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. I always point the wrong way anyway. Seth, how are you doing this week? It’s been a lovely week here in Connecticut. The Jets drafted well. Giants drafted well, and we are ready to rock and roll. So what’s new with you?

 

Seth Price  0:26  

Everything’s good here. Can’t wait to get in it. Lots going on. What’s on your mind?

 

Jay Ruane  0:32  

I got bit by that bug, and we did travel sports for a number of years. I think this is my daughter’s final year playing travel sports in volleyball. I think she’s just going to focus on the high school team. I think my older son. he gave up travel baseball last year, and now actually coaches in the Challenger Division, which is the kids with developmental disabilities.

 

Seth Price  0:58  

And that’s exactly what all my kids have done, and my middle guy is now gone from being a helper to being like the paid coach of those teams.

 

Jay Ruane  1:07  

Yeah, and it’s great, and it’s giving them so much more joy than. You know, my son was, he was a decent player at 8, 9, 10. By 12, he was not. He wasn’t starting. So he was, you know, playing the last three innings of a blowout, one way or the other. And he was just like, I don’t really love this anymore. Let’s do something else. And he’s found something that he’s very passionate about. And so, I mean, look, I think a lot of parents invest a lot of money because they want to get that college scholarship, and they think that travel sports are the way to go. That’s just what I think. But it was nice sitting out in the sun on the weekend. I’ll take that, but I have a couple of issues. I want to run by you. I want to get your input on it because I’m dealing with it in my office. We have a member of our intake team who is remote in the Philippines, kicking ass, doing great work for us. Wife was working remotely for somebody near you, actually a dentist’s office out of Baltimore. She’d been working remotely there for five years. Private equity came in. The owner sold to a private equity firm, you know, a dental group, and they immediately got rid of all of their remote workers. And they’re, you know, they have a call center that they were going to work out of that was US-based, so all the remote people got told, thank you very much. Have a nice day. So, you know, we have an ad out to get a couple more remote people, and it’s going to be in the legal ops department, not in intake. And my intake VA remote worker said, “Hey, my wife is interested in this. Would you interview her?” Have you come across that where you have, you know, family members, even if they’re based in the States, family members of people that you employ and who are looking for a job in the you know, is that? Is that troubling? I mean, look, I’m a family firm. I worked for my dad for the longest time; now he works for me.

 

Seth Price  3:02  

Look where that got you.

 

Jay Ruane  3:03  

Right! A lot of stress, a lot of strife, and a bleeding profitability right now, but, yeah.

 

Seth Price  3:11  

Look, I think it’s like, it’s, I still okay.

 

Jay Ruane  3:15  

It depends?

 

Seth Price  3:17  

It depends. So when I was a baby lawyer, I remember all I was excited they I remember I went to the law firm because it was they offered free juice and soda. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Fridges were stocked before I drank coffee. I probably would have been the guy taking the K-cups. But so I remember some guy sits me down, and I shared a secretary with a very nice lady who turns out to be dating one of the partners, and he’s like, what’s your take on the nepotism policy for the firm? Like, as long as there’s soda in the fridge and my paycheck cleared, you do whatever you want, right? He was trying to figure out, you know, what happened? The truth is, they’ve been together now 30 years, I think, like, some rules are there for a reason, because in general, there are some bad situations. You hire both, and one stops working well. And can you fire somebody when you know? There are lots of reasons not to do it, but I think you need to know it’s a you know, you’re already dancing on the head of a pin, working internationally with a certain amount of trust. Are these guys gonna be working from the same house across the way from each other? Is that healthy? But you know, if it makes economic sense? I’ve taken more chances with that. I think done more, more good than bad. We hired a group at the firm that was a package deal in a relationship headed towards more, and one spun out not that long ago, and that was kind of weird, but we kept one who’s amazing, and we love it. So to me, you know, I think it comes down to, are you? There are two questions. One is the immediacy. Does this person bring value at a price point you want? Is it a team member? And then second, what are the chances this goes south and you have to deal with it? David Brenton came to me years ago. He was already serious with our head of accounts when the firm was rather small, you know. They’re now engaged, married, and you know, it worked. You know, we both know situations where things don’t work, and there’s a problem, whether it’s in their marriage or one of them working out one, not. Lots of different scenarios where it can go south. But I feel like you being a man of the people could make it work.

 

Jay Ruane  5:30  

Well, I mean, I think you know, if I’m going to make this happen, I think number one, it needs to be clearly defined roles with their own KPIs, so that you haven’t…

 

Seth Price  5:38  

They won’t report to each other.

