Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello, and welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is, Seth Price. Seth, how you doing today? Labor Day is over. We’re in the final sprint towards the end of the year. How was your weekend? 

Seth Price  0:21  

It was great! And I got a funny anecdote for you. I’m at the tennis club, and this lady runs up to me. It’s like, you’re famous. I’m like, What are you talking about? It turns out, one of our raving fans is her sister, a med mal lawyer in New York, who loves the show and does all of her walks every day listening to us. 

Jay Ruane  0:40  

 Wow, geez. I think we probably need to start doing better content then, because we have people who are expecting good things from us. So let’s talk. Let’s just jump right into it then. I mean, you know what? What’s, what’s the issue of the day at Price Benowitz, because I’ll tell you about my issue later. 

Seth Price  0:59  

Sure, I think what I’m struggling with right now is we know systems are needed. I’m on the show with Mr. Systems, right? And it’s process, right? We call it systems, but it’s process. So when you have Dan Martell telling you when there’s an issue, it’s a process problem, it’s now ingrained in my mind, and as much as I hate the phrase, 90% of the time, it’s true, right? With an issue, why did it fail the process? And what kills you, as a business owner, kills me, is, oh, now we get it. So for those who’ve been business as long as us, you know, when you hear that, you’re like, damn it, like, I can’t hear this anymore. It’s the you know, in 20 years, it’s the seventh person in this position, it’s the sixth person in this position, and you’re relearning. So yes, the more process you have, the better. But this is what I’m struggling with, which is, unless you’re going to put together all the processes, you’re going to have people beneath you putting process together. People talk about ChatGPT, other things, one is going to put these process together. And the question is, once that’s done, there is okay, you have a process I’m going to make phone calls to, you know, source something. How do you like, there’s a decision, are you having somebody overseas do it? Maybe someday you’ll have an AI person, you have a domestic person doing it. Is that person able to accomplish it? When something doesn’t happen, you’re like, Oh, we’re trying to find the location of a new office. And you realize we’re having trouble doing that in a place that we want to open an office in, and we realize, okay, who’s been making those calls, and it’s somebody who’s overseas, which may be great, but if you’re calling up trying to lease something, there may be a bias against somebody who’s clearly not domestic. So much fraud out there, people trying to do all sorts of straight, shady stuff. So the question is, we are like so I’m I get process, but how to determine the level of savvy or intellect that’s needed at different stages to make sure that what you have as a visionary gets implemented? 

Jay Ruane  3:00  

I think what I mean for me, at least, it comes down to you want the person who is the most, least capable person of doing it and and I think what you’re describing for me in your situation is that it may not be most beneficial to have somebody remote be doing that, because it takes some local knowledge. You can’t that you can like one of the things we do right when we onboard somebody new who’s remote is I went out, I cut a 10 minute video about the culture of Connecticut, and here’s where our capital is. Here’s where our communities are. 

Seth Price  3:39  

10 minutes I got battled. I wanted to do a a seven part, 45 minute course, and I got shot down years ago. But I love the 10 minute video. 

Jay Ruane  3:47  

You know, just, I mean, we talk about how it’s, you know, Red Sox and Yankees and John.

Seth Price  3:53  

The basics!

Jay Ruane  3:53  

The basics, so that they have a better understanding. But, like, if I were picking an office in, you know a town, I think I kind of need to know, okay, is this the nice part of town? Is this where people are going to want to go, like you kind of want to have some local knowledge. I’m assuming he’s never going to be able to just get .

Seth Price  4:12  

I’m assuming they know where to look my my issue is, if you’re trying to get an office, maybe within another suite, whatever it is, there’s a certain amount of interpersonal piece to that, right? So if the person answering the phone or dealing with that person owns the space and works there, and they hear somebody who’s sort of clearly not here, doesn’t have all the answers it, you know, look, I’ll give you a I’m gonna go on a tangent. So we’re moving, we’re moving our banking from One Big Bank to Capital One, 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

okay.

Seth Price  4:12  

very exciting. 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

Why is that?

Seth Price  4:12  

The you know, we over the years, we went Bank of America. It was too large for us. This technology’s frozen. Would bounce our checks. It’s too small. Didn’t have the technology in DC. Capital One is putting a huge investment. Not only do they have Caps tickets, but they it’s the right platform for a lot of reasons. And most importantly to this point, the guy who runs our team happens to be a guy I met 10 years ago when I started BluShark who was in the branch of Bank of America that was in the BluShark first building. 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

Okay.

Seth Price  4:12  

He’s a genius and nice and cares, and at a bank that’s all you can ask for. 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

Well, you’re, I mean, so you’re going there, not because you’re going there, really for relationship. 

