S5:E23: Post Thanksgiving Thoughts!

S5:E23: Post Thanksgiving Thoughts!

๐ŸŽง New episode alert! Jay Ruane, CEO of The Criminal Mastermind, and Seth Price from Blu Shark Digital and Price Benowitz, dive into some deep discussions in the latest episode. Listen in as they tackle the potential repercussions of turning off paid advertising, the exhaustion of lawyers, and the impact on their efficacy, and the idea of grooming attorneys for case intake. Plus, they share their insights on leveraging credit cards for travel, annual expense reviews, utilizing attorney labor for intake, and much more. Here are 3 key takeaways from this fascinating episode:

๐Ÿ”น Exploring alternative business models in the legal field: Leveraging attorney labor for case intake could dramatically improve efficiency and revenue. Also, the episode discussed the concept of a centralized courtroom through video cameras as a cost and time-saving measure.

๐Ÿ”น Facets of managing business expenses: They delve into techniques such as using credit cards with points for vacation expenses, annual expense reviews for product/service retention, and shopping around for the best credit card providers.

๐Ÿ”น The future of education and student debt: An interesting discussion emerged around the challenges of high tuition costs, the potential of online universities, and the need for policies to control student debt. Don’t miss out on this enlightening conversation! Tune in to the Podcast and let us know your thoughts.

#Podcast #Lawyers #BusinessInsights #EducationReforms

 

Transcript

Jay Ruane 0:07

Hello, and welcome to this edition, a holiday edition, of The Law Firm Blueprint. I’m your host Jay Ruane CEO of the Criminal Mastermind. And with me over there at the headquarters of BluShark Digital and Price Benowitz, my man Seth Price. Seth, how’re you doing this week? I see you got the BluShark shirt on. But what are you repping on that hat?

Seth Price 0:28

A little Aruba. I’m bringing myself back to the beach.

Jay Ruane 0:31

You know, it’s funny to talk about Aruba. I just, I head there in three weeks from today. 100% on points, JetBlue mint class, Ritz Carlton club level. And I’m not spending a dime. It’s kind of nice, looking forward to that.

Seth Price 0:46

That’s awesome. We’re big fans of Aruba. It started out out of spite. The Maryland Delaware beaches were so expensive for a crappy beach. Back in the day, that I found that the, a five star hotel was the same price as a motel at the beach. And started it, and while Aruba has caught up as far as pricing. Thankfully, there have been enough points and things like that, as you said to, you know, make it reasonable. So with that, that’s our happy place. It seems like it’s great weather out of the hurricane belt. Global warming has made the summers a little bit warm. But the breeze when you get it is awesome. Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the, it’s one of the benefits we have of being a law firm CEO and running our business is the ability to to get those points there. There’s no tax implications. For right now, who knows-

Jay Ruane 1:36

For now. So you know, and you know, it’s funny, I was talking to a friend of the show, Marco Brown, who amasses, amasses, amasses. And we have a lot of friends who amass points, now you’re a little different. Because you’re, you know, you’re at 100 hotel nights a year with going all.

Seth Price 1:52

Well its not that, that’s not not the points. The points come from digital spend, and the multipliers. So people like Sandy Van who have figured out the entire system, to, down to a science, it’s pretty, it’s ironic that today’s New York Times has an article about how it’s almost like a regressive tax on non business owners. Because what, as you know, using credit cards, people with points cards, it charges you more for those transactions. So your blended rate goes up, which means in theory, all merchants charge slightly more to make up for the fact that they, you know, have a couple points or two to three points, coming out through rewards cards. And that sort of that, was sort of the point of the article is that it is great for those with their own business. But it is, you know, for the general public, it is not ideal.

Jay Ruane, 3:02

Yeah, okay. So that’s a good question. And that will lead off something that we didn’t plan on talking about, but credit cards, and accepting credit cards, you know, how often do you shop, your credit card provider, to make sure that you’re getting the best rate out there?

