Jay Ruane  0:07  

Hello, hello! Welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m your host, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man Seth. Seth, looks like you’re a BluShark today. How’s your day going?

 

Seth Price  0:16  

I am. It’s going well. But you know, it’s funny, just getting this thing to go live, I’m having one of these existential moments. We’ve been talking a lot recently, you know, over COVID. People were going, you know, international, then remote. And what are some of the pluses and minuses that we’re seeing over time? You know, in the back of my mind, on one side, you have John Morgan who says remote work is nonsense and people aren’t working from there. At the same time, when I look at my rock star employees, they’ve been with me over time. Most of those, many of them, are remote, and you know the people that stay 1010 years plus, and you know there are certain downsides. Some of your administrative help, when they’re not on site, things like just getting a laptop going may be problematic. And want to get your thoughts on what we call it the new normal, but like where we are, right? You know, COVID’s well behind us. You know, AI is sort of giving us efficiencies. We have international labor, and let’s call it national labor. Getting people in major metros to come to work is really, really difficult. So where is that balance now between, you know, most of us were not virtual-first? We have some lawyers in our tribe that built their firms virtually, digital agencies that are fully virtual. But what what is what is that balance, and what are we seeing? We look, if we’re trying to be introspective for a moment. What are the efficiencies we’re getting, and what are the downsides, so that we can start to sort of have an honest conversation about where we’re at when it comes to the virtual versus non-virtual world.

 

Jay Ruane  2:05  

You know, it’s interesting because I saw that article about Morgan saying, you know, we’ll shove a camera up your butt, and everyone needs to be in the office, and I can see there’s value in being in the office. I also see there’s value in getting the top talent, and so I think I’m going to give a Seth Price answer and say I think it depends. I think it depends on your culture. I think it depends not only on the culture but on the people that you hire, and I think it depends on what type of firm you want to have, and all of those factors go into if you can make a hybrid or a fully remote situation work for you. Now, for us in our firm, we have decided that we want to get the best talent, and some of the talent that we have may not necessarily live in our neighborhood. And so, for example, we are recruiting intake down in South Texas because we want people who are naturally bilingual in Spanish and English, but we know we want people with. I’d rather have a Southern drawl than broken English. In in in and I’m not being you know, negative.

 

Seth Price  3:20  

I don’t know. I to me like that’s the continuum. I feel like you’re one. I know in badly, I’m saying I’ve been through this. I’ve seen this movie before in my own world, where you go with Hey, Texas, but if that’s the case, if the English is good enough, why do you care if it’s English Spanish or Spanish English? Assuming, well, I mean, that.

 

Jay Ruane  3:39  

Well, I don’t know.  I have found that my intake that is remote does exceptional in my gatherer position, but in the hunter position, the American-based people 

 

Seth Price  3:53  

you’re talking sales position?

 

Jay Ruane  3:55  

in the sales like so we we bring our

 

Seth Price  3:58  

In sales off for the faint of heart because that’s not really intake. Let’s call that the non-attorney salesperson.

 

Jay Ruane  4:04  

Okay, right. We do. We call them hunters and gatherers, right? And that’s

 

Seth Price  4:08  

for your hunters. You’re yes, but that’s also an extremely skilled position. That if done right, is probably a six-figure position, as opposed to what I’m at this cross. Look, I saw it with BluShark. I saw that when we were all in-house in D.C. You know, well, two things happened. One, you had a limited radius, and I was amazed. We have people from Frederick all the way out to rural Virginia that used to come to the mothership on a daily basis. You can’t get that. You know, on a good day, you’re not going to get people to do that anymore, right? They’re just going to take a different job. A, but B, I think the piece that is starting to be apparent that, as you’re already at a flex, at best, you’re getting somebody there three days a week, right? You’re not getting people. Five day that five day a week most my world is gone like at four would be the max three for top talent and what I’m sort of struggling with is you know the the cycle you may get somebody locally but if they break what comes next and how long is it to get somebody to replace them can you find that unicorn and that looking for somebody? And I literally Price Benowitz right now is looking at high-level talent from outside of the DMV. Summers just just outside might be you know too far to commute on a regular basis, but they could come in periodically. But we’re looking at people flying in, in the sense that the level of talent, and that if you want to play particularly international game, or you want people savvy enough to work with AI, that the older and not age, but that the person who is happy with a commute in an urban market likely is not innovative enough to do the things you want and be comfortable with AI. So if you want that next-level leader who can be comfortable with AI and automations, be comfortable with managing international labor, is that the person who’s going to be local? And again, I’m hearing Jay in my mind. You just said a minute ago, “What about culture? It’s a real question, but some of our biggest culture warriors are not local. Like great culture people, I look historically. We have a wonderful woman in New York on Long Island who started with us 10-plus years ago, and I she went to resign. I said, “I won’t let you. I’ll set you up with a laptop at home well before Zoom. And she’s still with us as one of our strongest top talents. Our intake head, who runs a 30-person intake team, she’s in New Jersey. You know what? Are we at a point where talent is like you could the odds of getting enough talent locally with culture is so culture that you want that you’re better off with great talent because that substance, that excellence, if you look at Price Benowitz you know passion integrity excellence to find the culture fits with expertise are we going to be able to find it in our in our local little radius? 

