Jay Ruane  0:07  

Hello, hello. It’s Happy New Year from the law firm blueprint, but I want you to do one thing for me, and that’s give me a five star review. Ready to go? Seth, I’m ready.

 

Seth Price  0:16  

I’m ready do the music. Larry David would be displeased. Is it too long after New Year’s to be saying Happy New Year’s

 

Jay Ruane  0:25  

Absolutely not. I’ll say happy new year in July. Larry, I haven’t seen you.

 

Seth Price  0:33  

We gotta find it. Tim, Please play the clip of Larry complaining about happy new year being abused by being done too far after New Year’s.

 

Jay Ruane  0:41  

But I think in the first 15 days of January, you are way safe. And folks, we are here with the law firm blueprint for another season starting. I think this is like our seventh season now. I think it may be eighth. Oh, my Lord. Okay, we got at some point, we got to, we got to land this plane of this podcast, you know, because it’s been going on, but we still have stuff to talk about. And one of the things I want to talk about this, well, let’s go back a minute. Let’s talk about how y’all ended the year. How is Price Benowitz set up for another wonderful year. What are you thinking about? Because I’m going to drop a truth bomb on you. I don’t think you’re ready for it.

 

Seth Price  1:17  

Oh, wow. Well, look, Price Benowitz, you know, we had a landmark year, and that, for the first time ever, the personal injury department tied the rest of the firm. It’s been a chase all these years, with 25 criminal lawyers, and for the first time ever, we are now, you know, at the point where. But part of the reason it tied was that I feel like the non PIs, but we spent so much time building up the PI department that we took our eyes slightly off the ball for the criminal and family, or we didn’t build it out as much as we could have we, you know, if you if growth was a thing, and we had some retraction with a couple of spin outs. And so 2026 not do we want to lose any momentum for personal injury, but we have look on the fee for service side. We just had a few selling units, and you’re back in business. So really excited for for 2026

 

Jay Ruane  2:13  

Well, that’s fantastic. I sat down with my leadership team over the last week. I’ve sat down with my marketing team over the last week, and we are. We’re not changing much in terms of digital marketing. We are. We have capped what we’ve spent. We are not spending another dime on digital marketing ever again. So whatever we’ve spent up to now, that will be our baseline, but that will also be our max. We are going 100% analog for the rest of the life of this firm. We are taking what we would so we may have upped our 10th our digital marketing budget, 10% every year, 15% some years, to try to capture more market share. And I said, Prashad, get rid of it. We’re going to take whatever we would have spent on that, and we’re driving it hard into analog market. What is analog to you? What are you doing analog? So it’s giving speeches, taking people out to lunch, giving away tickets, reconnecting with people, all the stuff, going human to human, being more visible in our community, supporting charities, supporting Little League teams, and actually connecting person to person, rather than relying on digital marketing for our our revenue. Now we’re still going to have, you know, 50% of our business come by way of digital marketing, but I suspect in years to come, you know, our spend on digital is going to be less and less valuable. You know, a cost of 250 for a click will be 300 I can buy less now because I’m not adding more money to that bucket.

 

Seth Price  3:51  

I think it’s utter nonsense. No, you’re wrong.

 

Jay Ruane  3:55  

You’re wrong. People hire lawyers, because I’ll tell you right now, referrals are easier to convert. I can compete. If I were in pi, I could compete with the Morgan and Morgan’s in my local area by knowing better.

 

