Jay Ruane  00:00

Jay, 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 my man, Seth Price, down there from Price Benowitz and BluShark digital. Seth, it’s another week the law firm blueprint is chugging along. What’s the mess on your desk this week?

 

Seth Price  00:26

For me, what’s top of mind is recruiting. I’m at the point where I know that I know how to market things, and that there are times when you just have to add water, you know, yeah, and we’ve talked about this before, but I’m really feeling the squeeze. I feel that law school demographics change during COVID.

 

Seth Price  00:46

Sure did

 

Seth Price  00:47

Right, best and brightest wasn’t always going to law school where we lost a lot of the best and brightest. Two other things, they’re like, I don’t do virtual law school, and I can’t say I blame them. We have the issue of loan forgiveness. School is so expensive now that a lot of programs have these 10 year loan forgiveness programs. So in criminal in particular, getting people out of the PD or the prosecutor’s office

 

Jay Ruane  01:11

they’ll stay.

 

Seth Price  01:11

They’ll stay. And the problem is at 10 years, which is the tail end of when you want to get somebody right, because then two things happen. One, they’re not the sort of young, hungry person that you can help mold and train. They do have more experience. But secondly, they’re halfway to their to their 20 years.

 

Jay Ruane  01:32

Yeah, and they’re also entrenched with the mindset of a government worker. And now I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna court controversy by saying I would never hire a government worker, but I would never hire someone who has a decade

 

Jay Ruane  01:46

Well, to be fair, I don’t put the average public defender or prosecutor generally as a government worker. I agree on the paralegal side. See, this is where you’re right? Yeah, let me hear it. Let me hear Jay. Jay opine on this.

 

Jay Ruane  02:05

So here’s, here’s the problem. And this is coming from my life experience. When you get someone who’s worked in an a large office that is focused at one courthouse, and there’s 6, 10, 15 of other people who do their job, they come into private practice, and they think somebody else can cover this. I can take a day off whenever I want. I don’t have to work past five. If I don’t show up, someone else will just continue all my cases, and I don’t have to think about it. And I can even take vacations and put cases down, because it doesn’t really matter. Then they come into private practice and they’re like, Well, I know I don’t feel well today, I’m calling out. And my response is, well, then get case coverage. You have you put stuff down today. We gotta run around and hustle. We do have overflow, but they just they don’t have the same mentality. So I am responsible for these files.

 

Seth Price  03:01

I haven’t had that experience. Our top Lawyer in Virginia and Maryland both came out of the prosecutor and Public Defender Service. And they like, it’s also, you know, you get the right people like anything, right? So, and look, we had one guy who was amazing, who had been many, many years, and sort of had and went back to government. So it’s not, you know, history is written by the victor when you

 

Jay Ruane  03:23

Right now in the criminal mastermind, we’ve had the thread going in our Slack group all about hiring this week, and it has been consistent nationwide, among the members of my organization, going down from first hire to 50th hire for some of the larger firms. And they all say, if they’re a public defender, and they’ve been around in that system, entrenched in that system for a couple of years or more, they fall apart when they come into private practice, because they they’re used to, you know, clocking out at five o’clock. And I don’t

 

Seth Price  03:55

I don’t know what public defenders you speak to. Our public defenders kill themselves. So if I

 

Jay Ruane  03:59

They kill themselves for the clients, but they don’t think of it as a business. No, they’re more social work type, right? When they want to take time off, they are entitled to time off.

 

Seth Price  04:09

And that’s why I put the My personal philosophy is give them the incentives with the cases. So you take time off, you just make less money. So it kind of, it’s it sifts that out pretty quickly, like we’re self selecting operation in that people that come are jet like we’re not sitting here saying where to pay the most. We’re saying, Hey, here’s a base that’s less than most. This is how you’re going to make more than most.

 

Jay Ruane  04:32

Yeah, but don’t you find then that they spend a little time at your office, and the ones who can’t close can’t make more money, just go back to government work.

 

Seth Price  04:43

Just we, as I said, we’ve had that once. But generally, of all my issues that has not been won.

