Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello and welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m your host, Jay Ruane and with me, as always, my man, Seth Price. Seth, how are you doing this week? You just did some traveling.

 

Seth Price  0:17  

I did. Just came back from the F1 event hosted by the Eve people, and it was, you know, quite an experience. You know, I am not a city kid.

 

Jay Ruane  0:27  

Well, that’s cool. I guess there are a lot of sports going on. We had the Derby, we had F1 you know. And, you know, we just booked, we just bought out a suite for the Savannah Bananas.

 

Seth Price  0:38  

That seems to be money. And, you know, it’s funny, okay, so you have a gold event, right? You gotta you got a great event coming up, and something you know, you and I have talked about over time. Which is when you’re networking, and whether it’s a primo suite, getting the people that you want there. You could always fill a suite so they haven’t been asking me a hot ticket. But the hotter the potential relationship person you want there, likely the more busy they will be, and may or may not be able to make it. And the juggling of, how do you make sure? It could just be a lunch, it could be a suite, could be whatever, whatever is a finite amount. How do you leverage your time so that you’re getting the best likelihood that the people you really want are there, rather than people who are just taking up space and eating your food?

 

Jay Ruane  1:28  

Yeah, that’s that. That is the million dollar question. Because, you know, I mean, in some ways, depending on who the person is, you almost want to build the events around them, because that’s who you really are trying to network with.

 

Seth Price  1:43  

Understood, but you very, very

 

Jay Ruane  1:45  

What if they bail?

 

Seth Price  1:46  

They bail, and it’s, you know. Part of the reason I gave up season tickets was it was too stressful. I didn’t love the idea of just going to waste. Yes, sometimes I went to employees, which is great, but it was, it’s a full time job. Once you have that sweep the job, just beginning in that what are you going to do with it? But I got to tell you brilliantly, because right now, these guys are on fire. I’ve gotten to meet the founder at a conference a number of months back, and just what a ride he has had, and just the way he is, you know, took. If you’ve been to a Harlem Globetrotters game, you’ll know that they have not changed their playbook since, like, 1950 racist jokes and all still in there. So, you know, this guy took baseball, which is trying to figure out how to connect, and just seems to have made it into said, you know what? This is entertainment. And I’m unabashedly that way. And I just hats off to him, because he’s created a category.

 

Jay Ruane  2:44  

Yeah, and the thing that’s interesting about is, like, he started, you know, barnstorming, going to minor league ballparks, and now he’s doing major league ballparks. 

 

Seth Price  2:51  

He’s beyond that. You know, he’s doing football stadiums and, you know, and like, you know, then he’s doing collabs with Mr. Beast. He’s doing pop ups. I mean, he’s bringing in, like, women who wouldn’t have a place in professional sports. I know there’s a professional team starting, but you know, he’s bringing people I’m like, Oh, I remember her from the Little League World Series. I mean, he is this guy has figured out the pulse of how to go viral and done a really nice job with it.

 

Jay Ruane  3:17  

Well, I think at the end of the day, though, like in that context, people want to be entertained. I mean, that’s where dollars are going. Now, their dollars are going to venues and good entertainment.

 

Seth Price  3:28  

Just you watch, I bet you, as you try to figure out where, where you’re allocating seats, this will be one of the bigger demand things you’ve done that, you know,other things are niche. I don’t like that type of music, you know, I’m not into this type of racing. Whatever it is, you’re going to find that this is that you’ve timed that very, very well.

 

Jay Ruane  3:47  

Yeah, so I’m looking forward to it, you know, that’ll and it’s actually on my actual birthday this year. So it’s my birthday party. You know that, at least that’s what we’re calling it, you know, in the firm. And we’re going to get some people there and be able to network with them. And then I got to pick up a suite to go see Olivia Rodrigo, because apparently that’s the hot ticket. She’s kicking off her tour here in Connecticut at the end of September. So I reached out to my guy. He’s like, Yeah, I can get you a suite, no problem. And they go on sale tomorrow, so by tomorrow, I’ll own a suite for one or both of her shows, and use that, you know, because if you can impress the kids, the parents.