Seth Price  4:34  

Cool, we were going there and that relationship solidified, saying that’s what we’re going right? We they had everything we wanted, technology wise, large, not too large, free Caps tickets on occasion. But the real answer was, they had what we wanted, but this guy, that’s why we’re there. And frankly, if this guy left, we would, I mean, again, it sucks to leave banks. We’ve been 15 years, but we would very much have to consider it, because what I care about is that guy. So this is my yarn. So I get an email. BluShark made the Inc 5000 for the sixth year in a row. Awesome. Get a nice little meal from somebody saying, hey, I can make you money on your ACHs. We can get you 2% back on your ACHs. Cash Back. So start talking to him, start introducing to my team. And here’s two things. He also claimed to have a product that was comparable to ramp. We’re starting to look at ramp as virtual cards for staff members. Keep better control of spending, right. I like some of the points on some of the point cards. We’ll keep those for the bigger purchases, but for the micro spending, getting the accounting right more important than the points. That’s what it tells me to say. So this guy calls up, it turns out, what couple things at Capital One, unbeknownst to me, the credit card to be completely separate from the bank. It’s almost true for businesses. You know, where you have Verizon, Verizon Wireless, that type of thing, right? They never should the two cross. Okay? So it turns out there was one fact the guy left out there’s a 2.9% fee that gets associated before your 2% back. 

Jay Ruane  7:14  

So you’re really getting hit for a point 9.9.

Seth Price  7:19  

I think the game is one of two things. Either you deduct the 2.9% and therefore that’s really 1.75 and you’re getting two back, maybe there’s a 2.2 to .3 spread, maybe, or you have shareholders, and you’re like, well, that comes off the bottom line, but the 2% tax free goes to me. Personally, I think there’s a bit of that, you know, for small to medium business. Whatever it is. My uncle doesn’t know about it, but it’s wildly popular program, but the fact a it wasn’t disclosed, so I escalated. First person I spoke to wasn’t great, right? I’m going to be the mail carrier. Second, I finally got to the guy who knows the stuff. He’s like, Yeah, this is ridiculous. So he brings me back to a new guy, because I’m like, I’m not going to deal with the guy who got himself in the door with this. And the new guy was like, “Oh yeah, ramp, yeah. We don’t really compete. I spoke to one guy said it was ours. Wasn’t as good as theirs”. I’m like, Okay, can you get me at least to a guy who knows? Because if they had a product like ramp with virtual credit cards, I would rather not have a third party service and have one roof. But because it’s not my banking guy, I have to fight and it’s this. So in essence, they’re doing the opposite. They’re trying to put the lowest paid person towards it, and I’m a more high maintenance fire than most. 

Jay Ruane  8:41  

Oh, God, Seth, you are the highest maybe.

Seth Price  8:44  

Right? But, I mean, because I don’t want to pay 2.9 Don’t tell me it’s…

Jay Ruane  8:48  

Right!

Seth Price  8:48  

Fat free money, and it’s really either, at best, a tax flow of 2.3 which sounds great, but you know, it’s not like these half pennies add up like Superman three, you know, or it’s really just a way of screwing over your partners. I can’t tell which, and so I have to go back. I’m going back to the superhead guy say, what’s the just tell me what the real deal is. How can, if this is, is it a tax play? Is it a way just to shelter it? And if you have something, don’t assign me to a guy who has no idea about the product that I’m trying to buy. 

Jay Ruane  9:22  

Yeah, I’m more you mean, basically, you’re more sophisticated than your salesman. And, you know, and they put the wrong salesman on you. I mean, that’s the. 

Seth Price  9:31  

Right, And I’m just like, and because, anyway, so I digress, but it’s almost like the flip side of this, which is they are putting the guy who is that they can only put so much talent out there. They’re only going to pay X dollars the person who has X amount of knowledge. And you know what? He doesn’t sell me, but he’ll sell everybody else who are like immediately get it and say: “Oh yeah, uncle, he’s not going to notice we’re paying 2.9%”, they literally want every check to be written and every wire that’s sent out to go through their credit card, they’ll charge you the 2.9% and give you 2% cash back. And for enough people, this is like their fastest growing product. 

Jay Ruane  10:10  

Well, I mean, it makes sense, because you’re you’re able to get that little bit of cream that you know, you don’t necessarily have to share, right, if you if you don’t want to. So, I mean, I get it. I wouldn’t want to run my business that way if I partners, because I think it’s just, you know.

