Jay Ruane  0:07  

Hello. Hello, and welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane and with me, as always, is, Seth Price down there. Seth, you didn’t get slammed by snow like I did. I got, I got three feet of snow outside my front door. Nobody wants to go outside. I had to shovel a path for the dog to go take a leak. But you, you guys.

 

Seth Price  0:27  

In DC, not, not really, you know. I was down there he next morning, it was nothing. Suburbs, we got a couple. You know what was nice? What happened? And I don’t know if you had this on your first round, was when the snow came down the first round the snow. If you didn’t shovel that first day, when you’re like, I’ll wait for it to stop. It froze over to be ice, and we didn’t warm up for like, two weeks, right? And so it was, it was just you couldn’t really shovel it unless you had professional equipment, and it was just a complete cluster. So this time you saw everybody out, sort of getting rid of that first dusting, and it really was not, did not have that effect. So I hope you guys, but you know, it’s funny, because it reminds me that, when we started this podcast, pre covid, a snow day was devastating for productivity, right? You, nobody was coming in. You’re closed, right? I remember big decisions early days the firm, are we open or are we closed? At this point, just like some schools, not all New York had a big back and forth on this. you know, you we just sent an email the night before saying everybody’s working virtually tomorrow. You know, speak to your supervisor, make sure you’re locked in. There are very few jobs that don’t have a virtual role. Whether that should be is another story, but we have it across the board. So that said, you know, in the in any space, the downside of this, when you have that much snow is, while you may have productivity. Now, I was noticing numbers would drop, because there just aren’t arrests. People aren’t out and about. People aren’t getting injured. You might family lawyers may have a bump coming out of this with people who can’t see, you know, we saw this out coming out of covid. Huge bump. But it is, it changes economics in the in the northeast, when these huge events take place.

 

Jay Ruane  2:13  

yYeah, it certainly does. I mean, we have, we now factor it into our annual budget that we’re going to lose one or two weekends of arrests to winter storm. I mean, we had, two weeks ago, we had two feet of snow, about a foot melted away. We just put three feet on top of it. So I got four feet of snow outside my door. We’re going to lose a little of it, but then next week, we’ve got another 20 inches coming on Tuesday. Hopefully, I’m what I’m hoping.

 

Seth Price  2:46  

Really?

 

Jay Ruane  2:47  

Yeah, yeah

 

Seth Price  2:48  

God. And look, and you balance this like, that’s why I got to look at stuff, you know, somewhat quarterly or annually, because you also have, like, for us, month of July in Maryland, they’re no arrests. All the cops are at the beach, right? So pick your poison.

 

Jay Ruane  3:01  

Yeah, no. I mean, and it’s one of those things that you just have to, you know, as a business owner who’s been in it for a long time, you have to spot the patterns, right? You have to take a step back and say, Okay, what’s going on? One of the, you know, what? You wouldn’t think it, but our worst week of the year every year for the last 17 years, Fourth of July week, because everybody goes away.

 

Seth Price  3:27  

My guess is that there’s the law enforcement also takes as much vacation as possible around that time.

 

Jay Ruane  3:33  

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, like, we will do 20% of our average weekly, we’ll drop 80% that one week. It’ll spike back the next week, but like to the point where we’ve actually considered just closing that week and saying, here’s an extra week off. Folks have fun, because is it? Do we gain more in culture by giving them a week off basically at the middle of the year? That is extra bonus, versus having everybody work and be staring at their computers and waiting for the phone to ring.