 

Seth Price  4:27  

Because that will get the parent there, right? There’s no conflict. Cancel their travel, sports, they’re going to that. So look, let’s make some money here. Reviews. I’m seeing this stuff like, if you know, look, reviews always important. We’ve talked about it over the years. Over the years. There’s been more talk from Google, through their emissaries, about reviews recently that I’ve seen in a long time. As it gets more and more important, people are talking about it. People are gamifying it within law firms particular, you know, hey, here’s $30 for every time, Susie, they mentioned your name and review. And apparently Google said, Hey, gigs up. We don’t want to see that. And we’ve seen with some clients where if one person is overly successful, not a principal, not the person doing the work, but somebody behind the scenes. Now, Google says things they very often want, may or may not have a way to effectuate it.

 

Jay Ruane  5:21  

but, I mean, okay, how are they going to check this? I mean, I’ve got Ashley, and Ashley does a great job, and clients love her and they put her name in it.

 

Seth Price  5:30  

Valid point. They are trying to take anything that’s we talk about spikes, right when you did something where 15 people reviewed you on a far away IP, right? When you and I, you’re a bunch of your people were nice enough to review my firm. A third party guy came and said, Yep, look at this. Look at this comp from Connecticut, right? You know that, you know things like that. That was before people were virtual. Shows you how long we’ve known each other. So, long time. So I think that what they’re saying is we want to get rid of the things that we can detect are there. Now, could this be the rock star? you see this on cruises. You’re on a cruise this summer. I just came off one. we have seen on cruises in the past, where it’s almost a joke how much they’re pushing put my name in the survey, because clearly they’re being compensated by it or promoted. So I think that what we’re seeing is it’s one thing if it’s natural that every once in a while something comes up. there is no way that every single review for Ruane is going to have Sally in it just over and over and over again. And they’re just, they’re trying to cut down on that. And so I think some of it is the big guys have really taken, like most things, have figured out how to replicate it at volume, and it’s sort of smooshing the little guys, because there’s no way you have as many employees there, you know, and it’s harder to get that up. We’re seeing a number of interesting patterns. One that second, some of the reputation management services where people can pay to have negative reviews, challenged that some of those have popped back in recent days. We’re noticing that. So a bunch of things seems, you know, Google seems to, you know, play Whack a Mole with different areas. And part of the reason it’s significant is the reviews matter, not just for the local search, which is more and more competitive as organic has has been hit the organic side of of local, but it also matters to your LSAs, so particularly PI space, where it’s so hard to get those those leads. That it’s another, another element, where lawyers are trying to position themselves to be able to get those LSAs and Google sort of throttle it or stating it. And we’re seeing, like most things, at the extreme end, I’m actually doing something about it. It’s not something that I see everybody getting hit by, but certainly crowdsourcing and speaking to people and speaking to clients. People are seeing reviews disappear in larger clumps than they used to. It used to be. It was every once in a while, it seems to be more of a cat and mouse game of late.

 

Jay Ruane  8:06  

Yeah, we actually had a really interesting issue in the last month with reviews, because there’s another lawyer in my building. Different practice area, and we started getting really long, like really, really long. This happened, if I’m looking at the first one here, it happened on March 6, where somebody was giving a one star review to a lawyer who’s not involved in our firm whatsoever. And then the same review came up in different words. Obviously, they had fed it through chat GPT with like a dozen other posters, and constantly complaining about.

