Jay Ruane  0:07  

Hello, hello. Welcome to this edition of The Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane and with me, as always, is my man Seth Price down there in the Price Benowitz Remote Headquarters. Seth, you know, we’ve been doing this show for a long time. We started it during COVID. I was doing it in my bedroom. Now I’m doing it from my office. You upgraded your place. Now you’re in a new house. Well, not new to new now, but new since COVID. So I’m just thinking, man, we’ve been at this for a long time. How you doing this week?

 

Seth Price  0:35  

I’m doing well. We got just came off college reunion, we got son’s graduation tomorrow, so lots of good stuff going on.

 

Jay Ruane  0:43  

That’s, that’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Yeah, we’re gearing up for, you know, a couple weeks from now. We’re on a plane for three weeks in Spain, Italy, and France, and I just found out that the house that we’re staying, it’s my father-in-law’s childhood home. No AC, that’s not that big of a deal. It’s up in the Basque area. There’ll be a cool breeze. No Wi-Fi, no TV.

 

Seth Price  1:07  

Well, TV was last time you watched TV, but the Wi-Fi? As my kids would say, the Wii Fi, no Wi-Fi. Now, can you bring a hotspot?

 

Jay Ruane  1:17  

I’m sure I can. I don’t think I’m going to, I’m gonna go old school style. I mean, there’s bars in the.. there’s.. there’s.. there’s nothing

 

Seth Price  1:28  

she says you’re gonna have access.

 

Jay Ruane  1:30  

Well, I mean, I have my cell phone, I can always hotspot through that if I need to, but.. but yeah, there’s.. there’s..

 

Seth Price  1:40  

If you have cell, if you have international, you know, then you’re fine, meaning better yet for the kids. I mean, look for me, when the kids don’t have connection on vacation, you know, to me that’s better. On the cruises, I don’t pay for them to have Wi-Fi, like I want them to be offline, meaning intentionally, like. It’s look, the story has not been told, but the amount of anxiety created, and I’m convinced the short form video is a substantial part of it, is pretty ugly, and those companies know how to. I mean, the Roblox lawsuits going. There’s no doubt that they’re doing evil stuff to keep us addicted online.

 

Jay Ruane  2:18  

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, especially for the two of us, with our ADD. I mean, you know, the dopamine. You get into it. Next thing you know, you’re sitting and staring at two hours worth of videos. I can only imagine on an un, you know, a brain that is not fully developed yet, how much they do it, but. You know, the town’s got like six bars, eight bars, once one little store town of 300 people. it’s halfway between Bilbao and San Sebastian, so there’s going to be great food, and I’m just looking to sort of relax, maybe read some magazines that I’m going to download to my iPad and project up on my new book. Yeah, there we go, that’s what I’ll do. What a great segue, folks. If you haven’t gotten it yet, Local SEO by Seth, and is Dave Brenton one of the authors? Is now available online at Amazon. I saw it there, and you know, if you get it and then see and bring it to a conference that you see Seth that I’m sure he will sign it for you, and that way you’ll have a collector’s edition. I don’t know if you do what I do. Maybe you’ll do that since you’re getting to an airport on Friday. I always bring a copy of my one of my books with me, and I’ll walk into the bookstore at the airport, and I’ll put it in the business book section, and I’ll take a picture with it, saying, ‘found my book at, you know, Dulles Airport, which I found it because I put it there, but it’s a good social media post, if nothing else, and you get people who are like, “Oh, I got to pick up that book, I got to check it out, but iit’s a lot of fun to do. So you may want to, you may want to do that this weekend and tag me. 

 

Seth Price  3:53  

I love it, I love it, I’ll visit Jay Ruane but look, talk about marketing and what’s going on, you know. we talk a lot about operation on the show, we talk about marketing, but I’ve seen some disturbing trends that I think are going to come home to roost. You know, look, everything’s gotten more expensive, right? That’s what we see – gas, go up, inflation, yada

 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

yada, it’s $20 for a pound of turkey at the supermarket.

 

Seth Price  4:15  

Well, just a cheesesteak, that was my barometer from college, back for reunion in Philly. You know, what was a 456 maybe you know, goes up to eight over the years, $16 for the new cheesesteak place. Ironically, the cheesesteak stores around you, Penn gone. I had to go over to Drexel to find a real cheesesteak store, and it’s, you know, it’s a sign of the times, the kids…

 

Jay Ruane  4:41  

They can’t support it?

