Jay Ruane  0:00  

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 in his headquarters, his off-site headquarters, working from home today. Seth, it’s been a few weeks. How are you doing? How you doing, Seth? 

 

Seth Price  0:22  

Doing well. Doing well. We did not have an episode last week. I got one of those post-camp viruses the kids brought home just knocked me out. First time since COVID that I just couldn’t move. 

 

Jay Ruane  0:35  

That’s okay. It’s okay. I was I’ve been slammed myself. You know, it for us. You know, we’re heading back to school shortly. I’ve got you know, tryouts for soccer, tryouts for volleyball. Baseball is going insane around here because Fairfield is in the Little League World Series and crushing 

 

Seth Price  0:52  

It’s a whole other topic is the business of youth, travel, and sports.

 

Jay Ruane  0:58  

 Oh, god, yeah. 

 

Seth Price  1:00  

And you talk about it, read about it, and I just put my daughter into one of the leagues. So, you know, what the hell you know 

 

Jay Ruane  1:07  

It really is ruining youth sports. 

 

Seth Price  1:10  

And look, there’s parts that are awesome, but parts, you know, I just saw one family. I’m in Vegas at some C-level law conference. I’m checking into the Golden Nugget, because I think that there was somebody who was trying to save a buck, they put their conference there, and at like 1 am, I’m checking in, and a family from Bethesda next to me is checking in for their soccer tournament. I’m like, yeah, like, have we gone too far? 

 

Jay Ruane  1:34  

I mean, honestly, I’ll be honest. I think we have, but that’s another subject for another day. There’s a lot to talk about. And I want to talk about my customer service experience three weeks or two, two weeks ago, now, and sort of give you some things I experienced and talk through it. Because, you know, for a lot of us, in the fee-for-service, criminal defense arena, or in the fee-for-service, general criminal law, family law, trusts and estates, bankruptcy, you know, PI, even if they’re sort of one-off situations. I mean, there’s not a lot of repeat customers compared to other businesses, like restaurants, dry cleaners, and the like. It’s, you know, you got one opportunity to wow them. So let me tell you. Let me set this up. So it is three o’clock in the morning. I get picked up by our car service, taking us to the airport, because we have a cruise leaving on Saturday. So we’re flying in Saturday morning. Get on the cruise. I checked before I booked the flights. This thing has a 99.9% on time. You know, this flight from New York City to Miami never has a problem. We roll into the airport at 5 am for a 730 flight, and all of a sudden, all of our phones go off, flight canceled. And so again, on the line, and start talking to the people, and they say, yeah, we can get you there on Tuesday. I’m like, “Hey, I gotta get there today. I gotta. What other airline can you put us on? Can you get me out of Newark? Can you get me out of Westchester? Can you get me out of JFK?” No, no, no, no, it’s all nos. So my wife, while she’s waiting in line, she just Googles charter airlines to see what we can find. Um, Delta is absolutely no help, just no help. They’re just like, well, there’s nothing we can do. Have a nice day. And maybe that’s because they’ve gotten too big. They don’t care about the individual customer. 

 

Seth Price  3:31  

Or, look, let’s put or I thought of it this way, because I saw this in real time happening, Delta right now, of the major airlines is the best customer service. So if they’re melting down, you’ve got no hope anywhere American, which I fly all the time, like super elite on this right? They at night, it is a known thing that they land and hold the plane for over an hour to get a gate. It’s like, and they don’t care. My point is, this is how crappy an airline it is. So with Delta, which is the premier, I wish that I had status on Delta, that they had enough flights out of my market if they’re melting down, what hope the rest of us have. 

 

Jay Ruane  4:12  

Well, and that’s part of the problem, because, I mean, it’s just, it’s just air travel is just a nightmare nowadays. 

 

Seth Price  4:18  

And look, but part of it, they maxed it out. They want to make a buck. It’s a business. And the moment, as you know, air traffic control throws its hands up and says, “Hey, we’re overwhelmed at that.” This is the cost of overloading the system. I had this I was on the tarmac headed to Newark. This is when the unreasonable hospitality, right? We read the book. I’m so excited at literally four o’clock, I reserved dinner for me and my parents at 11 Madison. I’m on the tarmac and I have a backup flight, but we’re ready to take off. So I say, You know what, I’m gonna have to turn I cancel my backup flight as we’re about to take off, denied back to the gate. Newark shut down, and now I’ve canceled my flight. I can’t get on the other flight that was going to LaGuardia and miss it. You know, by the way, not so unreasonable. Hospitality gave me a hard time, challenged my wanted me to pay for the seats, even though I called them and told them was an act of God, they closed the airport, right? Another story here. But, you know, I think that with life, we’re all making calculated decisions. Do you go that morning? Do you go the night before? You know, this thankfully wasn’t a wedding. If you missed, it would have been rain to the world, and you showed that for X dollars, this goes to that business theorem I have right. Money solves almost every problem. A few shekels, you know, you were able to save the vacation, which not everybody could do. 