 

Seth Price  8:56  

It’s the double whammy. A, somebody wants this guy and B, they’re doing the wrong guy. So somebody

 

Jay Ruane  9:01  

They did it, and they did it not only to me. They did it to like, a dozen firms in my town, right? So they’ve got all of these negative reviews about this one lawyer. He got them too, but he’s like, Well, I got mine removed because they were negative. Blah, blah, blah. He’s like, and I’m like, Well, I’m trying to get mine reviewed, and they’re not taking them down. So they’re still up. We’ve hired, we’ve, we come, you know, we complain, we fill out the form, we show that he’s not associated with us, and Google has left them up. We’re still dealing with it. But

 

Seth Price  9:35  

That’s where you got to escalate. And obviously

 

Jay Ruane  9:38  

I had a four nine down to like a four four.

 

Seth Price  9:42  

yes, that’s a huge

 

Jay Ruane  9:44  

One of my offices, because I got a dozen negative reviews in a two week period.

 

Seth Price  9:51  

Wow, yeah. Generally, like, we saw a lot of this, you know, you know where Google and Yelp will if something happens that’s political. You know, a buddy of mine did a Trump burger when he first won the presidency with like, you know, yellow cheese coming off the side of the bun and a small pickle. And next thing you know, the guy’s flooded with one star reviews from Staten Island. You know, those things Google is pretty good. Maybe not be immediate, but when it’s a nominal number 12 is not that large. It will come down with time, with the right people, escalated. Send it to my guys. I’ll have them take a look. But it’s it’s not nothing, and it can hurt you because you’re in that intervening time. It’s not there. You know, my normal advice is, when it’s a real person, you call up and you say, hey, what can you do.

 

Jay Ruane  10:40  

I have no idea who this person is. And I actually other law firms called me and said, Hey, did you know about this? I’m like, of course, I know about this. I knew about this the minute it happened. You’re the one who found it a week late, because you don’t pay attention to reviews. And they’re like, Well, what are you going to do about it? Like, well, I escalated. I talked to them, you know, the people that I had and tried to get rid of it, but you know. And you gave me some advice, responding to the review makes it harder to get it taken down,

 

Seth Price  11:06  

Especially the first 30 I don’t like that. You know, it’s not, there’s a lot of stuff out there, yeah, because you’re it’s not real. And again, you would do that if it’s not going to go away. But right now, the goal is get it down right. Does this guy know who’s going after him?

 

Jay Ruane  11:19  

No, he has no idea, and it’s frustrating him, because he’s like, now I got all these lawyers who hate me. He’s like, I’m a referral practice, like, I want them to send me cases, and they’re saying, Hey, you pissed off somebody, and they’re coming after you, even though I think it’s like a ransom situation. I got a feeling at some point someone’s going to reach out saying, we can get rid of all of these if you pay us X number of dollars, type of thing.

 

Seth Price  11:44  

Never just like, Google doesn’t want us having too many people. One paralegal happy. You know, it’s tough because, you know, you don’t want it gamified at the same time. You want people to get great service recognized. And so, like anything else, just got to say, Okay, you want to make sure that you know they don’t at the end of the day, Google doesn’t want it gate kept. They don’t want you only having your happy people do this. But you know, it was, it was something back in the day Tammany Hall in New York City, scandalous period, and something that feel out of LaGuardia. Somebody asked him, you know, why do you put your your friends in your administration? And he’s like, What am I supposed to do put my enemies? So it’s like, what are you supposed to like, you know, you’re supposed to like, Why are you only asking happy clients for five stars? I want my enemies putting stuff up?

 

Jay Ruane  12:30  

exactly. So it’s so it’s interesting to me, because, you know, we’ve been working sort of in this Google ecosphere, and sort of have left things like Yelp just sort of sit by the wayside. Because, I mean, think about it there. I, you know, I talked to the to the Yelp rep recently. That’s never good. Well, they were trying to sell me on a, you know, some sort of package, blah, blah, blah. And I, I took the call because I said, you know, and I want to get some answers. And they’re like, look, we don’t want reviews from people who are not Yelpers. That’s why we’ll only put up in the, you know, verified review type thing of people who are active on our platform. And then if somebody reviews you on Yelp, they will not, you know, we’ll try to go after them and get them to start reviewing other places, you know, so that they could become inactive. And I said, and they’re like, Well, how many people do you have in the state of Connecticut that are like, active Yelpers? And I don’t know if he was telling me the truth, but he’s like, you know, there’s about 79,000 in the state of Connecticut that are constantly posting on Yelp.