 

Seth Price  4:43  

I think it’s partially the eating habits of the kids who are can afford $90,000 a year. Are there? Look, my kids yell at me for having oat milk instead of almond milk, because it’s too heavy carbs. I mean, like they are well aware of what’s going into their body, and I think the stuff that we did, which was the late night Eggle, which was bagel with cheese and eggs and breakfast meats galore on a greasy grill. That’s long gone, that you know. The smoothie stores and the sweet greens and chopped have invaded, so in a good way, but anyway, we digress. Everything’s more expensive. I am concerned, you know. It has been not a PPC, which used to be the gold standard. You turn a faucet off and on, not always viable in all markets. LSA, which used to be like print money, get as many as you could in some markets, no longer as sweet as it once was, particularly outside of the plaintiff’s world. Usually, okay, there, but I have real concerns for criminal practice. Right, average fee per case. Many law firms out there, if you took your criminal mastermind, my gut is 5k might be the over under.

 

Jay Ruane  6:04  

Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds about right.

 

Seth Price  6:06  

a lot of $1,500 speedings, 2500 3500 and the number of felonies is a fraction of the number of misdemeanors at 5k per average case. I mean, I know we have to target what you’re targeting, but the idea that PPC could be at 3k a case, you’re out of business. You can’t be doing that. And so I would implore anybody who’s watching, who’s in the criminal, anybody should be doing this right across the board, criminal, not criminal, but specifically criminal, but family trusted. If you aren’t, I used to be like, here’s some money for PPC, I’m sure it’s fine. Right now, I’m pretty sure it’s not. The question is, what is? That’s how much it’s changed that if you are not on it and allocating, you know, they’ve been saying in marketing one half’s work, you don’t know which half. You have the ability to dig into this, and that if you’re not tying your intake into your marketing, you’re definitely leaving money on the table or putting yourself underwater.

 

Jay Ruane  7:11  

So, what’s the solution to this? Is it to go to other forms of traditional marketing? Is it to throw up billboards, which, at least in my market, every billboard is a PI lawyer, so their prices must be through the roof. And or do you do non-traditional digital, like YouTube pre-roll ads, which I have been a huge proponent of for the last years. I don’t see a lot of lawyers doing that.

 

Seth Price  7:36  

Whatever works is great

 

Jay Ruane  7:38  

Do some analog marketing, get away from, you know, all.My book, Analog Marketing, Analog Marketing.

 

Seth Price  7:46  

Would you, could you have your practice with just analog? You know, you’d be up to 150

 

Jay Ruane  7:51  

I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, but I could, you know, I could.

 

Seth Price  7:55  

But that’s my point. The some of these things that are there are not going to deliver at the volume to sustain the Jay Ruane or Seth Price criminal business model. I am so..

 

Jay Ruane  8:09  

Okay, so let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Then this, I’m going to pivot now. I’m going to ask you, Seth Price graduates law school in 2026. He says to David, let’s start a firm. David says, I want to do criminal, and you’re like, yeah, that sounds good to me. I want to do that too. Where do you go first? What do you do? 

 

Seth Price  8:29  

I would argue right now you don’t. 

 

Jay Ruane  8:32  

That’s really 

 

Seth Price  8:33  

that’s the level I’m at.

 

Jay Ruane  8:34  

you’re that convinced it’s that bad. You don’t launch

 

Seth Price  8:38  

right now. right now that the barrier to entry for organic is significant, that you can do it. you can open an office. You can get your reviews. You can do that, but that gets you x, but that as it’s getting throttled, that PPC is usually what gets you over the hump, right? And again, with all due respect to the Jay book, it’s not getting you the volume you need for a multi-associate practice,

 

Jay Ruane  9:11  

but I’m saying you’re starting practice now

 

Seth Price  9:15  

understood. So Jay’s model could get somebody somewhat occupied. 

 

Jay Ruane  9:20  

Well, let me ask you this. When did you and David hire your first associate?