 

Jay Ruane  04:50

I mean, around us here in Connecticut, I am seeing senior lawyers, guys who are my age and older, so like mid 50s are now opting into government work, taking a public defender job. Granted because they started in six figures here and have good benefits and good retirement and that type of thing. But I think I’m eating their lunch because they were, you know, solos trying to hack it out. And now, you know, the digital marketing and the branding that we’ve done has taken away some of those referrals they would have gotten, because people are coming to us now, but I’m seeing a lot of older lawyers trying to get those jobs.

 

Seth Price  05:27

Right right now. It’s, well, I guess we’ve couple things. DC is almost not a market for criminal with the gentrification of the city and during COVID, nobody was checking the income requirements for people, you know,nfor their cases, everybody got a public defender. It was crazy.

 

Jay Ruane  05:44

Is what’s going on with the National Guard, is that adding to arrest?

 

Seth Price  05:48

Like, I don’t know what’s going like, they’re marching on the mall, like, I don’t they look part of the issue is, like, if you wanted to really bring the National Guard two things, one, they’re not designed to make arrests. They don’t understand that whole piece, right? They want to shoot somebody. They’re pretty good at it. They’re trained as soldiers, but they’re not being sent off to, like, dangerous neighborhoods at night. They’re sitting there, marching up and down the mall and hanging out the Lincoln Memorial and, like, the visitor center. It’s crazy.

 

Jay Ruane  06:16

Yeah? I mean, it’s a show for the tourists. Really, I don’t know what it’s a show, maybe. So the tourists from, you know, other areas of the country feel more comfortable coming to DC.

 

Seth Price  06:26

It’s what I think. I don’t know.

 

Jay Ruane  06:29

Who knows? I don’t know. But I just, you know, I have, I have made a position that we are not hiring anybody from government work, because they just don’t get what it’s like to be in private practice.

 

Seth Price  06:42

Okay, so we talk criminal. We’re having trouble hiring. Family. Had a nice run, and we’re building, I know you’ve had family in the past. I don’t know how much you’re running at the moment,

 

Jay Ruane  06:50

not zero. I got rid of it. I don’t like the clients and I don’t like the lawyers even more.

 

Seth Price  06:55

No, and, but, you know, look, we take us a long time to find people that can play for this. I get it. So this is, this is a thought question going back to those days. It’s a billable hour thing, right? I was not smart. I was not a Lee Rose and figured out how to do the flat fees. It was one or two groups out there that have done that, but what we have done is started to realize that adding paralegals can scale a great attorney. That an attorney can build X amount and that each additional paralegal you add. So one attorney with starting off with 1,2,3, or even if you could get to four, paralegals can be do have a nice seven figure operation. One of the things that I’m trying to figure out, because when you start out, you hire a paralegal, but then you’re like, Okay, well, I’m paying the money. I need this thing to bill. And I’ve been crowdsourcing around the country to some of the people, my buddies that have larger operations. And it’s fascinating, because you know how, like I talk about my 25-25-50 deal on the criminal and family for that matter. But what I’ve seen here is that, like, you know, I was like, I thought I would be all over the place. There literally is a number, and I think it’s 900 hours a year is the over under that a paralegal needs to bill, and it covers themselves. They’re not rolling in it, but it essentially builds up enough revenue that you can build that lawyer to a better level than you could otherwise. And so, you know,

 

Jay Ruane  08:30

a year is not hard to accomplish,

 

Seth Price  08:32

no not at all. And one of the things that you know I’m thinking about is, do I bonus people beyond the baseline you know, so.

 

Jay Ruane  08:41

Your paralegals do that now, do they have a billable hour requirement?

 

Seth Price  08:45

Not. It’s not a good KPI. We’re looking at it, but it’s like, oh, that person’s high. That person’s low. So what you have saying is, hey, here’s our baseline.