 

Jay Ruane  5:40  

What’s that?

 

Seth Price  5:41  

They would not be reporting to each other.

 

Jay Ruane  5:42  

They would not be reporting to each other. clearly defined roles independent of each other. Because you don’t want one person carrying the weight for two and the other person you know, blowing work off and getting carried right? You don’t, you know, you don’t want to put yourself in that situation where you’re paying twice for the really the work of one who’s grinding so much that maybe they even get burned out. So I think that that’s certainly something that you need to, that you need to work out.

 

Seth Price  6:08  

That I’m less, especially in two different roles. You know, I was fraught with peril at the same time. It’s an opportunity.

 

Jay Ruane  6:14  

Yeah, yeah. So I think we’re gonna give it a shot. I mean, based on your feedback, it sounds like it’s worth at least investigating the next level. I have some concerns, you know, that I want to see what they address in the interview about, like, right now they are working sort of opposite hours, and you know, they have kids. In fact, one of the children has qualified for the Filipino swim team that’s going to be at the Olympics in two years in LA, which I think is super cool. And if they come over with their son, I don’t know if they’re going to be able to make the trip, but if they do make the trip, I’m going to fly to LA and see their son swim and get to meet him in person, because I think

 

Seth Price  6:55  

That’s awesome. But you know, you know, good luck getting the tickets. We were in the lottery, and by the time we got

 

Jay Ruane  7:03  

I got it. Look, Foo Fighters are playing tomorrow night here in Connecticut. Nobody could get tickets. I call my guy. He’s like, I got you a dead set.

 

Seth Price  7:13  

Connecticut amphitheater, a slightly different one than the Olympic bowl, but just to show you, face value what we’re dealing with. By the time we got in, and we got in early, we were part of the first tranche, $5,000 closing ceremony tickets. I mean, closing

 

Jay Ruane  7:28  

That’s crazy. Who wants to go to the closing ceremony? I’ve been to the summer, and I’ve been.

 

Seth Price  7:32  

No, no, no, no, understood. But if there was another, we wanted other stuff, it was just wasn’t its, you’ll get it. I get it. But it is, it is the Olympics, frustrating. I went to Atlanta, and we owned the joint. We went to everything at an amazing time.

 

Jay Ruane  7:49  

He was giving away tickets to boxes.

 

Seth Price  7:53  

It was we couldn’t drive everywhere because they closed all the roads, and like they were empty. It was just really special. But LA is different than Atlanta. And it is, I think, that just anybody can get him, is grabbing and throwing in the aftermarket, and it’s just prohibitive. Like, really, for like, the B-level badminton games and the, you know, and the weightlifting. I remember with the weightlifting, and we saw, like, the non-metal competition, like 11 through 20 or something. Like, is there really that much pent-up demand for this random stuff? Like, I get the gold medal stuff. Like the swimming and gymnastics is going to be bucks. But, like, I’m just amazed that all this other stuff is gobbled up for Lord knows what amount.

 

Jay Ruane  8:37  

It’s amazing. It was amazing to me. Like, I went to see handball and

 

Seth Price  8:43  

So much fun.

 

Jay Ruane  8:44  

Passionate fans from around the world. And I’m just wondering to myself, how are we as the United States not dominating handball with some of our professional athletes? You get a guy coming out of D1 college who doesn’t make the NFL. The NFL draft was last week. My jets did great, according to everybody. Your Giants did well, but

 

Seth Price  9:08  

The Jets are irrelevant. More than a draft pick there, but

 

Jay Ruane  9:14  

Well, it’s definitely gonna take

 

Seth Price  9:16  

more than interesting

 

Jay Ruane  9:19  

before we get there. I want to see if I can

 

Seth Price  9:22  

I’m gonna stop you there because there are ratings

 

Jay Ruane  9:25  

It’s just NFL trivia. Give me one of two teams, one of the two teams that have had the most number one picks in the NFL Draft since the draft era began.

 

Seth Price  9:38  

I gotta go with the Jets.

 

Jay Ruane  9:39  

Okay, not the Jets. It’s either the Rams or the Colts, both have seven number one picks. But can you name two, or can you name one of the three teams that have never picked number one? So this is, this is what I was doing with my son as we were driving.

 

Seth Price  9:56  

I’m gonna go, Cowboys.

 

Jay Ruane  9:59  

No cowboys have picked the number one they had. It’s not. The Ravens, the Seahawks, and the Broncos. They have never picked number one in an NFL draft. So folks, there’s a little trivia you can throw at people.