Seth Price 3:29

Not enough. But put that aside, there have been points where, like, you know, you know, what you sort of are within range of reasonable, you’re not with somebody who’s, who’s crazy. But there are a lot of things like that, where you could do it all the time, but there’s a certain amount. And I think, I thought you’re going the other way with which cards are best to use the other way, that it’s gotten to the point where, you know, like all things looking at the top 20% of your expenses and shopping it. And I found it actually harder, and let me ask you this, I have started to find that, yes, I could save some money here and there, doing a lot of different things. But that as I’ve scaled, and again, this is not advice to somebody who’s sitting there with, you know, one attorney and one staff member, but that as I’ve scaled, I’ve forced myself to be less penny wise, now when I say penny wise, less worried about switching the credit card processing, and switching this or that to save a couple of sheckles, which is crazy, because that was sort of my DNA, where I feel that if it takes my mind and my staffs time away from other viable products, you know, for example, we just upgraded our voice over IP, just so much was being relied upon from Latin America, it was time for an upgrade from all works from a million years ago. And that I rather sort of worry less about sort of that stuff. And it kills me because I really love saving money and getting the best value. And you know, when I look at a bill and I see 60 cents a unit and carat cups, I lose my mind. But is it is it better to leave a little fat on the bone as far as expenses because only you were gonna get that down. You train your staff, they can get three quotes. They can be aware of stuff, but is there a point going almost from the early days of our show, where we’re like, okay, let’s switch this can we save an extra three grand a year? Is there a point where you’d be better off working on your business, and strategically making moves to help you grow rather than saving a couple dollars?

Jay Ruane 5:08

Well, you know, it’s an interesting time that you talk about this, because this is something that I’ve talked about on prior shows, too, is that I use, I tend to take the time after Thanksgiving before Christmas, and I call it my cut month where I literally go through everything that I’m spending money on, and start to see, is this something that I should be spending money on? And back in the day, it was, you know, do I need this $50 A month subscription service that I got once to do you know, like, Canva, or something like that? Now I have a person who does that job. So yes, we do need to have that in the office, at one time, I’d sign up, I wouldn’t use it for six months. And I’d have to make that decision if I wanted to keep it. But now I you know, I’m still looking at things saying okay, hey, can I save $10,000 a year on a product that I’m no longer really using?

Seth Price 5:59

It’s reflection time. But it’s generally, it’s not, you know, you’ve used that very well over the years. I’ll give you, Jay Ruane was like I cut off Avvo to see if I’d miss it.

Jay Ruane 6:14

And I didn’t

Seth Price 6:16

Right. And I was up to $50,000 a month at one point.

Jay Ruane 6:19

Ugh.

Seth Price 6:20

No, no, no, it worked at one point.

Jay Ruane 6:22

Well, to be fair, it wasn’t a question of did I miss it? I had the inclinations because I on the sly, gave Avvo a tracking number that I had, and was comparing and contrasting what they said calls I got into my tracking number and they weren’t anywhere near the same. So they were straight up lying to me about the traffic that I was getting. That’s why I pulled it because I said I don’t think I’m getting as much as I think I am. And sure enough, I didn’t miss it.

Seth Price 6:53

But let me add this. Okay, this brings us to our topic du jour our topic du jour was talking about leveraging attorney labor with intake rather than just non attorneys. I know there’s a school of thought with some sort of coaching groups use non attorney closers. I’ve never moved to that direction, not making a value judgment good or bad. But let me ask you this because this is, we’re gonna get to our topic. But this is something I’ve always wondered about. When you have excessive leads, let me say excessive as is a fungible concept. But when you cut an Avvo. This is years ago, and it wasn’t like no calls came in through Avvo, but you didn’t see a bottom line number difference. Is there ever a point where you buy that there’s that when, depending on your staffing, depending on how your intake a setup, that you could reduce your intake flow, that there’s almost an embarrassment of riches at some times. And that, well, we don’t want to think of this as business owners. As you’re scaling you have intake, and you have lawyers that are incentivized in different ways that you could actually reduce, whether it’s paid search, whether it’s Avvo, whether it’s different things, and not see a difference in revenue, because people are just going to cherry pick stuff they like better, and not say, hey, we need to expand that the expand the pie, etc. I’m wondering your thoughts on that?