 

Jay Ruane  08:53

of 1000

 

Seth Price  08:55

of nine or two 1000

 

Jay Ruane  08:57

I mean, I mean you wouldn’t go 900

 

Seth Price  08:59

I am. Well, hear, hear me out on this. If I were to offer 2000 or 2500 for every 100 hours above 900 all of a sudden, this is a way to make an extra five to $10,000. Now 10,000 is not going to happen, but if you’re already paying good money, is this a bonus system that would actually, for a nominal amount, deliver what you need, and paid, paid quarterly. That’s my current thinking.

 

Jay Ruane  09:28

I mean, I would approach it more in terms of, if it’s 1000 right hours, that’s going to be your base for the year. I would say, in a quarter, you got to build 250 right and we’re going to pay out quarterly bonuses based on the number of hours that you bill above 250

 

Seth Price  09:44

At least 20, 25, 30, whatever you decide, some number per hour extra for every, for everyone that’s there. You know, God forbid they, they built 200 hours extra beyond your target. Maybe $5,000 happy to do it,

 

Jay Ruane  10:03

Well, yeah, because, I mean, think about it, at their billable rate. It’s, you know, it’s significant to the firm, because they’ve covered themselves. Now you’re getting into actual profit

 

Seth Price  10:12

Right, and that also leaves them with 1000 non billable hours, right? Which is supporting that team and making it more sustainable.

 

Jay Ruane  10:22

Now, I don’t do the billable hour. I never have really, but what do you guys do in terms of requiring them to record their hours? Are you record by the end of the day? Record by the end of the week, record by the end of the month. Record by the end of??

 

Seth Price  10:39

Look, I know from being a baby lawyer at big law that you know, day is fuzzy. Week is, you know, moving towards nonfiction. Two weeks, you know, you’re in a different world. Look, the good news is software now, you know, AI and emails make it a lot easier to figure it out. I’m debating this is, this is the part that I’m not going to get through. It’s like parenting. I’m telling you what I’m gonna do, and it’s not gonna happen. So what I would say is, you know, one of my thoughts looking at this is, I in a perfect world, they would build their entire 40 hour week, okay? No, no, and then you’d only because my gut is that there’s stuff out there that is billable that is not, and of that number beyond what they’re billing. Not everything may hit a client, but at least you’re taking it out of their judgment as to what’s billable and what’s not.

 

Jay Ruane  11:38

Yeah, I think that would be tough, because I think in order for them to capture 40 hours, they probably would have to work 50. And you don’t want to do.

 

Seth Price  11:44

No no, no, you’re missing point. They could build one. They can build nonsense. I just want it to be captured. I’m not saying that they

 

Jay Ruane  11:51

That would be really interesting, if you literally tracked minute to minute what they were working on.

 

Seth Price  11:58

I’m saying they’re billable. Our requirement is 900 or 1000 minimum. I know a bonus beyond that, right? I’m thinking that I in order to incentivize like, I could say 1000 it sounds a lot better,

 

Jay Ruane  12:11

But let me, but let me, let me ask you, though you talk about incentivizing, incentivizing, not everybody is incentivized by money.

 

Seth Price  12:20

I better find out.

 

Jay Ruane  12:21

Like, like, honestly.

 

Seth Price  12:23

I mean, look, you’re right, but like, so it may be time off. I’ll figure it out. But for every 100 hours, or every 25 hours, a quarter that you go over the minimum, there’ll be some prize. And you know what, you’re right, if it’s not money, we’ll figure out what their what their love language is.

 

Jay Ruane  12:40

Yeah, I mean, because I think that’s one of the things, that’s one of the things that we actually ask as people come into our offices, how do you like to be recognized for exceptional work?

 

Seth Price  12:49

understand and then also it shape that also changes with time.

 

Jay Ruane  12:52

Absolutely, absolutely my, you know, like, here’s a perfect example. So today, when on sale, we have a local, you know, small railroad, you know, company that does the Santa Claus and elves Christmas train. It’s, you know, like a 45 minute ride, and they have Carol singing, and they serve you hot chocolate, and Santa comes in and does this whole thing. And so they sell cars and they sell tickets, right? But if you call on the very first day they are available, which is today, you can buy a whole car of 36 seats for like $3,600 right? So today, at 5am my office manager got on the phone and got on hold and was waiting for them to get it so she was able to secure two cars, you know, for $6400 or $7,200 whatever it costs. Now one car is going to be given to my, my team who have kids. So, you know, we’re going to pull a car full of our people and take them on a and they have a nice day, and I’ll pay for them to have dinner. My kids are a little on the older side. They don’t necessarily want to do it.

