Transcript:

Jay Ruane 0:00
Hello. Hello, and welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m on your host, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man. Seth Price side, I never know which way to point now that we got this new software, but it’s all looking good. Seth, it’s been a while since we did one of these.

Seth Price 0:14
You know, AI is great, and we know we need to get there. But like, you know, just getting through the day and looking at numbers and pushing people to the best they can do. It is a grind.

Jay Ruane 0:25
It really is. You know, I just got back myself from getting out of the office. I rarely get out of the office anymore, but I was down in Charleston for the unreasonable hospitality event that best ever put on, and that was really fascinating. I know I’ve read the book Unreasonable Hospitality. I know you have, I know, especially, you know, 11 Madison Park in New York City, a huge, huge restaurant that made waves years ago. And it was really fascinating to meet with some of those people that are mentioned in the book, right? And get to hear their story, a lot of Connecticut connections. So cool for me. Turns out one of the speakers knew a girl I dated years ago, because they’re around the same age, so it was very cool. But, you know, taking the idea of unreasonable hospitality to a law firm is different than a restaurant, right? And so you have to go to it with open eyes, because, you know, I’m dealing with people at the worst part of their life. I don’t necessarily need to wow them with, you know, free champagne. I got to actually provide good service. And I think for that, I think for that, you know, the best way to do that as a lawyer is over-communicate, because lawyers have such a bad rep for communication, that if we can get ahead, and we actually are making some changes this week, we already over-communicated. We’re going to do even more. Because I think that the way to stand out among other lawyers, is to never leave your client wondering what’s going to happen. Well, look,

Seth Price 1:50
and I think if you go back to the book, which I loved, the great service is table stakes, right? So going to court basic communication. This is a place charging premium prices. What I mean wasn’t just like, you know, a few $1,000 worth of DUI, this was the equivalent of the $20,000 DUI place, right? So you had the ability to take less cases, you had it spaced out, and you had great staff. Even with that, what struck me, and again, we all would love to have the moment where you fill the parking meter, you buy the hot dog and you chop it up. But with each of those things, even the glasses in a box, it takes forethought labor, and bandwidth in order to do that and that. When that is not budgeted, it’s a great idea. It’s never happening, right? And so, you know, just looking at you know, take a PI firm, for example. If your paralegals, prelim case manager, whatever you want to call them, have case volumes that start to creep from 80 to 100 to 120 to 150 all of a sudden, forget about unreasonable hospitality. There’s not even basic hospitality, right? So part of this is our and because this goes back to the reality of what you and I talk about all the time, as far as staffing. When do you hire? Right? So you take those questions we get all the time, when do you hire somebody? You know? Do you hire a lawyer or paralegal? We’ve talked about that countless times, but if the answer is, you’re making a decision, which means you’re either a little light on labor, on lawyer labor, a little light on admin labor, whatever you know, however, you want to do it. What you’re basically saying is you’re not at that elite level in either place, because you’re in growth mode, right? I think Dan Martell, who consuming a ton of his content recently, has something where he just had a video the other day where he’s like, if you’re in growth mode, you have one of three things going on, you know, you either have not enough labor, you know, too much labor, or just enough. And you’re in growth mode, you’re constantly trying to figure out how you know that balance, so that you don’t go out of business, and that, you know, we don’t we’ve never talked about it that way, but essentially, that’s what you have to do. And for me, this is particularly poignant right now. You know the current administration in DC, forget about politics. Just factually, we are seeing layoffs at numbers that are unbelievable in our market, right HUD, 1000s of people. I’m sorry, Department of Education, crazy numbers. Department education already had to come a bunch of these other places. All the government contractors do with USAID. So all of a sudden, very, very concerned about fee for service clients. Will the money be there, right? So they’re all these unknowns. And at the same time, we’re staffing for growth, and it is a particularly perilous time, because one of the things you normally have is certainty of some sort or another. So right now, not only are you trying to handicap how much labor to put in place, to hit what your needs are, but you have the level of. Volatility right now is just off the charts, at least in the DMV. You know,

