Join Seth and Jay as they talk about the troubles and triumphs of this week in their firms
Hello, hello, and welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m your host, Jay Ruane, and that man over there, my God, Seth Jerome Price. I’m coming up with J names for you in the middle of Seth. But it’s been, it’s been a while since we didn’t live together, obviously life gets in the way of doing something every so often, but it’s good to see your smiling face. How’s your week going this week?
It is going well. You know, I feel like there are moments when things are clicking, you can’t look too closely, because then you start to see some stuff that you don’t want to see. But, you know, when you get big picture numbers, like month over month, year after year, numbers are the right direction. That’s a, that’s a great thing.
Yeah, for sure. You know, you know, I’ve been going through some struggles at my firm, I had, we had changed up some senior leadership, and I got more involved my summer of Jay, has, has devolved into me doing a lot more work. But it’s really been interesting, because it’s allowed me sort of with all that I’ve learned and been able to observe while I’ve been out, make some changes. And I’ve gotten multiple messages, during our check ins that I’m doing now that people are a lot happier with the way the new management style is with me back in charge. And, you know, breaking us into a pod system, I think has made us a lot more efficient. And I think there’s going to be some benefits, you know, we’re still in the in the bumpy road. As we work things out, I’ve got two lawyers who have gone out on FMLA leave for 12 weeks, Sue to one was the senior leader. And another one was a sort of a grinder who did a lot of the work that some of the Court lawyers didn’t want to have to do. But we’re you know, and he was trained to do something that they hadn’t been trained in. So, I have to train them up to get them there. But it allows me to see how my old system modified is a lot better than the system that we had in the middle. Because we’re doing some cradle to grave stuff with the clients, individual lawyers, why is that I think we’re going to come out stronger than ever. But having been having to put in for having two employees put in for FMLA on the same day, just blows my mind today get Luckily for them, I mean, it’s gonna be unpaid at coming out of us. But Connecticut has a program where they’re gonna get $1,000 a week, you know, it’s not, you’re not going to get rich off of it. But for 12 weeks, they’re gonna get $1,000 to pay their bills. So, you know…
The question, if that was not there, would they have taken it?
I think so. Well, I think one of them, one of them would have…
Don’t go with too much detail, but I’m saying…
One of them medically needs the time to get well. And the other one, I think just I wouldn’t be surprised if he launches his own firm while he’s out.
Right. And, look, it is something we talk about a lot, right? I got a lot of conferences and Masterminds, and I love it. But I know that when I was building the firm, there were a lot of moments where I’m like, do I get on a plane and go somewhere to get a nugget to get further versus you know, what you need to be doing. And while I love you to be on a beach for the summer, or whatever it is you choose to do with your time, there are times when the firm needs you. And that if the systems are not in place, you really can’t go fly away. Because if it’s built on a house of cards, and you’re not there, the only reason that it’s staying up is your sweat equity. And that while we may aspire to do a summer in Europe, much easier said than done, especially given and we talked about this a lot. The lack of redundancy during growth mode, even at the stage we’re at, you know, there are a few key positions, some that don’t matter because there’s redundancy. But when you’re when you’re building and, or when you have two people plus some other turnover from the recent past that does not allow a machine that really allows you to work on your business, you’re back into this whether we like it or not.
Right, right. I mean, I have a law license, and I can get in there and I can handle, you know, some administrative hearings. I mean, I looked at, I looked it up in our CRM, and I’ve done over 5000 administrative driver’s license hearings. So, when I showed up last week, the judge was like, oh my gosh, it’s you hear back what’s going on. I haven’t seen you in three years. Or more actually, probably more than that. Because of COVID. And you know, we were talking and now I’m like, I’m shooting it out. Because you love it you love these judges and we’re having a good time. I’m like, hey, this is what’s going on and, you know, I’m recording it because it’s a remote hearing. So, I can train my people on how to interact with these judges. And I think we’re gonna come out stronger. It’s just, I gotta go through the sock, you know, that’s, that’s what we do, you know, there’s some parts of this job that do suck. Let’s face back, it’s not all rainbows.
