to settlement. So not just the legal process, the financials and the marketing and the client generation. Like when I was doing the consulting, no single attorney was able to answer half of my questions, like, what's your cost of client acquisition? What's your total cost on the case? And how much is your net profit per case In a different category, like pre. Lid, Lid.
- [35:30]
A
Whatever.
- [35:31]
B
Nobody has any answers. They all just like, they have good days when they get a big check, they have bad days when they get subbed out. I was like, okay, any answers to anything? Or what's your demographic target for your client base? Or none of this stuff. So what we developing and what my vision is is to automate the heck out of that. So I'm not asking no attorney, no managing attorney any of those questions. I just ask my AI platform. Yeah, is that how do I get him in? How long do I keep him? How much is it going to cost me Month to month to month to month to just keep him on the system and into the process? And when they got out, what was my net profit as a business owner?
- [36:12]
A
I was having a conversation a couple weeks ago with someone that's in tech, and I was talking to them about how we were talking about the contraction of the legal space and everything. And I asked him, I said, like, what individual roles in the firm would you be the most afraid of if you were one of those people? And he said, the paralegal. Right away, he said, paralegal. And I wonder what your thoughts are. Like, who's safer? Do you think a lawyer is safer in this environment?
- [36:38]
B
Or a paralegal lawyer, because it's licensed, it has that. The advantage of the license. It's like an unlicensed driver and the licensed driver. Which car do you want to get into? So that's the first element. The second thing is that the paralegals who are titled paralegal correctly, a lot of people just throw that title around. It's paralegal, but it's not even a case manager. The paralegal who can actually get prepped for deposition can do depot prep Mediation prep, do mediation summary, do a full discovery and analysis. That's a paralegal. So between the whole scheme of things, yes, paralegal is probably the safest, but they're only true paralegals, not make believe paralegals.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah, that is an interesting, very interesting point because we have case managers is what we have. I would define a paralegal as something different. A paralegal is something different where they actually can prepare the depot outlines and they can prepare all of the exhibits and all that. So are you saying that if like that the true paralegals are safer than, than say the case manager types, the.
- [37:51]
B
True paralegals who are completely AI enabled? Yes.
- [37:55]
A
Interesting.
- [37:56]
B
Not, not alone. If they're not AI enabled, that they use AI at least 40% of their work, then they're not safe either because that means they're not a paralegal.
- [38:07]
A
Do you think we're going to start to see more one person or one lawyer law firms popping up where they, maybe they, they hire a team of paralegals like true paralegals, then it doesn't.
- [38:17]
B
Start with the paralegal. Paralegal comes way down the line. You have to do your marketing, you have to get your clients, you need to put them through the process. You need a case manager, you need a legal assistant, you need all of that before it gets to the paralegal. Paralegal is really just for true litigation, trial focused litigation, which if you start up your firm today, two and a half years from now, you're going to need a paralegal.
- [38:40]
A
That is quite the prediction. Would you start, let's say you were starting a law firm today completely AI. Would you start with the marketing or would you start with the legal operation side of things?
- [38:50]
B
Marketing.
- [38:51]
A
I'm, I'm with you on that 100%.
- [38:53]
B
I, we actually doing this for like five new law firms. That is completely AI. We intend not to hire anybody. You know, and it starts with marketing. Okay. You know what we do? Just a little secret on that. Even while I'm starting a law from to tomorrow and I'm starting with the marketing, I get the cases. I don't even want to work on the cases right now. I want to start referring them out and get my 30, 40% referral fees.
- [39:17]
A
Yeah.
- [39:18]
B
Which is more than most firms make on their net profit. Yes. By the way. So I work with the two firms that we generate over 500 clients a month, retained clients a month, and we don't practice nothing. Okay. And our staff are only marketing staff. We are a Law firm. So what happens is I generate a whole bunch of cases so I get a feel of it about what's the market like, what's the client base like, what's the cost of client acquisition, what's the potential? And I push the, I refer them out to the bunch of firms who have tons of people that were missing cases. So I give it to them. Once this ball is rolling and I get the just of it, then I start maybe hiring an intake person and a case manager or AI or something like that. I don't go hire up a whole bunch of people and then go try and make it work. Start by referring out.
- [40:08]
A
Do you think it's going to be easier for firms to make more money in the future or do you think it's going to be more complicated because there's going to be more competition because of the AI?
- [40:18]
B
No, I think it's going to be a division of between they're going to make more money. If they're up to date and they are up to technology, efficiencies, productivity, good financial analytics, then they make more money if they wanted the old fashioned way. No, they're going to get wiped out.
- [40:36]
A
I, I've had the same view where there's kind of like the princes and the paupers where, where you're going to have the people that are, that are using AI and they're really gonna, they're really gonna succeed and the ones that are not are just gonna. In 10 years they won't exist. In 5 years they may not exist, but in, certainly not in 10 years.