 

Jay Ruane  5:41  

So what happened for those in the audience, you already know the answer this question. So what happened is, I call. My wife calls. She finds a charter guy who’s like, I can find you a flight. Can you get to Teterboro? I call my limo company. He’s like, Yeah, my guy’s still on site. He wasn’t picking somebody up for a couple of hours. He’ll just swing back around and take you to Teterboro. I mean, it’s 15 minutes from LaGuardia to Teterboro at four o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. They drop us off at Teterboro at a hangar that we have no flight. We have nothing. I got this person from Monarch Jets, who’s trying to find us a way to get down there. You know, it’s nine o’clock. Hey, we got to be wheels up by noon. If we’re going to make this 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, we call Ubers to get home. Uber shows up. Phone rings my wife. We got a plane. We got a pilot. They’ll be there in half an hour. You’re good to go. I gotta cancel the Uber. Crush my rating so I threw the guy a couple 100 bucks so he didn’t crush me. And so we chartered a plane, chartered a plane to take all eight of us down to Miami and get on. We literally get on the boat with five minutes left before the gangway goes up. That’s like, to the point where, like, staff was grabbing our bags, saying you got to get these through security right now. You got to go. You got to run like we’re running on the gangway. But what the difference is, because Delta doesn’t care about the individual consumer, 

 

Seth Price  7:13  

Or they care as much as they can at scale. 

 

Jay Ruane  7:18  

They just said, there’s nothing we can do. Now, this other company higher price tag, of course, but we got taken care of. They pulled the car onto the tarmac, 

 

Seth Price  7:29  

But, of course, but that’s, that’s apples and oranges and frankly, it reminds me in law school of that example where somebody goes on safari to be married, and they come back and the photos are ruined during development. For those of you watching, we used to have to have film that went to a dark room. If you left the light on, you ruined it so and I remember, you know what? What do you owe if they screwed up your wedding photos? It was like, if you went to a photo mat, you got a new roll of film for seven bucks, right? If you went to a place where you paid a premium $300 to have it developed, instead of $7 a photo mat, you would end up with, possibly the cost of restaging the wedding. Are you paying the premium for it when we’re buying Basic Economy seats, and we’re, you know, doing it? What can we expect at that number within reason, and I also have, as a frequent flyer, I have a like again, there are different reasons flights get canceled, but I also always want to make sure that somebody doesn’t have the thumb on the scale of get this in the air despite safety issues. 

 

Jay Ruane  8:40  

Well, yeah, 

 

Seth Price  8:40  

And that’s a no, but it’s a balance in the moment. You don’t want to think about that, but it’s a systemic thing. If an air traffic controller says, Hey, we can’t handle this. What is it political? Then you’d be upset if it’s really like, this is too much volume for what we’re dealing with. Living in DC, we’re kind of sensitive to too much volume on an approach. 

 

Jay Ruane  8:59  

Yeah. I mean, we were told it was a crew timeout. 

 

Seth Price  9:02  

That’s the most frustrating. I mean, 

 

Jay Ruane  9:04  

well, it was the first flight of the day. There’s no way it was a crew timeout. That was their excuse for whatever. Maybe they didn’t have the right crew there. I don’t, I don’t know. 

 

Seth Price  9:12  

I’ll give you the continuous 

 

Jay Ruane  9:14  

so now I’m buying into a private plane. 

 

Seth Price  9:16  

God bless.

 

Jay Ruane  9:18  

So let me, let me finish. So our friend Justin McShane, out of Pennsylvania, he needed something to challenge him. He went and got a pilot’s license. He got his plane delivered to him last Friday, and he flew it up to here, to Bridgeport to see me. I met him for breakfast, and while he’s in the hangar prepping for fuel to get put in his plane so he can fly back home. He sees a thing, couple $100,000 you can buy a quarter share in an eight-person citation Cessna. And so I talked to the guy. And you know, if I get the right cases to come in later this year, I may just buy into this, because I’m going to start traveling more with kids going to college. And I want to travel more and to avoid having to deal with any of those risks, it may be worth it to me. And planes don’t really depreciate. They just got them out and put a new avionics. 