 

Seth Price  9:25  

Like, we were out, we were shot out of the cannon. We, but we had a law clerk within two weeks, they were an associate. Hire another law clerk, within another two weeks they were an associate, but it was a different point in time where you threw stuff out. Now, look, digital still works, but what I’m saying is what scares me about criminal specifically is that right now, unless something changes, paid is not the answer to get you. Like getting cost-effective paid, where you want to scale, isn’t it? I don’t see that as viable right now.

 

Jay Ruane  10:04  

What about workers’ compensation? Because I know at least in my state, comp only takes 20% and they’re competing with PI, huge PI shops. If you were a comp lawyer today, would you just say, look, I’m not going to do any advertising,

 

Seth Price  10:20  

no, no no no

 

Jay Ruane  10:21  

And I’m going to start to go to every big massive advertising PI lawyer and say, “Send me your comp cases.

 

Seth Price  10:29  

That’s always a good answer if you can get those relationships. Yes, no, no, but look, so that’s where I would take Jay’s book. I mean, if Jay was coming out today with what, who, the Jay’s superpower, yeah, you could have an F you comp practice being Jay going every trial or conference, get everybody to love you. Yes, no doubt. But what I’m saying is, when I see something where, if you look at you compare, you just talked about turkey, $20 a pound, yeah, when you started this, what, 20-25 years ago

 

Jay Ruane  11:03  

now…

 

Seth Price  11:04  

No, when you, when you transitioned

 

Jay Ruane  11:06  

25 years at Ruane

 

Seth Price  11:07  

what was Turkey in 25 years ago?

 

Jay Ruane  11:10  

Prolly 350 a pound,

 

Seth Price  11:12  

right? And what was the median  criminal case? 4k?

 

Jay Ruane  11:20  

yeah, probably 3500-4k. I can remember handling drug dealer cases, you know, tell them 2500 bucks or 4500 bucks, if the guy had a lot of weight on them, it’d be 5000 if he was looking at

 

Seth Price  11:34  

It’s more now, but the average, when you take the volume of that stuff, it hadn’t gone up with the rest of inflation in criminal. It just hasn’t billable hours, and family went from 250-300 to 400-600 on average for most lawyers out there, right, depending on the market, you know. Again, some are still down there at the three, you know, at the 300 $400 an hour, right, but the idea that criminal, specifically, what I got in 20 years ago, a DUI was around 5k. it hasn’t gone up the same way, and so the cost of meat, whereas the clicks were 50 cents, and so

 

Jay Ruane  12:17  

my first click was two cents, I can, I still look back,

 

Seth Price  12:20  

Right I think you’re throttled, where yes, organic gets you the cases it gets, but we just had a situation in South Carolina where Google fucked with the algorithm for two weeks. gone, you’re gonna yell at your SEO. Google started showing people at a 3.5 rating, it’s not gonna last, but it sucks, so I think that it’s some of it is, and that’s where you know I love networking, right.

 

Jay Ruane  12:46  

i know

 

Seth Price  12:48  

right? I love enjoy it too, maybe a little bit less as I get older, and you know, but you know. I still, I still, I mean, I love it at the higher level, but I still remember going to BNI groups, and I don’t care. take Jay’s book, go to the BNI group. If you’re going to a BNI group, you need a widget that everybody needs and makes money, whether it be some form of insurance, some sort of service that is replicable

 

Jay Ruane  13:15  

Well if you’re a trust and estses lawyer, that can turn into something.

 

Seth Price  13:18  

It could, I think, there’s an extent that different conversation we talk about afterwards, but take that out for a sec, because it sounds like a panacea. I get my issues there too. Look, I just heard one person say bankruptcy people are completely out, a part of the economy. We still are propped up, yada yada, but on criminal, we haven’t seen the stuff go up, and the cost of clicks have gone from 50 cents to $100 in some cases, right.

 

Jay Ruane  13:42  

And here’s one of the biggest challenges with criminal, and for all of you who are watching or listening, and you don’t practice criminal law, what you have to realize that when Seth and I and his partner David started out in this area of criminal, there was a lot of money in being a criminal, I mean, we, they were, they were moving serious weight on drugs,

 

Seth Price  14:05  

 A velocity of cash running through it.

 

Jay Ruane  14:08  

just a ton of money. I mean, I can remember back in the day, guys walking in with little shopping bags with cash and counting it out on my conference.

 

Seth Price  14:18  

IRS has really done a decent job of cracking down on that.