 

Seth Price  14:06

They’ll hang out with the Jews with the menorah the latkes

 

Jay Ruane  14:08

exactly, exactly, so, but, but my we let our staff that have kids know that we secured the Santa Train in Essex for this day, and we actually have one of our team members who relocated to Florida come decided today she’s gonna flip flop and do Thanksgiving here in Connecticut. So on that weekend, she can take her kid on the train with her husband. She changed which day she’s coming, which is great. But the cool thing was, is that, since I already was on the phone with them, I had Emily, I said, buy me a second car the next day. So that one day is on Friday, for my people, on Saturday, Prime Time, Saturday, 2pm and I just turned it over to a local children’s charity. And they are re just going to give it away to people that you know need to have a moment of joy because their kids are battling cancer, and so we’re going to fill that car with just, I don’t even know. I don’t know who’s going to be on the car quite because I just gave the cheer and said, put people in the car. Tell them it’s a gift from an anonymous person. Have a nice day. And the charity was blown away, because they can never get the funds together and get somebody on the phone at the time. And it was phenomenal. So, like, that’s something that, like my staff, they’re like, we’ll work extra hours because you hooked us up for this. Like, they’re gonna have to take a day off. And they’re saying, Well, why don’t I work on a Sunday? Because I’m gonna have to take a day off to be able to do this thing that you and I said, No, no, take the day off. It’s all good. Well figure it all out. No worries about that stuff. But I want to be as generous as possible to my people, and it’s not in a cash for for work situation. So that’s the thing like you got to survey your people and see what they react to.

 

Seth Price  16:01

clearly, clearly. I mean, like I start with cash because cash is king, but time off is certainly.

 

Jay Ruane  16:07

Now let me ask you another question when it comes this is good, because this is, this is something that I’ve wondered about when I want to give cash bonuses, when I want to give bonuses for hard work, for something like that, do you put it in the paycheck, or do you walk up and give an envelope

 

Seth Price  16:23

Again probably shouldn’t have all this recorded, but I’m a big fan of, you know, for, you know, life events, you know the Tony Soprano style, right?

 

Jay Ruane  16:33

That’s what I was going to say. I want to make sure that you’re doing it, because if it comes in the paycheck, it goes into the check.

 

Seth Price  16:40

Couldn’t agree more. I almost would rather do gift cards than but just anything into the paycheck, it’s just lost. It sucks.

 

Jay Ruane  16:50

So when I’m at a Price child’s wedding at some point in the future, know fully well they’re getting the stack of cash. Oh, right, right in the envelope. And it’s funny, I got family in North Jersey that are of a particular Neapolitan lineage. And when my cousin got married, my parents, my, you know, my parents are the whole Irish Catholic, you get them a nice crystal bowl and that type of thing with the card, I was like, no, no, we’re giving envelopes of cash to this wedding, because that’s what’s expected. And and, yeah, we showed up, and my mother insisted on bringing the Tiffany bowl that she gives to everybody, but my father also had the envelope of cash to make sure that that made it into the bride’s purse.

 

Seth Price  17:35

And you see that story that somebody ran off with the gift box?

 

Jay Ruane  17:40

Yeah. It happens.

 

Seth Price  17:42

They caught the guy.

 

Jay Ruane  17:43

We get up here in Connecticut. We have a very large population of immigrants that do the cash envelopes. And we get one of those cases every year where somebody grabs the thing and gets and tries to run with it. One a year at least.

 

Seth Price  18:00

Do we? Do we talk the Philadelphia Karen, or has that been talked out?

 

Jay Ruane  18:04

No, we can talk about that. What are your thoughts on it?

