The Future of Law Firms Won’t Be Built on Billable Hours

Summary

Maximum Lawyer Podcast

Episode: “The Future of Law Firms Won’t Be Built on Billable Hours”

Host: Tyson Mutrux
Guest: Matthew (Subscription model law firm owner, podcaster, legal tech entrepreneur)
Date: July 14, 2026

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Overview

In this engaging episode, Tyson Mutrux welcomes Matthew—a legal entrepreneur and outspoken advocate for abolishing the billable hour model. Their wide-ranging discussion dives into the shifting business models for law firms (with emphasis on subscription models), the changing legal tech landscape (including deep dives into AI tools), challenges facing big law and solo practitioners, gender equity in the legal profession, current and future uses for agentic workflows and legal AI, and a forward-looking discussion about business models, data, and competition in the legal space.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Challenging the Status Quo—Origins of Innovation

• Matthew’s entrepreneurial background was forged in family history and reinforced by theater, community, teachers, and mentors.
• The urge to challenge legal tradition (specifically, the billable hour) comes from both nature and nurture.
  • “Just the nature of being entrepreneurial is to challenge the status quo. You see the cracks in the matrix and you need to go and fix it or just break it.” (Matthew, 02:44)
• Storytelling—and hearing family stories of entrepreneurship—shaped Matthew’s mindset to think differently in his own legal practice. (04:46–05:50)

Beyond the Billable Hour: Reworking Incentives

• The billable hour is described as the main friction point in the legal profession, hampering innovation, equity, and lawyer wellbeing.
  • Burnout, substance issues, gender inequities, and technology adoption gaps are all linked to the perverse incentives of hourly billing. (06:01–07:28)
• Subscription models and alternative fee structures empower creativity, allow scaling, and better meet client needs:
  • “If you strip the lawyer of what ails them, you open up and free up their creativity to do more things.” (Matthew, 06:01)
• Removing the billable hour allows law firms to focus on outcomes, efficiency, and recurring revenue, benefiting firms and clients alike.

Big Law, Gender, and Equity

• Though more women are entering law school than ever, their presence in big law leadership remains minimal, partly due to structures that penalize efficiency and flexibility.
  • Matthew’s podcast guests—*“majority women and attorneys of color”—*reflect greater movement away from traditional firms toward entrepreneurship (10:28–12:12).
  • “They’re able to manage family stuff ... find faster ways to do things ... and yet they’re penalized for that because they’re not hitting their billable hour quotas. Well, of course they’re out of there.” (Matthew, 12:14)
• The episode highlights the need for more inclusive structures in legal business models.

AI & Legal Tech: Tools, Workflows, and Security

• Rapid Evolution: Both host and guest note how AI preferences and workflows change every six months.
  • Tyson: “I could probably ask you this every six months, and I know my answer would change.” (13:28)
• Favorite Tools (starting at 13:28):
  • Perplexity.ai: “If I had to pick one, Perplexity. But a close second right now is Whisper Flow.” (Matthew, 13:36)
  • Whisper Flow: Voice-to-OS application helping lawyers work across all platforms; boosts productivity, good for dictation, and gamifies usage (16:54).
  • Paxton: Legal-specific AI for document review and compliance.
  • Comet Browser: Integrates various LLMs and orchestrates multi-app workflows.
  • Google Workspace/Gemini: For document management, formatting, cloud search, and infographics (31:28).
  • Daily “holy trinity” varies depending on specific legal or tech context.
• Security and Compliance: Emphasis on enterprise versions with HIPAA, SoC2, ISO compliance; data privacy and law-specific compliance are musts for law firms (17:31, 21:58).

Notable Quotes

• “Lawyers are excellent talkers. It’s what we do professionally, whether we’re transactional or litigation...” (Matthew, 16:54)
• “The average is being raised... When we let these AI tools just make me a symphony. Analyze this contract...that’s AI Slop.” (Matthew, 30:16)
• “You are the conductors. We orchestrate all these tools to perform the symphony that we want.” (Matthew, 29:01)

AI Workflows—Orchestration, Not Replacement

• Agentic Workflows: Lawyers increasingly conduct, direct, and sequence AI-powered tasks rather than doing every low-level task themselves.
• Real World Example: Matthew gives a step-by-step on using Gemini and Paxton for contract review, running AI for formatting and review, then orchestrating changes via Comet Browser and Perplexity.
  • “I orchestrate all of that in about 5–10 minutes for any new agreement, no matter the size.” (Matthew, 81:14)
  • Timestamps: Detailed workflow breakdowns begin at 29:01, return at 76:31–83:01

Client Experience & Legal Business Models

• True innovation is rooted in aligning incentives and delivering value—rather than billing for time.
• Recurring/subscription revenue is both “predictable” and “scalable,” and aligns business incentives with client outcomes (51:49–52:47).
• Experiential Insights:
  • Providing “custom client Calendly links,” automating document updates, agentic work “chunks,” etc., all enhance the client experience (74:02–76:13).
  • “When you stop selling time, you start selling transformations ... Solos and Smalls are better suited to do that than anyone else.” (Matthew, 72:42)

Data, Competition, and the Future of Legal Tech

• Legal tech investment has soared, and practice management systems (Clio, etc.) have the advantage of controlling vast stores of legal data (42:07–46:29).
• However, the panel also notes privacy issues, concerns over data use by private equity/competitor firms, and the risk of protectionism by bar associations (45:42–48:52).
• Both see more competition as ultimately healthy and as a catalyst for overdue innovation:
  • “Bring on the competition. ... The legal industry needs more competition.” (Matthew, 47:00)

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Notable Quotes

• On the billable hour:
  “If you don’t use technology and you’re billing by the hour, you’re engaged in wasteful procedures that are against most rules of professional conduct, if not all.” (Matthew, 47:00)

• On AI & automation:
  “I’m doing very, very high level work and thinking about what I need the AI to do. ... If you verify in chunks and you do more human-on-the-loop...it doesn’t take me a lot of time to do work anymore.” (Matthew, 59:50)

• On law firm transformation:
  “We are the conductors, right? We don’t need to know how to play the violin. But we have to know how the violin works and how it resonates with the drums and other strings … When we don’t apply our own taste ... that’s AI slop.” (Matthew, 29:01)

• On business model evolution:
  “Now what they’re able to do is ... How do we make it take an hour and a half, an hour, 15 minutes? Automate it. Now how many more times can we do that for how many more clients?” (Matthew, 51:50)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------------|------------| | Matthew’s background/entrepreneurial drive | 01:47–05:50| | Status quo/law firm business models challenged | 06:01–07:28| | Gender equity and law firm ownership | 09:19–12:14| | Alternative fee models, impact of AI | 13:28–24:03| | Favorite/current legal AI tools | 13:28–24:03| | Detailed AI-powered workflow example | 76:31–83:01| | Subscription/recurring revenue business models | 51:49–52:47| | Data privacy and competition in legal tech | 41:06–48:52| | Orchestration, not replacement—lawyers as conductors | 29:01–31:28| | AI agentic workflow for contract review | 76:31–81:41| | The future of client experience and outcome-focused law | 72:10–76:13| | MSO/Private Equity/Decentralization in legal & the “anti-MSO”| 68:21–70:47|

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Memorable Moments

• On AI replacing legal work:
  “You think it’s also replacing higher level stuff? ... I don’t disagree. ... On some higher level stuff, too.” (22:29)
• On one medical + legal subscription parallels:
  “I could text my doctor whenever I want.” (25:00)
• On data and output as the future:
  “All this money’s flowing in, but ... these are coming in from capital allocators ... it’s a gamble.” (41:06)
• On lawyer wellbeing:
  “You can’t pay me enough money to not be involved in my daughter’s life.” (Matthew, 53:21)

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Final Notes

• Matthew’s company (Practi): Offers Shopify-like services for law firm subscription models, focusing on seamless onboarding, recurring subscription billing, and minimal upfront cost for small and solo firms (61:46–66:07).
• Connect & Learn More:
  • PractiPod.com (podcast network, launching soon) (86:19)
  • LawSubscribed.com: Matthew’s Substack/podcast
  • Matthew is most active on LinkedIn.

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This episode delivers a comprehensive look at the future of law firm business models, the rapid adoption of AI & automation, the changing face of legal tech, and real-world strategies for thriving in a client-centered, innovation-driven legal profession.

Transcript

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All right, so Matthew, you spent, I'd say most of your career really challenging the status quo. And I wonder where that comes from because, I mean, you, you've really attacked the billable hour, which I don't really want to get into, like, because we've talked about that before. Yeah. And you've. There's videos of you all over the Internet talking about why you don't like the billable hour. But I guess, where does that come from?

[Matthew]

Well, first of all, Tyson, thanks for having me here in person on your organic food podcast. I thought it was, you know, I was like, I thought organic food PODC podcast. But hey, okay, that's cool. No, thanks for having me. And, and it's, you know, I think it comes from, I don't know, like this whole nature versus nurture debate. And like, I've just got like entrepreneurship in my DNA. My, my father's mother was one of the first, like, working women doing real estate in Chicago way back in the day. And she was part of the conversion from apartments to condos in Chicago. And now, ironically enough, in the last 5ish years, they've been converting back. So sorry, Bobby, your work's being undone. And then my, my mother's father was like a door to door salesman, but also was always inventing things and he even got like a patent once. I mean, he, like. And neither of them became like super rich or ultra wealthy.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

So it's not like I'm like, I'm coming from that, but like just those examples where, you know, it's in my DNA. Both my, My parents were the first generation college students and I'm a first generation attorney. But just the nature of being entrepreneurial is to challenge the status quo. You know, you see the cracks in the matrix and you need to go and fix it or like just break it. Right. And so there's something just inherent in like who I am. And I think on the, on the nurture side that was just fostered in me through teachers, you know, my parents, mentors. And just when I saw the problems with the billable hour, I just had to attack it.

[Tyson]

Yeah. So your, your grandma, I think it's funny how you said your father's mother, your grandma. Yeah, yeah. What?

[Matthew]

I guess because on both sides, right, each side had an entrepreneur.

[Tyson]

Well, I'm wondering like, is that who you looked up to the most? Like that your grandma or was that.

[Matthew]

She's still living today. She's 93 years old and she's down the street. She's in the. What was formerly known as the John Hancock building.

[Tyson]

Holy hell. Like, good, good genes, man. That's fantastic.

[Matthew]

Good, good genes. And on my mother's side, her, her grandmother, my great grandmother lived to be 99 years old and. And my, My bubbies father lived to be 100 and he was a boxer.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Well, with AI, which we'll get to a little bit. We. Then you may live forever. Like you.

[Matthew]

You might with your genius longevity, escape velocity, baby.

[Tyson]

That is.

[Matthew]

I've got good mitochondrial DNA, that's for sure.

[Tyson]

That is fantastic. But do you. I guess, do you look at. Is that who you looked up to the most? I'm wondering like, was there something that she did that challenged the status quo that makes you want to challenge the status quo so much?