Jay Ruane 8:15

Well, I mean, it’s interesting, because I’ve got, you know, I’ve got some referral fees coming in in 2024 from some some PI cases, and one of the things that I plan to do, when that check does come in is turn off everything. I’m going to turn off everything for two months, no more paid anything. And I want to see what the revenue hit is. You know, we’ll still have our organic websites that are up there, but no more pay per click, no more LSAS no more paid, social, none of that stuff. And I want to really be able to see what the what the measure of all of that revenue is. Because, you know, we’ve get we get people who call in who say, oh, I saw you on Google, we can track them to some extent if it’s a paid or if it’s LSA, that type of thing. But I really like just curiosity. I mean, maybe that’s, it’s, I could really hurt my business. I’m sure I’m doing it when I have this cushion. But, you know, I want to see, you know, what’s my market penetration, you know, what’s my brand affinity out there in my market? And, you know, the reality is, is that if you have fewer leads that are coming in, and people want to earn certain amount of money and they’re incentivized personally, they may add, hey, you know, I only got 10 leads this month, I’m going to charge 10% more and make it up.

Seth Price 9:33

I’m sort of afraid the opposite, which is when you see the opposite mentality, where you charge less,

Jay Ruane 9:41

Because you’re nervous,

Seth Price 12:08

1,000%

Jay Ruane 12:09

[inaudible], where you look at everything through your own perspective. And so that’s why in my office, you know, our lawyers don’t close their own leads, because-

Seth Price 12:17

Zero, even a sophisticated high end felony, where it’s hard to price, you’re gonna, that’s going to just be done by the closing attorney?

Jay Ruane 12:23

Closing attorney does it all.

Seth Price 12:25

And it’s one attorney for the entire firm?

Jay Ruane 12:27

You know, look, we’ve gotten very, very savvy at Price Benowitz with people like Bill Biggs and John Hockhazel’s advice. And really focus on like, percentage of wants closed, right? That’s, that’s our, one of our main metrics, right? In PI, it’s pretty easy because there’s no money involved on the front end, it’s is there, is there an injury, liability, and is there somebody to pay. And you can tell whether you want a case much more easily. And we really, really focus on that number. And the only reason that we would, that more leads would be bad, is if you couldn’t get to them. When it concerns me in the criminal practice, and this is why, what I wanted to talk to you about today was whether or not, we’ve never had an intake attorney, we’ve had an intake team that brings it to the attorneys who sign it themselves, it’s good for customer service. It’s not as good for conversion, because it’s not a person sitting there. But I also bundle the income to the attorney into that. What I’m concerned about is as the lead and using the Avvo, or the paid example you just talked about, as you give somebody more cases, does there, does an internal shuffle go on, where people say, you know what, this one isn’t quite as perfect, I’ll let that one go. Perfectly monetizable. And if you were staffed and you were, and you had pure vision into this, you’d be able to say, hey, that’s a good case. What are you doing? But do most people present company included? And we’re rather sophisticated with Salesforce and everything. Do I have an issue, where unless I can grade the leads going out to whether it’s a sales attorney, or non attorney, salesperson, whoever’s making that sale, that the increase in in leads, isn’t going to proportionately raise the revenue as much as it should, because of that human nature?

Jay Ruane 12:42

Well, I think, I think you run into an issue also as well, I mean, if you have the lawyer closing the leads themselves, and they just had a terrible week with a ton of work, and they get a new lead on their desk, even if it’s an A plus lead, that’s monatizable, and it has good profit margin built into it, they might not sell it as hard because I’m just exhausted. And they see, okay, this is gonna take more work or this is, you know, they, they, they have that,

Seth Price 13:29

Is there ever a time where they speak to them?

Jay Ruane 13:33

When they speak to who?