 

Jay Ruane 7:25 I think it’s exceptionally difficult to find the talent that you need once you pass a certain level because you know if we’re talking about the firm of five to 10, you’re going to get a bunch of general practitioners who have you know marginal talents in a number of different areas that you can cobble together to make a functional business, right? But when you start to scale, when you’re at 25 or 50 or above that, you need people who are exceptionally talented at one particular area and can take all of those headaches off of your plate as the owner, and so I think it’s it’s it’s it’s going to be a requirement for you to look outside your local area unless you have a ridiculous profit margin that allows you to play pay well over market and entice people from your local area to leave other successful jobs, because I mean there are there are some great people I’m sure in the DMV area for you, but they also are making you know 200k and are very happy in their job. And if you’re going to click 200k, why would they leave?

 

Seth Price  8:39  

I’ll tell you about non-lawyer positions are six figures plus now, and the question is: just like we’ve talked about over the years, do you pick your top people for those pyramids that you pay top talent? We lost somebody recently who was amazing. They came at her with a I don’t know 15 or 20, maybe even 20 $25,000 raise to to Steeler, which I took as a compliment. It took a lot for her somebody to to go. At the same time, look, is that sustainable for them? Maybe, maybe not. But if you pick that one person who’s going to then manage a huge team, the you know you what you don’t know is we’ve all been there when we’re hiring. We sort of fall in love with a candidate, and they come and they’re human, and they have the strengths and their weaknesses. But is the right move as we start to develop, and you have the access to global labor and national labor, is the right move to gain greater excellence? We always say we only want a players, but we kid ourselves. I mean, to find somebody culturally, locally, at your price point, like like anything, there’s there’s compromises made. Is the right move to get the best person on the planet, you know, or you would say domestically that was going to solve your problem and let them, you know, can. Amortize their number and the pain in the ass factor for them not being local is that going to get you a better product in the end?

 

Jay Ruane  10:11  

Well, I you know I think it also depends on what the role is. If you’re an HR manager and you are doing one-on-ones with people and that type of thing, I think naturally that that fits in a Zoom remote setting because you’re going to be talking to a lot of remote people, and and that goes now. I don’t know if I want my bookkeeper, who’s cutting checks, to be a remote person, even though I know they can do it, and then somebody locally prints them. But I don’t know. I’m the kind of owner who likes to be able to walk down the hallway and say, “Hey, look something up for everybody.

 

Seth Price  10:45  

But is that no longer like so? For us, BluShark, we lost our ops person a couple years ago, and when she left, it was devastating. She was running all that finance, and truth is, we were ready to upgrade. She was amazing, and we brought a finance. This person’s commutable. I don’t think she’s been in the office other than our annual gathering. Meaning, if the substance she can get

 

Jay Ruane  11:08  

there, but but there’s a problem. You can have that person in your. I guess

 

Seth Price  11:14  

I guess the issue now is look again. Blushark’s all 100% on bill.com. What’s the problem? It’s not like law firms have checks that go out. I get it, but you know we are pushing so far. I mean, right now I’m looking at Google Clio Pay as the integration. You know, as an integration, they finally have sort of like brought the efficiencies are so great, and the question is, we still cut, especially when personal owners had way too many checks. The question is, if you could, if you were starting a firm today, there are probably people that don’t cut any hand checks anymore. Oh, sure. And if everything’s done by the association, you know, I mean, again, we’re now retrofitting it in. But if you’re not sending a handwritten check out, it’s all electronic. Does it matter where the person is? That’s the question. Meaning, there’s cultural issues, there’s trust issues, there’s familiarity.