Jay Ruane 5:04
it’s interesting. We talk about staffing is, and I think that’s, you know, hiring is a problem for lawyers right now across the country. And I made a decision a while back to, you know, I didn’t want to be lean. I would rather take home less profit and have an extra set of hands at two different levels, at the lawyer level, at the intake level, and also at the at the paralegal level. And so we kind of intentionally overstaffed at the intake and the at the paralegal level. And wouldn’t you know it, I was away in Charleston, and we lost a paralegal, and we lost an intake person, which,

Seth Price 5:43
which goes to, you weren’t overstaffed. You were prepared for I was

Jay Ruane 5:47
prepared for it. And so, you know, I didn’t freak out, because now the people I have can handle our bandwidth, and now we’re going to hire and train and get people back in. And so we have, and I would rather give up a little bit of profit to have less headaches, and that’s the way. I’m just like, I know lawyers who are like, I’m running myself ragged covering cases and running around because I want to eat that profit. And I’m like, wrong with it’s

Seth Price 6:12
a value decision. There’s nothing wrong. It’s a value. Or you run, as you did for many years, run exactly with what you need, but when somebody quit, you’re back in court, or

Jay Ruane 6:20
you double now I’m saying, screw that. I’d rather overstaff,

Seth Price 6:25
knowing where you are. How long were you, quote, unquote, overstaffed, in your opinion, for

Jay Ruane 6:30
probably about 18 months to two years

Seth Price 6:33
that you think was that long? Yeah, let me ask you this, were you overstaffed, or did you grow during that time?

Jay Ruane 6:42
Well, we grew and hired new people, but the people that we had in the sort of overstaffed seat, you know, they weren’t the best at anything, but they were passable. Like if I were to do the whole, you know, Jack Welch, cut the bottom 10% I probably would have cut these people last year, but they could do work, and we kept them around so that they could fill in when we I mean if you recall, if viewers or listeners recall, last year, we had six staff members have babies in a seven, eight-month period. So we were moving things around every everything’s in flux. We got back to we got back to some semblance of normalcy in our office, and then we realized, hey, if they quit, it’s not the end of our world. We could restaff. Train better now we have a better training program. We can, you know, personality, we can spend more time actually hiring people to fill these roles, now that we know what these roles are and what the talents that those people have because they didn’t exist, and we were just, you know, shoving, jamming somebody into that role. So it’s actually a net positive for me to have lost these two people. I’m, I’m excited about it. Okay, let

Seth Price 7:51
I take you back to something, because you touched on something, and this has been, I’ve been thinking a lot about, I don’t know where it lands, but we are, you know when we started the firm, we had nobody having kids, then people started having kids. Now in the current normal paternity leave is a real thing, so we are handicapping people coming and going. Obviously, you’re not, you know, we know we’re not firing anybody. We don’t want to fight we want the people back, but you’re having to figure out how to get work done for multiple months. DC now has a fund that we pay through taxes work to take longer maternity and paternity time. Okay, that’s one, I’ll say, risk factor, but one up and down that we have to manage and do, do very effectively in order to keep the high quality. Does part of that quote, unquote, over staffing allow for that natural ebb and flow. In the first part, I’ll give you a two-parter. You know, the second part, which I’m starting to wish that I’m able to track, is when there are things like marital issues and somebody’s going through something that’s identifiable. You know, being divorced is another place where the person is not out of work, they are still there. But do we, should we be handicapping, knowing that there’s going to be less production and that we’re going to need to layer, you know, additional work there, and it’s these, you know, sort of, how do you keep it like this when they’re all these ups and downs through different life events? Well,

Jay Ruane 9:26
see, and this is something that I think it’s important to discuss, which never really gets discussed in the concept of running a firm, is that you know, I hire somebody, I’m expecting 40 hours of work out of them a week, but their 40 hours of productive work one week. May, you know, they may only be able to give 20 hours of productive work, you know, I, I mean, I can go back in my own history, uh, I’m not happy about this, but I can remember. I, you know, it was the, it was the the end of a relationship, before I met my wife. And this is. 20 plus years ago, and I can remember coming into the office and literally sitting at my computer and staring at it for an eight-hour day. I accomplished nothing that day. I remember that day because it was a it’s a visceral memory burned into my brain. But I literally accomplished nothing. And that even wasn’t a marriage that was, I think it was just a relationship that was it. So, yes. I mean, there are going to be people who get divorced or whatever or have the loss of a family member who will sit and stare at the screen for eight hours. I think you need to get a race. I think you need to be an under.