Seth Price  4:08  

Great, great, great, great in criminal defense, in DUI where you’re the king to me, there’s no like it protected space. Nobody wants to talk about DUIs. They mean again, will you get referred like, I applaud you, being in the community, awesome, giving speeches. Awesome. Nothing bad. But if you actually want to scale, if you want to grow, I to me, that is not going to get you to the numbers you want, meaningfully and that, I think it’s a risk factor for you. Now, look, it’s not gonna happen. Year one, you’ll be fine. But I if this was a movie, we looked at this like the number. And yes, everything you said is true. Referrals convert better. They’re awesome. You should do them. And maybe it means going back to putting Jay at a booth, at the criminal cop, at the at the COP. Yes, all of that’s there, but to me, it’s not an either or, because they work in concert. Stuff we’re doing, like price benefits, we put a TV on. Does that mean that digital stops? No, it’s just the opposite. You can’t do TV without digital, because some people remember your brand, but a lot of people see an ad in the back of their mind, and then they they go and they search, and that that helps your search. So, you know, we think a lot of ourselves, but I think that the stuff you’re doing with speeches, well, some of it will be direct referral. We think a lot of ourselves. You’re at your booth. They remember some wacky guy in a booth at the at a bar conference, and when they search, oh, that’s when I know him. And so to me, I think it goes in concert with but in criminals specifically understand there’s risk factors. And I’m not saying you want to be paying the Pay Per Click stuff, but you’re playing the game. You get the reviews, you’re opening the offices, you’re adding content reasonably. You know, you’re making sure you’re staying with the AI trends to make sure you’re an AI search. But why would you it’s built you You’ve done well, why would you, you know, bastardize it?

 

Jay Ruane  6:01  

Because I don’t think I’m spending enough time or attention on offline marketing, and I think offline marketing is going to convert better. It’s going to it’s going to create a moat for me in that everybody’s going to know my name in the legal community in my state if they don’t know me already, and I’m going to work on connecting with the people who can send me business to

 

Seth Price  6:26  

do you have a person on staff? Is there a dedicated person for your relationship marketing?

 

Jay Ruane  6:32  

There is. Now we just promoted somebody to that role, and the first thing I gave her to do was to read unreasonable hospitality. She’s gone through all of the things that we’ve sent out for years. You know, baked by Melissa cupcakes, or Georgetown cupcakes or Peter Luger steaks. She’s got a list of

 

Seth Price  6:51  

how many people have referred you, more than one case over the years, hundreds. You have the list, I have the list. Okay, so to me, it’s over 200 I’m gonna pivot for a second, because what you’re saying, Look, I love the salaciousness of not doing digital. That’ll last

 

Jay Ruane  7:10  

for I’m not doing digital set. I’m not spending more money on digital. I’ll do the digital that I have understood. And I have a writer on staff, so I’m not I’m not firing her.

 

Seth Price  7:20  

I get it, but like, budgets and look, and also paid doesn’t work that well. I get it like that. You know, if the LSAS get more expensive, you can’t challenge them like the ROI is less good. I get it that possible. Look, you could, you could pull that out. But to say you don’t want to spend

 

Jay Ruane  7:38  

any money, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna pull a $50,000 a month spend on LSAS when it’s generating

 

Seth Price  7:45  

and as Jay would do, if it could spend 100 you do it right, if you monetizable, right?

 

Jay Ruane  7:50  

I can’t spend all the LSA money that I have in the thing right now, correct?

 

Seth Price  7:54  

So, and it’s working. God forbid LSAS get too expensive, you’d be pulling all that money back. There are times when your spend drops because, but let’s, let’s go back to this. Because I think that, look, a lot of, lot of the sort of these tribes talk about, you know, the gas calls to give a shit, call, all that works. And you look, you have a brand, you’ve built it over the years. You any listserv, you say, a DUI, Connecticut, 100 people say, call J So you’ve done, you’ve done that. You know, I think the only liability average, you never expanded beyond Connecticut. Frankly, I mean, you still could, but meaning, you know, meaning you have opportunity there. You’ve talked about it, yeah,

 

Jay Ruane  8:29  

but I guess I’m lazy or I don’t have those aspirations. I don’t want to necessarily like, I like my life. I don’t want to, I don’t want to buy a practice in Massachusetts and have to get involved

 