Seth Price  10:26  

Of course not. But, you know, but look, we’ve all like, we’ve talked over the years, you know, we’ve all there have been situations where, you know, again, it’s a is it is or am I missing something? So just tell me what is like? It can’t be the .2% spread, because I see this, I’m a big credit card guy for the points. And there are people that look at that like school tuition, college tuition. And the general rule of thumb is you’ll pay the 3% if it’s for a sign up bonus, that you wouldn’t get the points otherwise, to get your 200-300,000 point bonus, but as a pure cash play, we’re talking about something where it’s strictly like, what’s your tax bracket? Where is 2.9%? Is there a sign up bonus because it sounds like there’s some bonuses in the first year that might make you more. That like you know that it goes from point two to two for a year, but then you’re locked in.

Jay Ruane  11:23  

I mean, the big question is, at the end of the day, how much of your effort is worth it, because the amount of time that you’re putting into this, you could sign up three new clients and, well, that’s something that I want to talk about. 

Seth Price  11:36  

No no understood. But I wanted the ramp product, because that is something that we write, right? And that’s sort of like “hey, my bookkeeping team found ramp”. They’re interviewing, they’re doing a beta test with them, right? Here are these guys real? What my guess is, it’s sort of like bill.com. It’s nicer, it’s more elegant. It’s the one group that does it. Does your bank have it? Yes, but it’s not going to be as cool with as many features. Is the money worth it? And the same thing’s gonna be true with ramp.

Jay Ruane  12:03  

Yeah. And I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, I think as a business owner, as a law firm owner, you have to sort of make decisions as to what the what the right moves are, and where you should be spending your time. We talked about Dan Martel buy back your time, like I could get in the weeds of building all the systems, but I shouldn’t be the one building all the systems. I should have the people that actually use the systems build the system, stress test them with somebody on a level below and make sure it’s done. But I should not be the one. 

Seth Price  12:36  

I’ll push back. I’ll challenge Jay. So you don’t want to be larger, right? Meaning you don’t want to look you know.

Jay Ruane  12:44  

I say that, but it’s like, every year I’m hiring another 10 people.

Seth Price  12:46  

Right, so, but the question is, is that the best are you the systems genius, where, if you did nothing but put systems in place and let people run them? Is that meaning you’ve done other things, you built your own software, right? Some would argue that was a time pit, which you again, my truism is, people do what they like to do.

Jay Ruane  13:07  

You need to know, though, like, I built my own software because nothing existed in the market when I started building, I mean, we were server based.

Seth Price  13:14  

Understood, but for the last 7,8,9 years, there have been alternatives that you could use that would do as much or more, you know, with some some security built in, by the way, remind me, we, despite everything we’re doing, we had somebody get in and send an email, got into one of our accounts and sent an email out with a, you know, somebody. We do the testing, we do the fake cyber attacks, right? We’re about to add a new authentication. I just literally battled, but we ended up spending another 20 grand where you can’t authenticate a new computer. And basically these cyber attacks by getting one of your staff members to give their username and password. How goes beyond me. They’re then able to, then like they can then basically use that new computer anyway. My point is, we were days away from another layer of security that would have protected but just shows you, it is a cat mouse game. I digress. But going back to you, you and that we do what we like you do like it. Yes, there was nothing 20 years ago. I get it, but you there is a certain amount of what do we like to do, and where, how much further do you want to build, and what is the best use, 

Jay Ruane  14:27  

But, and that comes down to value. I mean, what does it cost to have Filevine, you know, annually for your PI team? 

Seth Price  14:27  

I mean, what do you our software is 10s of 1000s. It’s crazy, right? 

Jay Ruane  14:32  

You’re probably, you’re probably, you’re probably spending close to $100,000 in software a year, right 

Seth Price  14:44  

Across the board, with everything, for sure

Jay Ruane  14:46  

I have my system. It does everything I need. I’m no more than 20 grand for as much as many users.

Seth Price  14:53  

And if you just say, okay, if you, if you hadn’t had that distraction, that’s 80 grand. And what would you have done with that time of the bill, you know, of building, managing, repairing, dealing with again? 

Jay Ruane  15:06  

Well, I mean, I have a developer. I just send him slack messages. He gets stuff done. I mean, I built my own software, but I’m not doing the coding. You know, at one point I was, but I’m not doing that anymore. 

Seth Price  15:20  

You got yourself off that bandwagon? 

Jay Ruane  15:21  

I got, yeah, I mean, I, in fact, I have a weekly meeting on Tuesdays at 2pm with my FileMaker developer, and have been doing that one for at least five years now, where I meet every Tuesday week, where are we going on? And as of this week, I’m not on that team anymore.