Seth Price 10:36
this isn’t like your fires of it, but it’s just if you want to have that unreasonable hospitality if you want great service and great quality, is it such a business we need to bulletproof against? Because if somebody is staring at the screen for eight hours a day, how do we make sure that the client doesn’t suffer from it?

Jay Ruane 10:54
Well, I think in those situations, I think it’s part of your firm culture that there should be a dialog about it. I mean, I know back when I had that issue, I felt comfortable enough to share with my paralegal. Man, this isn’t working out. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m, you know, I’m not getting done. And my paralegal was like, Okay, well, hey, I’m going to cancel your phone calls for today because you’re not in the right head space. I’m going to put them down for two days from now, and we’ll circle back, but I’ll reach out, I’ll talk to the clients, that type of thing. I think I think.

Seth Price 11:28
the question is, is with our and part of it is with the way we are not all in the office all the time. You don’t always know that,

Jay Ruane 11:38
, but I think you can have a culture where people are communicating and their their core team knows what’s going on in their lives, understands and

Seth Price 11:47
but it’s the piece. There’s a piece that you can do through culture. There’s a piece you can do through communicating online. But there’s also the nonverbal body language. When somebody walks these you walk in, and so there, you know, I struggle there, and I’m, I’m wondering whether there are patterns that we, you know, we know when somebody tells you they’re pregnant, you know, you have X number of months to prepare for a departure and it’s clean, they’re not in the office, right? You know, are there other life events that we and again, it’s some. Everybody handles things differently, but are there different life events that we need to handicap in order to make sure that we do that? I gotta, I’ll throw another since we’re doing rapid fire, I feel like we haven’t had you for a while. I’ve been raising my LinkedIn game and, you know, sort of following a number of the bigger influencers, and a guy actually to post about Jonathan Pollard, who I met years ago, serendipitously, just on an elevator ride in Fort Lauderdale was one of the sorts of the bigger, you know, big content creators on there, and he was, he got, he put out a post today saying that he thinks that it’s crap that People look at gaps on resumes negatively as a red flag. And there were a lot of people saying, that’s right, and he had some very good points, like, you shouldn’t be for, you know, looking at somebody like, hey, are they working for the man or not? And it could be they have to take care of a sick parent. But it struck me, and it comes to some of the issues we just talked about, do you think it’s fair? Because I thought that as a business owner, I’m not saying I’m not hiring somebody based on a gap in the resume, but to me, it is a talking point to clarify what’s going on so that somebody’s saying. Nothing to see here, I thought was for a guy that I’m usually like, yeah, I see the point there. To me, I thought that that was actually irresponsible. Because if we’re trying to figure out how not to have somebody who could melt down at the office, looking at why somebody has gaps is significant in that process. I think it’s

Jay Ruane 13:58
hugely significant. In fact, I can share a story that happened to us. We had an associate who was with us who came in 1516, years ago. She came in on her resume, she had done internships in the public defender’s office, she had, she had, and then she passed the bar, and there was a year gap in her resume. And I’m like, You got admitted in October, but you’re interviewing now, and you don’t like, what have you been doing for the last year? And I just said, you know, I’m just curious that your resume just kind of stopped. And she said, Oh, well, I didn’t put it on my resume because I have, we have a family member who owns a local factory. They are being audited by the IRS. They had a big mess in their office. I had bandwidth. I had just come out of law school. They wanted somebody they trusted in the family to come in and kind of help their bookkeeper clean up stuff and make sure that they were in compliance. And I was smart enough to do it. It, but it’s not criminal. So I didn’t put it on my resume. And I’m kind of just working for a family. It’s, it’s not working in law.

Seth Price 15:05
I’m like, Well, look, and I love it, and then we’ve had those, and that’s great, right? That’s an or, you know what? I had a kid, and I wanted to, I wanted to basically just get a reset. Fine, that’s not the issue. But when you get the answer, oh, yeah, those three months, yeah, I started a job. I didn’t put it on there. All of a sudden, to me, that’s valuable information as to whether they had a meltdown somewhere and there was a real issue. And so to me, I just it’s, to me, it’s a valuable data point, not because we should all feel that we have to be on the Hampshire real, 24/7, but a is there something that is not disclosed?