Seth Price 13:35

Is there ever time when somebody goes beyond the intake attorney to speak to the attorney that would actually represent them in the case?

Jay Ruane 13:40

No. We don’t allow it. I mean, maybe, but I can’t think of a scenario in the last 18 months where that’s happened.

Seth Price 13:53

Right. So the good news is you don’t have somebody who’s dealing with court. But you know, like any intake attorney, you know, or intake person, any salesperson, you know, if the drinking gets out of control, if they’re having a bad day, personally, you put your eggs in one basket, and you’re just like, hey, this person solid, I’m gonna, I’m gonna bank on them.

Jay Ruane 14:00

Yeah, I bank on them to close business for me, and assign it out and to get the right fee out of the client, you know, for the amount of work. And, you know, this lawyer, you know, has been with me for 15 years and handled a bunch of cases knows the courthouses knows the,

Seth Price 14:27

So it’s not, it’s not like you’re bringing somebody in to do this, you, you groomed this person for that job.

Jay Ruane 14:32

Right. Exactly.

Seth Price 14:33

And so I’m sitting here, we did a very nice, and we have an amazing person that I really like, she’s, she’s wonderful, who does our PI intake, and has allowed us to get our numbers to like 95% of wants with a team of people, but escalating to her, where, wanna speak to a lawyer? Here’s our partner in charge, done. But I’m struggling more. And again, it’s I diversify my risk, I have some lawyers that are better at closing than others. And I’m trying to figure out, you know, I have five lawyers who each are doing well into the seven figures personally. So obviously, the system works decently. But they’re not all, I have other lawyers that are doing four to 600,000 a year, which is fine. But would I be able to do better. There’s a Family Law Group Substantial out of Canada that I’ve met over the years, and they actually went from all their lawyers signing up to three intake attorneys, signing everything and then providing it over. And that’s, that’s sort of what I’m in the midst of sort of thinking, hey, is there you know, with this, I know that our client satisfaction is very high, because there’s no miscommunication. You know, and we have multiple jurisdictions, now four states, including DC if you call that a state, in the hopper, but I’m really feeling that there’s. that that is, that while the plaintiffs practice is very easy to get wants to gets, it’s much harder, because in the criminal case situation, or frankly, some of these other, the nice thing about a family law is that you have a paid consultation that screens people out, potentially, in the [inaudible] states as well. And that allows intake, just to put a button, seats with a paid consultation, and the lawyer is off to the races. But with criminal, it’s, I’ve been struggling with it because it’s so hard to grade a lead up top, I know that when my partner David and I started, I would take an intake and give him somebody and say, there’s plenty of money, go take the intake, and by the end of his intake, they have no money. And so it’s it’s definitely a work in progress. But you’ve been able to balance all of that. Qhat happens when your gonna intake attorney is out?

Jay Ruane 15:42

Well, what we’ve done is, in the, in the few situations where she’s been out-

Seth Price 15:48

No, just sick day, vacation day-

Jay Ruane 15:50

Right. She refuses to take vacations right now, because she’s got young kids, and she doesn’t want to travel with them. But that’s going to change. So we are grooming two attorneys in the office who, when they have a free day, they will sit in on her, listen to her consults, and sort of just get some small training. Worst case scenario, if I gotta pop in, I pop in, and I pick up the slack. You know, and that’s just because I don’t have a backup for that role right now, it’s on our, it’s on our vision board for 2024 is to have somebody fully trained as a second, second sales lawyer, and I think we’re getting-

Seth Price 16:07

If you were starting from scratch, as essentially I am, what, what personality traits? Because it’s, it’s, it’s sales, right? At the same time, you know, do you care how much I mean, I feel like with, the more there’s a knowledge of the process, the less likely you are to have pricing issue problems. I mean, obviously, they need to have experience in those courthouses to understand, and to be able to effectively communicate with the client, one of the biggest challenges that you have in the criminal aspect, and I can’t speak to family law or, or trust and etates, but I know in criminal is, clients have a tendency to hear what they want to hear.And, if with non attorney sales, you have challenges with people who will over promise to sign the lead, because-

Jay Ruane 17:22

Right and that’s why the non attorney salesperson I don’t love.