 

Jay Ruane  14:21  

Well, I mean, think about it, you know. I used to get gambling cases from some of the local OC guys when their places got raided. Gambling is now legal. Marijuana is legal in a lot of states, and so that took away a lot more people, instead of buying their heroin or their cocaine, started you getting opioids from, and that really destroyed that market in terms of it. Now there are people out there who are still buying fentanyl and stuff, because they can’t get as high as they want off the pills. But I’ll tell you, you know, the government has taken away a significant amount of the illicit activities that used to fund criminal defense. Yes, and I see guys that I used to, that I used to rep. I talked to one guy. I ran into him at a pizzeria, and we just started shooting the shit. I represented him for years. He had an unlicensed pharmaceutical business, let’s call it that. He picked up a gun case, and he had to do some time, and it was funny. I was chatting with him, and he said, I said now, and he goes, oh, he’s like, I’m still giving the white people in the suburbs what they want, and I was like, what are you talking about, and he goes, I got five Amazon delivery trucks, and we run Amazon deliveries, he’s like, and so I got four guys who, who work for me, and we pile stuff up, and we make deliveries, and I said, you know, he’s become legit, and he’s making, he’s like, I’m making as much money as I was back then with a lot less risk, and I

 

Seth Price  15:49  

right, right, you do, you know, x every x years, you’ll get arrested and have to spend money on a lawyer and spend time away, so you know. I am seeing, you know, on the criminal side, real squeeze. Family wealth has increased. There’s more to fight over the people willing to spend it, and look, it’s been hit as hard as others. I would agree with that. You know, you see on the PI side first, you see Morgan Top Dog, people like that coming in nationally, but now you’re seeing, you know, we will have shows, hopefully, Chad Dudley on soon talking about what he’s doing. The amount of private equity about to hit the PI market is dramatic, and when they come in and prices are of these leads and these cases are not going down, they’re only going up. So I’m watching this confluence, and I think that look. Yes, offline marketing always a differentiator, get it, but know that when somebody’s thinking today, I think you got to look at what is the cost delivering the product. Something we never thought about back in the day, and what is the price to get something in the door, and then if you’re doing their areas, I’ve seen a lot of people pivot for it in immigration where digital works, but social works particularly well.

 

Jay Ruane  17:02  

Yeah

 

Seth Price  17:03  

right. People are thinking about this for months, if not years, building that online relationship. God bless. Criminal, much. You don’t have that time. I know the short form works, but you’re essentially back to like building a brand, and you are probably one of the few people that could take that advice. The random solo with one or two people. What are the odds you’re in the right place with the right time? You know it’s not nothing.

 

Jay Ruane  17:27  

And here’s one of the things that has been.. we started January 1, I think it was January 1, 2025. Although I have to look at my notes, it may have been 21st 2024 We staffed weekend and full time.

 

Seth Price  17:43  

you squeezed more juice out of the orange.

 

Jay Ruane  17:46  

Eight to eight, Saturdays and Sundays, we have our intake closers working, and we, you know, some of them only work four days a week, and they get a three day weekend, but their three day weekend is, you know, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or whatever it is. We found a way to incentivize them to not pay them more, but, but make it work. And every weekend we close more and more business.

 

Seth Price  18:09  

Always, when I started.

 

Jay Ruane  18:10  

In talking to other lawyers, and they’re saying, “Jay, I don’t know what’s happening. Monday morning we used to get three or four calls, and now we don’t get any. I’m like, “Yeah, because my people are closing them on Saturday at 2o’clock because I think now people want much more immediacy. They don’t want to book an appointment, you know, three days away. They just want to solve the problem and move on with their lives. What are your thoughts about weekend intake?

 

Seth Price  18:35  

Well, I mean, look, I think it’s a bigger intake in general, right? And that we look, it’s amazing. It’s major part of operation. It’s the least sexy. I’ve talked to you about, like, what business model works there? There are two or three people as consultants out there. Falkowicz talks from stage on it, but the number of firms with broken intake, and look, who are we to speak, any at any given moment, you’re like, oh my god, these two people suck, and I.. It’s humans. I know we may be moving more towards AI, but until it’s fully there, we are, you know, 300 law firms at Blushark. It is shocking, the stuff that we see. The firms that make money are the ones that are staffing. They’re doing nights. They’re doing weekends. They’re figuring it out. It’s competition, and if these private equity guys are coming in, they’re going to fund, they know how to operate,

 

Jay Ruane  19:29  

right

 

Seth Price  19:30  

Average lawyer is like, at best, a practitioner, hopefully they know how to market, but the odds of them having the trifecta of intake marketing and substance, very, very, very remote. So you know, again, as these things come, and as I sort of raise the flag about some of these areas, it’s competitive with intake, right? If you don’t have it right, that’s where you don’t have a shot.