 

Seth Price  4:09  

So that sort of pivots to our next possible topic, which is, when things drop. How do you make up for it? You talked a lot about offline advertising. It’s very hard to get that to turn on. You can cultivate. But one of the things that, you know, I am seeing, you know, that is a, I’ll call it Google creep, in the sense that it is. We were given an organic world. We had a three pack that was sort of the non-paid sector of Google, right? Or, you know, or get we had PPC at the top, which for many has become untenable, and LSAS that in the PI space still very robust. And in certain areas make sense, certain areas don’t. It’s much tighter. You know what? What I am seeing. And the reason why this is sort of analogous is I’m seeing that for a lot of people present company, included some traffic has dropped in different areas. Google is creating a paid LSA that looks very much like the three pack before the actual three pack, bringing down local numbers, pushing organic further down. As these roll out in certain markets, people are being forced to increase their percentage of money in paid search in order to, you know, for many grow, but in certain instances, just to maintain. And it sort of brings an interesting dynamic where sometimes you know that there are things that are cyclical, you know, there are events like snow that take place, but as we’re seeing this, there are going to be lawyers. My prediction is that really get squeezed, because paid is not for the faint of heart. Margins are smaller, and that people that have sort of survived on, whether it be a remote area or just a handful of reviews, or where SEO Plus Reviews in a local search pack have made you your money. It’s one of those areas that is getting more competitive, and knowing what Plan B is certainly is something that I think everybody is now dusting off, if they haven’t already. Just saying, hey, if I want to be able to maintain or grow, what are those levers that I could do to get me through some of those ups and downs? Because you’re down 20% you do no paid, presumably at this moment, if you were to put a bunch of money into that July 4 paid, presumably you would help round that out, right, but also bring down margins during that time.

 

Jay Ruane  6:32  

So actually, one of the things that we’re doing now is we have the eastern end of our state, our numbers are not as robust as we would like, our lawyer there is covering and carrying probably about a 90% capacity of the caseload. We’d like to get him up to 100% because there’s, there’s profit in that. And so what we’re doing is, actually, we’re pulling back from some of the brand stuff that we’re doing with on YouTube, with our YouTube pre rolls, because I’m driving a ton of money into that for brand, but we’ve decided that in that market, we’re going to pull back a little bit on the brand and repurpose that money into PPC for the three courthouses we want to try to grow. And we’re going to we’re going to look at it, we’re going to do a six month run and see how that impacts our leads. And then, if it’s working, then we’ll ramp back up the paid, paid YouTube for brand, because we’re seeing the return on the Pay Per Click. At least that’s the theory behind it.

 

Seth Price  7:33  

The ugly reality is you’re going to get a number, if this is new of recent memory, that the new numbers on Pay Per Click are absurd, and you’re going to see numbers particularly in the DUI space, and it may not be tenable. That’s the frustrating part here to see in a future episode about that A, but B, I think you sort of it brings to a… You know, look, if you look at potential areas to gain cases outside of community marketing, which we’ve talked a lot about recently, but whether it’s lead gen, which is essentially gambling, hoping you get a service, certain markets, certain types of law work, many it just, you know, it works, and it stops working. You know, you have paid search, you have organic, you have these different elements, but that when it comes to actual levers, we are seeing more and more that Google is forcing people to have paid as a piece of their marketing budget. I’m curious here because I know a group that was heavily TV, and they were getting lead gen lower. Let’s say, hypothetically, you get a cost of a DUI at 2500 I’m making that up. Not where you want to be. 

 

Jay Ruane  7:35  

Oh God

 

Seth Price  8:21  

Right, but if you’re able to charge eight for the DUI, is that? Is that a viable model for you? Maybe, maybe not. You know, it’s not you don’t like it. Not very exciting. But we’re starting to see people having to make some of these hard decisions, as far as you know, what, what are they going to do? Because if, if numbers are in certain markets dropping for a bunch of reasons, you know, look, we see in the PI space, with Morgan coming into markets with the spend, they have. A piece of market share is going there. I see a lot of people who have been able to figure it out. But if you had a model that was completely, you know, that was out there where X percent of the public was going, and you’re getting slightly less because of that mega player. You know, John’s argument has always been, oh, well, now people are, you know, you it’s an ad for people that wouldn’t hire a lawyer, potentially in the plaintiff space, maybe. But you’re starting to see it, you know. And again, smaller players getting squeezed. I’m curious to see what our audience is saying.