[Matthew]

No, no, not in particular. I think some of it too is they've always been. Especially that my father's side of the family has always been extra theatrical. My dad was actually even a theater major. He went into sales and actually good source of business for my firm is I'm involved in my local community theater program. I host and produce the podcast and help on the marketing side of things. And I do it just because I love it.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

And so why do people hire you? Because they know like, and trust you. And so turns out people who have Time for community theater, you know, have some resources to spend on attorneys as well. But like just being able to foster that creativity that comes from that side of the family I think allows your imagination to run wild. And I was always inventing things as a kid too, but I never like the type of entrepreneur that I am is I don't look at the way somebody else has done something and say I could do that too. It's, I just pursue my own path. So it's not like I'm like looking to her specifically, but we learn through stories. And I just always heard her stories growing up from her directly and also about her and about my grandfather on the other side. And I just think like hearing those stories and learning about how it's like it's in my family. And I don't think they could only come from inside the family. But for me, that, that was my experience. It just helped inspire me or start, you know, stoke the flames of a fire. That became me having to do something differently in my own way.

[Tyson]

All right, so you've done, you've gone away from the billable hour, you've done subscription model your way. Are there other things you can point to where like I'm doing the law is doing it wrong. I'm going over here and doing this.

[Matthew]

I mean it all comes back to the incentives of the business of law. And so one of the reasons I attack the billable hour is because if you stop making money based on how long something takes, which personal injury attorneys know, well, you know already, it just creates all the incentives to solve so many other problems of what's broken with this profession. Right. You've got substance abuse issues, you've got burnout, you've got more women attorneys going, women going to law school and becoming attorneys than we've ever had in history. And yet they're still not in leadership at big and mid sized firms. Why? So there's all these problems with the legal profession, lack of technology, adoption. We could talk about AI, but it really was way before AI. Right. Lawyers were not adopting technology. And yes, we're profession based on precedent and there's no precedent with new technology. But we also figured out that we could apply horse law to motor vehicles. And so we're also incredibly creative in other ways. So I think if you strip the lawyer of what ails them, you open up and free up their creativity to do more things. And so I saw the billable hour as the largest friction point from lawyers being able to go and do that. I'll pat ourselves on the back here. I think lawyers are some of the smartest people I know.

[Tyson]

Sure.

Well, we're very versatile. Like that's the great. Because of our law degree, we can be very versatile. I think that that is where like the benefit is. It's like if you're a doctor, your medical degree is pretty limiting, but when you have a legal degree, I mean, you can go anywhere with it, which is pretty amazing.

[Matthew]

Yeah, yeah. And we're just really good learners. I've been talking to my high school, their careers in law class and prior to that, their law club for 13 or 14 years. And I just did it last week again for, again the 13th or 14th time in a row. And when I used to go there and talk to them, I would explain how being a lawyer is kind of like being a professional student. You're reading and learning and talking to people and interviewing all the time and then you put that work together, usually in a written format, and then you go and present it to the class, to the jury, to the judge, to your clients at a board meeting, whatever. It was like being a professional student. I had to throw out that talk entirely though this year because how AI is radically changing the game. Because it used to be, oh, I could go and talk to them and even in 10 years from now, the way I practice law is relatively going to be similar to the way they will practice. The game has changed, but the being a professional student thing I think still resonates because we're just really, we foster that part of our brain and we create all these neural pathways about being able to learn more and at scale, I think, than maybe other industries.

[Tyson]

So there is, that's, that's a really important part. There's also a big mistake that lawyers make too is where they will become an over learner, where like they don't ever take action. And that's, that's one of the, that's the other part of it where like they just keep learning and learning and learning and then they don't take any action. And that is the, that's like the double edged sword of that.

[Matthew]

Right, right. So lawyers tend to fall into the visionary camp instead of the integrator.

[Tyson]

Yes, I would say I think it's probably true. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matthew]

We could play both roles though. Yeah, yeah.

[Tyson]

I do want to ask you, because you mentioned the. Because I don't, I don't really focus much on like big law at all. And you mentioned the thing about the lack of women in big law leadership. That's not how you put it, but I'm putting it. And what I have noticed, it does seem like there are more women opening their own law firms, which I think is great. I don't know what the percentages are. I did see a percentage. So we do these insight briefs on all of our guests. One of the guests for today, she had put in her. In some of her information about that only 3% of all law firms are owned by women. That's a stat I've got to look up because that's a shockingly low number if that's right. But it's got to be increasing with what I've seen. I know it's more anecdotal, but I do wonder what, when it comes, like the big law leadership, what do you think the issue is there? Because there are more women in law right now than there are men, I think. And so how is that possible?

[Matthew]

Yeah, some of it is. And so my podcast law subscribed because for those of you who also have podcasts, you always have to plug your podcast on 100%.

[Tyson]

Absolutely.

[Matthew]

Which you've been a guest on.

[Tyson]

Yes. And I. You. You actually helped me play you. You mentioned you were very nice about plugging the podcast, so.

[Matthew]

Oh, yeah.

[Tyson]

You plugged the conference too. Yeah. You spoke at. Of course.

[Matthew]

Of course. So. So. So on my podcast, I interview attorneys who have ditched the billable hour and are leveraging alternative fees. And just like tons of technology in the majority of attorneys I've interviewed are women and attorneys of color. They definitely outnumber the lawyers who look like us.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

On my podcast. And so at least from my own anecdotal experience, it's majority women and women attorneys of color and attorneys of color who are leaving other firms sometimes big law and starting their own practice. And it's because it's simply not built for them because it's built for attorneys that look like me and you and for women in particular. And gosh, like, I kind of want to stop talking because, like, you should be interviewing a woman about this. But go on my podcast and check it out. I also built a a resource for [e-mail] data, which is 244 today. 244 curated sources with over 100 of them are interviews I conducted on my podcast. And you could just ask that resource which is it redirects to a Google's Notebook LM that's shareable. You know how many women versus men attorneys have been on the podcast and it could. It should be able to tell you that answer. It's great to build second brains using AI and it's definitely the majority of them. So it's just like they. I have a daughter, so I'm biased here. I think, at least at the younger age, girls are definitely smarter than boys and we mature far slower than they do.

[Tyson]

I think there's a lot of science backing that up.

[Matthew]

I think so. And so here they are super creative, really intelligent, more mature, and they're able to manage, you know, family stuff, which we could debate whether or not that. That that's a fair pressure that society, our society puts on them and yet go and work their. Their big law job and find faster ways to do things and get better results. And yet they're penalized for that because they're not hitting their billable hour quotas. Well, of course they're out of there. And I've got dozens, if not like 50 plus women attorneys who I've interviewed who have said some version of that on my show.

[Tyson]

Yeah, we did a panel at Max Law Khan, I think 28, 2019. 2020. I guess it would have been 2019 because Covid, we had to cancel. 2000 and 20s. Or it was that or 2022. We're like. That was a big concern. We had a. I can't remember. I know that someone suggested it. Someone had messaged us, and she wanted a mom's panel. And so we did like a mom's panel, which was really interesting. It talked a lot about that stuff. I do want to shift gears because you mentioned AI a little bit. Let's. I. I think this is funny because I could probably ask you this every six months, and I know my answer would change. And I wonder what yours is like as of right now, as we sit here. What is your favorite AI tool?

[Matthew]

Oh, man, isn't that tough?

[Tyson]

Now?

[Matthew]

That is so, like, I can't pick one, right? It's like, you gotta pick one. I need my holy.

[Tyson]

You gotta pick one. You gotta pick one.

[Matthew]

So perplexity still wins for me. And. And perplexity. Oh, man, Perplexity is the greatest. Yeah. Yeah. If I had to pick one. Perplexity. But a close second right now is Whisper Flow.

[Tyson]

I've heard a lot of people talking about whisper Flow. I still have not used whisper Flow.

[Matthew]

So shout outs to Ernie the attorney. He also has his podcast, I think the 8020 principle. And Ernie tried to get me onto Whisper Flow and his whole community. He's got a community a little smaller than the association, but. But in A similar vein. And he's not even practicing anymore. But he talked about Whisper Flow. He even had the founder in. And I kicked myself for missing that conversation he had with him. Because now it's like Whisper Flow is blown up.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

And I don't think that CEO is coming down to a rinky dinky little. I mean, Ernie's community is great, but it's like, compared to like the audiences he's in front of now. But what I love about Whisper Flow is it lives on the operating system level and there's an app for mobile. And so whether I'm inside of Perplexity or I'm inside of a browser comment browser, which is Perplexity's browser, or Paxton AI, which is another, like, it's up there for me. For legal.

[Tyson]

Really for legal. So unless it improved. I was using it about a year and a half ago.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

And we dumped it. But I would love to hear, I hope, I hope it's better.

[Matthew]

Hey, hey, look, whatever other legal specific AI tool somebody's using, that's just the one that I like to use. And I orchestrate in an agentic workflow through Perplexity Enterprise Comic browser. It's AI Assistant and Paxton and Google Workspace to like orchestrate like all this agentic workflow stuff. So like I'm using Paxton as part of that workflow. But I could use Whisper Flow in everything. In my text apps, in whatever. So it is at the operating system level and it's context aware. So when I could, when I'm talking to older attorneys who are still like dictating into a dictaphone and having a human like secretary write that up, which is crazy. It's crazy, but it's still out there. I tell them of all the AI tools, you should be using Whisper Flow because just like a human listening in to dictations, Whisper Flow is context aware. And it also, you could program it so that it's a verbal version of textexpander, you press the button to talk to the Whisper Flow software on your computer and you say personal email. And it puts in your personal email, you say work email, you say tech startup or startup email is what I have for, for practice. Yeah, right. And, and you could have like the like default prompts that you're like buyer side analysis prompt. And then it puts out that long prompt that you have set up for buyer side analysis for a contract. Right. So you've got that version of it. But you could just mind dump. I mind dump into a Google Doc using Whisper Flow and It organizes all of that for me. I think Plodding Pin does some version of this too. But Plot doesn't live in all my apps where I could access it. Right. It's just a major time saver. I've gone from in October of last year thinking Whisper Flow wasn't going to be useful for me to in December signing up for the free version and starting to change my habits to go from typing to talking. Lawyers are excellent talkers. It's what we do professionally, whether we're transactional or litigation, because you're talking to your clients, you're negotiating deals. But as a transactional attorney, which is what I am now, I. Last month I was in the top 9% of whisper flow users.

[Tyson]

Oh, wow. So there's. They gamify it, then they gamify Fantastic.

[Matthew]

And they show you how many words you've dictated this month, this week. They have a running tally and they have a total number. Yeah, the gamification is awesome.

[Tyson]

Well, tell me this. So I have my laptop. Whenever I'm out and about. I've got my work desktop. It's like for the firm stuff. And then I've got a show desktop was for like more like the studio area. So I do things on all of those devices and I get my phone. Do I have to download it onto each of those devices to make it work? Yes.

[Matthew]

So interestingly, I mean, Whisper Flow is still a startup, right?

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

And by the way, for like, I'm paying for the enterprise version of all these things because it promises HIPAA SoC2 and ISO compliance zero data retention, which is not always great for like an AI tool that could like learn from your stuff.

[Tyson]

True.

[Matthew]

But it's still a game changer for me, even though I have all that stuff turned on for Whisper Flow and it's still like Perplexity Enterprise is $400 a year per seat. Whisper Flow is $288 a year per seat. And these are for the enterprise hyper secure versions that as law firm owners we have to worry about that kind of thing.

[Tyson]

So the enterprise version is only $400

[Matthew]

for Perplexity Enterprise for the whole year.

[Tyson]

Really?