Seth Price 17:25

That said, it’s not like like, it’s always like lawyers can do only business with other lawyers because they’re more ethical, maybe, maybe not. But incentives are incentives. And that’s the piece, have you historically had any issues with your attorney salesperson, where they price a felony way too low? And then there’s resentment back? Or that that’s not as much of an issue?

Jay Ruane 17:49

Well, it’s not really that much of an issue, because my lawyers don’t get paid a percentage of per case, you know, my lawyers get salary and, and that’s it. So, you know, they get they get their, you know, salary, six figure salaries, but they get them for as much as I can, you know, shove down their throat basically.

Seth Price 18:12

Right as you know, when you have a business model, and it’s baked into it, it’s very hard to take anything away from somebody, if I reduce somebody’s-

Jay Ruane 18:15

right, and they’ll be upset

Seth Price 18:17

5% for not signing it. Am I gonna get push back? I’m sure I will. At the same time, look, I think what it’s forced me to do, the good thing is we’re pretty good at marketing, but we’ve had to over market in order to do that. We do eight figures in criminal so it’s not like we have a lot of criminal stuff coming through. The question is, could this be done more efficiently, with a centralized person to take care of this component of it?

Jay Ruane 18:45

Well, so then I gotta, I gotta ask you a question. If you’re there, if it’s generating revenue. Would you, changing this when something is working and generating eight figure, you know, it, you know, generating good money in the criminal space? Is it better for you to simply expand to a new market in that space? You know, it’s, you know, rather than trying to upset like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Seth Price 19:20

Yes and no. Okay. So point well taken, and let’s say of my six attorneys that are each able to do roughly a million in gross a year plus or minus, yeah, you don’t mess with that they can somehow balance signing people and doing their work. For the people that are not the A pluses. I wish I had only A pluses. You know, is there a model where I would allow me to scale because one of the limitations on scale, like I’ll give you an example and this is not apples to apples because we’re talking about family law, they can force somebody to a paid consultation in theory, but I can’t find the talent I wouldn’t show with somebody listening to this would say, hey, I’d love to be part of this system. I can’t find family lawyers that I can stomach who I want to work with. And that’s at scale. And what I’m finding is, you know, I have to limit myself to somebody with a bunch of skill sets that are amazing lawyers, decent human beings, and can close. That’s a lot of different skill sets. If I can find people that are decent lawyers, decent human beings, but aren’t great at closing, could I, you know, or who burn out, we now have lawyers with us over 10 years. And we’ve lost a person who just had a midlife crisis, after 10 years, said, you know what, I don’t want the, I don’t want the grind. And when you do all those things, is it possible, it would be a more sustainable model for some lawyers, when they leave court, and they don’t need to take intake calls.

Jay Ruane 21:02

Right, well, could you have somebody do a data analysis of the amount of time spent for your bottom for sales, lawyers in sales and be like, hey, you know what we’ve identified that you’re losing, six and a half hours per week and you four, if I fill somebody to be the salesperson for you four that fills 40 hours, you each clawback six hours of life to either-

Seth Price 21:32

Life or production-

Jay Ruane 21:33

Or production.

Seth Price 21:35

Right. So yes,

Jay Ruane 21:36

It’ll actually be better for you, you’ll actually make more money.

Seth Price 21:38

Agreed. Now, whether I, whether I claw anything back in the end? Who knows? Right? I mean, like, it’s, that’s the piece that it’s tough, because as we know, no rain,

Jay Ruane 21:49

I think it’s a business decision. And you’ve just got to invest the money to see if it’s gonna

Seth Price 21:53

Like, again, I should be so lucky, I find a person who values align, who can sell who’s a lawyer who can gain enough knowledge, I won’t have that running start. I tried it once internally, and I have not had luck with my own lawyer saying, Hey, do you want to semi retire into this position? I haven’t had people partially, and this is the this is the part of it is, it’s the incentives, if they make less money selling than they do doing? They’re like, I might as well do everything. And that, that was part of that’s part of the issue. So, you know, it’s, I’m excited. So my, my current venture is to find an attorney, somebody who wants to be home with their kids. Who’s able, That’s amazing, they’re able to balance that because generally, this is a daytime activity. And if kids are floating around, that’s not so easy. Right?