Jay Ruane 15:44
Well, then, okay, so this is so this then opens up a whole can of worms, because what about those instances where you, you know, give somebody a 90-day severance, and you terminate, and you say, hey, look, this isn’t working out. You should look for another job, but we’ll keep you on the website, and you go look so they’re, you know, to their new employer, they look like they’re just, I’ve run my course. I’m not happy at the farm. It’s time for me to change. But they were getting can, and you’re a participant in the ruse that they weren’t a flame-out by keeping them, allowing them to have you on their resume continually while they’re looking for jobs. So you’re solving your own problem. Other people may be doing that same thing, and you know, so even without a gap in the resume, you could still have red flags, I guess. Oh no, no, no. 100% This

Seth Price 16:37
isn’t like an either-or. And look, I’m a big fan of that. I think that because, look, the reason somebody’s leaving may, you know, like, going back to the old data, it’s you, not me, you know, it’s that whole concept. There are a lot of reasons why people leave a place and maybe your finances may be their fit. There could be a cultural fit with people that would be fine. So, like, I’m humble enough to know the truth is somewhere in the middle on that, and frankly, you’re not going to offer that if it’s a flame out, right? You do that when it’s a decent person. That’s not right for you. Presumably, if somebody’s threatened to sue you, they’re not remaining on your website. So, you know. And it comes back to, you know, to me, all of this is powerful, and it’s nice to say we shouldn’t consider that. But if somebody went to care for a family member, that’s great. My question all I want to know is, when they chose to do that and left their last job, was it a smooth transition, or did they say I gotta leave today? This is your problem, not mine because those are the things that just like dating, how somebody broke up with somebody broke up with somebody else, is likely what’s going to happen to you like, is this something that is, you know, how does that fit into the bigger picture? Because we talk about, you know, testing for culture and personality tests and all this stuff, you know, that’s great. But I want to just know to me is, is this somebody who is going to land the plane whenever they leave an opportunity. Or is it somebody who’s, who’s, you know, you know, blowing up the joint?

Jay Ruane 18:08
Yeah, it’s, you know, the hardest part of this job of running a law firm is finding the right people at the right time and putting them in the right seat. I mean, it’s also, you know, there are people who you may meet early on in your career who may be a great person for your firm 10 years later, but then they’re gone. They’re not in that orbit anymore, and you can’t get them. And so it’s really making do with what’s available to you at the time and squeezing the best out of every single employee. Because there are people that I met 15 years ago, that I would love to have brought in, but we weren’t ready for them, and now they’re entrenched in something else, and they’re not going to leave that place.

Seth Price 18:51
I guess I’m going back to the red flag to get stuck in my craw, which is what you know, are you looking at the length of tenure at other jobs? If somebody spent nine to 15 months at their last four jobs, is that to you a factor that goes into whether or not past performance, has no guarantee of future results? But does tenure play a role?

Jay Ruane 19:14
I think it does to us and we and we would ask about that. We would say, hey, it looks like you know, you’ve had four jobs in the last three years, or last six years. Tell us. Tell us what you’re looking for, you know, because, because, if they say, Well, I’m looking for X, Y or Z, you can’t provide it, you know. If they say, Oh, I was, you know, I really want to work in a hybrid environment, because, you know, my dog is getting old, and it’s important for me. And I was at one job, and it was all remote, and then they said, No, you got to come back. And then at my next job, they advertised it as remote, but then they said, No, it’s in the office. And they did a return to Office thing. So I left and well, if I can accommodate that, and you’re good, we’ll do that. I think you got to have that conversation early on. On, you know, in stage X, Y, or, I mean, and that’s another question I have for you. If we want to pivot a little, I have now decided that we need to do a better job in the interview process, whereas we’re going to actually designate interview stages with this topic we’re going to discuss. So in the first, it’s going to talk about your life goals, how you might fit in here, what you know, and where you think you can best serve us. Then in the second one, let’s talk about, you know, what kind of environment makes you best, and can we provide that? And then the third one might be, how do you interact with other people? And instead of doing like these two-hour interviews with people, make break them down into, you know, 1520-minute calls and get to know people over an extended period of time, rather than bringing in different people to hammer them on a question or, I mean,