Yeah, because I've got the. I've got Perplexity Max. Oh, so are you using way more.

[Matthew]

Are you using like the computer features you're overpaying?

[Tyson]

Yeah, I am overpaying for you overpay. Yeah. Because the I, I find. I kind of find computer junk. Like it's.

[Matthew]

I disagree.

[Tyson]

Oh, it's just. Oh, interesting. Okay, so how do you use it?

[Matthew]

I Use it inside of Comet browser mostly.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

So then that way when.

[Tyson]

I don't know. Browser too.

[Matthew]

Yeah. What? I don't know what to do something with computer. Like I've vibe coding now.

[Tyson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matthew]

Not for my firm, for Practi, but still.

[Tyson]

Sure. Yeah.

[Matthew]

Because my CTO is a former Google software developer.

[Tyson]

Very nice.

[Matthew]

Very nice. One of the reasons we're getting into things like Ilticon startup Hub is because he's got some amazing credentials and I've made a name for myself. But like, he's got phenomenal credentials and he's, he's local. He's in Chicago too. Shout out Jomari if you watch this.

[Tyson]

So.

[Matthew]

So now he's too busy building integrations with like Clio and 8am so I could vibe code, some other features that then he could take the code and use cursor and Claude code and like build it into the Practi plat.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

But I'm able to do this, but I don't know about how to do this API key and this other thing and Google Cloud or all this JSON, whatever language. So I just tell the AI assistant and comment browser, hey, look at what Perplexity Computer is saying and go and do that for me.

[Tyson]

Interesting.

[Matthew]

And then it just, like the AI is talking to itself and it goes and does the things that I don't

[Tyson]

know how to do.

So that's how I use Claude. So I use Claude to then talk to Bolt to build out things and it's. Which is so funny to watch it. Like they'll, they're like communicating back and forth and it's like. Or it'd be like in Claude, like, you're not doing this. Right. And Bolt like, oh, you're right. I'm so sorry. And it's so funny because they'll talk

[Matthew]

like humans and it's so inefficient.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

I think the AI should just be able to just like, you know, connect

[Tyson]

and like, just get it. Right. Right. No, you're right. Very inefficient.

[Matthew]

It's very inefficient. And the way that I do it, it actually clicks around on the screen and opens up different tabs and stuff because it's all happening inside of Comet browser. But, but it's like, it's like flavors of ice cream, right?

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Have you ever had Jenny's ice cream?

[Tyson]

Jenny's ice cream is amazing. Strawberry is the best.

[Matthew]

I. I like salt salty caramel, which I know is a little bit of like. Well, everybody likes that. Right.

[Tyson]

I Don't know. I'm not a huge like salty in my ice cream fan, but whatever.

[Matthew]

Well here's, here's the thing. So you've had it. So you know it's got the best ingredients.

[Tyson]

It's so good.

[Matthew]

It is more expensive, like twice as much as Ben and Jerry's.

[Tyson]

Worth it.

[Matthew]

Totally worth it. So just because there's multiple flavors of ice cream doesn't mean that like, that like they're all equal. Like some are actually better than others. I think Perplexity falls into that camp and it's reasonably priced, unlike, you know, Jenny.

[Tyson]

Oh, I agree. Yeah.

[Matthew]

But, but even then it's like, okay, so like. All right, well you don't like Jenny's. Well, there's other like high end ice cream out there. Right. So there are plenty of flavors of ice cream. So I don't think there's one AI tool that's the best tool. It's like, well, how do you work, Tyson? How do I work? I am able to create incredible images and video inside of Gemini and Veo and Nanobanana that just when I tried using ChatGPT, when I tried using these other image models and video models, it's just, I'm not getting the results.

[Tyson]

No.

[Matthew]

So it like I'm. This is why capitalism is good and we need competition.

[Tyson]

Yeah, I agree. Well, it's funny. ChatGPT not good for video. But I think, I do think ChatGPT is best at image creation and image editing. But, but I've had a different experience. That's what's interesting is like you, you could have 10 people and they could have 10 different products that they use that to edit a product or whatever it may be. So you mentioned the Holy Trinity though I'm curious what the third one is because you, you mentioned perplexity and then what were the other you mentioned? Okay, what are the other two officially? Is it Whisper Flow? Is that.

[Matthew]

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's because I'm using them all the time.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

Right. Perplexity and Whisper Flow are like my daily drivers for legal work. I have the Holy Trinity. I bring in Paxton because I want a legal specific AI.

[Tyson]

I'm so shocked that you.

[Matthew]

So I don't love. That's not perfect.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. And I hate how it wants to export everything as a word document because I'm in Google Workspace.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. But then outside of like legal specific work, Google Workspace and Gemini come in as the Holy Trinity.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

So I've got different holy trinities based on the different kinds of work. And my CTO of practi will tell you, you know, Claude and Cursor and I don't know if he's using Codex or Gemini version of code stuff. I don't know. That's so outside my wheelhouse. But he's got his own holy trinity of AI tools.

[Tyson]

I wonder why. Okay, so I have kind. It's interesting how the way I work has changed since 2022, since ChatGPT came out. Everything.

[Matthew]

It's different every six months like you said it is.

[Tyson]

But like, like right now I have replaced. I don't use Comet anymore. I don't use Atlas anymore. Which I loved both of them. I think that they're both actually really good. Yeah, I now just work in my regular Chrome browser and I use the CLAUDE extension, which I think is really good as well. I wonder why you don't use like the Claude extension.

[Matthew]

I'm using Claude's large language model dominantly inside of Perplexity's comment browser because that's the model that it uses more than any other model are the Opus models. Yeah, but I also don't really care. Like why do you hire an expert? So the expert could do the expert things.

[Tyson]

Sure.

[Matthew]

And I will not replace subject matter expertise. It will replace low level work from subject matter experts for sure.

[Tyson]

But I have a challenge to that.

[Matthew]

Okay, okay.

[Tyson]

That would. I would agreed with you a week ago, but I've changed.

[Matthew]

Oh, you think it's also replacing higher level stuff?

[Tyson]

I do, but we keep going.

[Matthew]

We don't disagree.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

Okay. That's why I said for sure, for sure. The lower level stuff.

[Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Matthew]

Right. And yes, on some higher level stuff too. But Perplexity. Why do I use Perplexity? Because it's. I'm just not. I'm not locked in to the Claude LLMs. Yeah, it's using those. It's using GPT 5.5. A lot more on the computer stuff and the more complicated things, it's finding 5.5 is better. It's using Gemini on things sometimes because I'm using the enterprise version. I don't think it's using the open source models really ever. Because there are security risks there.

[Tyson]

100%.

[Matthew]

Yeah. But for the Pro version, because of course I have. Like I have for my consulting company. I'm paying the 200 a year for Pro and then for my law firm, I have to be paying the 400 a year, you know, for the enterprise. Oh my gosh. It's like. It's like nothing. They're under charging, I hope for the amount of Arvind isn't watching what you

[Tyson]

get out of it.

[Max]

Right?

[Tyson]

Yeah, right. Way undercharging.

[Matthew]

So. So in the pro version I use for like, for my podcast and all that stuff, I'm sure they're using the open source models for certain tasks that I'm assigning to it.

[Tyson]

But Codex. Using Codex at all.

[Matthew]

I mean, so I'm again, when I'm used Perplexity Computer. I could check which models it's using for which particular things. I don't really care. Yeah, like that's why I'm using Perplexity. I don't want to build my own PC. That's why I'm a Mac guy.

[Tyson]

Right. That's why. Yeah, Max is up here. But so I'm going to ask you. So have you used the Amazon, the medical thing that they're like.

[Matthew]

It's like, oh, I'm a One Medical subscriber.

[Tyson]

Is that what it's called, One Medical?

[Matthew]

So. So One Medical was, was like a subscription based like membership program that Amazon didn't own. And then they, they purchased it and there's. In my town there happens to be. It's just like my, literally my low. My closest doctor that's local to me, like the closest doctor's office. So I was like, awesome. For nine bucks a month, paid annually, like, I'm in. And I could text my doctor whenever I want. So yes, they have integrated AI into this.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

And I have tried asking some questions and it's like, oh my gosh. I'm like giving up my data and privacy.

[Tyson]

Well, check that because there's no ask. Check this out. One of our employees, she was, she was asking me about it the other day and I'm like, I've heard, I've heard them advertising the hell out of it.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

And I've never used it. She's like, well, check this out. So she, she goes on for something for her son in, in a matter of minutes. Okay. A matter of minutes. I'm talking not. I'm not. Not like, not 30 minutes. I say, I'm talking like a few minutes. She had told all the symptoms a prescription was written and it was said it was available at the local pharmacy. And I'm like, how is that even possible? Yeah, there's got to be a human that looks at it somehow because you can't just give a prescription without a human, a doctor saying, yes, this is. Okay.

[Matthew]

So There are these AI native law firms now. I've actually interviewed one of the co founders, J.P. mohler of General Legal, which is a YC backed like MSO style structure, AI native law firm. And I, for those, for the audio only listeners, I used quotes when I said AI native. Yeah, finger quotes.

[Tyson]

So you didn't hold them up high enough.

[Matthew]

I didn't, I didn't. Yeah. Sorry. Camera.

[Tyson]

There we go. Here we go.

[Matthew]

Oh, there, there's, there's my camera. So, so like they do do human in the Loop review, but it goes so fast that it's hard to do that for every single contract. Right. So I have to imagine that at least with medical there's enough gap time between them actually getting the script that they've got some kind of automations or something set up or like the doctors are reviewing all of that stuff, you know, within 24 hours. Because then it's not like they're going to get the medication delivered within 24 hours.

[Tyson]

No, it was to be picked up, it was picked to pick up at the local pharmacy.

[Matthew]

Oh, within like a few hours.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Oh, wow.

[Tyson]

Yeah, that's what was talking about it. Because they could just. She was going to leave to go to get the, the, the medication.

[Matthew]

Hey, here's the good news, Tyson, and for all those personal injury attorneys out there is when self driving eliminates motor vehicle accidents, at least you're going to be able to go after it.

[Tyson]

Yeah, it's. Well, a core reporter that we use most of the time, like 90% of the time she's like, I cannot believe you bought a Tesla. I was like, like, if we can eliminate all injuries, fantastic. That's like I, my profession does. If insurance companies were honest, my profession wouldn't exist. That's the thing. And there are some, there are some honest adjusters and insurance companies, but the vast majority, they're not, they're trying to, to build people out of money. But that's another topic for. Yeah, you had made a comment about all these agentic workflows that you were working on and we won't be able to show them on the screen now. I, hopefully we will. Hold on. You give the tease.

[Matthew]

Oh yeah, yeah. So, so for those of you that are watching this, we're gonna have, I'm gonna have a special link in the show notes. But, but also we'll, we'll only. I don't know, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have to, I, I'm new at this, Tyson.

[Tyson]

We'll play some of that at the end. That way you have to stick around to the end of the episode. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matthew]

So stick around to the end of the episode, and maybe I'll send you a video up.

[Tyson]

There we go.

[Matthew]

Okay. So there we go. Stick around to the end of the episode. By the way. You're watching this. It's too late, but you'll probably do this next year. Tyson and the team at Maximum Lawyer are putting on this awesome YouTube. How to do YouTube.

[Tyson]

YouTube accelerator.