 

Seth Price  18:07

Look as a baseball fan, I you know, Yankee Stadium is rough in batting practice, yeah, like it was, you know, and you know, most again, people had gloves. The ball in the hand, it’s yours, until it’s in the hand.

 

Jay Ruane  18:21

It’s in the hands on yours.

 

Seth Price  18:22

And given the amount of time, I just happened to be up late that night when the stuff started to hit, so I saw way too many views of this thing, but the amount of time that it was done, the time to get it, was not enough that you were it was ripped out of somebody’s hand. It’s like, at that point, it’s yours and it’s gone to a kid.

 

Jay Ruane  18:42

No, I think, I mean, I think in reality, she touched it then, maybe, maybe, and then it bounced into the row in front of her, and he grabbed it, but she but the more interesting her possession.

 

Seth Price  18:55

In both scenes, when it hits off somebody’s cheek and breaks a jaw, and somebody else picks it up and Jen, like those.

 

Jay Ruane  19:01

Yeah, that’s just life, right? I mean, I’ve caught two balls at two games. In both of those situations, the balls have left with a kid who was sitting near me. Because I’m an adult. I don’t need another I got a bucket of baseballs in my garage. I don’t need another baseball in my life. But if it can make a kid happy, it’s absolutely going to the kid.

 

Seth Price  19:23

And we had a life moment. We used to get pucks at almost every hockey game. And my son, as he sort of, you know, started to shave, you know, you’re no longer at the point where it’s yours. And he got the rule, it’s got to be and you know what that’s sort of like, the what it is all about. I think the one piece I’m going to get, I’m gonna flip this story on its head for a second, though. Look, this woman, crazy awful. There is some sort of like, it was a, there was a short story. We saw a film when I was in grade school, like the lottery and everybody, like in the town, got a. A ticket, no ticket, ticket or stick a lottery.

 

Jay Ruane  20:03

It’s a great short story, yeah, exactly. Everyone’s got a ticket, and then the person who wins the lottery gets taken care of.

 

Seth Price  20:09

Well, right? They stoned that. Yeah, yeah. And I kind of feel like that’s what this was like, Yes. What was completely wrong, completely out of control. Who knows what she was on? Let her day was entitled, whatever you want to say. But the idea that we have a woman in North Carolina that just had her neck slashed on a bus like we that story doesn’t make the New York Times, right, but this is front and center. You know, that Coldplay that we, you know, we have all sorts of crazy, significant things happening in the world. And look, I’m as guilty as anybody. This isn’t like, I’m holier than that. I’m like, I watched the feed. I was like, trying to figure out that who had the ball and etc. I love the fact that the both the Marlins and the Phillies took care of this kid. All great. But it is something about how the world looks at justice, and it’s what what is in front of you and what you know of the wrongs that have happened in the last 24 hours. This one went viral. But how many others would you be shocked at? You know, you know, right now, the number of people sitting in jail for crimes they didn’t commit they can’t get out. The number of documentaries we’ve watched from start to finish, where you’re pretty sure somebody didn’t do whatever the hell they’re in jail for.

 

Jay Ruane  21:30

Okay, you want to talk about? Have you watched the one with the mom and the daughter? The unknown number one.

 

Seth Price  21:36

Yeah, let’s not give give any much away. But oh my god.

 

Jay Ruane  21:41

that woman’s crazy.

 

Speaker 1  21:42

crazy,

 

Jay Ruane  21:42

crazy to say what she said. I mean, oh, my lord.

 

Seth Price  21:47

And look, and it looked a great example the other way, like, what’s the right punishment for it? Like, this is, like, head blown.

 

Jay Ruane  21:58

Yeah, and, I mean, we are, unfortunately, in our business, we are one, you know, we’re one bad day away from our firm being blown up because somebody did something that was absolutely bonkers crazy

 

Seth Price  22:10

And, you know, I’ve seen it. We hadn’t. We had an employee do something they shouldn’t have done times bluntly, they were given instructions, misconstrued, made a phone call and said something, and somebody decided to leave a bad review, and then all of a sudden they were in a circle. You could see it, and it was scary, because there was a bunch of and, look, we were wrong. Loved to have apologized and said, you know, our bad didn’t have the opportunity. Whole series of one star reviews come flooding in. Thankfully, Google is now sophisticated enough that they were able to decipher and get all but one which was legitimate because we did something that wasn’t that one should stick if you did something wrong. But wow, yeah,

 

Jay Ruane  22:57

it’s crazy.