 

Jay Ruane  9:54  

You know, it’s interesting to me, because when you think about it, like, yes, in the PI space, there is the Morgan, and they are a behemoth. There’s no other way to talk about it, but in my criminal space, in, you know, a section of my home state that I want to go after, I mean, I think I can make the argument in terms of brand name. I may be the Morgan. I’m not spending, but I’m the main hunter. So the question then is, if I’m not the one who’s going to be spending, you know, 1200 $1,500 $2,000 for case acquisition, is anybody in that market able to pay those expenses? Like, am I the can I can be the Home Depot and come in and and suffer and pay that two grand acquisition cost for the next year, knowing that I’m going to my margins going to be shit. I’m not going to really make money on it, but it’s going to put all the local mom and pop hardware stores out of business, and then Home Depot is the only thing in town that’s me. You know, is that a strategy? Because, you know, there’s a lot of lawyers out there that are starting to slow down because they can’t afford to keep up with the need that the amount that Google is asking for, for pay per click and LSAs, and they just don’t, they don’t have the team in place to, you know, respond to these calls and take these calls, and so they’re losing money. I mean, shit, our best two sales days are Saturday and Sunday. When I don’t know another law firm in the state of Connecticut that’s working Saturdays and Sundays?

 

Seth Price  11:36  

Well, I and I think it’s fascinating as we sort of talk about this, because the pitch of some of these sort of, I call them tier B or C private equity groups, is, we know PPC, we can roll you up and. Look, I’ve seen it. There are players that are very sophisticated that were using Wall Street money through Arizona and particularly the PI space. They fell on their face when it came to straight PPC, you know, because the Arizona firms can’t really leverage the LSAs, because they can’t have offices around the country, right? Whereas the private equity play in theory, they’re still working off of your Google business profile, where you have a chance at the LSAS. But you know, it is, I don’t care how good you are, trying to make a living from straight pay per click, not LSA, but straight pay per click. You know, I think there’ll be, I would not want all of my firm’s equity rolled into somebody who has that

 

Jay Ruane  12:30  

as a business plan. I agree 100% with that. I 100% because, you know, and the reality is, PPC is not the only place that Google makes their money. I think it actually probably would be, you know, secondary to LSAS. They’re probably making.

 

Seth Price  12:46  

I mean across the world. I mean, PPC is their game. LSAS is professional services, compared to the entire world. Whenever I search for, I mean, it’s not, you know, whenever you search for something, How infuriating is it when you look for a brand? You know, you’re on vacation, you want to find your hotel or a cruise line, whatever it is, the fact that they are buying just like we do, to protect their brand. And the click for, you know, sponsored is very hard to tell the difference. I think at some point, you know, I don’t know whether it’ll be the antitrust suits that eventually come, but the way that they are. You know, the original saying was, do no evil. That’s clearly out the window. They are now literally putting something out there where the average person has no idea they’re clicking on a paid ad.

 

Jay Ruane  13:32  

Let me give you a perfect example of this. So I’ve got a friend of mine whose 18-year-old daughter last year wants to go see a Coldplay concert up at Foxborough. Tickets go on sale. She is on what she believes to be the Ticketmaster Site. She Googles it up. Nope. She spent $3,000 to buy nosebleed seats off of a site that was out of the UK that was a ticket reseller. The tickets hadn’t even been issued yet out of Ticketmaster and they wound up eating a $3,000 for two tickets or three tickets to go see Coldplay. And she was like, I had no idea I wasn’t even on the Ticketmaster site. Everything looked like the way it was, the official home for the concert, all this other stuff.

 

Seth Price  14:24  

That’s an extreme example. I went to buy, like, like our outdoor amphitheater, something that was not particularly expensive. It was probably $50 lawn seats. But one of these things that I clicked on that. I was not savvy enough to tell difference because it was, it was their own. I didn’t know it was not the law. It was the actual end use, not the Ticketmaster of that local it was probably like 75 or 80. They built in 35 or $40 worth of fees on something that was easily accessible some other place. 