 

Seth Price  10:15  

They’ve never sucked that badly,

 

Jay Ruane  10:17  

Right, exactly. That’s why.

 

Seth Price  10:19  

They may have ups and downs, but they’ve never fought.

 

Jay Ruane  10:21  

They’ve never been that bad that they get number one. But, yeah, but, there’s a lot of D1 athletes who didn’t get drafted last week, and they can throw the hell out of the ball. And why are they not? They have good hands.

 

Seth Price  10:32  

One of my favorite guys in college. I’ve lost touch with Jorge. He was on the football team and got injured. The fire alarm is going off, so we may have to postpone for a second. And long story short, he ended up walking on to the US Men’s handball team. The issue is, like any sport, it looks easy, but if you played as a kid and all the way up, it’s such an advantage over being a great athlete transitioning later.

 

Jay Ruane  10:55  

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. That’s what you know. But I was just thinking about that. Okay. Seth, so I got another question. This is therapy for Jay here, at what point do you decide that it’s time to end a referral relationship? Because I’ve had a relationship with a lawyer for a number of years, and I’m just not satisfied with the level of communication or the attention to my clients. I’ve sent them some clients with whom I have close relationships. I see these clients regularly at events and, you know, the neighborhood and that type of thing. And I’m trying to get information out of them. I send them emails. I don’t get a response in a timely, or, you know. or I see, you know, they’re taking time off, which I’m not opposed to people getting vacations, but it’s like all they ever do is post about how they’re flying here, going there. They’re on this vacation, on that vacation, and I’m hearing from those clients and seeing, hey, my stuff got continued another three months. You know, you know. So, the client I refer to a lawyer says to me, “Hey, man, I thought this thing was going to resolve in April, and now I’m saying it’s not going to resolve till June. I’m kind of getting frustrated, and I don’t have a response, because that lawyer, you know, they’re, they’re doing other things, and I’m just.

 

Seth Price  12:14  

Let me go through this like you’ve answered your own question, in one sense, because you’re not getting the service you want. But let’s, let’s go through the order of operations.

 

Jay Ruane  12:23  

It’s more of the clients not getting the service,

 

Seth Price  12:26  

No, no. But let’s start with not in the right order. But are you getting paid? Are the cases monetizing? Do you get checks bluntly?

 

Jay Ruane  12:34  

Eventually. I mean, they’ve got a, you know, half dozen of more files over the last two years. they haven’t, they haven’t all settled yet. They’re in the process. 

 

Seth Price  12:45  

right? But what you’re saying is, it sounds like, in general, we’ve all seen this. There are ones where you get no money, right? That’s a problem, right?

 

Jay Ruane  12:52  

That’s a problem.

 

Seth Price  12:53  

The second is where the clients aren’t happy, and that’s probably the preeminent one. if clients are not loving the Mojo, to me, it’s a hard no that’s like just again. You’re giving me a bunch of background on it. You sort of know why they’re not loving the Mojo. But if they don’t love Mojo, they don’t love Mojo.

 

Jay Ruane  13:09  

right!

 

Seth Price  13:10  

On the next side, you have sort of the in between, which is communications. And this is the piece that I know is. You know, it looks to me like, how you know. You have an issue where, if this is a type of law, it’s hard to find somebody who does it; you bend more than others. On the other hand, if this is one where you know car wrecks for you, more people will do PI in Connecticut than you know what to deal with. For me, for example, comp in Virginia is very hard to find. I bend more than I would in other areas that said bad user experience; I’d rather not refer it out. I don’t want clients to be upset.

 

Jay Ruane  13:59  

Well, that’s and that’s part of the that’s part of the issue, you know, because I’m getting negative feedback, and I’m also getting, well, you know, another neighbor says, don’t rely on Ruane’s word. He sent me to a guy

 

Seth Price  14:11  

You’ve gone over a line now, you’re asking a question, you already know the answer to, which is, that’s like, we’re well beyond it.

 

Jay Ruane  14:19  

Do I try to salvage something? Do I do? I try to bring it up and say, Hey, this is what I’m getting? Do I wait till I get that check and say, Hey, listen, I want to give you some feedback.

 

Seth Price  14:32  

A combination of things. One, I think the first thing is, you stop sending stuff out, right? That’s why you don’t continue with cases going out when you’re in that situation. There are different types of situations. Like, you have a bad rep. Like, the person in charge of his referral stuff isn’t good. I need to deal with somebody else. Like, I see the BluShark side. There are people who are not mojoing with somebody or somebody who’s not up to the task. It’s “you don’t have the A person in a small shop,” though. Are you really going to give advice that’s going to change bad?