Seth Price  8:41  

in buying a practice. But would you put an office in Massachusetts, get a lawyer? I mean, all these things are possible, but like, what I love here is you’re sort of saying to me, I’m doubling down, getting rid of the part about like, you’re not going to spend another dime ever. You’re not gonna spend another dime unless you do, unless it makes sense. I’m not doing it. You’re a rational player. You’re telling me that if I if you saw that $10,000 more than your current budget would bring you a 6x return for that $10,000 would you do it or not do it? Of course, you do it, right? So you know the But that said, I think what you’re looking at is something I always dream about, which is when you have a B to B market, certain extent, BluShark has it, but it’s even more so like, outside general councils get this, and they always look at those, those guys come to me and say, I want to do SEO. Like, No, you’re not doing SEO right. I’m like, the worst day over. Like, no, okay, you have 100 potential people in your town that might need outside general council services. Make a list of them. Those people are a, on your call list. B, you have season tickets to something, as you do with your concerts, you’re gonna have a box somewhere. You’re gonna have, like, whether there’s a country club or an eating club, if you’re in a city, you’re gonna do and you’re gonna rotate through and make sure each of those people gets it and sees it. I get it, but I have a struggle right now, which is, I join. You know, there are all these different networking groups out there, and. There’s one that’s quite nice. I’ve been friendly with it for seven years. I finally jumped in. But they have, you know, they sort of get on me because I don’t go to every one of their general meetings, because their general meetings aren’t just lawyers. They have lawyers, they have account they have real estate agents, they have all sorts of, you know, from a lawyer point of view, hamburger help. Could those people refer you a case, maybe, but it’s really the legal community that you’re looking for primarily, and that these many of the people in their financial advisors, they’re connectors. It’s not bad. But I could also join a country club and just talk to the people in the you know, it’s not special. So, you know, I think it’s a grass is always greener, because I’ve actually been a little bit dejected on the relationship marketing. Now, what you’re doing is different because it’s super targeted. You’re going after the people that have done right by you

 

Jay Ruane  10:47  

before, right? And I want them to do right by me again. I mean, I have this list of my, you know, the top people that have sent me word, and I’m gonna make sure that I’m massaging that understood.

 

Seth Price  10:57  

And the question is, what can you do, because, hypothetically, right? Does this, because it’s always the question is, like, how much of this is coffees yourself, and how much of this is, if it’s a list of 100 people, 200 people, I

 

Jay Ruane  11:13  

think it’s like 173 of more than one referral over the last five years, it was in the 170

 

Seth Price  11:19  

Yeah, let’s add a few extra for good measure that you know. Because you also want to look at, were they referrals and people that send you, anybody who calls them? Let’s, let’s also segment that out, right? Because that might bring your number down a little bit. There are referrals, but is it a referral? Right? We got to keep it real. I have people like on med now, I literally try to educate the referrers, saying, hey, if there’s not permanency or death. It’s not a viable case. And you know, you’re again, I’m happy they’re thinking of me, but it’s nonsense, and like you need to sort of, but for you, there’s generally an arrest, right? It’s not, it’s not something, you know, what you don’t want, because you have a lot of people that think of you for all legal things, good, but the contractor ripped me off. What do I do? You get a lot of that positive but time suck. Still want it. So for here, I think what’s genius is, if you say hypothetically, it’s a 200 person list, you call the 175 to 140 you add 60, and if people that sent you one, but you think could have more. Now the question is, how much of this has to be? J Ruane, like if you want to go meet people, God bless if you like them. But how much of this if it’s really okay? And I think, I think, to his, to his credit, and Craig golden farm does a nice job of this. If you have, he has, I don’t know, 810, 12 touch points a year for his referral sources. And if you’re able to put stuff together, and you’re able to put a combination of a bait by Melissa at holiday time. We actually go after holidays, because there’s so much before nobody remembers what they got. And if you’re able to have some sort of newsletter esque something, and you’re able to have whatever it is, invites to the box, do you still do your box? Oh, yeah, yeah. So you got your box. Look every time you have the box, you could almost send out 40 invites.

 

Jay Ruane  13:03  

No, you’re never knowing that 30 people can’t show, right?

 

Seth Price  13:08  

And so, and like, you know, if it’s long as it’s not like a, you know, YouTube

 

Jay Ruane  13:14  

fighters, but see the Foo Fighters came, and I was able to get another dozen tickets. Because if you

 

Seth Price  13:19  

put that out there. I always say, God, for good people come. You buy the tickets. If all 200 people on your list wanted to come, you’d buy 400 tickets. So it’s like, it’s really, if you use that and really saturate list, great. But I also think you’ve got to really check and work the ROI, not that you won’t make money, but if you do bake by Melissa, for all of those people, what does that run you? It’s X amount of money.