Seth Price  15:42  

But a lot of years you were

Jay Ruane  15:43  

A lot of years I was, but, you know, that’s just the nature of it. I want to make sure that this thing was working, just, it’s just the way it goes. But, I mean, I think, you know, with with the systems you need to do it. But then then there’s questions that came up in the in the mastermind this week, for me is, how many systems do I really need? Like, you know, I’m a solo and I’m just starting out, and I was like, Look, I think you need about 50, and that’s it. And here’s the list of the 50 that I think you need. 

Seth Price  16:11  

That’s, look, if you can do that, that’s such a blessing, because give people a, you know, a law firm in a box, so to speak, It’s in. The truth is, you don’t need the systems as much day one, because you’re there, you know what to freaking do. The question is, as you layer people in, assuming that you are, that’s where it becomes difficult, because you could either invent the wheel yourself, but at this point, you know, we all you know, inner the interwebs have developed. There was not as many resources 20 years ago. 

Jay Ruane  16:39  

There was nothing right? And honestly, that’s that’s why I started doing what I started doing was because nothing existed out there.

Seth Price  16:47  

And those that were were scattered around the country, and that you sort of figured it out. So the good news now, for anybody starting now, maybe more competition, but at the same time, you can hacks that can cut down on a lot of that spinning of wheels? 

Jay Ruane  16:39  

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So let me ask you, then it’s, you know, we’re, we’re back. We’re into September now. We are, we’re cruising. What is your goal for the end of the year for, for Price Benowitz? Do you guys have like, a a four month sprint that you’re like, Okay, this is where we’re going to be by December 31?

Seth Price  17:21  

Well, look for those of us that have a contingency PI practice, it’s all, no, no, I’m just saying it’s crazy, right? So that is the sprint, literally, so much so that we’re talking about moving our holiday party to be a beginning of year kickoff party with our opening sort of address to the firm. You know, it’s weird. You know, it’s holiday party. Christmas is nice, yada yada, but you know it’s also stressful. And you know, you’re trying to, you’re trying to get people, you know, away from the office. We do it. You now do a firm summit full on site, people from around the world come in. So there’s that, I think, that we have some tough decisions to make as we get smarter about profitability per lawyer, per group, having some tough conversations, making sure that we are, you know, Legacy players that were profitable at one point, that aren’t, either need to become so or we need to sort of figure something out. Because that and those are some of the tough things. You know, we’ve been really diligent years behind where I’d like to be, of trying to nail down profitability per, you know, unit, and that has been a piece, and then, you know, we’ve I would argue that the number as we’ve aged, and this is, this is probably good advice for everybody out there, the number one piece differentiator of revenue versus not revenue from marketing that comes in for calls, texts, emails, is response time. We know it. You know, if it’s PI, it’s minutes, are you getting somebody on the phone? Are they answering questions? Are they connecting? Are they but with the fee for service, it’s tougher, because the person who answers the phone likely is not going to be able to sign, particularly anything beyond a speeding ticket. And to me, that has become one of those KPIs that we sort of have not focused enough on, and then when we see problems, the correlation is shocking. And I think that, if we’re honest with ourselves, people, oh, I don’t miss any calls. What is your personal response time? And it calls somebody there today, you know, it depends on the call. Could be a couple hours, it could be a day, like if it’s a day, it’s done, or it’s a 30% close rather than a 70% close. You can’t always be there within that but can you scale response time or layer it so there’s a there’s an action packed where there’s a full intake done, and even though it’s not signed, you’re investing, they’re not calling around, because you’ll get if you don’t find a way to get that response time up, it’s just leaving money on the table, and it’s. It kills me, because every time I see an issue and look, you see it, right? Solos is, if you, if you’re in court, we have an amazing lawyer. This woman is crushing it, but she… her numbers for intakes were way, way down. She has seven trials over the next four weeks. Small trials, but like, it’s when you have that she’s gonna be billing and doing a great amount of work, and it’s gonna bring in money, but it’s not, you know. So what’s your plan B? And that’s where we’ve worked with the non attorney sales person, or in our case, Attorney sales people, trying to make sure that we can eliminate the ups and downs as best we can. 

Jay Ruane  20:35  

Yeah, we had an issue yesterday with our intake team leader where it turns out that, you know, I relinquished control of the intakes years ago to Theresa, and she took over and was doing being the sales attorney, and then we elevated her, and we have a non attorney sales person as the lead of the intake department, and Now he’s the bottleneck, because he’s like, Well, I got to check every piece of paper before it goes out, because if the numbers are wrong, then we get hurt. And I’m like “Danny buddy, you gotta trust the people below you. Like you have an executive assistant whose job is to do the paperwork”. If he can’t do it, then we get rid of them, but you can’t be also putting eyes on every single contract that goes out in your role as the supervisor, like, because now everything is flowing through you, and we’re bottlenecks to get a third 

Seth Price  21:34  

Well, it’s also the system, right? Because at the end of the day, how many four fields are being filled out on your retainer?