 

Jay Ruane  15:08  

That’s the thing, like, you know, I’m sure this person, I mean, I’m not overwhelming people with referrals necessarily, because my marketing is dialed in, and I’m getting the cases that I want, and we get extra cases that come from prior clients. Hey, who would you call for? X, that type of thing?

 

Seth Price  15:26  

I’ll give you an example. There are some coaching programs out there that tell you that, as a lawyer, like they would have given you advice years ago, Jay is now the business leader. Get out of the courtroom. You can’t touch it. And you know, you may have stayed longer than you wanted to, but you had, you were sort of the chief legal officer that kept a certain level, and you only stepped out once. You had systems and processes when you were not missed. Whereas there are people that are starting out that never practice, right, I mean, or very quickly get out. God bless. It probably makes more money over time. I did it. I just, I kept one guy in. I split my profits with somebody, and they were but to me, if you’re in a situation, whether it’s personal life, because they’re vacationing all the time, which I’ve seen some cases, or they just fancy themselves as too good for it, but they’re going to let other people do it, then you’re at the whim of those people, and

 

Jay Ruane  16:20  

You’re not necessarily trained to

 

Seth Price  16:24  

Just like I’ve never really gone down the non-attorney, closer concept the dragon from some of these groups that to me. The more that the person is detached from a firm for whatever reason, like it’s good for selling and turning it up. But as a referral person, you can, you don’t go by that you’re going by who’s going to delete, like for you, you can get the same referral fee from a bunch of people. So the first question is, are the clients taken care of? First, do they do? They take the case in, right? You’re handing it, so hopefully they do. They’re not. In some cases, you’re just saying you signed it up. Are they signing up the cases? Are they doing great work and communicating, and you’re getting a check? And in this case, you never get to the check, because if they’re not taking care of your clients, you go to somebody else. You know, you have plenty of different options.

 

Jay Ruane  17:19  

You know it’s interesting, because, you know, the flip side to this is a friend of the show, Chris Earley was. I happened to run into him in New York at the last Fisher mastermind, who came across the room. I showed up and came across the room. Hey, Jay. I was hoping to see you here. I saw your name on the list. You’ve got three cases that are going to close in the next 90 days that you’ve referred to us, this one, this one, and this one. We’re really happy with the results. We think they’re right at the right number. So we’re just wrapping things up. But I wanted to tell you in person that I’m going to be sending you some checks, and I was happy to have that conversation. I was like, whoa. This is fantastic. You know that type of thing?

 

Seth Price  18:00  

Look, I’m guilty of that. That is good business. That’s what you want. I mean, because, like all the talk about coffees and this and that, that conversation is more likely to get another referral from you than anything else, just taking care of people. Look, I’m funny. I got a call just before the show from an old friend, a referral source who came out of nowhere. I think it may have been a former Blushark client. Maybe it was somebody who was, you know, I remember, was doing all sorts of creative outside-the-box stuff. lost touch, starts referring me cases. And he’s like, Yeah, I’m going to get a license here, and now I’m going to have another opportunity to send you cases. So I think to a certain extent, it’s just being a decent human being and staying in touch. But look, we see so many people who are trying to outsource is the wrong word, but like, detach from their operations. And the question is, have they really created an operation that allows for that, or do they just detach?

 

Jay Ruane  18:59  

Well, you know it’s interesting. There are a lot of lawyers who I see who want to, you know, be the CEO, be the owner. And I’m wondering, you know, but for the fact that you have law school debt, or maybe you’ve retired it, and that you’ve identified, self identified as an attorney, wouldn’t it have been so much easier to buy a franchise from some fortune 500 company that gives you all the playbook, like it’s tough to do this and scale this as a law firm owner, there really aren’t. I mean, now there are many more resources. 10, 15 years ago, there weren’t. But it just seems like, why did you want to get into law as a business?

 

Seth Price  19:39  

You got your degree. It’s a protected universe.