 

Jay Ruane  14:54  

This is why you just got to get a suite at the local amphitheaters, exactly. It just makes my life so much easier. I got all the tickets coming in now, all the shows. People are reaching out to me. When are we going to go see this show? 

 

Seth Price  15:05  

What are the big shows this summer?

 

Jay Ruane  15:07  

Allison Krause is big. They just announced Darius Rucker with Robert Randolph, which will be a phenomenal show. And my friend, if you are watching The Voice, my friend, Javier cologne, who’s the winner of voice season one is back for their, you know, challenge of the past winners. And he’s good friends with Darius Rucker, and he always will show up at a local show when he’s there, so I expect to be able to get maybe backstage and hang out, which would be very cool. So, but yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff. Mike, my son is psyched. My 14 year old son is psyched. Weird Al Yankovic is coming.

 

Seth Price  15:43  

That’s, the one I’ll come. The rest of those guys I don’t think I’ve ever heard of, but like, Weird Al, I’m in.

 

Jay Ruane  15:48  

Yeah, Weird Al will be a great show. Weird, so there’s that. And, yeah, I mean, it’ll be a good time that some Maryland boys, O.A.R. are going to be playing. So yeah.

 

Seth Price  15:59  

We’ll get David Haskins from Carolina to come up. He’s a big, Weird Al fan, so

 

Jay Ruane  16:05  

fantastic. Bring him up. We’ll have a great time.

 

Seth Price  16:07  

Have him up there. So, so what else on your mind? We’re, you know, we’re, it’s no longer happy new year. Larry David would be very clear. This is we’re not in the new year period anymore, right? So we’re, we’re fully into 2026 you know. I think that we look back at the first quarter 25 we were like, Thank God that quarter was gone. How are you seeing the market right now? What do you do? What do you what do you see as as a business owner, both from a case acquisition and a hiring retention perspective. 

 

Jay Ruane  16:34  

I’ll talk about hiring first, because I think this is something that’s really sort of interesting to me. We had a flame out with somebody who didn’t make it 90 days, which is fine. You know this, if we’re not the place for you, give us more than zero notice. But you know, we got through that, and we’re hiring now. But what I find is really interesting is in the first week of having our job posting, we got 20 applicants, and of those 20 applicants, I’d say 10 of them were worth a little deeper you know, conversations, nine of them have zero responses to our overtures, sending them a text message, sending them an email. Nine.

 

Seth Price  17:21  

I’ve seen the opposite in the market where I am.Tighten up. Amazon’s layoffs, you know, like big firms, you talk about layoffs, we have big law in our area. Government contracts slashed, right? Doge just crushed it. Government workers, I can’t tell you that. It’s all perfect candidates, but we are seeing more velocity, less turnover than we have in a long time, that people are just like we live through the great resignation coming out of covid. I’m almost feeling the opposite, that if somebody has a job, not that there’s a turnover, not that people don’t leave. It’s not like it’s zero, but what the sort of for the most part we are, you know, if people have a good place being paid, you know, at or above market, we’re not seeing the movement that we did before.

 

Jay Ruane  18:09  

I think there’s a lot of people that are nervous about the state of the economy. And when you’re nervous about the state of the economy, you don’t want to leave a job that you can manage, that you’re making good money at and go to a new one and be the newest person on the payroll, because if there are layoffs, the newest person is the one who gets cut. So people want to stay where they have some seniority, because they don’t want to take that risk. I think that’s

 