Jay Ruane  21:42  

Like five, right

Seth Price  20:35  

It’s not. And frankly, other than price, is there anything that you couldn’t get renegotiated if it was wrong, spelling a name, not good, right? But if you minimize the number of things, and you have somebody with decent, attention to detail, it’s one of those ones where it goes out and he could check it afterwards and quality control it. First one is really an issue. You send out 100 retainers, how many mistakes, you know? But at the same time, there may be method to his madness, and maybe that your person doing that is not high enough. We were struggling. We have an issue at BluShark where we have essentially a coordinator who has the job of overseeing a number of overseas assets. And in this particular position, those overseas assets are okay. They’re not they’re not flawless. And the question is, what percentage of that project manager’s job should be making sure that stuff is right? Because if she took the attitude that you were that you want and push stuff out, it would be bad. So are you investing enough in the right people in those seats? And if you’re not, then you’re gonna have to have that guy review it, whereas if you have amazing people with attention to detail on those seats, and it’s five things they can get, they know they can get the price right, no better than then you’re then you’re okay.

Jay Ruane  22:03  

Yeah. I mean, it’s really, it’s really challenging. You know, I knew growing and scaling was something that I wanted to do for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons, given my history, was I wanted to be, I hate saying it because of the negative connotation, of it, but I wanted to be bigger so that it wouldn’t be easier to fail. I wanted to get bigger so that if something were to happen to me or my father, like we weren’t the only source of income. We had, you know, digital assets, we had referral partners, that type of thing. And so I wanted to be big enough not to fail, which helped us survive COVID, for sure, because we had institutional contracts we could rely on. But when you do that, you’re not the only person who’s responsible for anything, and you have to, I think you’re the one who said it. You’re like as you scale, you have to be comfortable with some level of mediocrity. And I think that’s something that is very difficult for lawyers to release on because we are trained to it all comes down to my license. It all comes down to my name. I have to look at every conceivable thing. And so I think that’s probably why, one of the reasons why law firms have not scaled until recently, in the same manner, 

Seth Price  24:20  

And in fact, we mostly scale in the plaintiff’s department, which seems like the microscope, especially in DC, that we’re under like $1 off in an escrow account could be your license. Whereas in PI, nobody cares. You know, you use people, use best they you know, all every unsubstantiated claim, all sorts of craziness that nobody could get away with, outside referral fees. You can’t. You can co counsel. Has anybody ever looked at the number of hours done on one go? No, there’s, it’s something bizarre about the world that nobody seems to care whatsoever in the plaintiff space. But. But in the fee-for-service space, the microscope is so absurd. 

Jay Ruane  25:03  

It’s it really, it’s really, you know, I It’s interesting. I have seen in my market now for years. I mean, we’re talking now almost 30 years, you know, I when I was actively trying cases, you would think that I could call myself a DUI specialist. 

Seth Price  25:20  

No, I remember those early shows

Jay Ruane  25:23  

Yeah, I couldn’t specialist a DUI lawyer. 

Seth Price  25:26  

Some people just saying you were a DUI lawyer, nonsense. 

Jay Ruane  25:31  

And now I see all these young lawyers, and they all say they specialize in this and that. The other thing, if I put that on my website now, the bar would be looking at me, but all these other lawyers that have, you know that are solos getting by with a cell phone, they’re doing it, and I can’t compete with that, because if I play their game, I’ll get dinged, because, as arch Manning said, I got a red on me by every every judge and every grievance counsel. You know, I don’t have a target on my back. I got a red dot from a million different directions, you know. And then that’s the thing, like, I think I need to, you know, I don’t, I just don’t know it’s, it’s, it’s difficult enough to scale a business. It’s even more difficult to do it with the confines of our ethical obligations, and the people enforcing the ethical obligations who don’t really understand how business really works. 

Seth Price  26:27  

Next week, let’s talk a little bit about that, as far as recording of calls and ethics and AI and everything. But we got, we got to wrap right now. 

Jay Ruane  26:35  

All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week. Thank you for being with us. I hope you had a wonderful summer, and you’re gearing up for the end of the year and really rocking it here with the Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can take us every week on the go wherever you want to go by subscribing to the Law Firm Blueprint podcast, and if you want to catch us live, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn, live in our Facebook group the Law Firm Blueprint that is going to do it for us. For now, I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth price, bye for now.