 

Jay Ruane  12:13  

I’ll be honest with you. For me, I would much more trust a HR director to be remote than my person who’s cutting checks, I I don’t know maybe it’s but but my question is maybe it’s because I do criminal defense and I’m used to well.

 

Seth Price  12:25  

What does cutting checks mean anymore? What does that mean cutting checks? You’re not cutting a check that demonstrates how old we are. There’s no longer cutting a check. It doesn’t exist.

 

Jay Ruane  12:37  

No, it does for me. I mean, see the thing is for me in my practice. You know, I’ll have a client come in with $5,000 that I got to put in my trust, and the courthouse wants to see a check from my trustee account as part of a deal. So I can’t say why ADCH is within the world.

 

Seth Price  12:54  

It’s all sticky, but we are getting towards the point where if that can be done through an online check piece, it’s no longer the paper. Let’s say cutting. It’s not. You know. It’s. It’s sort of like. Yeah. You know. It’s no longer a phone to our kids. It’s a. It’s a. You know. A personal device on the phone.

 

Jay Ruane  13:12  

I agree with you. I wish the courthouses near me were even accepting of one of those things. But I have judges in my courthouses, that print out the docket and handwrite on it for the continuance dates, and then hand it to a clerk to input things. We are backwards in this state.

 

Seth Price  13:31  

No, understood.

 

Jay Ruane  13:32  

If I said, “Oh, we ACH the victim their money, the judge would look at me and say, “What’s ACH? I wanted you to have a trustee check that I could see with my own eyes. Unfortunately, I could get as technologically advanced as I want to, but I have to work within a system. And right there’s a

 

Seth Price  13:50  

And right there’s a last look. There always, but the question is, how many of those are going out a month? That’s when we always have to ask ourselves. And then,

 

Jay Ruane  13:57  

yeah,

 

Seth Price  13:58  

right. So it’s half a dozen. So there, you’re like okay. So they’re cutting of checks for a half dozen a month. If that was done remotely, and an admin goes to an FM printer that you have dedicated for just that, like it’s that last mile. Like the reason I was delayed getting on today was that the Blueshark person that should be getting these laptops perfect isn’t on site, and you know there’s a lag of getting them. So I had to go through three laptops before I found one that was working right. There’s a piece of that.

 

Jay Ruane  14:32  

You don’t just have your own laptop that you go that you take with you everywhere. I got to tell you, I went to the Bahamas this week, and we could talk about the success that was, but holy hell! I take, I carry a laptop with me wherever I go. I don’t show up in an office. I couldn’t imagine

 

Seth Price  14:50  

for this specific piece. I used. I always had a laptop here. It’s like essentially a desktop. Let’s call it a desktop. It just wasn’t functional, and my point is, it’s I. But it’s- it’s- I go back to the 8020 rule. Is it perfect? No. I hope this is a clean broadcast and it’s not screwed up. Old me would have been upset. The new me is like you know what, you know it allows me to have this amazing ops person who I never would have retained. Yeah, I think they used to be here. They moved out of town, but we never would have retained, but for that. And so there are going to be some blips. So you’re right, Jay. If I carried the laptop with me this morning, rather than relying upon the in-house BlueShark device, I wouldn’t have had that issue. So yeah. 

 

Jay Ruane  15:36  

So what we do is we have a remote IT person that’s on our team, and basically got the IT job because everybody went to him.

 

Seth Price  15:47  

Five minutes before. What I’m saying is, what I lose is the five-minute-before concept. There needs to be slightly more planning if I’m willing to do that, and I’m not going to be irate that it’s not working on five minutes’ notice. You know, you and I scheduled this at the last minute, so talk. So, you know, look. We know that our lawyers are going to have to be local. What is your ratio of paralegal to lawyer at this point?

 

Jay Ruane  16:13  

So, this is really interesting because we’ve actually made a recent change, and what we found was that if we we used to have one paralegal to two lawyers, and what we found was if we reduced it so that it was a one to one situation, they could carry a higher caseload, and we could actually have a better margin. So what we had before was one paralegal who was who was basically covering two lawyers, each with about 80 files. So the the paralegal was responsible for 160 files, and each lawyer had 80, and when we analyzed it, we were able to see that we could have the lawyers handling 120 files if they had their own paralegal. And so financially, it worked out for us. Where if we gave every lawyer their own paralegal, we were able to increase our caseload. Interesting, and so we were able to actually, because what we pay a lawyer is different than what we pay, right?