 

Jay Ruane  19:59  

Well. I wonder, you know, if we had, you know, if we had the ability to look into a crystal ball and see who’s going to rise and who’s going to fall in the next five years with the private equity coming in. I think it comes down to private equity. The behemoths out there are going to invest more and more into digital marketing, and they’re going to take over the airwaves and the billboards and the digital things, and the other ones that are going to be successful are going to be those, you know, independents, the solos, or the, you know, two or three person who are really, really ingrained in their community, really.

 

Seth Price  20:36  

The person where Jay’s book will matter. You’re not Jay’s book doesn’t help you with 50 lawyers, it doesn’t, you can’t, you can’t feed that, but if you’re like,

 

Jay Ruane  20:46  

Doesn’t really even help my firm. It helps me. It helps my partner, Teresa, because these are all the things that we’ve talked about and done, but even with my associates, I’ve run them through the training, all that stuff, and they’re like, yeah, but I don’t have time, I’m working cases.

 

Seth Price  21:02  

frankly, if you take the interview, you know, you shouldn’t want them doing it. But, when stuff gets slow, and you know, and it’s more, so it’s pick your poison, you can only do so many haircuts a month, that said,

 

Jay Ruane  21:17  

that said, I got somebody for intake from a haircut last Friday. I got a nice shape up here. I went to go see my friend Nick, and Nick said, “Hey, I know somebody who’s looking for a job. She’s working in a deli, but she’s great. She can talk to anybody.

 

Seth Price  21:33  

Okay, but on a call, both BS in that this is the six month rule. You got the person when the person craps out. I don’t want to. Hopefully they don’t. God willing.

 

Jay Ruane  21:41  

will announce they’re live on the show,

 

Seth Price  21:44  

but that said, you’re telling me that the person you got was a deli person recommended by the haircut. Had you instead gone to, you know, a networking group and met somebody who was college educated, not working in a deli, knew, you know, was in sales at the Verizon store, would that have been a better mix? So you know, because, like, and that’s part of it. It’s like, you know, I joined a group. Let me land on the plane with this, because this does go back to the book, and where I want to be. I joined a group. There’s a national networking group. It’s about a third lawyers and two thirds, from our point of view, hamburger helper. In the sense that it’s non lawyers. Some of which are lawyer adjacent, like accountants, and some are pretty adjacent, just with a check for the organization, like a real estate agent. Yeah, where doesn’t really do me a lot of good, and I’m having that realization that if you’re not a solo, can you justify the time that their program wishes you to provide? It’s two hours once a month in a meeting, then you’re meeting three people for lunch once a month that are not, they’re random from your group, and I’m sitting there saying this publicly now it said, you know, which is, I don’t get it, you know. It’s one thing if you’re like in a lawyer-only group and you’re like every person there could give a referral, but the odds. now there are groups like BNI, using that as an example, I still don’t think it’s good for criminal,.

 

Jay Ruane  23:19  

I agree, I think it’s terrible, and it’s funny. Somebody posted that in, like, a Facebook group, and they’re like, “You should join a BNI, and I was like, and I had to respond. I said, “Don’t go to BNI if you’re a criminal defense lawyer, because that’s

 

Seth Price  23:31  

just not enough. Not enough people,

 

Jay Ruane  23:35  

people going to BNI are not going to get arrested, for the most part,

 

Seth Price  23:38  

right? But those people in those groups, for the most part, are amazing connectors. They go there to these meetings, they’re religious. They go and they go out there. When they hear something, lawyer, get it to like there, and if you have something where enough people need it, you measure trust and estates, perhaps. Injury, perhaps when there’s enough of a cadence great, because with the cost of PI cases in many markets, 3000-$4,000 a case, you know, if you’re a smaller firm, you could justify your time that if you were to get a couple cases a year from it, fine. But if you’re, you know, if you’re in the criminal defense space, where the margin is x and the average fee is 50, you know, that means your profit is 1250 per case, and you get two cases a year. Is it? Can you justify your time?