[Matthew]

Yeah, how to YouTube. I'm gonna call.

[Tyson]

How do you. I like it. We YouTube. Yes.

[Matthew]

Yeah, the YouTube accelerator. And, like. And so you should come out to the next one. If you're watching this, it's too late.

[Tyson]

I would tell you I love your city. Chicago's fantastic. We're having it this year. But this is. It's really cool. But your workflows. Yeah. Like, what are the cool ones you're working on right now that you're like this? And sometimes cool's boring. It. It. It is.

[Matthew]

But you know what? I. No, I think this is awesome. And. And now every time I start a cle, I. I run a version of this agentic workflow because I could show that while I'm teaching this cle, actual substantive legal work that I've orchestrated is happening right now. And I can't bill by the hour for this because I'm doing something else, and it's not like a human's working on it. I've orchestrated AI to work on it. And I think the word orchestrate is really important. This is what I was talking to these students about. When we think of ourselves as any kind of professional or business owner or just employee or anything, even, like, in my life, we are the conductors, right? We don't need to know how to play the. We don't need to actually be able to play the violin. But we have to know how the violin works and how it's played and how it resonates with the drums and the other strings, right? And, like, we begin to orchestrate all of these tools to perform the symphony that we want. And when we don't apply our own taste, our own creativity, or think about the listeners, the audience, and what they like and change the orchestration to that, that's AI Slop. When we let these AI tools just make me a symphony. Analyze this contract.

[Tyson]

Slop.

[Matthew]

Basic. The average is being raised, right?

[Tyson]

Well, the way I put it is people spend so much time when it comes to hiring and firing and learning people. You need to do the exact same thing with the AI all of the same things you've done, learning people and how to hire, how to fire all the ins and outs of that, you need to be able to do the exact same thing with the AI.

[Matthew]

Absolutely. But I think that context is really important for what I'm about to explain. So I will get a new master Services agreement.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

And I pulled one from the SEC for demo purposes. And then I, I open it up. I mean, I use a lot of tools for this. Right. So I like, I still like Adobe Pro. I think they're, you know, 20 bucks a month is good for what I'm getting for value for. From it. So I'll open up this PDF of this SEC msa, you know, for these two publicly traded companies, and I'll convert it to Word. And then I open up the Word document inside of Google Workspace and Google Docs, and then I convert it to a Google Doc and then I go into Gemini sidebar, which has gotten incredible just in the last three months. What you could do in Gemini and Google Docs is astounding. It used to say, I'll give you instructions on how to do this, and now it just does.

[Tyson]

It does it for you. Yeah.

[Matthew]

So I could say, hey, does anything in this document not make sense? There's one of my favorite props now inside of Gemini. And it will say it will give me all the things that's wrong with this document, including formatting.

[Tyson]

Have you given it rules or are you just generally asking?

[Matthew]

Well, because I'm using Whisper Flow for all this communication too, so I could just like, verbally like, blah, blah, blah. We're moving so fast. Right. Because I'm just talking to my machines.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

And then it finds all these weird formatting things that are invisible to the human eye, but visible because of the weird conversion process. So I'm like, great, fix all those. And then in like 10 seconds, all those formatting problems are fixed. Think about how much human time is spent on formatting. Crap.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Fixed in seconds inside of Google Docs with Gemini. Now I wonder, seconds.

[Tyson]

Why wouldn't you. And maybe you're doing this, and maybe you're just doing. As an example, why wouldn't you, like, upload that to your case management system and just have it automatically do that?

[Matthew]

Because Google Workspace does it all for me. I don't have a case management system and you don't do it.

[Tyson]

You have a.

[Matthew]

And with Google Studio. Have you come across Workplace Studio yet? Yeah, it's the Zapier killer, basically.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

You could create all these agentic flows and yes, of course, like, we love our, our, our LPs that we're integrating practically with you know, but also like man for $14 a month for Google Business Workspace Standard with Gemini baked in per seat.

[Tyson]

I can't believe you don't use system like how do you organize notes and

[Matthew]

files and all that Perplexity computer or personal computer now organizes all that stuff for me.

[Tyson]

If you want to go look at

[Matthew]

a matter like how it doesn't matter because you just tell it what you need and it will orchestrate it all for you.

[Tyson]

But okay, let's say that you need to.

[Matthew]

And I'm a transactional attorney too, so it's a little bit of a different ball game than a litigator because like,

[Tyson]

like sometimes I need to go like through the, the actual case notes on a file like just to get it up to speed on things.

[Matthew]

So I, I maintain a living Google Doc for every single client.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

And I also have that inside of Notebook LM so that I can create. And I prefer Notebook LM because all the stuff you can make from it. But even just Gemini inside of Google Docs now I could probably be like based off the last month of activity, generate a report for, for my client for all the work that I've done. Because in the transactional space and when you do subscription you want to do like these monthly updates to your clients. Right. And so Notebook lm, I still think you could like, you could make a video overview of it, which is awesome.

[Tyson]

Which is amazing.

[Matthew]

Yeah right. Like click of a button or here's an infographic of your last month with like all the stuff we've accomplished for your business, where we've, where we've come, where we've gone or even like of like the last year, you know, inclusive of the last month. Right. So I really like Notebook for that. But like yeah, I just keep a running tab. I could ask. Google Workspace has a cloud search feature which basically searches your whole ecosystem. So not just, it's like was this a Google chat conversation? You know, is this living in Google Drive or email? Where is this? Google Cloud search just searches everything for stuff like that.

[Tyson]

So are you with what you do?

Do you ever.

I'm assuming it's like draft things based off of template. Right.

[Matthew]

So for that I'm going to use a third party outsourced provider, like a 650.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

And look, full disclosure, I am talking my book a little bit. Some of these companies do sponsor law subscribe, but I was always using them before they became sponsors and I was already talking about them so they're like, hey, let's some sponsorship dollars, right? And if they're bad, I'm not going to stop using them and they'll stop sponsoring. Right. And like I said, I at my agreements with them I could say whatever I want. And I interview competitors all the time on my podcast. But But 650 I really like because for. And their pricing is different so I can't really say exactly what the pricing is because depending on your circumstance it will be different. They mostly sell to in house teams and HR departments now. But fractional GCs like myself could also use them as like back office for compliance and updating employee handbooks and employment docs and all this stuff. Like they have templates and they have workflows. I also use formula, which is formula with a W at the end. Very creative. The Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education. And it's like it's not great technology. Look, it's 30 bucks a month and I think it's like hot docs like integrated and I can't change the questions but I have some other like I've heard about hot dog sops. I know, I know it's really old school. That's why they're not charging a lot. But like I'm using like template databases that it's their job and I'm paying them so that they update the templates.

[Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Matthew]

Right. And then I could take the generated documents from those template third party providers that I'm subscribing to and I could use Paxton or Perplexity Enterprise realistically both to update and improve and check compliance and all that stuff.

[Tyson]

Do you ever use like Clio or anything like that back in the day?

[Matthew]

No, because of the lack of billing features that because it didn't bill the way I needed to bill and now I'm paying for all this extra stuff that I'm not using.

[Tyson]

Yeah. Have you ever used like a doc gen function on anything?

[Matthew]

Well, I used Gavel for a while, even back when it was document.

[Tyson]

Did you code it? Like code the documents and everything?

[Matthew]

Yeah, so. So back then, I mean now what they've done is really incredible because you could just upload a document using AI, it will like suggest all the automation so it like it's in like one or two hours, you've got a fully automated document that used to take one or two months.

[Tyson]

So that's the reason why I ask is because our CTO Kosh haven't built out something where like we used to have to code all of our documents, whether it's Filevine, whether it's CloudLex, whether it's TrialWorks, whether it was Clio and it's interesting now we just upload the document and the AI reads it and says okay this is where this would go. This is where like. And you can, you can always change it if you needed to but it's like there's no more. Like there's the need to code documents is, is gone, it's done.

[Matthew]

And I actually love standardized docs. I don't know if you've ever heard of this company. Bond terms. No B, O N T E R M S. Okay. Like a bonfire. Bond terms.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

Todd Smithline is one of the co founders and he actually had a subscription based law firm like well over a decade ago but he pivoted into standardized docs. There's also common paper 1 NDA which I think might have been acquired by Simple Docs or some. There's some acquisition there but there's this movement starting with non disclosure agreements to move towards standardized docs. What I love about bond terms is they don't just have NDAs, they have service level agreements, professional services agreements like all these open source docs. Now they make money when enterprise companies or growing companies at scale need to like auto do all of this stuff but they give away all their docs for free. And so when like my playbook and I've built this inside of a notebook and notebook lm this is one of the things I teach about how curation and taste are our superpowers as subject matter experts and lawyers. Is is now I could have this training ready to go and customize it with updated prompts and notebook LM of how to use bond terms for standardized documents that are open source and vetted by hundreds of lawyers from different stakeholders. And so when you get a non disclosure agreement. Look, I don't bill by the hour, right? So like let's get to deal close as fast as possible.

[Tyson]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Matthew]

And so when they you get this crazy NDA with all these nonstandard terms like we don't even look at it anymore. It's like here's bond terms, here's why we use bond terms. It's really stupid simple, it's mutual and it's not our paper. And since it's not our NDA that we're saying we're fighting over NDAs. No, it's an open source standardized NDA. And so it's not like it somehow favors us over you. It doesn't favor either party. That's the point.

[Tyson]

Do they usually. I mean, I wonder, like, the other side, do they fight that?

[Matthew]

No, they're like, whoa, this is amazing.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

That's usually, like, when I. When I'm done with a deal on the other side of a lawyer, and they're like, so you bill on subscription. Tell me more about that.

[Tyson]

Yeah. Like, the litigation side of me wants to say, like, no, I gotta win this. I gotta. I've gotta. I've gotta make sure this is more favorable to my client than your client. That's.

[Matthew]

That's what I love about being a transactional attorney. I litigated for eight years.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Like, we're just trying. Everybody's trying to close.

[Tyson]

Yeah. How long. How long did it take for the litigation side to wear off of you?

[Matthew]

I never really was that, like. Like I say, I only litigated for eight years.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. Like, I never became this antagonist.

[Tyson]

I mean, eight years, man. It. Like that. That's. That's a. I mean, it aged you. I guarantee it aged you. Well. Yeah. Well, sure.

[Matthew]

And the billing hours didn't help up.

[Tyson]

Yeah. For that, I've never had to bill, which is a blessing.

[Matthew]

Yeah. Yeah. Because even when you're being productive, like, it just drains the heck out of you, man. And, like, you know, like, you're just racking up the bill for your client. And even when I was an insurance defense attorney for five years, like, still, like, you're gonna have to fight over it with your client. Right.

[Tyson]

Like, the bills completely, like, I hear. I hear them talk about all the time, like, they're complaining to me about having to argue with their client about billing time, which I think is interesting.

[Matthew]

I. I know, it's wild.

[Tyson]

So.

[Matthew]

So. So I was the guy that they would bring in when two of the attorneys on a case were fighting with each other. I would come in, I would have to go to that hearing and, like, keep things cool.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

I just never was super antagonistic.

[Tyson]

I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. Yeah. Hard pivot. I do wonder.

[Matthew]

Organic food.

[Tyson]

Yes.

[Matthew]

Organic food.