 

Seth Price  17:25  

For me, and like for me, I’ll show you. It’s baked into my deal. So when I on the criminal side, when I add the paralegal work, it’s less profitable for me. But I, but if you get if you get more work done, then it would.

 

Jay Ruane  17:36  

We’re getting more work done. In fact, now the combination of the paralegals plus AI is really accelerating. I mean, it’s possible. You know, right now we’re about 100

 

Seth Price  17:52  

lawyers that are staying in one courthouse alone.

 

Jay Ruane  17:55  

No, no, no. They they each have like four courthouses that they work. 

 

Seth Price  17:59  

that’s a hustle. It’s so 

 

Jay Ruane  18:02  

They go to a different courthouse every day and have one office day a week.

 

Seth Price  18:06  

I mean, look, I love it. Are the are the paralegals all local?

 

Jay Ruane  18:10  

No, they all started local. Well, no, that’s not true. So one of them is local. She’s been with me for 10-11, years now, but she’s local. She’s the next town over, but she doesn’t come into the office.

 

Seth Price  18:26  

I understand. So, so how many how many lawyers are they supporting right now? Assuming you’re not counted as one right now, how many active courthouse lawyers do you have?

 

Jay Ruane  18:34  

1234, I have seven active courthouse lawyers.

 

Seth Price  18:41  

So basically, you’ve said you have seven active career lawyers. So each one now has their own paralegal.

 

Jay Ruane  18:45  

Each one now has their own paralegal. Actually, one there’s one pod where there’s two lawyers in the pod with one paralegal.

 

Seth Price  18:55  

And I think even for junior lawyers that you you still have baby lawyers that are there, you still one paralegal per lawyer.

 

Jay Ruane  19:01  

Yes, yeah. And actually, the junior lawyer gets the most experienced paralegal. So they what

 

Seth Price  19:08  

What is a lawyer expected? A lawyer plus paralegal pod. We’ll call it that one that team. What are you expecting that criminal defense lawyer to gross? A

 

Jay Ruane  19:18  

A million.

 

Seth Price  19:20  

I’m sorry,

 

Jay Ruane  19:21  

a million,

 

Seth Price  19:22  

a million per lawyer,

 

Jay Ruane  19:24  

a yes per pod. So it’s a lawyer paralegal. I’m hoping to spend 250 in salary. I’m hoping they generate a million,

 

Seth Price  19:33  

right? And wwhat’s realistic? That’s the hope. What if you 850 to

 

Jay Ruane  19:37  

850 to 950, a million? I had the million. Two of my lawyers hit the million, and the rest are high eights. 

 

Seth Price  19:46  

I have lawyers that are into the seven figures, and I have lawyers that are you know in the mid you know 556, and I’ve not, and maybe the paralegal difference would get. That, but it’s interesting as to whether that would make you know. Can you take a five somebody who’s doing the five hundreds, and with a dedicated assistant, would they spike, or are those people just not capable

 

Jay Ruane  20:14  

Well, I mean, the reality is that you can give them more volume so that way you can generate more profit off of it because at that point.

 

Seth Price  20:22  

You;re assigning the case as it assigning them.

 

Jay Ruane  20:24  

With they they are they come in by courthouse by geographic area. No,

 

Seth Price  20:30  

No, but you’re but you’re signing your your non attorney salesperson is signing the people.

 

Jay Ruane  20:33  

Yeah, no, we don’t do any attorney sales. No, it’s non attorney sales by 100%

 

Seth Price  20:41  

Is there a level of case that does get to the attorney?

 

Jay Ruane  20:44  

No,

 

Seth Price  20:45  

even high end felonies,

 

Jay Ruane  20:47  

even high end felonies,

 

Seth Price  20:48  

or but is that that’s not the bread and butter of the practice,

 

Jay Ruane  20:51  

right. That’s not the bread and butter of the practice. The high-end felony stuff can hire us for a consult and meet with a lawyer, but all the selling is done by the intake person.

 

Seth Price  21:02  

Interesting.

 

Jay Ruane  21:03  

Yeah.

 

Seth Price  21:03  

Very good. So look, I just it’s as the world changes, as technology is there, as the international is becoming more mature, and you’re getting people with experience. We’re really just trying to figure out. Like I feel like I want to invest more and more into the senior non-lawyers to try to manage and train up those people, which may come out to one-to-one, right? It may become a one-to-one piece.