It’s, and again, you have an amazing team. And you know, look, I’ve had, you know, historically very proud of the fact we have not lost many people we didn’t want to lose. But when you have one of those, you know, for us, it’s been, you know, once or twice a decade, and you get that phone call, there’s a long pause before you start speaking, you know, what’s coming, it’s those those building blocks that are there are not going to get fixed on two weeks’ notice. And that’s where I think as an owner, like you ideally shouldn’t be, but very often are that that plug in the, you know, in the wall, make sure the water is not spewing everywhere.
Exactly, exactly. So, you know, it is what it is. But I wanted to talk to you about something that, that we talked briefly offline about off the show, and I think we need to delve into a little further, you know, we’re starting to use AI. And one of the things that I was able to do is actually put together a sentencing memorandum, we had a client give us all of their biographical data, and then, you know, using chat GPT, we were able to craft a very compelling narrative of their life story that we could add to their sentencing memorandum. And that was awesome. You know, because I’m not the best creative writer, I’m a more of a technical writer. And this was able to, you know, put some flourish on it that it wasn’t made up. It wasn’t like what we saw in New York, where the lawyer got checks if you just make stuff up. But you had an issue with some AI in your office as well, right?
Well, no, that wasn’t AI specific, I’d say first headline, we all need to be on this. You know, at tilma. Justin lovely did a great job. He seems like he’s ahead of the curve. Down in South Carolina, doing some great stuff with AI. And Finkelstein at a mastermind really opened my eyes up to the fact that like, this is not going to come from the trenches, it’s going to have to come from the top. And I find it tough because I, my leadership bench at the firm is not AI first. And so, I’m just trying to figure out how do I you know, do I require people to be on the A browser so that they can have chat GPT closer to them, because the stuff you’re talking on the sentencing memo, again, copilot, not the writer that you’re going to turn in, right? First draft look at it, but what I love, were people’s responses to emails similar to your sentencing memorandum, where it’s allowing for, let’s say, an upset client that has three points, answering that, but instead of as you said, as a technical writer, point 1, 2, 3 I’m so sorry to hear that we strive to like all the stuff that you know, you need to include that but may not be your natural inclination, when you’re like, I can’t believe I’m dealing with this. Right, those types of things. The the power is tremendous. And I think what I’m struggling with is, especially at scale, and we talk about managers and mid-level managers could have entire episode or week, you know, series on mid-level managers as people get to that point. But the idea is, how am I going to get this down to the trenches because it’s not people’s first inclination, not dissimilar. I know we’re gonna pivot to this in a second to leveraging of international labor, and some of it is it’s just going to happen, but I wish that there was a way to not just get it, you know, out there, but like, you know, we were a bonus Lee at the firm, maybe it’s giving bonus Lee points for anything that somebody does with AI, just incentivizing like you would for anything else that you want to move the needle on.
And one of the things that I think you need to have is training to your people about you know, the negatives that go along with AI, like the tendency to hallucinate and add stuff that doesn’t really exist in the real world like that lawyer in New York with the command do not illuminate, you know, so that you’re telling it but, you know, you’re almost really need to effectual effectuate an AI policy in your office so that people know, okay, what can I use it for? What shouldn’t I use it for? That type of thing.
What I think the part of it is, is, as an owner, we can’t be so frugal a free version of AI that using an old database is not the way to go. Even up, just raise 50, you know, $50 million. You know, it’s having a closed environment using the different case study using environments where at least somebody is doing what they’re pulling from is legitimate and vetted. To me, that’s the next step. It’s not about like, what can I get for free and there’s nothing wrong with that, right? You want to draft but you’re right first, but like it’s which comes first. First, I need the people who embrace it, right? At some point. I’ll tell the story in a second that the pivots from this, but like, you know, my kid in school, my eldest will take any shortcut he can is doing half as assignments with Chachi vitae. I’m sure that it’s readily apparent to anybody who reads it what it is. It’s not long before the employees do that right now, I’m like, encouraging them to do that not to do it badly, right? But like, I want them to sort of be aware of it. Because the first thing is playing around with it. Hopefully, we don’t end up in a court mess because somebody actually goes one step further, or sets them to a client. But the idea that first you got to start playing with it. And right now, I’m not even getting people playing with the music badly. Forget about using it well.