 

Seth Price  13:39  

I call bullshit on all of this, in the sense that active Yelper just means you’ve done a bunch over the years, right? It’s not like it’s in there today.

 

Jay Ruane  13:50  

So I pushed back. I said, Okay, there’s X number of people who get arrested for DUI in the state of Connecticut, right? You know, it’s less than 10,000 I said, so I have to get I have to hope that of those 10,000 that get arrested, some of them, what maybe two or three would be active Yelpers. Where’s the value to my investment? And he simply pitched a pivot and said, you just want to have a fully built out campaign, and we want to highlight two or three of your very positive reviews on your page. We’ll keep all of the other ones, but we can structure where, you know, put the best reviews at the top of your campaign, of your profile. He’s like, because that’s what’s getting indexed by all the AI tools now. And I said, but

 

Seth Price  14:38  

It’s so awful. It’s

 

Jay Ruane  14:39  

so so, so basically, you’re telling me you want to gamify the system. Take my you know, you want me to pay monthly. So my three decent Yelp reviews, because we’ve never gone after them, are in the top area, so that, you know,

 

Seth Price  14:54  

it’s one of those things. if the price is right? You may, you may do it. I say the first thing everybody needs to be. Or if you haven’t already, dust off your yelps, dust off your Avo. Haven’t looked at it for 10 years. You know. You know, looking at each of these places, have some sort of strategy with, you know, with these different message boards that you may not care about, but hopefully find somebody at your firm that has just, you know, has some sort of relationship with those platforms. You know, there are all these different places that we just didn’t care about, and I’m gonna say you have to go crazy on it, but I think it’s at least find out what’s there and get rid of the stuff that’s really not good.

 

Jay Ruane  15:34  

And one of the things that you can do, which is what we’ve done, or I’ve done, is I actually set up a an automation that looks at a few Reddit channels, identifies Connecticut based issues of criminal law, DUI, and will slack me a message using make.com and Zapier and a couple other you know things. If a thing gets posted, I can then have a link to be able to respond.

 

Seth Price  16:03  

One step is somebody other than you is doing that’s the next step.

 

Jay Ruane  16:08  

 It’s all being automated, right? But then I have to get somebody else who can do the response, right? But right now, I like the granular control of it, because I like to see you know what? You know, what if I put something in my response, and then, you know, two months later, I asked chat GPT about me, and they say, Oh, they use this phrase, oh, okay, so I know chat GPT is using Yelp reviews or Reddit responses, that type of thing. So it’s more data gathering for me to be the one in charge for it right now. I could offshore or I could put it on somebody on my team, but right now, I’m using that to to get my my data so I know what I’m working with, but. it’s, it just the reviews and staying on top of them and curating them and pointing people to the right place. I mean,  in a medium sized firm, or, you know, a firm that’s not a solo with a paralegal, like I’m talking, you’ve got, you know, maybe two or three partners, maybe two or three associates. You know, your your headcount is probably in the seven to 15 range, right? You know, all in seven to 15 range. You can have a person who’s cultivating reviews, monitoring reviews, responding to as a full time job.