 

Seth Price  22:57

So how do we land this plane? I don’t

 

Jay Ruane  22:59

I don’t know. I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of different things, but the reality is, is that’s the life of a law firm owner There literally is, every day you don’t know what you’re going to get. One of the cool things I’m doing with AI right now is I’m taking a lot of our training videos that we’ve done internally. Somebody who’s out there might be interested in this as we’ve taken our videos that we’ve done internally, and I have an assistant who’s actually pulling the transcripts from them, cleaning the transcripts using Claude or chat GPT, making them really polished and nice, no UMS or ahs, then I’m uploading them to Hey Jen, recreating our training videos with an avatar so that it is perfectly spoken, perfectly timed, no ahs and ums, that type of thing. And it’s really turning into a phenomenal product for our training. And we’re actually utilizing we’re on the Google Workspace. I know you are too. We’re actually going to start using Google Classroom as a way to train our new intake and new support specialists and legal ops and that type of thing. And then what I need to do is really set it up so that as you onboard, you get assigned a classroom. And hopefully, if all this stuff gets built out the way I’d like, by the end of the year, there’s going to be classrooms you can enter if you want to get promoted. And so you could take the classes, take the tests and show proficiency, and you could do that on your own time. So if I have a receptionist who wants to work into intake support. The receptionist, he can take the intake support classes, show his grades and say, Hey, I’m ready next opening. I’m ready to go.

 

Seth Price  24:48

We should be so lucky that we do a lot of these courses, a lot. We’re up to two full time trainers, yeah, plus some overseas support. Those are domestic. So it’s, it’s an investment, but you know what? It has meant that it is allowed for scale, and that’s key, you know, and I think someday somebody’s going to figure out the law firm in the box. The question is, will our audience and beyond want to pay for it? But, you know, it is that is one of the things that always shocked me, that we’re all these little practitioners figuring it out for ourselves and like a lot better knowledge than we had before. And speaking of that, before we get off, do we? Are we going to see you at the Fisher event in DC.

 

Jay Ruane  25:32

I’m getting closer. I’m not 100% I haven’t my it turns out my son is active in the media team at his high school, and they are presenting on the back to school night. So when I floated it that I might be out of town, he said, But dad, I really want you to see this thing I’ve been working on for two weeks and three weeks by then, and so

 

Seth Price  25:54

presumably it’s online. You can sit down.

 

Jay Ruane  25:59

That’s the thing. It’s a big media presentation in their new in their new innovation center.

 

Seth Price  26:04

An innovation center that doesn’t, that doesn’t digitize, no, no, no, no.

 

Jay Ruane  26:10

It’s, well, they won’t. They have all this stuff, but it’s a maker. It’s a maker lab. That’s what it is.

 

Seth Price  26:15

I understand, but Right?

 

Jay Ruane  26:17

But they’re not streaming it. Maybe they will, I don’t know. Maybe they will stream it. Let me I should ask Him that very good. I’ll do that. I’m getting I had, I thought I had clearance from my wife, and now I’m getting blowback from my oldest son. And you know me, I’m gonna pick them over anything else. So I’m working it. I’m working it. This is I’m putting more work into this than I put into some other of my cases, I think, over the years.

 

Seth Price  26:44

Very cool. Well, hopefully it works out.

 

Jay Ruane  26:46

All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the law firm blueprint. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go. On the go by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. And if you want to catch us. Live, catch us live, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live on LinkedIn and live in our Facebook group called the Law Firm blueprint. So please join us every Thursday, live or take us on the go. Be sure to give us a five star review that’s going to do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth price. Thanks for being with us. Bye for now. You you.