Seth Price 21:01
my office. The flip side is, if it’s, if it’s talent, they’re not staying in the market that long. So you know, if somebody’s gonna, you’re gonna spread this out over two weeks. They’re all like, if it’s an A player, they may not be there. My attitude with interviews is if it’s an A player and we, we’re there, I want to know, can they be interviewed within the next 48 hours, and if it’s outside of that, I want to know why it’s got to be, because they have an obligation being that they can’t be there for it, but that we want to, not that I want to hire fast, and not that I want to make a mistake, but I want to be able to get to the point where they know that we’re in place, so that it’s not, you know, we’re so we’re not far enough to belong in the process When there’s somebody that we’re, you know, fighting for. So how

Jay Ruane 21:43
do you know if someone’s an A player without, like in the well,

Seth Price 21:46
I mean coming through the screen, we, I mean, we’re at the point now where we have a, you know, a recruiter who is letting us know, and when you know, we get the sense that somebody’s special and that they, their resume and their screen are strong, and that, you know, we you know, if that’s the case for specific stuff, we talk about how hard it is to find a criminal defense lawyer, and we asked, we asked the question, Are you interviewing anywhere else? Not because just to know the timing, so that if they aren’t, they say, You know what? No, you’re my only place. Then okay, I’ll follow the Jay Ruane philosophy and try to spread this out. But if they’re like, No, I’m actively interviewing, and you’re now a step behind, because I’ve already done my second interview with some people, we better get our act together, because we’re going to want to know if we want to have a shot at this person, we better be prepared to be in play sooner than later.

Jay Ruane 22:34
But how does that change now, given the dynamic in your home market of DC, with a ton of freshly unemployed people who are coming from career bureaucrat-type jobs where they haven’t had to produce in a private firm or respond to clients? I mean, look, nobody needs to say, you know, calling the DMV or calling a federal office that speaks to somebody, they’ll get to you when they get to you. Thank you very much. Historically,

Seth Price 23:04
we didn’t make the transition, you know, with rare exceptions, you know, from a prosecutor into a defense attorney, yes, but like from a from an administrative, governmental job, it’s pretty hard to transition to the private sector. Right now, there are blogs websites, and webinars all talking about this. I’m right now. I desperately need a criminal defense lawyer in a particular jurisdiction, and there’s somebody who hits the avatar for what you’re talking about in the sense that they’ve been with the, you know, they’ve been, you know, in a governmental role, doing what we wanted them to do. They were now at one of the big federal agencies in a litigation role. They could easily, substantively do what I need. They could flip back to what they were doing. But are they willing to hustle, which is what a criminal defense lawyer is going to do? You know, are they willing to be the private price? This isn’t like, are you willing to like to work 70 hours a week, but this is, are you willing to take off the the the what the Vernier of what you had in government. And we’re literally at the point where we like the person she could do what we want. I always say to people that this is a self-selecting job. We know pretty quickly if they have the substantive chops, do you want what we’re selling and how we have positioned ourselves in the market? And here, you know, I we kicked it a week to have an in to have more in person, and just figure out, as you’re saying, you talked about all those different things if you want to be at home because your dog’s there, but this job is going to require you be a different courthouse, morning and afternoon. You know, four days a week that that like we want to know that, because I want to know that going in, right? And it’s, it’s frustrating because there’s so much talent. I just came from a networking thing at GW Law today, and some kid is telling us that he wants to go into a government contract. And I’m like, the wrong moment in time to now he’s first year, by the time he’s a third year, maybe, who knows, but Right? Now,

Jay Ruane 25:01
you know, this is the I want to go into finances in the fall of 2008