 

Jay Ruane  13:46  

That’s 1000 that’s 1000 a lot more than that 2000 because it’s $50 plus the shipping and the time it’s, it’s, you know, yeah, then plus

 

Seth Price  13:55  

200 not 100 it adds up, right? Again, 10s of 1000s of dollars when you really do it right, right? So, you know, the question is, okay, if LSAS are X amount, and you open another office, you get more LSAs, would you get more work? And that’s where, when I sort of had that official reaction, criminal is one of those places you are. One of the few people that has really gotten decent traction on referrals. We get them. But if I lived on that alone, I’d have two lawyers. We wouldn’t have

 

Jay Ruane  14:27  

20% of my business every year is referrals.

 

Seth Price  14:30  

What percentage 50 that’s amazing, you know?

 

Jay Ruane  14:34  

And I know I and if I can, if I can, double that 50% out of referrals, and I don’t have to spend another dime on mark on digital marketing, but I am investing, you know, a 10th or 20, if you know, or maybe even 20% of what I would spend on digital marketing. I still have an 80% win rate in more revenue coming in that I’m not spending on digital marketing.

 

Seth Price  14:59  

And so look. I guess this is the depends concept. Anybody else I would say, is completely crazy, you’re only partially Crazy, right? I mean, meaning, look, it’s a great statement to make, and it’s aspirational. Because, look, if you

 

Jay Ruane  15:12  

bring that part of Part of my reason for this Seth, part of the reason why I’m doing this, is that I’m not in totally abandoned I’m not pulling down my website. I’m not doing that, but I’m not spending the dollars because everybody is spending their dollars online. Everybody is spending dollars online. That’s that’s competing in my space, near or close to me. They’re also going digital

 

Seth Price  15:34  

beachhead with years with reviews, absolutely no, no, and that all these guys would love to be able to spend another $10,000 with your assets that you have. So, you know, I get the aspiration. You bring down cost and it look, I would argue to me, you know, look, every dollar you can spend effectively is great. You’ve been the king of pulling back to see if something would work if you pull out a PPC and you and you’re you know, and like you know, and you look at a PPC, for most criminal lawyers, being blunt, is at best, a three to one return at best. And most criminal lawyers, if they’re honest, at are getting 2.5 to one. Many are two to two to one. If you have you a shitty intake, it could easily be less than two to one, right? All of a sudden, you’re working for Google. That’s no good, right? So the idea of spending less there could be great, but if what’s your cost on an LSA, right?

 

Jay Ruane  16:32  

Now it’s, I want to say it’s like 213,

 

Seth Price  16:37  

ish, how many calls to get a case? Three, let’s say three to one. Yeah, yeah. Three to one on a DUI, probably more on a criminal, right? But that’s great money. You do that all day long, right? You’re not gonna, you’re gonna spend more than $600 to get referral cases.

 

Jay Ruane  16:54  

I don’t know if I am, though,

 

Seth Price  16:57  

more you have a baseline now, so you have to get more than this year like that’s not nothing

 

Jay Ruane  17:03  

Well, I mean, but the thing is, I think I can get referral cases from my from my the people who are already sending me cases by spending less than $600 on them over the course of a year.

 

Seth Price  17:14  

But if they’re already sending it to you, then will you get incrementally more again?

 

Jay Ruane  17:18  

I think I can, because, you know, they’ll think of me in January. They might not think of me till September. I want to make them think about me all year long, but to me, and get them to introduce me to people who make it open doors.

 

Seth Price  17:31  

But the question is, are you charging enough of a premium over market? Because that’s the piece. If you’re telling me that you’re now the $10,000 DUI guy, right? And you’re getting it. Okay, I get it. But if you have a widget that’s X amount that the market is charging maybe a little bit of a premium as a premium player in the market, then it’s just a question, how many are you getting? And if it’s the same price for the referral versus the so we’re three and

 

Jay Ruane  17:55  

a half times of the market for our cost, for our price.