Well, I know my marketing department is really using it a lot to develop scripts and ideas that we can use, you know, for just ideas that we can put out for blogs and for videos and that type of thing. Give us some talking points and that type of thing. I think it’s a little while until the lawyers feel comfortable using it. We’re going to do some training on that.
It’s not, it’s not all or nothing, right? And it’s just getting familiar, but just like this, right? So, we like for instance, at blue shark, we are very aware since we use contract writers that there’s a good chance just like duplicate content, we always use Copyscape. To make sure we have to make sure that we’re not getting somebody handing us because look, Google is well aware of AI content if they wanted to. They could easily and according to one person that that I just was meeting with that again, secondhand, I was supposed to that primary source. Google is actually digging sites, which is not what I was told by my Google contact, but they are seeing sites get dinged for straight chat GBT content, which would make sense follow the money. It’s not their content. They don’t want chat GPT to win. And that’s one more thing that would propel chat GPT into the stratosphere is if that works, and they’re just trying to buy time for bars to catch up. The theory being again, secondhand was that barred will not be penalized for content because it’s their product. I don’t know if that’s true.
I’m sure there’ll be some, you know, investigations to that, you know, if that’s the way they do it. But you know, the thing about the content is that it’s vanilla content. You know, it…
Which is great for manuals for ideas of what’s trending on tic toc because you want somebody else’s ideas. But for original content, that’s where it gets really, it can be brutal, but for stuff that is, you know, a best practice. That’s crowd sourced. That’s, that’s the stuff that’s just genius. And if we don’t get there, we’re going to be, you know, we’re going to be the taxi driver or the limo company when Uber came out. You know, it’s a…
It’s, it’s really interesting. I know, a year ago. I mean, it was only a year ago, I actually tasked the VA to go back through EVO, and go into there and say, give me a list of every question asked in this category. And then we sorted by the topics, and we found the top 150 questions, or derivations of a question. And then we use that as a springboard to write content ourselves. And now, I mean, now a machine can do it.
Right, it would give that to you. But the other thing was good, you know, we should not minimize that. And I think that hopefully, he’s whether or not Chachi, because recognizing that is that not all ideas are equal, if you saw the AVO that one of these things got massive engagement and something else was just that idea. You know, the that theoretically, where AI is headed is that it could it could give you that we saw something so I was expecting my next headache should be like, it could be like a sitcom, my next headache is going to be people using chat GPT. inappropriately, I have not been so lucky in the sense that I’m not getting the adoption a lot. Like it’s sort of like I tell people on intake, when they when they start your inclination or aggressiveness of conversation is to, let’s say that I’m an eight. You know, when you get to a five, I’ll be thrilled like you’re it’s okay for you to push a little bit outside your comfort zone. And if you get somebody who calls up and says, you know what, I’m not hiring these guys, because you guys called me too many times, I’ll bonus you. If it happens three times in the same day. Yeah, we’ll have a talk. But like, I need you moving towards the light. And I feel like that way about AI is that we should be so lucky that people are so savvy with it, that they’re trying to do something wrong. Again, first time won’t be pleased hopefully doesn’t mean poor. But we had an interesting thing. This was not this was a contractor domestic contractor who had a portfolio of work being done in a specific area. And the work was okay. And then it started to slip and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. Until some person from overseas contact us to say that they were doing the work for the person we hired domestically and they have lost their job. They outsource their job not well mind you. And the person was complaining because they hadn’t been paid. And I’m just sitting here like and it’s look again it was I was a no harm no foul but nominal cleanup. There was not a client type issue. It was something back end, but the idea being that You know, all of a sudden, you know, we don’t know what our what our headache of the day is you for us FMLA. Now it’s going to be are you going to have remote workers who are sitting there multitasking, and basically outsourcing their work. Now, again, if this person was smart, they would have had the first draft done and given to us, and we would have been none the wiser. But instead, they were taking the shortcut and saying, hey, just like chatting, btw, if you turn that in the bar, you’re going to end up on the front page of the New York Law Journal, you’re gonna be disbarred. If you, you know, if you were leveraging that person, in theory, they’re starting their own little mini business, I would have been none the wiser. Not that but the question now is, you know, are we going to have people sign stuff? Are we going to have any sort of tests? What are we going to be doing?