Jay Ruane 22:41

Right. I mean, you know, the reality is, is that I’m wondering if we are going to find in the years to come. Now, I’m not saying right now, although it could be you know, there’s a there’s been a dramatic drop off in the number of people going into law school.

Seth Price 23:02

We’ve been talking about this for months. If not years.

Jay Ruane 23:05

But I think law school. And law as a career is not necessarily the right choice for probably five to 10% of people who actually opted into law school. And there is less of a stigma of transitioning away from being a practicing lawyer to doing legal sales or something like that.

Seth Price 23:27

So, look- I know-

Jay Ruane 23:28

So I’m thinking maybe as it ramps up, you might be able to say, Hey, are you do you have a law degree, but you’re dissatisfied with actually being a lawyer? Well, guess what, we have a role for you to capitalize on your degree and do some sales. You know, the, you know, that that could be there could be opportunity, you know, in that area, because I mean, I’ve had lawyers who’ve come into my office over the last decade have been like, I should never have gone to law school. I don’t know why I went, I just went because everyone said I should be a lawyer. And I agreed, because I didn’t know what I wanted to be. And I really want to be a social worker, I really want to draw comic books. I mean, these are conversations I’ve had with people that I employ, and they come in and they’re like, this isn’t the career for me. And you know, I’m waiting for the person to say I really like sales. I don’t like being a lawyer. And then I can say, well, but have I got a job for you, you know, you’re

Seth Price 24:23

They’re out there. So hopefully somebody’s listening. But you know, I’m gonna conclude with this sort of scary concept. We’ve we bemoaned the fact less people go to law school, the bar has dropped, less people certainly want to be trial lawyers. You know, in the grind day to day some do but not at the same numbers we saw. Is this final nail in the coffin coming right? So law school tuition through the roof. Right, options for other things you can be doing. Right that don’t require being in a physical place that you can, quality of life, to work from home doing many things that aren’t this, how is our interest rates going to affect this? And again, I’m not, I don’t know how current loans are being structured. But if anything is, God forbid, floating. Imagine what the new cost of law school is $200,000 with real, non 0% rates?

Jay Ruane 25:24

Yeah. I mean, I don’t understand why if Congress sets the interest rate on student loans, why there hasn’t been a big push to make the interest rate 1%? Like, just there you go, that that’s a solution. I’m sure there’s it’s a political hot potato and all those other things. But it, that’s a lot cheaper than forgiving debt, you know, to the to the to the-

Seth Price 25:47

That, again it’s a very interesting, sort of, like, non sustainable concept. Like, why would again, and we could get into a whole political debate, of all the things that have been done. It doesn’t seem like something that solves the problem. It sounds like something’s a short term solution that might get some votes.

Jay Ruane 26:05

Yeah. I mean, because because the reality is, is that you still have people taking on that debt today to go to law school next year.

Seth Price 26:11

Correct. So are you forgiven? It’s like there and it just doesn’t make any. And I just, to me, again, there are a lot of things like PPP and ERC, that, you know, we’re sort of gifts from the government.

Jay Ruane 26:23

But here’s the thing, PPP was not a gift for the government to the small business owner. It was a way for the government to avoid-

Seth Price 26:32

Correct !

Jay Ruane 26:32

Millions upon millions of people

Seth Price 26:33
I get it.