Seth Price  18:35  

I think we paid our dues both a BluShark and a Price Benowitz on culture and building stickiness. So it’s not like there’s nothing. There are more systems in place. There’s more management. There’s less, you know, owners and managers. You know, as a one off, it’s gotten very strict as far as not getting outside voices to people, all that stuff. But I am, you know, when I look around and I’m going to pivot one more time before we get back to other stuff. What I am seeing, which is disheartening, particularly in my market, I’m curious whether people are having it is that, as people are losing jobs, and in DC, it used to be recession proof, the government employed you, government contracts were in place. Everything is off the rails right now, from that point of view, right government people forced out, and they’re coming back. What I’m seeing is that people 50 and above are having a really hard time gaining employment. And forget about later 50s and beyond. It is the length of unemployment for people is soaring, A and B, that the people that I see being successful are not going back for a, J, O, B, but ending up with two to four consulting clients, often making more than they were making before without that piece. Now, it takes a certain person with that hustle to go get those. Those pieces and look some expertise from the job you left. But that I am seeing real problems with the quote, unquote, traditional W2 job as people age, is scary, statistically significant within my extended circle in the DMV.

 

Jay Ruane  20:18  

So that’s, you know, that’s interesting. I don’t necessarily see that here, but maybe it’s just the type of people that I’m exposed to, you know, I’ll start, you know, I’ll start out talking to my neighbors and stuff about how they are seeing it’s interesting to me. I have a few people that I know that are in the their early 50s, and they are all dreading the impending Golden Handshake. You know, a number of them work at banks, and they’re like, you know, I’ve made my way up. There’s really not much further I can go. But if they cut me, they bring in somebody who’s 28 at half my salary, and it’s better for them because they have some they’re going to save a ton of money. And so I have to be, you know, proactive in maintaining my relationships and being ready for the hammer to drop. And I’m doing that on the, you know, on the doorstep of having one or two kids in college and, you know, and that it’s, they are talking about being frightened.

 

Seth Price  21:28  

No, no, I hear you a big law. No different. And this is the piece I never really you know. Let’s reverse engineer the big law model, right? You come in, you’re an associate. You work up to an eighth year. I know it’s not just eighth year. Now, let’s call it eight to 12 year partner. How old are you? Then? Like you know, your primary. Which means that the people who are managing people go from 37 to, let’s say, 45 not, they don’t stay on longer, right? But at, let’s say 37 to even 50 and what starts to happen, and I’m seeing this, is that people who exceed, like there’s an interesting diet or not interesting, but not positive dynamic, that when people in their mid 50s, where I happen to be, and friends who are now aging beyond that the people who are in those late 30s to mid 40s don’t necessarily desire managing the person with that extra experience. And it puts those people in any sort of not ideal job looking at perspective.

 

Jay Ruane  22:36  

Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that’s a troubling thing for the Gen Xers as we move forward, and

 

Seth Price  22:47  

They still, at least are young enough that that they have a lot of issues. That’s not one of them, meaning that those are meaning, what I’m saying is that people who are beyond, I guess so what you’re what you’re saying is the Gen X 50s are now looking at this like writers next, J, O, B,

 

Jay Ruane  23:05  

Right, you know and they want, and I think that they’re seeing their cost of living has exploded to have the lifestyle that they want. And they’re saying, oh shit, I’m not retiring at 65 this is a that would be untenable, you know, I just don’t have it. And now I got to think, be thinking, I’m working till at least 70 and if you’re 53 and at one point, 65 was your, was your end line, that’s 12 years away. You? Yeah, you can make that. But if you’re looking now 17 years away, that’s a long time, and to have something that you can be secure in for 17 years in this economy, with all the talk about how AI is going to eviscerate white collar jobs, you know, there’s a lot of nervous people. I mean, a real lot of nervous people out there. I mean, I have friends that are coders for, you know, Wells Fargo and UBS, and they’re like, you know, I’ve gotten rid of half of my team already, and I’ve got AI doing the coding, and my job is to just sign off on it so that they have me to fire or fix it if something goes wrong. But, you know, they’re not even bringing in the number of coders that they used to from, you know, India and stuff. They’re just like, it’s not worth it. We can have AI do it. And they’re thinking, there’s going to come a point where AI is going to be able to manage the coding applications.