 

Jay Ruane  19:42  

Sure,

 

Seth Price  19:42  

It was. The MSO is changing everything. And, like, you know, it’s funny, I was just having this conversation. So we talked about franchises. You know, in general, if you buy a franchise, you’re buying a job, you know, a timeshare. Like, it’s not generally a good economic one-unit investment. Now, if you buy 10, then all of a sudden you buy a regional manager, and it’s a business, but if you buy a single franchise of anything, so I think that’s part of it, which is the only way to really make money with it is to scale it. And so, hey, why have you scaled it’s like, I didn’t want to be the guy making the subway sandwich. I want to be the guy who was sort of like trying to put together 10, 20, 30 shops so that we can have some economies of scale, provide opportunity for people, but that’s the back and forth. Okay, I’m going to pivot for a minute. I know some of the people watching the show are from smaller firms. So when you do an office party, it’s you and a handful of people. You sort of see what’s going on. But as you scale alcoholic parties, we’ve if I go back 20 years of the firm, we’ve lost at least four or five people thanks to alcohol firm-sponsored events. We’ve generally tried to go back to wine, beer, and sangria, just to sort of limit our damage. At our last kickoff summer party, we had an open bar with wine, beer, and sangria. It was an open bar at a very, very nice venue where they did the classic bar thing, where $4,000 was added to our bar bill. And very hard to argue it, I did, but like, you know, it was a semi-private space where one of the bars that we had access to had us and paying clients. Lord knows what game was being played, right? And it was we who actually pushed somebody out over this. It was more than that, but like a person who just didn’t pay attention to detail on that, and in one sense, as drink tickets have never been something I’ve loved. But if we’re about to go to a hip spot, my marketing director has personal connections at a very hot happy hour spot, but we’re going into the thick of it, and I don’t want to be like fool me once. So for a couple of reasons, we’re going to drink tickets. Take a shot, right? You’re going to be you’re going to a hot bar. We’re not doing this at my house, which we love doing, but the staff doesn’t love the suburbs. We’re going to go to a hot spot, but we’re going to offer drink tickets. My question to you is, first, thoughts on that? And second, you’ve been to a lot of events over the years. What is your thought on the over, under, of right number of drink tickets for like, two and a half happy hour?

 

Jay Ruane  22:39  

I think one per hour is what you give them that way? You know that they’re staying within the realm of absorption and elimination of alcohol. You want to give them, but I don’t think you give them a half a dozen, you know, right?

 

Seth Price  22:55  

So my answer was two, because I’ve never been to an event where somebody’s, if you can, and three tickets, you might as well do open bar for starters, right? You’re almost at that. And secondly, to me, if you know, if the head of ops walks around and can be a big shot and hand somebody an extra drink ticket where they know they’re not driving, they see that they’re in good shape, God bless right here, you could be special. But I’m sitting here, and it sucks, because, look, I also know there’s a certain number of people don’t drink and are just going to hand over drink tickets, right, right? So

 

Jay Ruane  23:24  

So one of the things that we did last time we did that is we made sure that they had a special mocktail, and

 

Seth Price  23:32  

We are doing mocktails, which are in today’s world, no less expensive than you know, but we’re doing what we’re doing mocktails. But the idea is, you know, we made our peace because every time we’ve done hard alcohol, we’ve had issues. You know, and again, just crazy. We lost our job during COVID. It was awful. We talked about the show years ago, early shows. I lost the guy running our operations at that point, he insisted on hard alcohol. He said, people need it like it’s fine. He got drunk on the booze cruise and then sexually harassed our college intern is a dear friend of ours’ daughter from law school. I mean, it blows your mind.

 

Jay Ruane  24:11  

Yeah.

 

Seth Price  24:12  

We were like, rudderless for a while, because this a hole couldn’t the guy organizing the party, who insisted on hard alcohol, couldn’t hold his alcohol. So I’m torn. You want to be you like, in smaller groups. That’s one thing. There’s something about the larger group dynamic,

 

Jay Ruane  24:27  

right?

 

Seth Price  24:27  

That that, and look, I know they’re going to go out for an after party afterwards. And so the question is, you know, part of me is like, if, God forbid, somebody drove to an event and you are on record, not just saying open bar, but I gave them three drinks. That’s not nothing,

 

Jay Ruane  24:47  

You’re right. You’re right. And I’m sure some PI lawyer out there, would, you know, make a big deal about that? Try to pull you into a liability lawsuit there, for sure. I’m trying to think, now, have I ever been given more than two? I don’t think I have at any event with tickets. It’s always two.

 

Seth Price  25:07  

It’s always two. And then I’ve also been at tickets where the organizer says, if you need one more, let me know. Like it controls cost, like I want to be benevolent, but I’ve never seen a situation the idea that you’re handing somebody three is just because think about in this world again. Very often people get them because they don’t finish a drink. But if you if, for the average person who’s not Jay Ruane, if they have three drinks, they’re impaired.