 

Seth Price  17:23  

well, yes, and again, if with done with the right person, can be international, doesn’t have to be domestic. Again, flashbacks, things, iterations. I’ve had one point I had only intake looking at it. And the issue with that is that as they get busy, they may cut down on the number of reviews they’re helping you with, right? That was but I think in some respects, a lot of people come full circle, realizing that if people are going to leave you a negative review based on something on your website. their interaction when somebody answers the phone, you won’t take a case if Google is going to say that is a meaningful review that somebody who called your firm that you can’t help. he equivalent of somebody going to carbone and not getting seated because they have a reservation, never tasted the food. If that’s going to stick, should somebody who calls your office that you can’t help but you refer somewhere else? Is that worthy of a positive experience? And so all of a sudden, intake has become a better place to curate, but the happy client, or even the client, let’s assume you’re not gatekeeping that having a person nothing more valuable. I am amazed, because the number of firms I see through BluShark that crash and burn with zero review generation. There’s one in a major market I’m dealing with right now. We’ve done the SEO. They have the offices. They have multiple offices, and they are philosophically against getting reviews. And I’m like mind blown.

 

Jay Ruane  18:59  

But part of the problem is that that has value, you know, it was funny. I was looking at, you know. I took some time, probably, you know, the middle of April, and I said, let me look at all the lawyers I know that are 70 plus, right, and try to get an idea of who might be targets for acquisition. Who might be targets for, hey, you know, you want to slow it down, come join our firm, bring in your referral network and that type of thing. And I’m looking at lawyers that have been practicing for 40 or 50 years, and they’ve got three reviews, you know, seven reviews, and the last one was eight years ago. And I start, I don’t know about you, but if I start looking at adding a lawyer who’s on their own at any point in the game and they don’t have a significant number of reviews, that’s gonna trigger something in me and that like, what are they doing if they can’t get reviews? Now I know some really, really shitty lawyers. That have 200 plus, 4.8 5.0 star reviews, because they have worked it. But I, you know, I know their work product. I’ve seen them in pre trials. I know they’re not, they’re not doing a good job, so to speak, but their clients don’t have anything to measure that again. So to their client, they did a great job. I mean, I had people. I saw people get five star reviews when their lawyer was like, Oh, I totally missed that suppressionable issue in a pre trial. Call it out, and I’m like, oh, so, and they’re going to go back and be like, hey, this case is going to resolve favorably for you. Now they got and they didn’t identify the issue. The judge did.

 

Seth Price  20:44  

one thing I’m gonna throw out there for any of our family law people out there, the one risky thing in life sounds awful, but guardian ad litem, very often courts appoint you is that that can be an awful,

 

Jay Ruane  20:59  

terrible

 

Seth Price  21:00  

review issue because you’re representing often the kid. parents don’t like your position. You’re being and all of a sudden, I’ve seen people decimated so my you know, and one thing I saw, I spoke to a woman at conference, she has done is she has both sides sign a non a non disclosure for reviews before. Again, I have seen people where I told them, I can’t help you with your digital because you have so many bad reviews from your guardian ad litem work. And it’s clear it’s from that like it’s not close that if you do that, somehow have it under a separate brand, but if which is hard, if you’re named on the website, people are going to get angry. They’re going there. But getting something that is signed off helpful, the judge does, I would, if you care about your family law practice, that doing that is likely to make it toxic from a review point of view, and frankly, not visible based on the damage that can be done. It’s it’s not, it’s not nothing.

 

Jay Ruane  22:04  

Yeah, I mean, so many people, so many consumers and so many websites are now counting on, relying on using those review metrics as a way to determine whether or not you’re decent lawyer that, I mean shit. I mean, I think, you know, before you hire a quote, unquote marketing director in your 15 person firm, I would hire somebody who’s review wrangler. That’s their job.

 

Seth Price  22:32  

Well, that’s not expensive, right? You know, a real marketing person, you need to know a lot here. They have to just be tenacious.

 

Jay Ruane  22:40  

yeah, one of the things that we’ve been doing Seth is, you know, my people have a series of, you know, standardized calls that they have to make when we open a file. our intake team does it. So we’ve scripted into our, you know, our calls with clients, you know, when they’re on the intake they say, you know, we’re going to give you the kind of service that’s going to make you want to leave a five star review. And so they’re saying that in intake, that’s one of the things that they get graded on. In our call grading metric, is that they’re talking about.