 

Seth Price  17:59  

We are other people are a third less,

 

Jay Ruane  18:03  

no other people are two thirds less, two days, two thirds less, two thirds less. And so we secret shopped, you know, all the players. And we, you know, we had, I mean, it wasn’t really secret shop, but we did, I’ll share with everybody. We had somebody who was a friend of the firm who caught a case, so they had a legitimate case, it was verifiable, and we were going to wind up doing it for nothing, because they were a friend of the firm. And I said, hey, you need to shop your shop these people for me, and tell me what they quoted for you for a fee, and then we’ll take over the case, and we’ll do it for nothing. And so they spent their afternoon on the phone call, and we got the data. Everybody wins.

 

Seth Price  18:39  

And what was, the high? What was the low?

 

Jay Ruane  18:42  

The low was, surprisingly, was 1000 somebody offered them to handle their case for $1,000 the mean or media, and I forget which one that is, was like $3,000 and we’re at 6000 to start on these cases, with a kicker for the administrative side of stuff. So we’re like 7500 and some people are doing it for 1000 which, which was mind blowing, because it is. I mean, you need to spend the time to actually do the work the right way. And some people were not doing that. I just don’t know how at the

 

Seth Price  19:13  

number, when you start to charge that number. That’s what I love about the book. Owners will hospitality, but isn’t talked about enough in order, they charge 350 ahead, right when you’re when you’re charging $25 an entree. You don’t have the resources to put that in, to create the systems to make those pieces. Whereas now, if you really are charging and you have that premium on it, God

 

Jay Ruane  19:39  

bless, I can pay that extra out and make you have a person that runs and so, and this is a perfect, perfect example of that. There are companies that have figured out how to do that and give the impression that they’re going the extra mile. Five Guys is a perfect example. When five guys puts extra. Fries in your bag. Those were factored into the price of the original fries. That’s not something extra for you. That’s the serving. If you notice, when you go to Five Guys, everybody’s out there, they put in your regular thing and then they have a second scoop that was actually part of the first scoop, to make it look like they’re overflowing your bag. But they factored that into their pricing long ago, which is why a burger and fries cost $20 so you can do things like that to

 

Seth Price  20:27  

McDonald’s, it’s $9 on it.

 

Jay Ruane  20:29  

Isn’t doing that right? Exactly, right? So let’s give it

 

Seth Price  20:33  

for a second. I just had something happen to me. We’ve all have both have international labor, and we had somebody on one of our teams give notice, great, great player, no complaints. They got a dream job that we would not want them to not take 50% more money. They’re now traveling. They’re selling. They were before, just a behind the scene, but they love the firm. They’re crying that they’re leaving. But even with all that, couple days notice, not the end of the world, meaning it’s a job that we we have a person in house that train them. So replacing won’t be the end of the world. We have enough scale, but it come. We talked about this on a prior show, but is there sort of a way of creating that expectation, and do we need to? I know you don’t love severance. We’ve talked about that, I wonder whether or not if you want that, and we’re talking about internationals right now, which is different, slightly different topic we talked about before. But do you think that it should be part of the culture that people know that they are going to get two weeks severance if they’re let go for any reason, and that if you do that, but we are asking that if you change at some point, you may choose not to be here, but we ask that you, if we’re going to put that in place to protect you, maybe our choice. Maybe we don’t want you here at some point, but you’re going to not be left with nothing. And at the same time, we’re asking if you were to leave, to put that because it’s domestically, there’s a concept of that internationally there, there really

 

Jay Ruane  22:02  

isn’t the same way. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I actually tasked our finance team and our leadership team to put together sort of a slush fund to to be able to announce that we now have a in their one on ones for this first quarter to tell them straight up four weeks, we if you ever are let go for any reason, and we don’t suspect that, we guarantee that you’ll be paid out for a month. And we asked her the same, if you’re going to leave, give us a month’s notice.