How do you prevent that? If it’s a remote worker, I mean, I think I guess you install software on the computer to make sure that they’re actually doing the work. I mean, you could look at your keyboard stuff. But that then that becomes a management nightmare from the tank prevents you from doing anything else. If you’re having to check on that stuff, or to hire somebody, then audit them. I mean, our auditor system is working really well, in our office, even where I mean, we audit our lawyers, we have a 50-minute phone call with them every Wednesday, we’ll talk about last week, this week, and next week, what are you doing? What’s going on? And it’s just a check in with a senior lawyer, just to make sure that people aren’t heading in the right direction. But do you have to do that?
Or eventually, somebody’s gonna be like, and what point will you care but like, if somebody’s using AI chat GPT or otherwise, for taking the work again, assuming that they weren’t taking a shortcut. And using that as their first draft, you know, at some point, that’s, it’s interesting, because what protocols you talk about for AI, but again, with this crowd, I would bet if with our listening audience, which every time I’m on the road, I’m just amazed at how many people out there are listening to getting value from which I just, it just makes me so, so happy that when you and I sit down and go through this, that we’re impacting firms, but I bet you there are people out there, I saw this in the international space even that when I started to dig into what was going on, that some of the larger outsourcing groups that were using overseas labor, that people over time, would end up basically creating their own mini pyramid under them. Where work was getting done, not by them, but that they were taking the arbitrage of work. And so, you know, again, I, it’s there. And the question is, the more we’re in touch, you know, we’ve talked a lot historically about things like work snaps. And while we still use the international labor, there’s more and more, better newer technology, which has other rationales as far as productivity, we pulled away from work snaps domestically, because we saw some negative implications, particularly from Gen Z, that really was not pleased with the sort of Big Brother concept. But with all this stuff going on, I’m not sure. You know, at some point, are we going to need to go back to making sure just to protect client, you know, in this particular case, you know, if somebody is going to be sharing, we take a leap of faith that the people we hire are protecting privilege, but God forbid, it’s one step further removed. I mean, all of a sudden, passwords are out there, things like that. That could be a really scary, slippery slope.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we that we’ve instituted in our office is we, I have an assistant who’s on the administrative team, and, you know, we have an audit log of our CRM, so we can see who’s accessing it and who’s accessing it when. And, you know, we haven’t found it yet. But you know, we locked down our passwords, so that, you know, one user per time like you, you can’t have multiple browsers open into our CRM, because we don’t want them to give out their password to somebody else to be able to get in, we have two factor authentication.
And that’s, you know, look, I did I got scared straight in a mastermind recently, where they talked about, they showed a lawyer probably took a seven-figure hit some covered by insurance, some not, with somebody getting in not as gotten emails, passwords, could email from their accounts got into their bill.com. And look, we are well aware that our he level is not none of us in listening to show, with rare exceptions, have somebody at the level that really would protect us 100% I mean, the bad guys are always doing stuff. But the question I would I would beg our audience and I have focused on this tremendously recently and this is go as to, you know, this would prevent somebody sharing what they’re doing. But the two-factor authentication, oh, it’s huge. And if you’re not doing that, it’s at your peril. So, it’s a pain for your people, you may get a little pushback, but we’ve gone so far is now using one of those tools, I forget the name of who can put in the comments, where we actually send test emails to people to see whether they’re downloading things to see whether they’re adding their passwords. And, you know, we went from, you know, 15%, and we tested it cold to 3%. And if I take out my three worst offenders, a 1% error rate, but, you know, interfaculty talks about just like after a couple of false hits, he’s, you know, I don’t know, he fires people, if they keep downloading things they shouldn’t?
Oh, absolutely.
You know, the question is, but it’s, you know, burying our heads in the sand on this again, what will be my issue is yours is going to be somebody using AI, it’s gonna be so many outsourcing their job? Or is it going to be somebody just letting somebody in giving them the keys to the castle and some guy from a third world country coming in ransacking you and you try to pay them in Bitcoin, to stop the bleed?
Just the idea of all of those things, makes me upset to my stomach, you know.