 

Seth Price  23:10  

right, we want to do the Ritz Carlton

 

Jay Ruane  23:13  

when they and when they talk to their paralegal, it’s, I’m going to give you five star service. You know, that type of thing. The lawyer says, I want to make sure that you feel and so we’re talking about it early and often, so that when we do get to the ask, it’s like, oh, well shit. They said they were going to do it. They did it. Now they’re expecting me to do it well. So let’s, let’s the.

 

Seth Price  23:32  

The best way to do it is to deliver it. So yes, I love how, but like how often. And we’ve had humbling times during growth. You know, there were moments where the sausage making might not have been as tight as we’d like it to be, and we will you note that we part of the reason. Obviously we do, we’re much better on surveys internally, just to see where things are at, but meaning of clients. But I think it goes one step further that you really have all these different elements that are going into it, but a do great service. Nothing wrong with reinforcing it. But if the systems are there and people are communicating, it makes that job much easier. Just telling people that without actually doing is not quite because it has. There’s a negative effect for somebody that’s used as a sword. We see mostly on the PI side, because very often, money, shockingly, does not come from insurance companies as quickly as people want. And therefore it’s a situation where, you know, you see a situation the that people try to get their check faster by leaving a bad review. Again, very effective, calling people seeing what’s wrong. You know, you gave a shout out on the last episode for somebody who came up and talked to you about referral checks coming. And it was cool that Earley reached out, appreciated that. I heard this weekend a story the opposite way, which was for somebody who had brought in a PI firm upstream with their bigger cases. Something that bigger firms want to do, and they didn’t do something that I think is important, you know, like, if you have a big trucking case, and they throw a million dollars on the table, and the big firms say, You know what? This is a $5 million case. Let us have a crack at it. One of the things I think that’s powerful, if you can get it, is, okay, great. We’ll give you, you know, we’ll give you X percent, or they’ll give you X percent. Let’s say it’s 50-50, over and above whatever the original offer was. And I heard this story of a legit firm that was slammed, went to a player and wanted them to. They came in and said, Look, you’re at, you know, one you know you’re at, you know, 300,000 on this case, we know we can get it to a million. And, you know, year and a half later, they’re at 340 and took, you know, and gave them their standard referral fee, gave them the third for it. 

 

Jay Ruane  24:18  

Wow

 

Seth Price  24:21  

And that firm went back and said, That doesn’t seem right. And they were like, No, we’re holding to our third.

 

Jay Ruane  25:50  

Oh.

 

Seth Price  23:32  

Now when you do that, you’ve just brought that relationship. It was just seems very, you know, if somebody’s, you know, there’s a, you know, a famous speaker, book author who writes, never split the difference. But something, I think we talk about a future show. Think 90% of life can be because you’re not, you know, you’re not a hostage negotiator, right?

 

Jay Ruane  25:27  

You know, one off thing. I mean, it could be,

 

Seth Price  23:32  

Could be there are times when you want to hold it and do it, do it. But how often is it that if you just give a little bit, you can be win, win. You give up a few shekels from your maximum, the other person feels heard and vindicated, and you move on. And you know? And it goes back and forth. You know, there’s people in the world who get every penny from every transaction. But the longer I live, the more that I feel that that if you’re able to leave a little bit on the table, split the difference, that there is a long term strategic advantage in the relationships we talk about so much on the show.

 

Jay Ruane  27:17  

Well, I have a I have a perfect example about that is I refer to case out, a civil rights case out years ago, and after a number of years, they got a number to settle the case, and the managing partner, not my relationship, at that firm, came to me and made a phone call and said, Look, you never would have gotten anywhere near this type of fee if you had handled this case. So instead of 30% you know, we’re going to give you a third of what of our third but instead of that, we’d like you to take just a flat $10,000 because that’s probably all you would have got. And they’re like, and if you look at our billables, we’re losing money on this case.