- [40:53]
B
And it's not even AI itself is efficiency being on top of the numbers, the financial numbers, you know, workflow processes and tracking everything. I, I had a, I had a customer at Lego Sub who's been with us for about seven years and he even did something I, I have a lot of guts about this stuff. I didn't want to give a guts. He had the office close to LA that he built up for past six years that had seven, nine bilingual PI case managers. And under each one of those there was a two virtual staff helping them handling about 500 PI cases. And he came in two weeks ago and says I'm shutting down the office, which everybody wishes they could have or buy it or take it over. Because who in LA finds 9 PI case managers experience bilingual? I mean like come on, you're in field, you know how that is. And I said, why are you doing that? He goes, I'm going to go all AI and virtual. So he added like 1416 experience virtual staff from Legal Soft on the PI and he reduced his monthly cost by 68,000amonth and he shut down the office. He's a happy man.
- [42:10]
A
That is wild. You've worked with a lot of firms. I've seen different numbers. I saw 1100 firms. I think it's probably more than that. I wonder what are some of those invisible ceilings that you see? Some firms where they get stuck at a certain revenue level and they just can't get above it is their own.
- [42:29]
B
Limitation that they made up in their mind. Like, you know, everybody comes and says, oh, PI over here is saturated. Okay, saturated. When one of the reason I went to the ABS program was because as a, you know, a UBE attorney in Arizona, you can practice in 39 states. You don't have to get motioned in or anything. You're licensed to practice in them. Okay? So when somebody comes and says, oh, California PI is saturated, I say, okay, fine, go hire yourself in UB attorney for 100k. There's 39 states. Go after them, right? Oh, wow. Well, then they start finding reasons why they shouldn't, you know. So is all the limitation is man made in their own head?
- [43:11]
A
I like that answer a lot. I think that that is spot on. I. I am very curious. What LLM do you like to use the most? Like Gemini Chat, GPT Grok. I'm very curious as to what someone like you would. Which one do you prefer the most?
- [43:26]
B
I try to get one and then become an expert on it and not try to move around too much because they all have their own advantage disadvantages. I've been on ChatGPT and I'm still not close to being great at it. So why would I change to something else and go start from scratch? This is again, it goes back to the AI problem. There's so many new thing comes in that doesn't give you opportunity to figure out what you already started with. Yeah. And it makes people keep jumping.
- [43:56]
A
All right, before we wrap things up, I could talk to you for hours, but if people want to reach out to you or they want to know more about legal soft or anything else that you're working on, what's the. What's the best way for them to reach out to you?
- [44:09]
B
The website which is legalsoft.com or the Law Practice AI and my email address, you can post it up is H. Kohan with a K. H K o h a n. @legalsoft.com I'm very accessible because I love this stuff. I can't get Enough. I work probably still 80 hours a week because I'm just like drove in with this stuff. So I'd be happy to talk to anybody. H K O H a n@legalsoft.com.
- [44:35]
A
All right, so I'm not with this question. I'm not advocating people replace their, their employees with AI because I, I think that right now is an advantage where you can use AI to, to help supplement what's going on in your firm. And you can actually shift your people, your humans, to more customer facing roles where they're, they're helping clients. So with that in mind, I do wonder if you were to look, look, just look at your standard firm. It could be an estate planning firm, an injury firm, a criminal defense firm. What role are you replacing right now with AI?
- [45:11]
B
Intake, Legal assistance, Document collections and met summaries. Document summaries.
- [45:19]
A
You and I are on the same page. I think there's, I'm not, I'm not yet ready with the intake. I'm just, I'm not super comfortable with it. I've seen some really good ones. I know that Gary Falkowitz, he's been working on one that's really good. I know you've got a really good one.
- [45:34]
B
It's tricky because it's very critical to the firm. I just spent $100,000 generating leads to be converted into the clients. I gotta depend on my intake to convert it. Otherwise I lost everything. So that's why we took it very seriously. And since we have a thousand plus legal intakers deployed, that is still part of our organization. We have the inside what it takes to do an intact intake for the legal field.
- [46:01]
A
I love it. Well, Hamid, we'll leave it there. I really appreciate your time doing this. It's been a lot of fun. I, I love learning more about the things you're doing and getting your perspectives on AI. I think you may have freaked a few people out, but that's just, that's the world we're in right now. But really, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.
- [46:18]
B
Absolutely. Reach out if you want to have some fun and creating some new stuff.
- [46:22]
A
I mean, I love it. Absolutely. And I'm sure there are plenty of people will. So make sure you reach out to Hamid and his team if you need anything. But Hamid, thank you so much.
- [46:29]
B
Thank you very much. Take care.
- [46:46]
C
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