 

Seth Price  22:37  

And I think that’s tough, because when you leave, nobody like I gotta say, if somebody says to me again, exceptions for like, a trial lawyer and trial somebody says, I’m not showing in more than two to three weeks, it is a stretch. Can be done, but that I don’t, I think that you’re gonna buy maybe the

 

Jay Ruane  22:55  

two weeks for the four weeks, but I’ll take the two weeks, right? I’ll take the two weeks, and if I can guarantee that I don’t want the two days, right?

 

Seth Price  23:05  

And I think that the piece and look, and it may be like I’m rewriting the J rule. It may be we’re going to give you four weeks, and we expect two through whatever it is, something where, but we’re asking for you to and look, your flip side of this is you’re going to find somebody who’s either thoroughly mediocre to poor to an ftard, you know, that is, you know, not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and you’re going to end up paying that, and it’s going to be painful. I like that idea. I mean, I have a checks and balance with my executive director or my partner. Like, our goal is to make sure that even when we have to bite our tongue, that we’re taking care of people. Because if you don’t, it’s, you know, there are exceptions to every rule, but generally, 99% of the time, it’s even though it’s not what, because some of it’s i the beholder, somebody we think is a disaster could be the team that wasn’t supporting them, whatever. But it is, you know, I love the concept. I’m curious to see how it works. But I’m wondering here because this, this is a guy who had nothing bad to say, you know, was literally on tears on the phone, you know, breaking up. But the idea is, can that, can it be done? We’ll see.

 

Jay Ruane  24:22  

We will see. I mean, the reality is, is that, you know, I need to be constantly adding people, simply because, as you grow, and you know this, as you’ve grown larger, and for our audience, who’s starting to grow longer, the more people you have, the more chances of somebody having to leave exist. You know, when you have one assistant and you know he or she lives locally, they’re established. Their kids are grown, their husband has a job, or their wife has a job, they’re not going anywhere. You’re less likely. But, you know, I’ve hired some people. I have two people today, today announced that they’re pregnant and on. The intake team, two people on my intake team. One of them is a closer, you know. So that’s a skill, you know, and that’s closers. I’ve got one person who’s a gatherer, that’s what we call them, hunters and gatherers, and one person who’s a gatherer, who’s been through training is now says, Oh, I’m having a baby too. One’s in June, and one is in July with twins. Now, my hunter in July with twins. I can’t I don’t think she’s going to be back at all. So now I got to get more people in and get them trained, because at least I have noticed God for bitch, they say to her, you’re on dead rest tomorrow, and she’s out. I’m scrambling. And even though I try to overstaff, I feel like I can never get to the overstaff, because there’s always something that

 

Seth Price  25:41  

I distinctly remember that in our history. And I think that a couple things, two or three thoughts in this one I still remember, for anybody listening who started the firm first few years the firm, no materially, it was awesome. All of a sudden, we hit year 10, and it was like baby fest. So know that it’s part of a cycle. It comes, it will pass, but it is not fun to live through.

 

Jay Ruane  26:03  

Yeah, you know, but we need to be responsible business owners. Our female employees aren’t kept from being able to have, you know, the life that they want.

 

Seth Price  26:14  

20 years ago, there was no paternity leave. That was not a thing, and now, you know, it’s expected. So there are all these different factors, but I’ll add one more component to it, which is ironic. So a life moment where this year, we did we for the first time ever, not with lawyers, but with staff. We are being more circumspect. You know, we realized that we had expanded in certain areas that were not financially prudent, not like practice areas, but we had ops doing things above and beyond what was necessary. You know, we talked a little bit about in the show, where you talked about having a reception to each office, yeah, and we now have a situation where we have, in certain divisions, few enough people in that you need somebody when you need them, but to hire a full time person to wait for that. And then this is sort of the reason, I think it’s significant so is that through natural attrition, we’re fine. We have, like, the team that we want, but then comes the question, we’re now quote, unquote understaffed for the emergency, for the one off, for the irate client that walks in for the building that decides to do an inspection the middle of the day, for the flood, the broken gun, whatever it is. And that the attitude has been, we should divide those jobs among some of the legal assistance, you know, among some of the administrators, some of the executives. And by doing that, you’re not hiring an entire because in DC, one of the issues I struggle with is in office, to have a person remain in the office outside of an entry level position. If you’re 50,000 forget about it. But if you’re not at like, probably 75 with benefits and everything else, so now all of a sudden, for micro tasks, you’re paying $75,000 for a job that if it disappears, sort of like Jay turning off Avo, that person disappears. How much bad stuff is there? Now, some of it I don’t feel because I’m not the guy who has