 

Jay Ruane  21:34  

I move things around regularly because I always want to see how I can be more efficient. I’m actually using AI right now to build out a CFO for my law firm, and giving it access to my QuickBooks and to my Authorize for my payments and and and all everything. And I’m having it provide me the analysis and tell me, you know, okay, you should have this amount of money in reserves. You should have this amount of money in your operating account and that type of thing. Using best practices, we’re going to go. We’re going to we’re going to use as much AI as we can as well.

 

Seth Price  22:10  

We got, and I think to me, we actually ironically Price Benowitz to that substantial firm got a full-time CFO for the first time this year. Amazing, but that said, the fractional CFO, which essentially is what you’re replacing with what you’re doing, is one that we’ve never found an ideal situation with. Right? It just it was not you’re in, you’re out, and the idea.

 

Jay Ruane  22:34  

I think when it comes to the numbers and money, if you know I’m going the AI route for right now. No, no, no. 

 

Seth Price  22:40  

But it’s not in the. I think it’s an it’s not an either-or. But the fact that you could get that much and eliminate the theoretical, you know, this theoretical fractional piece, which just seems like it’s a great business model for the people, but not necessarily for you. So anyway, it sounds like we’re going to make.

 

Jay Ruane  22:59  

We had a fire alarm, but then it just went off, so I think I’m okay. I’m not burning up. It’s not getting any warmer here. When are you? Did you do? Did you go to Bahamar? I went to Baja Mar. My, my $20 millionaire. I don’t know if anybody knows. I’m a you know if you can pull the clip from my blue heaven. I’m not a fan of tipping. I’m a fan of over-tipping. And Seth, you hooked me up with Marissa, the manager at the front desk. I made a relationship with her and a little well-placed gratuity, and we went from having two fountain view rooms with our reservation to upgraded to a two-bedroom suite with living room, dining room, kitchen, balconies up on the 27th floor. You know, overlooking everything, having a beautiful view of the of the ocean. So it was it was it was great. And now now I now I’m going to Vegas in a couple of weeks for a conference. And if anybody happens to know the front desk manager at the Venetian, please reach out to me and let me know so I can make a contact with them and get the same type of consideration. So we can do that because I love I love throwing a little money around to people who deserve it and maybe reaping the benefits of that.

 

Seth Price  24:17  

That’s awesome. I’m so glad it worked out well, and you know, I will I will report back, but I am actively looking to continue to bring in great higher level talent, so that because part of it is if you really want to have a a legal assistant for every lawyer, that needs that mid-level manager, and if you don’t want that, it’s going to fall apart. So obviously, work, but it’s that who’s going to get them into the systems, so you can pretend that you have a unified firm.

 

Jay Ruane  24:53  

Yeah, yeah, and and one of the things that I thought of when you onboard somebody new. Who’s remote? How do you communicate to them your core values and that type of thing? Is there somebody who’s designated with that?

 

Seth Price  25:06  

We talk about that from interviewing on. So our well, we do too.

 

Jay Ruane  25:09  

But I decided over while this weekend we’re actually going to put together a little you know 10 minute video about our office and and and make sure that people see that and maybe even give it to them during the interview process, so that they we can ask them questions about our culture and our core values in the interview. We talk about them, but we don’t quiz them on it. And I think that’s the next level for for our interviewing.

 

Seth Price  25:34  

You know, on the next episode, let’s talk. I you know we did this amazing backpack giveaway, and we a lot of lessons learned on dealing with community, I’m so excited about it. We’re doubling down on a little

 

Jay Ruane  25:44  

analog marketing for the digital guy.

 

Seth Price  25:46  

Exactly, we did. We did an in well, yes and no. We was it was offline, but we did a partnership with the number one TV station in the market, and they did live hits every 30 minutes. Cool, and you know, yes, it was Jay’s analog world, and we are we liked it so much. We are coming back for a Halloween carnival at the time.

 

Jay Ruane  26:08  

Oh fantastic! I love that. What’s your costume going to be, Seth?

 

Seth Price  26:11  

I will be the scary middle-aged guy.

 

Jay Ruane  26:14  

Three-hole punch Jim from The Office.

 

Seth Price  26:18  

Exactly.

 

Jay Ruane  26:19  

Exactly. Okay, I like it. All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the Law Firm Blueprint. Thank you for being with us. Please let me know if you do know somebody at the Venetian Hotel, and always catch us live every week, 3p.m. Pacific, 3p.m. Eastern, 12 p.m. Pacific, on live on LinkedIn or live in our Facebook group, and of course, take us anywhere you want to go with the Law Firm Blueprint podcast wherever you get your podcast. That’s gonna do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Bye for now, everybody.