[Tyson]

Yes. The. The. All the money flooding into Legal Tech. I have. I'm baffled by it over the last two years. I don't understand it. And I think if I were at the head of a legal tech company, I would be pretty scared. But I. It's. Money keeps flooding in. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Matthew]

Are you into, like. Like, the moonshots and a 16Z podcast at all?

[Tyson]

No.

[Matthew]

Peter Diamandis and Andreessen.

[Tyson]

I know. I like Andreessen and then Peter Dumand. Who it is. And I, I like Peter D. Mundus.

[Matthew]

Okay.

[Tyson]

So like these guys, I don't know the podcast.

[Matthew]

Sure, sure. So I, I, they put out so much content. I, I end up just having like Gemini summarized it for me. Yeah, yeah, but, but they are super optimistic about the future and that has definitely rubbed off on me a little bit.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

And that like, we are bringing about a world of abundance.

[Tyson]

I 1000% agree with that. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Matthew]

And so like, yeah, like all this money's flowing in, but like, you know, these are coming in from capital allocators that like, it's a gamble, like venture capital, less so private equity, but especially ventures. It's like, it's gambling. You don't bet money that you can't afford to lose. So there's part of it there. Right. And because of the power law, you know, if they make 100 of these investments and one of them hit it pays for, you know, way more than the 100 investments that they made. And that's the game that they're going after. And so I think the VCs are going to be fine, Tyson. I think they're going to be just fine. There's going to be some winners, there's going to be some losers. That's capitalism, baby.

[Tyson]

Yeah, right. But if you, let's say you were the head. I actually won't pick on this company. Let's say you're the head of a major like case management system. Like, wouldn't you be a little concerned?

[Matthew]

I'll talk about these companies. So, I mean, Jack Newton and what he's doing with Clio with the Velux acquisition is freaking genius.

[Tyson]

I thought that was a brilliant acquisition. Yeah, I do agree with that.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Because.

[Matthew]

Because now they've got the data from large language models. Okay, so history lesson here of, of me and, and AI. So in 2012, I was a law student still. I was a second year law student and I watched this TED Talk on the TED channel, which I was still watching instead of just the YouTube channel, I think, because there were no ads.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

And there's this talk about machine learning.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

You go back and find it from 2012. And I talked about it in medicine and I saw that and I was like, whoa, the data. It's all about the data.

[Tyson]

Totally is.

[Matthew]

And so I was thinking, how can we capture all of this court level data where now we can like train these machine learning models back then to like, better predict outcomes for like, what judges are going to decide for like just orders at the at the court, like entry court level of everything. Every jurisdiction calls it something different. Right. So, and then Trellis actually came out. Trellis is still, I think, killing it, but now Clio already has all this data because all of their lawyers are uploading all this data into it. And now they've got these, if not language models, like this architecture around the language models that they got from Vex. And they have some innovators, dilemmas type situations where they're not able to really throw out all their old tech and all their old code. But if they were to like just build from scratch and they're probably doing this right. You have all that data from all these law firms and it's, they're getting new data that's proprietary all the time.

[Tyson]

So this, can, this, this concerns me though. Okay, so you have like a company, like even up law. You ever heard, have you heard of them?

[Matthew]

Yeah, yeah, I talked to them back when they were like only like five employees.

[Tyson]

Yeah, they're, they're like at now 600 employees. Like, they're massive. Like, yeah, they, they wall the data off, which, so my firm, like, they're not, the, the company is not using your data and my data. They're allowing me to use my data. You're, they're allowing you to use your data, but you can't use my data? I can't use. And you're, the company's not using the

[Matthew]

data, so they might be able to check your terms of service and practice. I don't have it.

[Tyson]

I don't use it.

[Matthew]

Okay, well, I would check because they probably can anonymize data and use it in other ways to leverage.

[Tyson]

I would have to ask them. I, I, I've got a, a pretty close contact over there that can actually ask that.

[Matthew]

I want them to. Yeah, I want them to. And I want Clio too. And I want all these practice management platforms to start leveraging that data because legal stuff takes too effing long and able to manage the data better, we could get to Outcome faster.

[Tyson]

Let's say you're like a Litify though. Okay. Which I think Morgan and Morgan may have sold, or John Morgan may have sold Lidify. I don't know if he's telling us

[Matthew]

they just announced private equity coming into Morgan and Morgan. Have you seen this?

[Tyson]

I did not. Let's, let's, let's, let's come back to that because I do want to ask you about CMOs and all that. So when it comes to them, like, let's say that Morgan and Morgan still owned all of Litify. There's no way, as an injury attorney, I would ever use Litify, because I don't want them to. Like, they're. Are we a direct competitor? No. But they're also another injury firm, so in a way, we are a competitor. So I wouldn't want them to have a lot of data now with Clio. Now, Clio is not competing with me, so I could see Clio anonymizing it and benefiting all of us. I could see that. Even up law, I can see that as well. But if there's a law firm, which there's a lot, there's an. I mean, they're like filevine. I. I don't know if the injury firm that Ryan Anderson came from, if they've got any ownership stake in the file line, but I don't think I'd want them to have access to that data. So I do have a concern if there's. If there are firms that are using that data that other people don't have access to.

[Matthew]

I don't know, man. I just don't worry about stuff like that.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

Like, you just got to, like, why do people hire you? Because they know, like, and trust you and you've built a brand.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

Like, so I like. I like to. I like to analogize, like, our current age with, like. Like medieval times.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

So, like, the people, like, like, I

[Tyson]

want to hear this. Yeah.

[Matthew]

Yeah. Okay. So, like, the people, like, building the tools.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. Are like blacksmiths.

[Tyson]

Okay.

[Matthew]

And then you've got those who are out there using the tools or like the knights in shining armor. Right. So building my sword, my shield, my armor, my lance, all my. My weapons, I get to go out and use on the field. Right. The way I use a sword or lance is going to be different from the way you use it. And just because a blacksmith made the same lance for both of us doesn't mean what we could achieve with it is the same thing.

[Tyson]

Let's collapse this analogy here. Let's get the CMOs in.

[Matthew]

All right. Bring out the horses.

[Tyson]

Yes. Private equity comes in.

Right.

[Max]

Okay.

[Tyson]

Now, the blacksmiths are now the knights in shining armor because they're competing with everybody else. That's. That could be a problem. Here's the thing. I'm all for private equity, so I actually make it very clear. I'm actually all for private equity coming in. I think it will make us better. Do you have any strong opinions one way or the other?

[Matthew]

Yeah. I think the legal industry needs more competition.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

And so Bring on the competition. Right. Like, that's part of the reason why the billable hour has survived as long as it has. I think, like, economic forces at play right now make it simply untenable today. And legal ethics too, say. And don't get legal ethics advice on a podcast. And I'm not giving any. But my interpretation for me is if you don't use technology and you're billing by the hour, you're engaged in wasteful procedures that are against most rules of professional conduct, if not all. And so you have to use. There's the implicit rule of you must use technology to save time if you're billing by the hour. And lawyers are just not doing that. So, like, let's bring in some economic competition. Some competition and let the economic forces at play win. And then we're going to innovate. Lawyers are some of the smartest people I know to bring it back to that right, present company included. And like, we will innovate if we're forced to. But you also see lawyers in my state too. Illinois, like the Illinois State Bar association, has some folks over there who like, lobby and legislate to create, like, protectionism rules. And I just think that's the wrong play.

[Tyson]

Yeah, I have wondered for a while when the bars are going to start to, like, put. Try to put up bigger fences around. I don't think that that's the right move, but I think that that's definitely on its way.

[Matthew]

We will lose our monopoly power to regulate ourselves if we continue to do that.

[Tyson]

True.

[Matthew]

And I don't want to lose that power. But also the fact that we are essentially a monopoly and that you have to have a law license to practice law means that there's lack of competition and innovation. So, like, part of me is like, oh, yes, get rid of our monopoly power. And the other side is like, ah, can we just like, innovate from within so we don't lose that? Because as a trained attorney, I understand some of the ethical concerns of maintaining that power.

[Tyson]

So you and I were on a panel years ago.

[Matthew]

So when we Answering legal.

[Tyson]

Is that what it was? I think that's what it was, yeah.

[Matthew]

Law firm management or office management.

[Tyson]

And I took the position then and like, I'm still with us. I think if I'm as a business owner, I want the billable hour every day. That's what I want. However. However, if I'm a client, I want. I want a subscription model or I want a flat fee. And what in this gets. I'll make my point okay. My point is what we focus on too much as attorneys and law firms is what we want, as opposed to what the actual client wants. Like, true marketing is like, focusing on what the client wants, not what we necessarily want. And there has been for years, like, this whole idea that it's all about the attorney. Right. It's all about you, the attorney. I've seen it. You've probably seen this too. Like, there's a lot of attorneys that kind of full of themselves that, like, I really early on there was this guy, I heard him, like, yelling at a large, at a. A law clerk, like, that worked for the judge. It was a clerk for a judge. And like, I'm like, what is wrong with you? She probably makes $35,000 a year, and you're just screaming. And he felt like, just very entitled to do it. And it pissed me off. And I think the vast majority attorneys are not that way. There are a select few where, like, they just focus too much on. On them as opposed to, like, what the actual clients needs are. Which kind of gets to your point about, like, the ethics part of the billable hour and everything else. But I think if we really looked at what the clients want, like what's in their best interest, it's probably not the billable hour, if I. If I'm being honest.

[Matthew]

Yeah, it's definitely not. And I really don't think it's in the lawyer's interest either. Because your ability to scale becomes, I mean, if not infinite, like, damn near close. Right?

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Because there are only so many hours in a day. Right. So the most limited resource is our time. And just because I don't assign a dollar amount to my time doesn't mean I don't extremely value it and protect it as much as possible. I'm just not selling time because nobody wants to buy time. You can't literally buy time. You can't.

[Tyson]

True.

[Matthew]

If you could, you know, Musk would live forever.

[Tyson]

So you're saying that the billboard is more limiting on the law firm owner?

[Matthew]

Well, so it's not that it's not a profitable business model.

[Tyson]

Oh, absolutely.

[Matthew]

I mean, lawyers have become millionaires.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. From billing time. But it's limiting because there are only so many hours in a day that you could bill. Billers are expensive. Right. To hire a biller costs six figures. Right. And you're only getting a margin on that. What are clients actually going to pay? You're exhausting all these time, this time and resources into collecting those bills in arrears. Right. So that's all waste of time that you can't do productive things with. Meanwhile, if you know a client's willing to pay $1500 for three hours, for $500 an hour on a particular legal outcome, then it doesn't matter how long it takes. And now you could do it again and again and again and repeat it, repeat, repeat it. So tracking time as law firms transform their revenue model from hourly to subscription, which Prakti helps with practi AI in case folks didn't know that.

[Tyson]

Pretty AI.

[Matthew]

Yeah, like practice. Spelled like practice. Then. Now what they're able to do is, okay, that task took three hours. Clients willing to pay $1,500. How do we make it take an hour and a half, an hour, 15 minutes? Automate it now, how many more times can we do that for how many more clients?