 

Jay Ruane  24:30  

Is it worth the squeeze?

 

Seth Price  24:31  

Right. So I’m sitting here really struggling about where you place your time, and I think that when you read a book like yours, it’s figuring out not in a vacuum, because every idea is a good idea, but what is the idea that is most likely to hit for what you’re doing? You like to try stuff, and that’s great, but time is money, and where are you going to take that allocation of time? So, I’ve been struggling with this personally, which is, you know, I have all these. Use that I can theoretically hit, but am I going to spend the time to get close enough to people who are not the super connectors of a BNI, but our colleagues, professionals? It’s nice, but where do you go? You know, where do you place your resources in the form of time? Maybe hit that on the next show, because to me, I am seeing the squeeze on paid digital in a way that I haven’t before. It’s not that it can’t be done, but it’s not it’s more and more challenging. The turkey is $20 a pound, and you don’t want to be throwing any of that out that doesn’t, that the kids decide they don’t want turkey this week, and it’s sitting in the fridge.

 

Jay Ruane  25:43  

Well, that’s what happens with my kids. They love something one week, and then the next week, oh my god, I can’t believe that you would ever ask me to eat a turkey sandwich.

 

Seth Price  25:51  

This networking version of that is, you go somewhere, you have a great hit, and you spend the next three years sitting somewhere, and it’s not

 

Jay Ruane  26:00  

It’s like, hitting your number in roulette the first time you put money down, and then you’re chasing that high for the, you know, the next four hours as you give it all back.

 

Seth Price  26:09  

and you know, look, you’ve done some amazing stuff when you had a booth at that larger conference. Those things impactful, and you’ve also done something which I have not done, which said you hold a flag and say I do this one thing and I do it well, and that’s the other piece, whereas Ken will add that, you know, to this question, which is going to be, you know, multi flag versus single flag.

 

Jay Ruane  26:33  

you know, one of the things that I’ve done, I’ll put this out there as an idea, is you know, I’ve noticed at conferences. I’ll take a look at, you know, DUI conferences, criminal conferences, that type of thing, and I’ll find interesting speakers and interesting presentations, and I will reach out to the people after they’ve given their presentation and say, “Hey, you put a lot of work into this, they had you at the National Criminal Defense Lawyers, or DUI DLA, or something like that, you want to give this presentation again? And I’ll bring them in by Zoom. I’ll let them do the presentation, and I’ll curate the audience, so it’ll be my referral partners. It’ll be, and I’m usually getting the speaker. I offer to pay them or get a donation to the charity of choice. Oftentimes, they just say, “Don’t worry about it, I’m happy to do it. But it’s a great way to build that network without leaving your desk. 

 

Seth Price  27:18  

What it is like everything else that needs a team to put it together, if it’s done right, and you know it’s like, you know, lots of great ideas, some of them work for a while. Barrier, that amazing friend of the show did an amazing lunch, but didn’t keep it going. You know, I give our. The lawman, Umansky, he runs a mastermind, nothing wrong with him. I think

 

Jay Ruane  27:39  

it was like last week,

 

Seth Price  27:41  

right, and I went to one prior one, and I love him, and his substance is amazing. It’s a good mastermind. People go got great value out of it. Is it the best value for Lawman? Is he getting the ROI? He likes it.

 

Jay Ruane  27:55  

Honestly, knowing Bill internally and what he values and what he wants to be his legacy. He’s getting more value out of that than bringing in $100,000 fiat.

 

Seth Price  28:01  

It is a passion play, right? 

 

Jay Ruane  28:11  

But then there’s something to be said for passion, and there’s something to be said for, look, I don’t need to be a billionaire. I’m comfortable where I am. I’d rather have free time. I can eliminate a half a million dollars worth of lawyer salaries if I took a caseload at this point and put that half a million.