But each of them you could do something about right you can get make sure you’re maniacal about two factor authentication, you can make sure that, you know, if you want to go a step further, you can test your team educate them, right. Again, easier said than done for smaller firm in one sense, easier, right? Go to each person say, this is a seven-figure error. This is and again, when I first presented it, I have people that were like, oh, yeah, I mean, now, we now get the reports that it’s pretty, it’s pretty slick. It pops something up and just says, hey, you just allow somebody in, here’s what you do to get, you know, here and gives them a retraining module, you know, right there.
That’s great. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, my director by new Director of Personnel, has been with me forever. Her husband is the cybersecurity for a major bank. And the first thing she said was, we need to do an audit to make sure we’re good. I mean, he’s, you know, he’s, he’s a, he’s a smart guy. He was a Greenbrae for years, and he’s, and he’s a resource I can tap.
On our stood and like everything else. I mean, I always one of my ethics lawyers was risk getting out of bed in the morning. But the question is, forget about what the geeks will tell you, you got to do this. And a lot of that’s true. But there’s very basic fundamental stuff. We’re all using software on the Cloud, I made a decision for myself a long time ago that I knew that my team was not sophisticated enough to manage an in-house server. I just like if we, if I was on the witness stand, and we had been attacked, and I had to see they were sort of going after Wi Fi guys like, yep, we did not pay enough to get the guy who could really protect us. And so, I, you know, there are guys out there that will do audits, you know, that are fee for service, not just the connection. But I think that I you know me, I want to be away from the favor economy. But I would just you know, I think the number one thing that everybody listening to this can do is, if there’s anything you’re doing, that doesn’t have two factor authentication, that’s meaningful banks, Bill online, Bill, pay, software’s emails, all of that stuff. And again, there’s further ones, which isn’t just a text, the next level is it goes through your app on your phone, right? Because people are now stealing the phones, I use each piece, I just want to get one step.
Think about, think about this, how many people in our audience now have a handwritten list of passwords taped somewhere in their office, and if you need a password, you go to it and you deal with that type of thing? Just get a password manager, that people that you can share Password Manager and then change your passwords regularly.
I get you, and I was guilty of this, I will you know, I’ll disclose this. There’s a long time my attitude was unless it was a bank or email or something really important. My attitude was like for frequent flyer accounts, this and that, like, I forgot the password so much that I use a standardized password and even with the stuff that was non monetizable next, and you know, literally it’s on the dark web, everybody knows the password. And you know, my wife’s Marriott account, they got a call from like, you know, de Moines, you know, residents in that somebody was literally checking into the hotel using her password using her account that had been logged in. And then months later, a airline customer that buys frequent flyer miles falls to say that somebody was offering my wife southwest miles to him, you know, so it is, you know, it is a cat and mouse game but it is no longer One Password, it is protocols. And if you don’t have the resources in house, getting somebody to do an audit, but very, very least, getting to the two-factor authentication blocks a lot of nonsense.
Absolutely, absolutely. So, what else you got going on? We got a few minutes.
I would, what I would say is, you know, I would, I am excited. I told you this was going to be the year of some personal, personal travel to do enough work, travel but really excited. Taking my wife back to Australia. We tie, I had studied there at University of Sydney; I was one of two Americans in all Australian.
So, they really have a poor opinion of Americans then.
Absolutely.
This was the early 90s.
This was 1990 and I felt like a soothsayer before the web was a real thing. And the Simpsons had hit in the States. And I was telling them what about the Simpsons I remember, like now we’re never gonna like the Yanks. The septics, they call the septic tanks yanks septic will never love. They ended up embracing the Simpsons more than we did, if it’s possible. And it is really, really interesting. So, I literally went back there as a summer associate and spent a summer on Manly Beach. But it is such a special place. I’m so happy to go back and be like a time capsule, I hope I get to meaningfully reconnect with a lot of my peaks from that, from way back.