[Tyson]

So it's kind of how mechanics do it. So my dad's a mechanic. And it's, it's interesting because they have, let's say, the job they bill based on the job. So let's say that the job is, is a five hour job. If they get it done in an hour, they still get paid for the five hours. Right. So it's, it is kind of a nice, nice thing. It's a similar way of doing it. It's just, it's flat fee but based on an hourly basis is kind of how, it's kind of how it works. I do think from a business understand point, it is almost, it is a very, it's close to perfect. I, I completely get your point. Because if you truly do dial things in, you could make more money. But.

[Matthew]

And get recurring revenue.

[Tyson]

Yes.

[Matthew]

Which is predictable.

[Tyson]

I do that. But I also do think that you. I see these big law firms, they. What was the big one that just like they were paying their partners $40 million as a bonus. Did you see this recently?

[Matthew]

I forget which one, but yeah.

[Tyson]

Oh, like Holy crap. Like 40 million as a bonus. Like what are they making on a regular?

[Matthew]

How many. And let's be real, like, like we talked about earlier. How many wives are they on? Because we're talking about white men here. Right?

[Tyson]

Right. Yeah.

[Matthew]

How many kids do they have from different marriages do they even. Kids?

[Tyson]

Probably not.

[Matthew]

You cannot pay me enough money to not be involved in my daughter's life.

[Tyson]

You and I are both, we've talked this before. Like we both drop our kids off at school. Like that's, that's, that's a really important part of, I think both of our lives. So I completely agree with that.

[Matthew]

Yeah, it's just not worth it, man. You can't pay me enough money. So. So, like. But, but the thing is too, is like how you pay your people, I think matters too. And I think paying them by the hour is nonsensical. And while I've always been a solo practitioner for my law firm and I, you know, I outsource things. Always project based, right? Never hourly. And as an independent consultant and podcaster, I do it all myself, I produce it all myself with practi. It's the first time I've worked with somebody in a long time. And now that I have a co founder and we're able to bounce ideas off of each other and work together, now, obviously we have equity in our company and I'm paying my co founder before I'm paying myself, actually, because he's a software developer and like big tech, he could go make crazy money somewhere else, right? So we'll pay him first. But as I think about who we're going to be hiring for PRACTI as we grow and scale, I'm thinking I don't want to pay anybody by the hour. I'm going to pay them a set amount. You know, they'll be quote unquote salaried for like tax purposes and such, but I'm going to give them super bonus structures. So it's like, here's. It requires real leadership and real management. Hourly billing and hourly paying for employees is just lazy, right? Especially those in the maximum lawyer community in the association. Like, you guys are leaders. You're not lazy. And so, okay, how many hours did it take? Okay, well, why does it take so many hours if you're paying the employee, right? And of course, that's why the clients have the same conversation with our charities. Well, now it's like, okay, here are your projects that you need to get done this every single week. Here are your stretch projects. Here are your super stretch projects. You have to hit every super stretch project to get your 1.5, you know, like 50% more of what I'm already paying you. And I will double your salary if you get these super stretch goals. But you have to get all of them done. But it requires real management. Well, AI actually makes this a heck of a lot easier. And I'm not talking about like monitoring all your keystrokes and stuff. I'm talking about measuring outcomes. KPIs. Okay? That's what matters. It's not how many hours did it take? Because now I'm creating the incentive for you to just get your Stuff done high quality still and as fast as possible because we're still measuring quantity and quality of output that keeps clients happy. Speed to deal time or to resolution, if you're a litigator. Right. And how long didn't it take? And client retention.

[Tyson]

How long didn't it take? I like that. Right.

[Matthew]

And client retention. Those are the four important KPIs that we're measuring now. And. But I have to come up with and think about what are the things that this person needs, that this employee needs to get done. AI will help with that.

[Tyson]

Yeah, I completely agree. And like, how much are you? I guess you are. I mean, you're still true solo. Is that how you are for the

[Matthew]

firm at this point? I mean, like, we didn't actually explain some of this orchestration that I'm doing with agentic workflows because we went off on a tangent.

[Tyson]

But.

[Matthew]

But like, I'm like, I. I will happily pay another $3,000 a year for an AI tool because I don't have to hire an employee and it could just take care of all that work for me.

[Tyson]

I wonder how it's. Since. I mean, you're a great example with this because you have done it before AI and you're doing it now with AI. And you were doing it true solo back then too, right?

[Matthew]

Yeah. I said when I launched my firm in March of 2022, which was pre chatgpt.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

I said I am a tech company that happens to be a solo practice law firm today. We call those AI native law firms.

[Tyson]

Yep. That's how we were. That's how we've always kind of positioned ourselves too. Because it does make sense to be that way. I do wonder how much, like, what does your work week look like now versus, let's say, you know, 10 years ago? Because I do wonder if you've. Are you working less now?

[Matthew]

No, I'm working way more.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Why way more? Well, there's so much more I could do. I also have three companies.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

But I will, like, since September, which is when we incorporated practi and we got into a pre accelerator program. Shout out to Founder University, Jason Calacanis's pre accelerator program. I basically stopped the marketing flywheel for my firm.

[Tyson]

Did you see Marc Andreessen talking about AI Vampires? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I've kind of caught myself working more. Like I've gotten up in the middle of the night just to check my agent to see, like, if it was doing what I was asking it to do. Like have you gone to that level?

[Matthew]

So no, because I still try to get eight hours.

[Tyson]

Not that crazy.

[Matthew]

Okay, yeah, I'm not that crazy because I'm also like the stage at which all my companies are right now doesn't necessarily require that. I think it may in the near future. But even then, Perplexity Enterprise is integrated in my whole workspace and my computer and you could run what they call tasks inside of enterprise or I think any Perplexity could do this. I have more access to do more of them because I'm paying more. Interestingly enough it's, it's under the notifications tab in Settings and so you could schedule it to run any kind of research, inquiry, deep research, regular search, create a document, all these things as for me as many times as I want or need and I can have it referenced back to an earlier one. And so by the time I sit down at my desk at like 8:30, 9:00 clock every, every day, it's already done most of the work for me, right. And I just have to like do human on the, I consider this more human on the loop because I like come in and then I have AI do more and then I come in and I, I like to say I have my, the AI do work for me in chunks instead of like doing all the work and then having to go in and do human in the loop like verification because it just takes way too long. But if you verify in chunks and you do more human on the loop, which is what Damien Real explained to me, what you call what I do otherwise I wouldn't know that that's what you call on the loop versus in the loop. By the time I'm doing that final verification and review and analysis, I've already done all these steps along the way that it doesn't take as much time. And just like my mushy meat brain like is able to handle that better than like have to review a 30 page, you know, AI and analyze and redline document versus being able to just do it in chunks. So it doesn't like I'm, it doesn't take me a lot of time to do work anymore. Like I'm doing very, very high level work and thinking about what I need the AI to do. And I'm not just letting these tasks that on every single morning just go. I'm like looking at the output and I'm thinking how could I improve that prompt to make that task better and how could I maybe create another task that looks at the previous task and creates that better like right now we are actually for. Part of our go to market startup lingo for, for Practi is we're building out a new podcast network. Really interesting, because podcasting, really important. Thank you to the podcast studio in Chicago here for doing this stuff in person.

[Max]

Right.

[Tyson]

They're great.

[Matthew]

I really think podcast, like we call it podcasting be like, what is that even mean? Like, I'm just creating content. Right?

[Tyson]

That's it. Yeah.

[Matthew]

I think creating content is one of the most important things you could do as any business, period. Hence the YouTube accelerator that you guys are teaching.

[Tyson]

The how to YouTube.

[Matthew]

The how to YouTube. But, but it's not just on YouTube. You got to be on Substack, you got to be on Beehive, you got to be on all the podcast apps. You have to be everywhere, you know, and on the meta platforms. Right. I mean YouTube is one of the number one places you could do it because it's video. It's the second largest search engine after Google. Right. But content's so, so important and also being able to segment the audience. Right. So we're not just launching one podcast for practi, we're launching a podcast network because for people who just want to hear from lawyers on how they've used PRACTI to save time and make more money, we're going to have that channel for those who want to just hear from experts that we bring on to teach about how they can do all the things that PRACTI doesn't actually help them with because we don't help with service delivery or getting clients or marketing. It turns out though, because even though I've turned off my marketing flywheel since I advertise my pricing online and I've done it for four years, I have AI, even Claude recommending my firm because putting your pricing, advertising your pricing, the AI likes that and it surfaces that to. To use to. To users of AI, potential clients of law firms with practi. Like that's one of our dominant things that we could help law firms with because we give you an E commerce store like experience for your law firm that says what your pricing is.

[Tyson]

Will you, will you go a little more detail about what practic is? Because I don't think we've really explained what it does.

[Matthew]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's hard because I know your audience is broad and I explain it in different ways, more nearer my, you know, the audience is. But it's the same way that Shopify let any business have an E commerce store, both brick and mortar or Just virtual online store. You could even do like drop shipping now with it. And they're focused on agenta commerce with AI agents buying stuff for people. We are basically building that for law firms where in a really frictionless, seamless way you can build out subscription packages for your firm and clients could click and subscribe and agree to your engagement terms right there in a seamless, frictionless way. And I love intake companies like lawbroker Shout out, they're doing great stuff there. And that's still necessary for certain practice areas to have a really good intake system. But you know what's going to really prevent people from like trying to sign up for your law firm fraudulently when they have to sign up and start paying a thousand dollars a month right away?

[Tyson]

That's true. Right.

[Matthew]

Like why do you need like all this extra intake when it's like, like they have to pay you before they even get access to you? And I have entry level pricing at 20amonth and even that keeps some fraudsters away.

[Tyson]

I have an off topic question.

[Matthew]

Okay.

[Tyson]

About that. Do you ever, with a subscription model, do you ever have like fraudulent charges like people use other people's credit cards, cards?

[Matthew]

No, but that's one of the reasons why we use, I use Stripe at my firm and Stripe is our first payment platform that we're using when we were going live with with Practi. And for those of you that don't know Stripe, ask Perplexity to tell you about Stripe. It's like the number one, it's like the best, most reliable payment process we

[Tyson]

use for Maximum Lawyer.

[Matthew]

The same thing. Yeah, Stripes. Phenomenal. And actually speaking of Maximum lawyer at Maxwell Con, last year I met an attorney at Max Lacon who was just about to try to leverage Shopify for his firm. Fractional GC for car dealers in I want to say Georgia was a Stephen Leftkoff. I think so.

[Tyson]

Yeah. It had been. It has with what you just said. He's in Atlanta, he does, he represents dealers. So it's got to be left golf.

[Matthew]

Yeah, it's good to have a niche, right?

[Tyson]

Yes, it really is.

[Matthew]

And so, but the problem with Shopify is it takes a percentage and so we can't do unethical fee splitting when you do subscription based stuff. And the reason it does that is there's actual real fees on the payment processing side for subscription based stuff. So the way we've architected and set up PRACTI to integrate with Stripe today, and as we look into the 8:00am integration, you know, Law Pay would be a natural second payment processor to try to work with. I also like Confido Legal as well. But like, we're just going to market with stripe. We just charge a flat monthly rate. Right. So our early bird pricing, if you want to get in today, is only $20 a month, and that's after you subscribe your second CL. And you better be making more than $20 a month after subscribing your second client. And later this year or maybe after we cross our first hundred users, we're approaching our 61st law firms on the platform. As of recording, we're going to up that to $100 a month. But even then, trying to keep it super reasonable, super affordable, it's not replacing your whole tech stack. It's just hopefully replacing your. Your billing and time tracking software. So at a hundred dollars a month, you better be making more than that every single month through PRACTI before we start charging.