Jay Ruane 26:34

being laid off. Every you know, I hear that all the time, people talking about oh, PPP was a gift to the small business owner. Dude, I didn’t collect any PPP money. None of that went in my pocket. It paid all my employees, yes, I was able to keep them as employees. So I guess that’s a benefit to me. But in reality, I didn’t see $1 of that money. And I can’t stand it when people are like, well, you know, the government does all these handouts, and it gave you a PPP. No, that was just to avoid the unemployment system collapsing, which is what would have happened, because everyone would have been laid off at the same time.

Seth Price 27:00

Right. And the argument could be made, if you didn’t forgive some debt, you’re you’re, you know, you’d have like enough bankruptcy, but you’d have an economic collapse of other, of other sorts.

Jay Ruane 27:13

Exactly.

Seth Price 27:14

And I, it to me, like until they really go out for, for profits, universities, and really curtail the bad actors that are just completely predatory. I mean, all this is sort of window dressing.

Jay Ruane 27:30

You know, it’s funny, there’s a there’s a local university by me, and, you know, it was a commuter school for, you know, 40 years.

Seth Price 27:40

Devry or something like that?

Jay Ruane 27:43

It’s it’s Sacred Heart University, it’s not that I’m putting them on blast they’re a local Catholic College. And in the last 10 years, the amount of investment they have made into, I mean, they built, they took over the old GE space in Fairfield, Connecticut, GE’s worldwide headquarters was there, they took that over, they built a hockey arena, on campus just for hockey, right. I mean, how many hockey games does a college hockey team play a year? 20 At home, so they have 20, men’s and 20, women’s games, they have a whole arena built for that. They have dorms, they have football fields, basically, I mean, the amount of money that they are able to spend is astounding to me, because I know they don’t have an alumni network that is giving them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Seth Price 28:32

It’s just pure cash flow.

Jay Ruane 28:33

So this is pure cash flow that they’re building this stuff off of. Well, I’m just wondering what that you know, the population of college students is going to drop.

Seth Price 28:45

Well, I wouldn’t go there. So I’ll leave you with this. This is my business idea. Hope somebody listening steals it. I think that this is a either a nonprofit or a do good business model, which is we sit here, people are now working remotely, right. They realize they get their work done. Some people love it. Some people don’t. But there plenty businesses that are working with fully remote. And I know there’s some downsides, this but how much free classroom material is online now, if you want you could find MIT, Harvard, Stan- you can find the best professor from each university, used to be you couldn’t find are now essentially online in some form or fashion. So this is my idea. For a very nominal amount, a couple grand a semester, 2500 was my over under. You would be able to apply to Ruane University, you Ruane University would be accredited. You would take the classes from these three sources. And then Ruane University would grade papers, have a test whatever it was, that will be paid for with your tuition. There also be a monitoring to show that you attended some percentage of those classrooms, which we know in regular universities doesn’t happen, right now. Nobody has any idea if you’re in class or not. And that basically, for a very nominal amount, you could have everything, basically an employer know, you’ve watched all this stuff, you’ve taken tests, they’ve been graded. Would you rather see that than a C or D level University on a transcript? For nothing, compared to 60 grand a year that some of these places that are, that you’ve never heard of before, with nonsensical faculty, are putting forth?

Jay Ruane 30:30

I mean, I know I would, I mean, I know that Google, you know, is, has got their accreditation program for people who want to be coders. And that guarantees you a job as long as you do all their classes. And I think that that’s the same thing. In fact, it’s interesting, I actually pitched this same, similar idea to, you know, I went to a Jesuit University and I went to Jesuit High School. And I said to the headmaster of my high school, I said, Why is there not a Jesuit University of the United States where you take the best classes out of Georgetown, in government, and the best in, out of Fairfield U in business, and the best out of you know, Spring Hill for whatever, you know, and just and the best out of Scranton for physical therapy and that type of thing. And, and amass this online university of the best that we can offer. And you can get a general studies degree, and that type of thing, and it’s all done remotely and that type of thing. I thought it would be a brilliant I.