 

Jay Ruane  28:19  

1. That’s the thing you don’t feel cleaning up the puke from the

 

Seth Price  28:22  

kid who’s visiting the office with with a client. Okay, there’s going to be a one or two things that happen, but we’re in a building that has an overnight cleaning crew paying them a few dollars to sort of help supplement giving a few extra dollars to one of the paralegals. The issue that you always run into is two things I’ve seen. One, it’s not the job I was hired for. We’ve always heard that, right? And secondly, it’s not legal. So even though it’s a support staff, anything that goes at it, you have to be careful. You do one or two things. Who cares? But if it gets too much, you have a risk factor of somebody leaving, yeah?

 

Jay Ruane  28:57  

I mean, all of that stuff makes sense. We actually have gone, you know, we operate on a pod system. Like a lot of firms do, we actually created a standalone pod called our support pod. In that pod, it’s run by my IT director, I’ve got my discovery coordinator. I’ve got an extra set of hands that’s trained and going through the training and actually working with my IT director to set up our training program for my legal ops. So we, what we do is, when we get somebody new, they go into that support pod, and then as needed, they can get pulled out into a pod to solve those problems. And one of the roles in that pod that we’re recruiting for is a local person who is our like Jack of all trades person that is the run and grab lunch, because we’re in a in a meeting, and somebody needs to coordinate that we’re recruiting for that I’m hoping to not pay 75 but I’m thinking I can get somebody in the $50,000 range for that role to be around and basically be, hey, run this down to court, because we want to timestamp that type of stuff. Off, yeah, and we’re gonna, and I’m gonna, that’s gonna come off of the gross revenue. It’s gonna come out of my pocket, because I don’t necessarily need that, but if it makes my lawyers and staff lives better, I’m willing to not make that revenue.

 

Seth Price  30:14  

The right answer is, the right answer goes back to being in the show. Is that person is so fractional that the ideal is, it’s your relationship person.

 

Jay Ruane  30:24  

Well, you’d love to have, you’d love to have the Uber of that.

 

Seth Price  30:28  

So, you know the best answer, you know, it’s only bet. The only better thing than sending baked by Melissa is bringing fresh baked brownies to offices personally, with a person, and saying, here it is, right, that’s what a lot of PI Groups do. We’ve experimented with medical providers. A lot of people do a great job of that. So to me, that might be the opportunity to double dip, where you have the if you have the right person who’s going to go visit, this is but the issue is, Jay is the force of nature. When Jay is there, it’s different than anybody you said at the same time, what level of touch do you need to ensure the referrals? I’m just still suspect, I think you’re getting the referrals from the people that know you. Yes, you could sue some more mailing and this and that. But the question is, you know, is there that much more? When you have a medical provider, they have five different PI lawyers, they can send to whoever brought them cupcakes. Last has an advantage. Do you really have that issue? The main thing is top of mind, and where the hell’s Jay’s number? But in general, of those referral people, are you concerned they’re sending to somebody else? But not you?

 

Jay Ruane  31:37  

I’m confirmed concerned I’m going to lose them to send them to

 

Seth Price  31:41  

somebody else. By Melissa for $10,000 investment, boom, all your existing people goes to me. What I loved was when you were going and putting yourself out there at lawyer conventions, because that room, you’re the only DUI guy, only criminal guy in the room, likely. And there, those are the guys where, like, all of a sudden, that two hours or four hours of you sitting there in some goofy outfit in a booth all of a sudden resonates now to me

 