Seth Price 25:05
right? You know, like, again, if you want to do it, you’ll figure it out if you’re that rock star, but if you’re, like, I’m not sure what I want to do, like, the last thing you and it’s also just tone deaf to what’s going on it is, there’s so much talent coming on the market. But I think that I make, I’ll make an analogy. Want to see if you buy it. We’ve talked over the years. You know, we have Amazon that’s in our market, right there. HQ, two didn’t really quite take off, but if you hired a person in an administrative role that the market’s at 100,000 for Amazon, was paying a $50,000 bonus, or a $60,000 bonus on top of the salary. So here’s $100,000 and here’s 5000 a month just for being here. Now Amazon’s have, you know, turns the screws pretty hard. It’s not an easy place to work. But when, and we saw this over the years, if somebody has a job which is paying a number above market, I never want to be the person that says, You know what, you’re really only worth 100,000 You’re not worth a buck 60, right? And I never, I have found it as a policy, not bringing somebody in with a substantial reduction in salary, even if it’s what the market is saying it should be. I want that person to go to market, take a bunch of interviews and find out that is market. I don’t want to be the a-hole that says, no, no, you’re not worth that, because I think it always ends badly, and so I am concerned a little bit when it’s bringing people from government who have been there for a significant period of time. I don’t want to be the person that says this normal doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a new normal, like that job isn’t there. If you want that job, you should wait for the job to come back. But if you’re in the private sector, we behave differently, and that is, do we want to be the person who is sort of bringing somebody from one lifestyle into another, just like I don’t like or do we have to wait for that person to recalibrate, to recognize, hey, this is not coming back. Or, you know, I’ve gone somewhere else, and this is how they are. We are a Kyler, gentler version of a for-profit organization, but we aren’t the same as where they’re coming from.

Jay Ruane 27:14
Yeah. I mean, I think, and I don’t want to get political here, but I think part of the problem with hiring former government employees is that the government sector jobs are not matching private sector pay anymore. I mean, you used to have fantastic benefits when you worked for your local municipality, because the job paid, you know, 75 cents the dollar of what you can make in the private market. So you got these pensions, you got great benefits, and that’s sort of made up for the fact stability and stability, and that made up for it that you you know the but now you know, the private market is paying not as good benefits, less stability, and not paying as much as you can make. And that’s why, for years, I lost tons of lawyers to the state service. They would go, they would leave me and go to the public defender’s office because I couldn’t pay them what they could make in the public defender’s office as a starting salary. And also, I mean, there was, we’ve seen it.

Seth Price 28:15
with court-appointed. Court-appointed in DC is at like, 90 an hour, and if not like, nobody’s getting rich off of it, but it’s changing your if the Asso if an associate can get that and fill their dance card, it’s going to price you out of a junior associate role,

Jay Ruane 28:29
right? Because, you know, they’re making 190 $180,000 a year, and plus whatever private business they can scrounge up, even if they’re not aggressively marketing, maybe they can get to 250 and, you know, and go for themselves and not

Seth Price 28:44
maybe, right? It’s this breakage. There’s this there’s that. It’s not perfect, but it’s you, those people without that number would not so what you’re saying like, it’s an interesting moment where I think what you’re alluding to is there are situations where the government salary is above the private sector. So you have somebody coming out where it’s a double whammy, it’s lifestyle and potentially money, right? As far as what the private sector values those skills,

Jay Ruane 29:12
yeah, and I think, you know, I think as private sector employers, we are really in a terrible situation because the talent that’s out there, you know, is, is, is not dealing with reality as to what they’re worth. I’ve seen it myself. When I’ve approached other lawyers who are, you know, senior status, and I say, hey, why don’t you join us? You know,