[Tyson]

So that's pretty interesting. So the $20 a month only kicks in after they got in their second client.

[Matthew]

Yeah. So see, I'm a solo practice law firm owner, Tyson, and I get sold on legal tech all the time.

[Tyson]

You're thinking about your customer and.

[Matthew]

Yeah, and I've been in the shoes and I get pitched all the time. And now as a, as a startup CEO and co founder, I get pitched all the time on all other kinds of technology and stuff.

[Tyson]

But.

[Matthew]

But I'm always like, well, what's the roi? Like, how do I know? Like, why should I invest thousands of dollars before I know what I'm actually getting back?

[Tyson]

Man, I got a horror story. I won't mention the company.

[Matthew]

You've talked about it.

[Tyson]

I should. Okay.

[Matthew]

I listened to pod.

[Tyson]

I was flown out and I was blind and die and I paid 20 grand up front and I was so. Didn't get anything that they promised us. It never worked. I was just like, we're just gonna cut our ties.

[Matthew]

Yeah. And look like, I don't want to do that. Yeah, like I don't want to do that to me. I don't want to do that to our. Our customers, our. The law firm owners. And like, like I. With law subscribed, I'm talking to law firm owners all the time for the pod.

[Tyson]

I love the approach. Yeah, I really love the approach. That's a, It's a great pricing model because like people, it's. Now it's proof of concept. I've played around with it. Okay. I like it, I use it. And it's, it's making me money. So I'm going to give you money like that.

[Matthew]

That's a brilliant model and not charging too much so that you don't go Vibe code it yourself. Although I don't think you can Vibe code Practi because I'm pretty technical for being non technical and I couldn't vibe code it. I had to partner with a very technical co founder to be able to make it.

[Tyson]

We've. We went through, I mean, we. We're making some massive upgrades this week on our case management system that we built. It is, it is incredible. I mean, it's like. But the thing about Vibe coding is, is that you've got to have some basic technical knowledge. Plus probably a CTO like you do that deals with all the other like back end stuff. Plus you have to spend a significant amount of time on it.

[Matthew]

And you need a product person.

[Tyson]

Yes.

[Matthew]

You need a dedicated product person.

[Tyson]

We're not selling it. I don't need a product person. You do.

[Matthew]

No, but you need a product person if you're Vibe coding because you have to make the product better and make sure it works.

[Tyson]

Yep. I get what you mean there.

[Matthew]

Not necessarily like. Like if the CEO is also the product person of the firm, if the managing partner has to also be in the product, figuring it out how to make it better, how to fix bugs, how to do you mean they have

[Tyson]

to understand the product? Is that what you mean? Yeah.

[Matthew]

Okay.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

You have to have somebody focused that Vibe coding product or on all the Vibe coding projects going on in the firm or in the business.

[Tyson]

It was funny because there is. There are some case management systems out there or legal products in general.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Clearly an attorney has never touched it.

[Matthew]

Oh yeah.

[Tyson]

It was created by a tech person. You're like, this is not intuitive at all. This makes no sense. But there's also a lot of really good ones too.

[Matthew]

If I see made by lawyers for lawyers, I run far away. Which is why we do not advertise that at practi. And my technical co founder is amazing in terms of like coming up with. And we're very AI native. Yeah, I'm using AI a lot. Like when I was making our business cards, I like used a previous template business card to like make our business cards. And he's like, no, I like threw it into Claude and here's what it suggested. I'm like, wow, that's way better.

[Tyson]

Way better.

[Matthew]

Way better.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right.

[Tyson]

So let's. Okay. I want to shift gears.

I want to make sure we get

to the agentic workflows.

[Matthew]

Okay.

[Tyson]

Back to that yeah, Yeah. I want to get your thoughts on. Thoughts on cmos. Because I had a conversation.

[Matthew]

Wait, CMOS or msos?

[Tyson]

Msos. I'm so sorry. Msos. I always do that. I think I've done that like five different episodes. Msos. So cmo. Completely different. Ms. Yes.

[Matthew]

So Chief Marketing Officer.

[Tyson]

Yes, exactly. Msos thoughts on msos. I wonder what your thoughts on it. Yeah.

[Matthew]

And so that's a managed service organization for those who aren't sure what they mean. And like hospitals and medical providers are where this came in first. And it was lawyers who came up with this structure for private equity to come in and buy up all these medical providers.

[Tyson]

Which is interesting. That. And that was decades ago.

[Matthew]

Yeah. And this is why I'm a one medical subscriber now. Because my, my experience with my doctor became crap.

[Tyson]

Yeah, right. But, but MSOs are becoming like a big thing in the legal space now. Or, or here's the thing, people are talking about it as it's gonna become a big. I've not seen it become a big thing yet.

[Matthew]

I know one investor.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Who is investing in MSOs in the personal injury space and I basically tried to convince him to not do it. That's not to say that it can't work. It's that I think the long tail of that is not going to be. Is not going to work. And here's why, at least on the private equity side of things, because lawyers will out regulate it, which is bad, I think, for the reasons we talked about. But also it's going to create competition from lawyers from the ground up, the solos and the smalls that are going to be able to now have to compete and leverage technology. And we're actually building in practice in an inadvertent way to be the anti MSO sort of. What, what, what's like people talk about crypto. It's like a, it's like a d. Something.

[Tyson]

What is it decentralized?

[Matthew]

Yes, we're like the decentralized MSO because we're going to empower lawyers to have alternative revenue and now actually be able to adopt other technology and compete and get recurring revenue to be able to invest in more technology and better innovation and actually compete with these MSO structures.

[Tyson]

Well, have you ever heard of a company called bigtree Medical?

[Matthew]

No.

[Tyson]

Okay, so they're, they're in multiple states, but they're, they were found started in Columbia, Missouri. And it's interesting because it's like the reverse is what you're talking about. It's decentralized where like they go, it's a subscription model. Hey, hey, hey. And so you get like a. Like, when I walk in. So I. It's funny. We have health insurance through the firm, but I also have, like, this concierge type of a medical doctor. I can go into. I can get in tomorrow, by the way. I can't. I don't have to, like, wait eight months to get into the freaking doctor. Like, if I were to go through University of Missouri or some other system, it takes months sometimes.

[Matthew]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

But it is interesting. It's like. It's what you're talking about, where they were like, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna change this.

[Matthew]

I.

[Tyson]

When I walk in, they greet me by name. They, hey, can I get you a water or soda or something? They. They, can I get you a coffee? It's not like when you go into a normal medical clinic now, where it's like you sit in a freaking waiting area for an hour. I know I'm in in a minute or two. It's of. It's very well done, and it is. I do wonder if that's going to be what's happening in the medical space where everyone has revolted against the MSOs a little bit because they hate them. And now legal space. We're going to adopt this thing that is not. Doesn't have a good track record.

[Matthew]

Yeah. And the thing about it is, is we will be able to compete on brand. We'll be able to compete on experience.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

Because when you stop selling time, you start selling transformations. Right. When, like, the classic whole, like, you know, am I paying, like. Like a. Like a handyman to come and hang a painting? I'm not paying him for his time to come and hang the painting. I'm paying him for the hole in the wall. Except I'm not paying him for the hole in the wall. Right. I'm paying him for his expertise on where to hang the hole. But that's not actually what I'm paying for either. I'm paying for him to actually have the painting in place at the end of the day, the outcome. Oh, wait, no, that's not what I'm paying him for. What I'm paying him for is. Has nothing to do with him. It's because when that painting is there, it's going to make me feel something every single day. We are selling not just outcomes, but transformations. When you stop selling your time.

[Tyson]

I'm paying him because I don't want to do it. That's one.

[Matthew]

Well, that's too arbitrage. But with legal, you can't really do it by yourself. And so, like, for personal injury, it's not about the money money, it's about how do you feel when the case is over, even when you lose. Did they feel like you represented them well at trial? Right. It's all about that transformative experience. That's what we're selling. And when you stop selling time and you start selling transformations and value,

[Tyson]

it

[Matthew]

just changes the game. And Solos and Smalls are better suited to do that than anyone else.

[Tyson]

How do you get that with a subscription model, though? Because, like, I, for me, like, I've given that, like, and I'm not saying you give them, you give them things probably on a regular basis way more than we do. And maybe that's what it is. But, like, how do you get those outcomes? Because, like, we, we have a definitive outcome at the end of the case. One way or the other, we have a definitive outcome. So how do you deliver those experiences and, and keep them engaged where, like, they're always pleasantly surprised?

[Matthew]

Yeah. I mean, there is no magic solution. Just like there's not one AI tool to use and you just use this one AI tool, right?

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

I mean, context matters.

[Tyson]

I don't like this answer. Better answer.

[Matthew]

That's a fancy way of saying it depends. Tyson. So one of the things that I do, and because I've done, I did a lot of coaching on how to do subscription before I decided to launch practi because it could just scale better and actually help people instead of be like, here's a hundred tech tools. Go demo them. Right. And see which ones work for you. I found that lawyers want tastemakers to just tell them what actually works. And if this doesn't work for you, then here's like one or two other solutions. If you don't like calendly. Right. There are, Here are some other scheduling platforms. Right. But speaking of calendly, that's one of the ways I give this experience. Every single client gets a custom calendly link that I identically create using Comma browser. I don't actually have to go in there and click around and with Whisper Flow, I have a Create new calendly link prompt. Right.

[Tyson]

By the way, if you're using calendly, do what Matthew's talking about because don't give them your generic link. That's the biggest mistake you could ever do.

[Matthew]

And when they unsubscribe, you just turn off that link and they don't. They're not able to schedule calls again with you.

[Tyson]

I Bet they try.

[Matthew]

I don't know.

[Tyson]

I bet they drive but.

[Matthew]

But I don't actually know. But I do bet they try because I have boomerang clients and as soon as they resubscribe, sometimes at higher levels. Right. I just turn that link back on and we're work. We're going to be working on today practice is just shopify for law firms in the future. We also want to be Roku for. For your software as well. Right. And so we want, we want it to be so that when a client subscribes and unsubscribes and if you use Calendly will be our first partner for this for sure. I actually got to meet the CEO of Calendly. He scheduled a meeting with me using my calendar.

[Tyson]

That's awesome.

It's so cool.

That's pretty cool.

[Matthew]

Tope is amazing. I went out there for their annual on site for their company as one of their power user customers a couple of years ago. So we want it to be that it automatically creates that new calendar link and turns it on and turns it off when they subscribe and unsubscribe. So that's on the product roadmap. We're really focused on just making the best subscription recurring revenue, flat fee experience that you could have today. Like a checkout in a cart e commerce experience. But that is on the roadmap. But today I just tell Comic Browser to make these things for me. And if they subscribe at a higher level you have different. You could set up all these things inside a calendly where it's like these are my hours of availability for this type of link. And so I just make it from, you know, my $20 a month availability to my higher paying, you know, availability for my time. And then like that's just an amazing experience. Here's your Customs calendar link that has your name or your business name in it and you use it whenever you want. No limitations other than when I'm already when I make myself available. Right. And I had a client schedule, three of them in one day because we were working on a big deal. And that's fine. Totally fine. Yeah. I did have one client schedule like, like, like every single day of the week once. And I had to talk to him and I was like, we're not talking about anything. You're taking up another slot. This really isn't what it's for. That's why I love month to month subscriptions in the transactional space because I could fire a client.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

And we make it really easy to do that inside of practi.