 

Jay Ruane  25:30  

Shit, if I had three drinks right now, I’d be on the floor. I don’t think I’ve had three drinks in since January one, if you put them all together. I just

 

Seth Price  25:39  

it is interesting. I hear the bars are very nervous that the Gen Z is, is really drinking a lot less.

 

Jay Ruane  25:51  

I can tell you straight up. I mean, since when I started 25 years ago, doing DUI defense, there were 18,000 DUI cases a year in the state of Connecticut. Last year, they didn’t hit 6000 it was 5995 total.

 

Seth Price  26:05  

How much of that is policing?

 

Jay Ruane  26:07  

I don’t think it’s policing. I think people just aren’t going out. I mean, they just are not going out like they used to. I mean, I talked to I mean, look, I mean, look, the truth matters. I have a 16-year-old daughter, right? I’m not talking about drinking. When I was 16, I was out every Friday and Saturday night. I was going to, like, underage Juice Bar nightclubs. I mean, whether or not somebody snuck in a bottle just to spike your drink is another thing. I was going to clubs. I was going out. I was doing stuff Friday night, my daughter and her friends, they all stayed home.

 

Seth Price  26:37  

And you were not partaking of the juice at the juice bar, is my guess.

 

Jay Ruane  26:40  

No, I actually one of them, I was working at. I was making some cash. But like my daughter and her friends, they don’t stay home and text each other and watch, you know, watch parties on Netflix. Whereas I was going out with people,

 

Seth Price  26:53  

you also know where she is. You’re like, we know our kids are.

 

Jay Ruane  26:56  

My parents had no idea where I was. It’s, it’s a different generation socially.

 

Seth Price  27:00  

But as we wrap up here, question, you follow this guy, Ian, with the locked up podcast out of Connecticut.

 

Jay Ruane  27:06  

Ian Vick, yeah.

 

Seth Price  27:07  

Yeah, interesting guy.

 

Jay Ruane  27:09  

Hang out at Tuxedo Junction when he owned it

 

Seth Price  27:11  

Did you ever go to anyone? Guess you probably didn’t overlap age-wise, but I don’t

 

Jay Ruane  27:16  

No, but I used to before he bought it. I used to go to the place, the club that he owned, and then it started to skew a lot younger, because he was renting it out and throwing parties for high schoolers.

 

Seth Price  27:27  

And I got to tell you, he has created really compelling content on podcast and social. I’d love to get I’d love to get him on the podcast, if we could. He just seems like the way that he has hit the use the media, use the medium, is just brilliant. And the stories, his storytelling of himself, is brilliant, but the way he interviews and extracts on a topic that we don’t talk about ever, that’s why it’s also like. not only is he great at it, I think, but the fact that he’s able to uncover a world that for most people, you know, I’ve been in criminal defense space for 20 years, since we started this firm with Dave, and the idea that there’s this okay, what happens to people once they’re locked up.

 

Jay Ruane  28:13  

It’s great, it’s great content. It’s really, really great stuff.

 

Seth Price  28:17  

And, you know, I remember going back to Crim procedure, there was a professor, very learned Professor started like, “Why do we lock people up? We talked about, why do we arrest why are we doing this?” We and we’re thinking about, like, why is there bail? Like, what you know, each of these steps, and like, you know, is the arrest punishment? Well, not really. The rest is just to determine, you know, it’s like, and you start to think about it intellectually. Well, okay, jail. Why are they in jail? What is the purpose of it? And when you start to realize the machine that’s been created underneath it is just wild, disturbing, like there’s an entire ecosystem that has taken a life of its own, that we just don’t think about on a daily basis, you know. I always think about it in the negative sense, when you think about the number of people locked up that didn’t do what they’ve been accused of. But when you just think about the people who have done this whole economy that is sitting there, it is staggering. When you start to think about what is out there that we just don’t think about on a day-to-day basis.

 

Jay Ruane  29:15  

Well, we don’t have time for it today, but I have two stories about the criminal justice system and the economy that has sprung from it. We’ll talk about it next week. I’ll ping you after this so I can tell you about the fun stuff that I’ve learned in my years doing this. So that’ll be a good teaser for our next show, folks. That’s going to do it for us today. Thank you for being with us. If you want to take us on the go, you can take us anywhere you want to go by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast. Be sure to give us a five-star rating when you do that. Of course, you can catch us live on LinkedIn, live in our Facebook group, 12 pm Pacific, 3 pm Eastern every Thursday afternoon. I am Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. We are the law firm blueprint. Thanks for being with us today. Bye for now.