Seth Price 29:40
I want to be very careful. I want to divide that between, look, I am. I have not seen that from individuals. I’ve seen it from people trying to sell their practice. More historically, we may see it with the government, may or may not, but I am more concerned, and I just because I think it’s an important distinction when somebody’s trying to port their. Retirement to bring their practice somewhere, I see that’s where there’s a much greater gap between the individuals. That’s why I think the market is pretty good because people pretty quickly see what is out there and calibrate themselves. It’s not day one, which is why I like to wait several months, because if somebody’s way out of whack, the market will take care of it. It’s something where it’s a book of business where, you know, I remember, I was trying to acquire somebody’s practice in this whole another show for another day. And, you know, this guy just bought out his partner five years before, for a quarter million. So I’m like, okay, maybe the thing’s worth half a million. It’s been, it’s gone down since that level. And the guy’s like, well, I want 2 million cash up front and a third on the back end. And I’m just like, you know, so I’m but the bigger picture with the government piece is making sure that we have you just like we’re dealing with in DC. Another analogy, we have all this office space C-level office space B-level office space that’s empty. And they’re saying, Okay, well, this is all empty because of work from home, and now the government’s going to cancel leases. Can we turn it into residential which we need so badly? And you know what? One out of 10 of those properties, one out of 20, you can do it. But in other places, the plumbing and electrical are so prohibitive that it’s a whiteout, you can’t do anything with it, right? And so the question is, these are human beings, and how are we going to retrofit from commercial, residential? How are we going to take it from government to the private sector in a humane, positive way, where there will be people that we want to hire in the private sector, understanding that the people who are leaving the government, sometimes after decades, need to somehow recalibrate because it’s a different cadence in the private sector.

Jay Ruane 31:46
Yeah, it really is. We are in the beginning stages of, I mean, the availability of talent is going to change as a government, at least for us, you know, there’s going to be some former US attorneys that are going to be looking for jobs, you know. And

Seth Price 32:06
to look at the scarier part, I’ll conclude with this we’re sitting there. It’s a ridiculous whammy in that, yes, amazing talent, because there, I’m not worried about the cadence, just department US attorneys, they work their asses off, right? So that’s going to be a great possibility. But if nobody’s being prosecuted, right? What would I do? It’s like, and so now it’s like, there’s all this amazing talent there. It’s an embarrassment of riches. But if we’re sitting there wondering, are we going to have any cases for them?

Jay Ruane 32:40
So it’s hard right now. We are in an exceptionally hard time to forecast anything other than today, because, and even that’s hard, I mean, it’s really I we are in a time of flux. You know, probably, I mean, listen, five years ago today is when they announced stay-home COVID-19 Like, I think we are in similar situations, not necessarily health-wise, but business-wise right now because we don’t know what the next month, 90 days, or anything, is going to bring I mean, you know I said to My Account in my bookie part, it’s like, I want to hold back and store more cash and build up a bigger, you know, safety security fund right now because I just think I might need it. No,

Seth Price 33:36
it’s unsettling. And, you know, we, you know, I just, I’ll throw this out as an aside, BluShark lost a Canadian client who’s like, we just don’t deal with us people. Wow, yeah, that was a humbling moment. You know, this was, you know, it is that didn’t matter who we voted for, where we stood politically. They were like, Yep, we’re just making a blanket. And that’s like, that’s where this, you know the unintended, the consequences of erratic political moves. You know there are times when you’re like, you know what we really need as a country? We get it. This is a fundamental business. We know we need to raise this tariff in order to pull something like, I get it. But when you’re just, this isn’t, I don’t get the impression this is thoughtful. It is knee jerk too and then we’ll figure it out afterwards. And, you know, we

Jay Ruane 34:25
That’s my point, and that’s the thing. And so what I think everybody who’s listening needs to do is just sort of be intentional. Take that extra hour this week and actually think about, okay, if think, look, we’re lawyers. We’re trained to think about all the potential consequences of any motion that we file, all of those things. So now it’s time to actually sit back and be like, if this happens, we go here. If this happens, we go here. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I just talked to somebody the other day about, you know, starting a new law firm and they wanted me for me if. Administrative and marketing backgrounds. They want to do the work, end of it. And I was like, Well, I have no interest in that area of law. It is B to C. Maybe I’ll consider something like that being a part of it, because it’s another area that doesn’t have the necessarily same market constraints that criminal defense does. So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s out there. So I’m trying to be proactive, and I encourage everybody out there to be proactive as well. Awesome, awesome. Alright, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the law firm blueprint. Thank you so much for joining us today. Of course, if you want to take us on the go, you can subscribe to the law firm Blueprint podcast wherever you get your podcast. Of course, you can catch the show live every Thursday, 3 pm Eastern, 12 pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn, and live in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint, which you should be a member of. But for that and for now, I am Jay Ru Wayne. He is Seth Price. We are the law firm’s blueprint.