 

Seth Price  28:03  

I don’t, I don’t buy the first argument. That bullshit. But if somebody comes to me and you know, and I’ve had, I think I’ve done it once, and people have done it to me once, it’s a questionable area. But like, if there’s a case where you’re underwater. You know, you took a case, you’re giving, you’re giving a third, but you litigated the hell out of it and it, you know, and it was much more onerous for whatever reason. Client did stuff. They made Barca play this and that toxic case. You know, there’s one school of thought, you pay your third, you move on to keep people happy. But I’ve gone, I’ve been on both sides of that where I’m, like, on this one, I don’t, either don’t need a fee or reduced fee. It’s not crazy, but

 

Jay Ruane  28:48  

I agree with you. And when, when I got other referrals that came in, they did not go to that firm. Multi million dollar referrals did not beat me up, and I wound up having to stick my, you know, stand. I’m taking my whole faith. Thank you very much.

 

Seth Price  29:04  

But there’s a if the first part of that ask makes no sense to me, you which you normally gets, why I came to you, right? I’m getting, I would get the whole thing. So that makes no sense, but it is not uncommon where something is so arduous,

 

Jay Ruane  29:21  

I think, honestly, in the PI context. And I don’t know why PI lawyers don’t seem to do this, but I would say to somebody, Hey, you’re my referral partner. I’ll pay you. You know, I paid 40% for cases free trial the day I started trial, and I have to put in all of that work. You know, will you agree to go down to 30 or 25 because the chances are and you’re gonna do a lot more work if you’re trying to case for three weeks and bringing in experts and all of that shit, the amount of hours that go in. You know,

 

Seth Price  29:53  

There’s another piece to the story, which is it’s death by 1000 cuts, where, if you don’t do that I like that. I think it’s not everybody does it. It gets sticky. It’s not clean. I get it. But one of the things that it does negatively, if you play their markets that are 40 and 50%

 

Jay Ruane  30:14  

right.

 

Seth Price  30:15  

you are basically assuring that nobody’s litigating these cases unless they’re five star cases. So you basically, by definition, knocked out litigation. Nobody can afford to litigate. You want to know cases at 50%

 

Jay Ruane  30:31  

Right. You know. I mean, I have, I have some relationships where I have 50% you know. And people are coming back and saying, and I’d say, Look, I’ll take 40 pre, you know,

 

Jay Ruane  30:42  

I know what it’s like to try a case. I know the amount of work you put in. I think you should earn more, you know, for a bigger number. So my 40% of a settlement, you know, may be smaller than 25% of a trial verdict, and

 

Seth Price  30:58  

The part that nobody puts in is the zero, which is, they just dropped the case because it’s too the risk changes. The risk profile for the law firm. I’ll land the plane with this one. And I don’t know if you have an opinion on it when, and it’s .I have to go to my analogy to the criminal world, or the fee for service world. In the contingency space, people are very tuned in to the average fee per case. You have a number for yours. In theory, that fee, I assume that you look at, and a good not many criminal lawyers do when judging paid search. If you’re judging paid search, you want to know what your average fee for cases look story for another episode, criminal and paid I know, with the exception of some pockets that you’re holding on to are very, very difficult to monetize, that I don’t believe that criminal fees have gone up with inflation in most markets, and that I’ve seen that Google’s cost on paid search has skyrocketed to the point where most lawyers in criminal are upside down. It’s a story that may destroy I mean, again, I won’t overstate it, but I think the criminal defense world may go back to what we saw when we entered which is a bunch of people picking up their relationship work that you may, over time, not be able to have a scaled firm and criminal with the way the economics are going and the squeeze on that. But when you’re looking at your average fee for case in pi, there are multiple points that you look at. There’s a point where you sign the case, then there’s a point in depending on how you work, 30-60 days, where you’re then dropping a whole bunch of cases, which could be 30 to 35% of what you signed,

 