Seth Price 31:34

Look, I look, I think that the teachers union where I live, Montgomery County is considered one of the better public schools counties in the country. I think they freaked out for a minute during COVID when everything went online, because do you really need 300 history teachers for 10th grade? Or do you really need, could you take the best algebra teacher in the county? And then you can have breakout groups so it’s not like you, but is there a point where we could get better quality like you should never have a crappy teacher again? Because you could have you know, your, your version of America’s Got Talent or The Voice to determine who’s the best and then let’s use that for our students. Right.

Jay Ruane 32:15

The, well then the flipside to that is the best for you might not be the best for me.

Seth Price 32:30

No, I get it. But there are some teachers when you get them they’re legendary. Again, it does not have to be one, you might have one that’s for kids who might need something, but my point is that it is look, and there’s a lot to breakouts, but the lecture itself when you move away from in class q&a, the q&a after a class, like the world changes perception wise. Anyway, we digress.

Jay Ruane 32:48

You know, this is, this, this is an interesting point, because also the, you know, the legal world can do in this, you know, during COVID I suggested on our criminal defense listserv, why do we not have one courtroom in the state of, we’ve got, in the state of Connecticut, we have 24 functioning courthouses, where they arraign people who were arrested the night before. And they were doing arraignments remotely. During COVID. I said, if you had two judges, and you had them on video camera, you could remove all of that arraignment process from every courthouse, making yourself so much more efficient. And you have the technology to do it and that as soon as COVID you know was over. They went right back to in person arraignments at every courthouse wasting two hours a day, you could have two judges arraign everybody in the entire state in about six hours statewide, have all the resources.

Seth Price 33:44

How many jobs would that eliminate?

Jay Ruane 33:45

Well, it would eliminate a lot. It would eliminate a lot.

Seth Price 33:47

Not just judges but clerks, plus

Jay Ruane 33:50

Judges, clerks,

Seth Price 33:52

Bailiffs.

Jay Ruane 33:55

Bailiffs, tons, you know, but that’s the thing nobody wants to be efficient when you’re in government. It’s it’s that’s just part of-

Seth Price 34:00

No, it’s funny. I was at an urgent care, kid with an ear infection last night. And I get there and it was, there wasn’t much of a wait there’s only one guy ahead of me. So we’re, he was he was in some pain. I don’t know why, ear infection really hit him. And you know, we had to wait 15 minutes, who cares? That’s pretty good by urgent care standards. We go to like a nurse practitioner or somebody who’s like doing vitals. Okay. And then you’re like waiting in a room. And for quite a while I see the person out there. I don’t know what the hell they were doing some-

Jay Ruane 34:33

They’re on Instagram.

Seth Price 34:35

No, no, no, I don’t think, no, I don’t think, they’re doing paperwork, this and that. The actual time it took them to come in and diagnose an EAR infection, which we knew it was that, was all about 45 seconds. When they finally got-

Jay Ruane 34:47

Well because they look in and they say yep, it’s infected, right?

Seth Price 34:50

No, no, no, I guess my point is when you look at the world and you see all these things, there are 20 different urgent cares around where each person is waiting in a little room but God forbid we could add some of the stuff. So, look, I think AI will help with some of this world. But as you see, there’s other pieces that are not, but let’s let’s get this wrapped up.

Jay Ruane 35:10

All right, cool. Well, I mean, that sort of went nowhere that I expected based on what we talked about. But that’s part of what we do here at the Law Firm Blueprint we talk about all the different things that challenge us every week. So thank you for being here with us. Of course if you want to take us on the go, be sure to subscribe to The Law Firm Blueprint podcast wherever you get your podcasts and you can catch us live in The Law Firm Blueprint Facebook group every week. Be sure to get our latest book, Tiger Tactics, CEO Edition, available, Tiger Tactics number two, it’s available online at Amazon. Be sure to pick up your copy if you haven’t gotten it yet. It is now in the top two or top three in law firm education, law firm management, and it certainly will tell you about Seth’s story about my story and all of our other co author stories. But thank you for being with us. We hope this is the beginning of your holiday season and you have a fantastic one. There will be more shows to come. We are not done this year, but we will see you soon. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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