 

Seth Price  28:27  

no, but that I’m not going there, that’s that’s a different issue, good issue, but and it’s on the same continuum, but what I’d say is, if you had an honest conversation with yourself and said, look, I’m not maximizing this, if he went and went to a family law conference and got on stage with his charisma. How much better ROI would it be than having his competitors at Mastermind? Nothing wrong with it. It’s good every Mastermind I go to, good or bad, I get something out of it. The people there love him. He’s built raving fans, nothing bad, but the question is, are just like I’m going to a networking event with a bunch of people who are not like random people. It’s always like, you know, you, we talked, if you do an event, you get a bunch of emails from people, that’s great. How, what’s the difference between going to a networking event that’s non-targeted as a criminal defense lawyer, and walking down the street and talking to 20 random people for five minutes each, going into a Chipotle and going table to table. How much different of an impact would it be now? The BNI, when you get to ones where they’re super connectors, I think there’s much more value because they are hustling for you, but when it’s a colleague type environment, it’s tough. You get stuff, it’s a everybody gets referrals in there. There’s definitely referrals, that’s not the point, but the ROI on time for it is my question.

 

Jay Ruane  29:55  

Boy, well, I’d love to hear your answer to that question, folks. If you are listening, please be sure to leave a comment down below in the comment section, and let us know what you think about this, because this is the type of thing that we are always discussing. We are always trying to figure out what the right thing to use. Because I gotta tell you, Seth, I opened my firm, you know, September 1, 2001 you know, it was a different time. We marketed different, we processed our cases differently, and, in 2008 when you know the economy collapsed, mine didn’t. I was doing criminal defense, you know, but then COVID hit. Then, you know, we’re here now with this AI thing. Every couple of years there’s a massive change in the industry and I’m wondering how I can be prepared for the next one, I think it’s by being moving right by constantly thinking, changing, and

 

Seth Price  30:55  

let’s land. let’s end with a silver lining, which is the fundamentals of SEO are working. They may be down slightly, but the AI next gen is developing it based on similar practices. So, what is scary is we are in a. We like certainty. When there’s certainty, we’re going up on that. That straight line, it is definitely frenetic, and what I think concerns me the most is Google’s money grab in it, you know, and how much they’re going to squeeze the organic, and is there a viable path in certain practice areas for that? That’s the part that I’m sort of, you know, focused on right now, and looking at real seriously.

 

Jay Ruane  31:40  

I mean, I’ll be honest with you, you know, with LSAs, then pay per click, then maps, then organic, I might spend my money on hiring somebody to help get any reviews, so I’m ranking always on the map pack, and go LSAs, map pack, and just give up on the pay per click.

 

Seth Price  31:59  

that’s what I’m saying, I mean, they’re in criminal.. I’m curious to get.. I know you have some rural areas, take those out next week. I want you to come back with what is your cost per case in the non-rural areas that you’re hitting.

 

Jay Ruane  32:16  

All right, I’ll have to get somebody to do that, because I don’t do that type of thing, but

 

Seth Price  32:20  

perhaps you’ll have an agent do it for you.

 

Jay Ruane  32:22  

I will, you know, what, maybe that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just have my, my Claude project started up. Fact, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do that right now. I got a couple more hours before the end of the day, so I’m gonna do that, work on that, so I have the answer for you next week. So, folks, that’s gonna do it for us this week here on the Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go on the go by subscribing to the Law Firm Blueprint podcast. Be sure to give us a five star review if you do that, and you can check us out live, live on LinkedIn, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, as well as live in our Facebook group, The Law Firm Blueprint. Be sure to become a member, because it’s a fun place to hang. It’s gonna do it for us. I’m Jay Rewaine. He is Seth Price. Last words, anything?

 

Seth Price  33:03  

No. You know what, I got one thing for you to add to your agent. I want you to add in your spending money on the social, adding your pre-rolls to that piece, because part of what’s getting that is brand, so you may have that secret sauce of combining it. I’m curious. Let’s make sure that’s in the mix.

 

Jay Ruane  33:20  

I mean, I’m in a state of 3 million people, and last year we did 30 million pre-roll ads. I didn’t even want to know how much that cost me, but it was worth it.

 

Seth Price  33:31  

Let’s find out. Let’s, let’s see, let’s see how

 

Jay Ruane  33:33  

name searches showing up in our analytics, which

 

Seth Price  33:38  

Are those name searches hitting revenue?

 

Jay Ruane  33:41  

Well, that’s we’re gonna find out. All right, brother. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next week. Bye for now.