 

Seth Price  24:29  

I speak, I see, you know, my kids are headed to college, friends, kids who are in college, it’s the talk of all of these guys, which is, what can I do that is AI resistant? Nothing. You know, what can you do where you’re not just laying down and saying, Hey, this being one of them, sadly, but where? Where can you bring your expertise that is going to be somewhat immune to what’s coming at us? 

 

Jay Ruane  24:55  

Let me give you an example. My nephew is going off to college to be an engineer next year at the University of Rhode Island. He was going to focus on on manufacturing engineering, and has decided to move into electrical engineering. And he’s like, You know what it’s engineering I can get. He’s like, I’m not going to be an electrician. I’m going to be able to plot out a data center. That’s, you know, that’s the same type of engineering that I would want to do. He’s working for Lockheed Martin now in their drone program, and he would have loved to stay with that. He’s like, but I’d rather get a four year degree and work towards a PhD in electrical engineering, because that’s going to give me a lot more opportunities in the future than being tied to mechanical engineering, which, who knows where that’s going to take me, but I know they’re going to need electricians, or people familiar with electrical grids in the next 100 years. So that’s going to be my, my focus in the next four years. He’s making a smart decision.

 

Seth Price  25:54  

I think, well, I’m going to, let’s, let’s land this plane with a down with a downer, sadly, which is okay. So what happens to me? There’s been a time bomb with universities charging these absurd tuitions, right? And I forget what the top top universities, they will find ways with the elite players to find jobs somewhere. But once you leave the elite universities, the fact that second tier universities are still charging $80,000 a year. There’s, you know, I think that we are going to see a moment almost like what you saw with the fraudulent for profit trade schools, where these universities may not be fraudulent for profits, but if they’re charging the rates they’re charging with it, and just basically, as you know, with 50% or more admissions rates. Basically anybody who signs up can go, You know what? What’s going to happen with for population is coming out with multi $100,000 debt without the opportunities. Because even if AI doesn’t eliminate all jobs, there’ll still be jobs, let’s say, God willing, that people are going to figure out a way that they fit into this economy. It doesn’t look like it will be the same volume of jobs. It’s almost like what we saw with law schools and we both came out, you know, there was a period where, you know, you could get a job at big law. When I was there, the rule of thumb, I was at sort of the, not top tier, bottom tier, sort of, you know, top 20 school. The top 10 to 20% got big law jobs, and then as it got tighter, it was 10%, 5%. That sort of expands a little bit. But if we’re at the point, similarly, by analogy, the people coming out of universities, the top 10% get jobs, and everybody else doesn’t get a meaningful job that has a chance to pay back. What, somebody’s invested in, whether it was, whether they had the money or didn’t, you know, are we going to see a reckoning when it comes to what is the path out of college for people?

 

Jay Ruane  27:52  

I think it’s the conversations have already started. I mean, the reality is, is that a lot of colleges now, at least from what I am hearing from other people, and my little bit exposure is come for the education, but, you know, develop the relationships that are going to get you your job. And that’s what some of the colleges that my cohort are looking at are getting pitched. They’re getting pitched not only will you get the, you know, the education that you need, but we can open doors for you. We can get you in places and that type of thing.

 

Seth Price  28:27  

I just call when we when you looked at jobs in a good job market, or a law school, the placement offices at universities, you know, elite, elite, you know, top of Wharton, yes, there was a job place.

 

Jay Ruane  28:40  

The people who are at the top of Wharton don’t need it’s like Career Services at any law school. It’s help for people who don’t need help.

 

Seth Price  28:50  

But yes, it’s the but what happens when you’re at that second tier university? You’re paying real tuition? They have no you know, maybe they have one great alumnus who has a few jobs there, but even the great companies right now are in this downturn. And again, it’s not just what I’m saying is. And the reason why I’m sort of is that, not only is it a downturn in the number of slots out there, will they be retooled? Yes, people become plumbers or like, there are only so many of those slots out there. I mean, you can always find a way and compete. But I am really concerned that the money being spent by people to go through those programs to say that the network around you, yes, but then you know, how should you be evaluating your school in the sense that it takes a long time for your cohort to get large enough for that network to matter. Yeah, I was at a big, big nonprofit the other day and actually bumped into my big brother and little brother for my fraternity. That’s three, four decades out of school where we elevated to that point. How you know, you know, coming out, it’s nice, but everybody else is looking for the jobs too.