Jay Ruane  32:10  

that, and so here’s what I’m doing, to do that right, like, so I just reached out to an accident reconstructionist who we’ve used on a case, who’s not in the state of Connecticut, But I said, you’re coming in for a hearing. You know the hearing is, is late March or early April. I forget when exactly it is. I said, How about I put on a seminar. I invite every personal injury in the lawyer. I noticed that somebody from their office, they can come in, they can learn about crash dynamics, which pi lawyers would love to know, at least have their associates. Love to know I’ll get all their I’ll get 200 associates in a room, and the next day this person’s here, they can, they can testify in the hearing that we have them for. So I’m getting two bangs for my real actually get CLE for if you get CLE? Well, that’s the thing I’m going to do all that stuff to get CLE for it and everything.

 

Seth Price  32:58  

Again, if you it’s just like an unreasonable hospitality. If you have somebody to do it for you, great. You great. If it be you. It’s a pain in the ass.

 

Jay Ruane  33:04  

Well, I’m going to get up there. I’m going to do the intro. No, no, I know that. That’s the easy part.

 

Seth Price  33:09  

Jake can do that. His eyes closed. The question is, getting 200 butts in seats is not nothing. We thought a lot of ourselves, actually, reconstruction. You sure that’s going to resonate.

 

Jay Ruane  33:18  

These guys are busy wanting to know this the mechanics of accidentally destroyed,

 

Seth Price  33:22  

you know? But again, it’s like anything else. Check with five people and make sure when you say you would you’re so is this really what you want or what Jay thinks you want? So here’s my thought, I apologize. So for example, if you have a junior guy, right, you’re sending your junior person. Do you really care about that? Or do you want the fundamentals of freaking trial for like, the district court level, like when you have a junior lawyer like accident reconstruction is the least of your worries. The question, can you go in there and make an argument

 

Jay Ruane  33:48  

in court? So here’s, here’s my thought I’m going to do, I’m going to have him do two to three hours on accident reconstruction basics so they can understand it. And my thought is, I’m going to do a presentation on offline marketing, networking, that type of thing, and that’s going to be the hook, because every lawyer I know who owns a law firm wants their associates to generate business, but they don’t know how to do it, or they don’t do it. Heck, I’m one of them. I wish my people could generate more business, but they don’t do it, which is fine, I’ve resolved myself to it, but just because I’ve resolved myself too, it doesn’t mean everybody has. So I’m going to say, Oh, and by the way, there’s second the second hour or the second presentation is going to be me on networking and that type of thing. I’ll give them a copy of one of my books, and I’ll get 200 or 100 or 75 whatever lawyers in the room to put my phone number, if they’re associates, into their phone so that they can refer me out to people.

 

Seth Price  34:43  

I’ve thought about it. It’s all it’s all good stuff. You know, Mario Godoy had a program like that. He did a monthly lunch. You had 50 people at a time come in. He bought them lunch. You know, the same thing, right? And it’s, you know, again, not for the faint of heart. I. I applaud it, and I but I also know that you could, you could do this for a year and get two cases, in which case, all that time, money and effort could be spent getting something that delivered. And that’s why I sort of poo pooed, not that you don’t want to be doing it. I love the referral. It’s awesome. The people are great. You get better case, yeah, but for the sheer volume of potential cases in criminal, nothing like it’s, again, you’re in family law. I get it if you found every financial advisor, every rabbi and priest you know, who deals with you know, every counselor. I mean, there are people that can get you cases there in criminal, there are people, but it is much, much fewer and farther between.

 

Jay Ruane  35:44  

Cool, well, folks, what do you think? Why don’t you tell us in the comments what you think about this? Should I go all analog in 2020 6am? I making a terrible mistake? We will find out over the course of this next year, but I want to hear what your input is on this topic. Is there anything that you think I am missing, or anything you think I should absolutely do that will help us run through this new season of the law firm blueprint. But folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the law firm blueprint. Of course, you can check us out every week, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn, live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint. Please join in if you aren’t a member. Seth, that’s going to do it for me. Anything left from you? No, Happy New Year. That’s it, man. Happy New Year, folks. We’re on to another, bigger, better things. We’ll see you next time on the law firm blueprint. Bye for now you.