[Tyson]

Let's talk about gentic workflows because I want to make sure we have time to do this because we are getting load on time. But you know what we promised at the end of the episode. So we did promise that.

[Max]

Okay.

[Matthew]

Okay.

[Tyson]

What is your, your highest ROI workflow that you've created and how did you build it?

[Matthew]

Oh, that's a really good. That's a great question, Tyson. And I didn't have to build it, I just orchestrated it. So the way that I think about AI and I've been meaning to, I've said this a few times now. This is the first time I've been recorded saying this though. And I'm going to create like I'm going to use Gemini Vo to create this is imagine you have like a vase, okay. And the vase is your law firm. Like a glass face. You could see through it. And you put different size rocks in that vase and different items and different things. And those are your people, that's your technology, that's your AI, that's all that stuff. And then it fills up to the top and it looks full, but there's all this empty space.

[Tyson]

It's like the rocks, the rocks in the bucket.

[Matthew]

Well, perplexity is sand and you pour sand in the vase and perplexity fills up all the gaps between the rocks. Right. Comet browser is a pitcher of water and then you pour water into the vase and it fills up all the space between the sand. Right. And so I don't really have to

[Tyson]

build what are the flowers? Is that the outcome? That are the output?

[Matthew]

It's just rocks. It's just rocks in here. It's just rocks. But the point is, whenever there's gaps between your tech and your people and whatever you've built at your firm, your stack, I find perplexity fills most of the gaps and Comet browser fills the rest. Because anything you could do in a browser, it can do.

[Tyson]

Yep.

[Matthew]

And so what I've done is I take and video to come after this. I'll make sure to record it and send it to Tyson to put at the end of this episode, if you're interested is inside of Comet browser. Let's say I get a new master services agreement. Let's say I have to fix all the formatting. Like I explained earlier in Gemini, I always convert it to a Google Doc because I like to be able to ask Gemini about things too. But I create a group tab and I have Paxton and the Google Doc of the doc open sometimes multiple Documents open.

[Tyson]

But I'm thinking, by the way, while you're doing this, I'm actually hoping we can have it right here as we're talking.

[Matthew]

Oh, so that is so cool.

[Tyson]

So if hopefully when I magically do this, it pops up.

[Matthew]

Okay. But yeah, you got it. And then, and then. That's awesome. What a vision. Talk about a visionary.

[Tyson]

Fantastic. Right here.

[Matthew]

That's great. AI is not going to come up with that. That's great. So, so, so then what I do is I, I upload the doc to Paxton and I have a detailed conversation and analysis with it. Right? Because you don't say, analyze this contract. You're going to get blah, slop. So I say, I am the attorney for buyer. Buyer's goals are X, Y and Z.

[Tyson]

And you're typing this yourself?

[Matthew]

No, I'm talking. We're using whisper flow.

[Tyson]

Oh, yeah. But like, it's coming from your brain.

[Matthew]

Yeah, it's coming from my brain using whisper flow. So I always say, who, who am I? Who is my client? What's the purpose of what we're analyzing this document for? And who is the ultimate audience at the end of the day? Am I sending the analysis to the other attorney? Am I sending it to my client to review with them? And I say all this to the tool and then it runs its first round of analysis and I. And sometimes it tries to export it as a word doc. Right away I'm like, no, pac, don't do that. No, no, no. And with Paxton, I also could turn on. I can't remember what they call the feature, but I could apply, like, the applicable law. So is it Delaware law? Is it Illinois law? Are there two states? Does federal law apply? So it's looking at the law that applies in addition to just running a legal analysis. One of the reasons I really love Paxton. So then I don't just take the first output. I analyze the output and I say, okay, for sections 1, 10 through 14, 20 and 25, right? Like, here are the sections that I think we need to focus on and care about. Now what I want you to do is I need you to look at those sections specifically and actually propose alternative language and share with me what that proposed language is based upon what I said in the original part of the conversation. Then it gives me that analysis, which I review again. I'm reviewing it in chunks. So I look at that and I say, great, Now I'm going to be. And I tell it, I'm going to be using an agentic workflow to redline the document. So I need you to put it and explain in very specific detail so the AI agent understands where to put in these red lines inside this document. And then it gives me that, you know, this is all done in like five minutes. It's very fast. The longest part is just it like incorporating the document like OCR ing and understanding and vectorizing the documents. And that only takes a couple of minutes. And then I tell Perplexity's AI assistant in the Comet browser that I have a group tab open and one tab is Paxton only. Look at the last part of the conversation there because it tells you what you need to do. And then inside of the Google Doc in this document I want you to go through and using the suggested edits feature, which is Google Docs version of redlines of track changes, put in all of the changes I have reached. I found the limits of what Perplexity is able to do with this, which is only up to 200 changes, which is still a massive amount. If I'm doing more than 200 changes,

[Tyson]

that's a massive amount.

[Matthew]

That's way too much. Right. And so I orchestrate all of that in about 5, 10 minutes for any new agreement, no matter the size. Although for shorter contracts it just takes. It goes way faster. And then I go and do something else. And I could run up to a dozen of these at a time because of the hardware that I'm working on. My Mac mini M4 Pro has never run so hot and it used to run so cold and I never heard it. And I actually start hear the fan kicking on sometimes times.

[Tyson]

I've got a Mac studio. I bought a Mac studio for this purpose because I. Well I was going to run some the show on it too, but also because you can run a bunch of AI stuff like you got to have something with some meat on it because otherwise it's not going to. It's going to heat up.

[Matthew]

And here's the thing, it could take it 30 minutes to an hour to make all the changes.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Because it's actually clicking around on the screen and like making those changes. Right.

[Tyson]

That's what's cool about any of the using any of the agents is you can just set these 10 things and just go do something else. Which is really cool.

[Matthew]

Yeah. The longest thing I've ever done and this was Vibe coding was 3 hours hours it took and I had to come in and check. And what I love about the Comet browser AI assistant is it takes screenshots and you could look at the full audit log because we have to verify as attorneys. Yeah, you have to verify as anything if you want high quality work product, regardless of if you're a lawyer or whatever. Subject matter expert. Oh, and by the way, if you're not a lawyer and you're doing this and you're an expert in a case, all of this is probably discoverable.

[Tyson]

Oh yes, there's the case law coming out about that too. And like defendants or partying in a lawsuit, like using Chad GPT, all that's

[Matthew]

discoverable too because I still do a lot of public speaking and training and stuff and I'm like, in every single production you request, you need to ask for all of the AI chat logs, period.

[Tyson]

I completely agree. Yeah. And you also need to be advising your, your clients to not use Chad

[Matthew]

GPT for things that you want preserved by attorney client privilege.

[Tyson]

100%.

[Matthew]

Yeah. There's a case called Crafton. Crafton with a K. It was out of Delaware. Every lawyer needs to read this case. As soon as it came out, I created a memoir just right inside of Perplexity Enterprise to send all my clients that's like, if you don't want this to be discoverable in any potential future litigation, you have me use my legal specific HIPAA Sock 2 ISO compliant AI.

[Tyson]

Great idea. That's fantastic.

[Matthew]

Subscription, baby.

[Tyson]

Are you on X or Twitter?

[Matthew]

I'm pretty much just on LinkedIn.

[Tyson]

Okay. Because Rob Freud, do you know Rob Freund? So he, he posts about like all the different kind of. I guarantee he passed. He posted about that case. Like it's usually about some AI, some issue where the attorney has put a fake case into a motion or something. But yeah, he talks about things like that, which is, he's, he's pretty on top of things like that, which is kind of nice. He's. If you ever get on X, he's a good person to follow when it comes to keeping, keeping up on those things.

[Matthew]

I have like 20 or 30x handles. Yeah, I just don't go on there.

[Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. Like, I, I don't. I can't go on LinkedIn because of the spam. The spam is so bad.

[Matthew]

I don't know the algorithm. The algorithm has gotten really good. Basically my whole feed is all about the business law now.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

And it's great.

[Tyson]

Good.

[Matthew]

I actually like, the algorithm has figured me out on LinkedIn and I do not get crap on there.

[Tyson]

I keep saying I need to spend more time on it, but I just.

[Matthew]

It's how you engage. Right. So like all of the posts that I will comment on Because I do way more of that reply guy strategy than I do of posting.

[Tyson]

Like when we went live one. On your. On your podcast. Like you. Yeah, LinkedIn. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, about that.

[Matthew]

That. That is the. My only post these days are because I did some kind of collaboration or I'm posting about. I'm going live on LinkedIn.

[Tyson]

Do you. Are all of your episodes live on

[Matthew]

LinkedIn with the exception of some where they need like, like approval from their PR department?

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. Like when I interviewed Teen Joe, who is the CEO of Zora, a publicly traded company, and he wrote the book, subscribed, and coined the term the subscription economy.

[Tyson]

Right.

[Matthew]

That was pre.

[Tyson]

Recorded. Yeah.

[Matthew]

Right. So like certain things are prerecorded. I'll interview reporters sometimes because they're covering this and they need to clear it with like their team. So that's prerecorded and I use descript's rooms for that. And it's really great. It's like Riverside, but it's their version of it. But I just go live on LinkedIn because then, like, we don't have to produce it that much. I run it through descript, I remove all the ums and ahs, but now there's like a toggle that you could say, avoid harsh cuts. And then I chop off the beginning and the end. I attach my intros and outros and if there's any ads, like mid roll ads that I do. And then like five minutes after the episode's over, the thing's produced.

[Tyson]

Nice, nice.

[Matthew]

I'm produced through, like we're recording now and I don't know, should we reveal when we're recording?

[Tyson]

All right.

[Matthew]

We're in June right now.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[Matthew]

Like, I am produced through the end of October for my podcast for a weekly pod. And I always have special episodes in between anyway.

[Tyson]

Very nice. Yeah, we don't. We go a little bit close. We go about five to six weeks out. It's. We go. Part of. It's because we do the in persons too.

[Matthew]

Sure.

[Tyson]

So. But these are great. Yeah, well, there's. It's so nice. Just be able to kind of like see someone and talk to them and touch skin. You know, we, you know, back to the earlier conversation. But no, it's great. Promote the podcast. We talked about Practi. Practi. AI. What else do you want to promote? Talk about the podcast and. Yeah.

[Matthew]

So, gosh. So. So this is like six weeks out from now, approximately.

[Tyson]

Probably by six. Yeah.

[Matthew]

All right, so. So practipod.com will be the new podcast network.

[Tyson]

Very nice.

[Matthew]

Okay, yeah, that's the new podcast network. Probably Media Practi will redirect as well. But. But law subscribe.com I use substack for all of my podcasting to backend that. Also on YouTube, it's all these. These names as well. Legal AI Live is live every month on LinkedIn and then legal AI live.com to catch past episodes. That's a live panel. That's great. And, yeah, I. I mean, you know, follow me on LinkedIn. You know, ask your favorite AI tool to tell you about the subscription attorney.

[Tyson]

Sweet. Nice. Love it, dude. Hey, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate it.

[Matthew]

It was great, man. Thanks for having me.

[Max]

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