Okay, so my summer associate was not in Australia, I did a summer associate working for an environmental law at the universal chemical plant in Naugatuck, Connecticut, where there is somebody was being sued because of you know, they were dropping chemicals into a local watershed or something like that. And we had to process just, you know, hundreds of boxes of discovery and determine if it was relevant or not relevant. The only thing I got from that summer was I got to see the actual paperwork for the creation of Naugahyde because that’s where they made fake leather Naugahyde that was at the Naugatuck chemical uniworld chemical plant. And the best part about it is it was like a 12-week gig, and I was making good money. And at the end, we got through all the boxes, everything indexed, everything responsive. And as we’re standing there, someone says, well, what’s that door at the end of the at the end of the room where everything was stored, and they open up the door and there was like another 1000 banker’s boxes we had done 500 over the course of the summer, and they found another 1000 boxes, and they look they’re like, you want to work all year. And I was like, Heck no, man, this is not the life for me. Doing document discovery, responsive stuff. But that, but I want a lawyer I still know he was like, yeah, that paid for me to go to law school for the next two years because it was definitely worth it. You know, worth it for me to stick around and transfer to the night division.
Well, I’ll leave you with this. You know, this is it shows you how you never like the networking the people I met you what 15 years ago and Bob was out somewhere I don’t remember. But it was like, you know, the, how people come back into your lives. So, I’m, I’m a rising ninth grader, literally middle guy right now who’s going to camp. I, for whatever reason didn’t click with camp and instead intern at the Bronx TAS office. This is like three Bonfire of the Vanities, right? So pre gentrification in New York, take the subway up there. And me and my buddy Mertz. Basically, in the first day of our internship, unpaid volunteer internship was, we got lumped into the minority summer works group, and they gave us an assignment. And we finished it like in the first half day, and that was supposed to be able to work for the summer. So, this lady from my autism rewards program that we were lumped in with falls, a guy named Scott Thompson, who was then in Ada, and says, I have to have your pipe down here. Like I basically take them so we ended up with him shadowing him. Remember the Crockett daycare scandal, which was like an awful thing where they were carrying anatomically correct dolls in the courtroom for these preschoolers or daycare kids to sort of. Anyway, this guy saw as an opportunity to get out of the ad editor, Rusty’s office, and he ends up giving both of us a resume but buddy’s dad was the dean of hospital law school at the time, Eric Mertz. And my dad was a practicing lawyer in New York, not a player, not a huge networker. And he sent his resume to a group that finds IP lawyers jobs, that’s what he wanted. They’d never play somebody without experience the next day they got a request. Didn’t hear it. He’ll finish my internship and left, would go to my Yankee games after the internship which is a great part of being in the Bronx DS office to build new software. Right. And last touch. I am in law school first year and my dad’s partners approached by a guidance CLE. He’s one of the big IP guys and said, this was Scott Thompson introduced him to my dad’s partner and said, hey, you’re your partner made my career. And we reconnected with the yellow club for lunch, my dad where he’s a member, and we got to reconnect. Turns out he got a job made partner from that original place, and was then at that point in house at Philip Morris. So, his Thank you back to me these many years later, was a summer associate ship in Sydney, where I had the time of my life. Thanks, thanks to him. So that, that is how I ended up as a summer associate in Sydney, Australia.
That’s pretty cool. So, folks, you know if you’re watching this in the Facebook, or please let us know in the comments what your summer associate position was, it may or may not have anything to do with the type of law that you’re practicing now, but I’m sure you’ve got a good story. Hopefully, better than mine. I don’t know if you can stop sets but that’s what we’re looking for down in the comments. Let us know how you spent your summer vacation when you were in law school. But for that we’re going to end the show today. Thank you so much for being with us. Of course, if you’re listening on the go, be sure to give us a five-star review for our law firm blueprint a podcast. Seth, any parting words?
No, excited. Excited for the week, the challenges and, you know, I wish you well. I know you got some tough waters there. I’m sorry. You’re back in but, you know what?
You know, I gotta tell you I’m feeling more alive than ever.
You said, look, I gotta tell you seem more excited about the getting back into it than you did.
I wasn’t ready to die yet. I wasn’t ready to retire. And were the, you know, the white shoes and the knee-high white socks and driving around in my Eldorado down in Florida. I wasn’t ready for that. I, you know, I still have stuff to contribute. Alright folks, have a great one. We’ll see you next week. Bye. Bye for now.
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