 

Jay Ruane  30:06  

Yeah, it’s a real challenge, and you got to question whether or not investing that amount of money is worth it, because you could take the same amount of money that you would invest into two years of college, and you could buy an apartment building and have your kid live in one of the apartments for free and generate maybe 40-50, grand a year, and now you’ve got 50 grand a year in income and a free place to live, and you’re building equity in an apartment building. Everyone’s going to need a place to live at some point.

 

Seth Price  30:38  

I’m going to leave this then I have a solution for getting the tuition down. I open sourced. I hope somebody listening to this steals it, but I truly believe that there’s enough free courses out there that if somebody were to come out with Ruane University, right and Ruane university, you could have an advisor. It’s cost 3000 a semester, let’s say something nominal that pays for somebody. You’re going to pick your classes off of what’s available for free, from MIT, from Harvard, from Penn, from all these schools. You get your you get your classes. You will have software on your computer that says what percentage of the classes you attended you got to see. You have to attend more than 65 or 70% of the hours of classes. And then this tuition would go towards somebody would create tests, maybe through AI now. it’s a new thing that’s out there. It may be essays, but that you would be, you would have basically be graded on these free classes in some third party way that

 

Jay Ruane  31:36  

it exists already, go to modern states.org, can take up to like, 40 different ideas, and you get, you get college credit for it.

 

Seth Price  31:48  

Understood. And what I’m saying is, I want somebody to take those and those grades and or, you know, watching time to show because I would argue that I would take a candidate from Ruane University, where somebody has shown that they’ve done that, the rigor of going through four years of those classes, to any of the nonsense you see from a private online university where somebody’s paid 10s of 1000s of dollars that there is a that we could basically, I mean. We had a babysitter/nanny back in the day. All she needed was a degree. And it was amazing, because the least amount was so high for just somebody who said, I want to check the box and say, I’ve done this. I have my BA. And if there was a way to get people something that the world, you know, the employers, would see as a value, that’s the difference, right? You can’t just be like, it’s a bunch of free classes, but if it was free classes that were leveraged into something that showed that you did the reading, you wrote the papers, you took a test to show you knew this look you get as sophisticated as even having work groups by class. But the idea that the free things that were out there could be used, not just as an anecdotal to learn, but to check that box for a VA that. Look, maybe Ruane University is not going to be as prestigious as a top 20 school, but I would argue I take that any day over the for profits that are just taking advantage of people with nonsense. Because I don’t. It’s sort of like when the kids get a snow day and they say, Hey, we’re going on Zoom. My kids individual teacher may not be great on Zoom, but there’s one algebra teacher county wide. If you could have the best history teacher in the country teaching those classes, why would you take the Imagine who’s showing up at that for profit University as the history professor, they ain’t going to be arguably any good, likely, right?

 

Jay Ruane  33:45  

I love it. I mean, I mean, look, my kids are today using modern states.org. They’re taking a biology class. They’re starting and they’re going to get their college credits for biology in Spanish this summer. I mean, that’s the question, can

 

Seth Price  33:57  

That’s the question. Can you take an entire curriculum that way, rather than like a tier C online university. That’s what I hope.

 

Jay Ruane  34:05  

Cool. All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the law firm blueprint. Thanks for joining us. Of course, you can take us anywhere you need to go by following us on your podcast platform of choice, by searching up the Law Firm Blueprint podcast and of course, catch us live on LinkedIn, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, every Thursday, as well as in our Facebook group, the Law Firm Blueprint, that’s gonna do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Bye for now.