Jay Ruane  32:49  

right

 

Seth Price  32:49  

right? And then there are ones that drop after that point, or get a bad verdict to trial or no or non collectible, or whatever it is. And that when you’re figuring out your average fee per case, it’s interesting, because every lawyer wants to have a higher one, because it sounds better. But if you don’t put the zeros in for cases dropped, or look at your total number of cases based on that 3060, day point where you’re sort of assessing what’s a valuable case you want your intake signing everything. So if intake signs 100 cases, and you’re dividing 100 by the amount of money you made, you’re gonna have one number. If you drop a third of those, you now have 68 cases. That’s going to be a much different average fee. And then if you monetize 60 at the end of two years, it’s even a different one. And I feel that very often lawyers who are optimists are not digging for those negative pieces, not that you want to be negative about it, but keeping it as real as possible.

 

Jay Ruane  33:55  

I agree with that, and I’ll take it one step further. I’ve not heard a lot of PI lawyers that I know that include their fee splits as a marketing expense. They think, and I mean, look, if Seth Price gives me a case and I kick him back and I make $100,000. I kick you back $30,000. That relationship cost me $30,000 this year, and so I need to put that as in my marketing.

 

Seth Price  34:24  

And I think the significant pi firms have started to move in that direction, but there are several pieces to that. One, yes, you got to put you have to account for it. Obviously, it’s below the line or it’s top line revenue, and that’s an expense either way. And that’s why the bigger marketing firms that have a great deal flow poo, poo, the referral cases.

 

Jay Ruane  34:46  

right

 

Seth Price  34:47  

Because they can get cases for a lot less understanding some of those may be the great cases. So that’s why you do want to very often referrals are better. But that’s, that’s, that’s one side of it. No, absolutely, that is a huge sort of you know issue within within the PI space. But it’s the zeros. The good news about the referral game is there are no zeros, right? But if you put all and that’s that the other piece that’s really interesting, for some reason, when people look at their their numbers, very often they don’t put their cost of employees into their marketing expense. They’ll put an agency, but not an in house employee. And so you have a bunch of people sitting around the office doing stuff and not really being accounted for in your costs. And when you go back to your average fee per case, I’ll give it worse. So not only do you have to put in your 1/3 let’s call it, but people are wining and dining you. They’re taking an f1 right? They’re doing all this stuff that you’re what you’re calling a referral. Maybe you’re going to masterminds, right? Look, take our great friend John Fisher. He does an amazing mastermind. He puts a lot of sweat and a lot of money into writing books, into the mastermind. Thankfully, he’s been profitable of late. But when you’re doing things to cultivate referrals, the dinners, the gifts, all the gifting, are you putting that in? Because otherwise you really don’t have a genuine idea of what it is. You’re just like, Oh, it’s a referral. I’ll just take that off the top, but

 

Jay Ruane  36:22  

It doesnt work that way.

 

Seth Price  36:23  

person you have that’s managing your referral business, all of that needs to be taken to account.

 

Jay Ruane  36:30  

Awesome. Well, boy, you know, for two guys who said we don’t know what we’re going to talk about today, we kind of went long, but that’s not a bad thing here in the law firm blueprint. But folks, that’s going to do it for us this week here in the law firm blueprint. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go. Want to go by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast, wherever you get your podcast. I know I get mine on Apple podcasts. I think you probably get yours on Google or Pocket Cast or Spotify, because you’re not in the Apple ecosystem. But that’s one of the reasons I could jettison this friendship at any moment. It’s that so you got to be Apple or the green check mark. Green check mark, it kills me. It kills me when I see that green check mark. Come in on your text messages. But folks, you can catch us live, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, every Thursday in our link on LinkedIn, but also in our Facebook group, the law firm blueprint, please join us. If you’re a listener, please give us a review if you get a chance, and please have a wonderful weekend. Have some great times, and come back and see us next week here on the law firm blueprint. Bye for now you.