 

Seth Price  10:12  

I know more about this than I should, because a friend of mine sold his business, bought himself one of these five cedar Cessnas. And is it Cessna with the parachute 

 

Jay Ruane  10:21  

That, yeah, that’s the system. That’s what Shane has. I would be buying into a bigger one that can 

 

Seth Price  10:28  

A deal is, it’s an amazing tax deal because the tax laws allow you to depreciate the entire thing day one. However, it pretty much means, if you go down that route from a friend who just went through this is a former Air Force pilot who’s now leasing it to my friend who was an airline Hopscotch Air, if you’re in the area, that may be the intermediate step of private versus commercial Hopscotch Air. Do a little commercial for him. Here, it’s like four, you know, probably four passengers plus the pilot, limited luggage. But you know, it’s your own little on-demand piece. If you go that route, every five years, you need to buy a new one, which is fine, because then you’re in for life. You’re never getting rid of it like reading. You can’t the moment you do. You’re paying back the taxes because you’ve taken the depreciation. So it’s, it is a hamster wheel, for sure. But you know, your story resonates, because I, for the first I’m not a car guy, grew up in New York. If I could Uber everywhere, I would. So finally, the minivan for my wife is done, and we need to figure out, what do you get to replace the minivan. And, you know, we want to go electric. And it’s interesting because, you know, I walked into a bunch of different dealerships. You walk, you know, walk into a Kia dealership, and it’s literally like spirit air, right? There are a bunch of guys around. They’re all young. They barely understand. I mean, there’s nice people, but they’re not sophisticated salespeople. There’s basically a look online, see what you want. I’ll take your order, pretty much, I’m exaggerating, but not by a lot. Flip side was, there is an equally priced Mercedes with a 

 

Jay Ruane  12:06  

EQB 

 

Seth Price  12:07  

The EQB.

 

Jay Ruane  12:08  

 Yeah. 

 

Seth Price  12:09  

With a mini. If most of them are two rows, there’s one version that has a mini third row would be five, five or less. So you’re perfect for kids. You know, my wife didn’t want that. I actually am now looking at it. I need an electric something. I something so looking at that seriously for the two row, but the piece that I found fascinating was at an equal price point. Now, granted, there are a lot of Mercedes that are a lot more expensive, and they’re just getting you in at the lower dollar, and they’re going to, you know, they expect us to be spending the six figures before long. That said, it was such a different experience. I mean, it was, you know, one was the St Regis, and the other was the Hampton Inn. And it just, you know, fascinating, like watching those little differences. I mean, some of it’s institutional, how you build your showroom in your facility, 

 

Jay Ruane  13:00  

of course, 

 

Seth Price  13:01  

And some of it is the people there. One was, you know, recent, I’d like to say college grads, but most likely, you know, based on the people I met, two-year college grads who were hustling and very good salespeopleish versus customer service centric, sales ambassadors. And it was just fascinating to see that now, just like the difference between the private that’s what made me think of it, and the, you know, and Delta, there’s more meat on the bone at, you know, on one. And probably to be able to justify it, but it’s clearly something very important to that brand, that when you walked in there, I was like, I had, you know, it’s down, it’s the Mercedes thing is literally walking distance to my old house, and I had never really spent time in it, never being a car guy, but, oh my god. I mean, I just go there for the amenities on a Saturday afternoon, like it was, like a, like, an industrious or WeWorks, 

 

Jay Ruane  14:05  

Yeah, good stuff. I’m surprised you’re over the G wagon. You know, it’s over 6000 pounds. You get 100% depreciation in year one. There are tactical moves you can make with that G wagon. I can see you, you rolling in with the G wagon, you know, with the matte black finish and the dark tints, you know, super Seth, 

 

Seth Price  14:24  

Although I had the EQB, and this is the world that has blown my mind. I wish there was somebody could get you understood this stuff. I don’t know what New York, New York Connecticut are like, but New Jersey and Virginia, you pay if you want to lease, which is has tax advantages as a business owner. When you lease, you have to pay the tax on the entire value as you lease, and then pay that over the period. And that’s not, I mean, it’s not good because, but the tax is not crazy in Maryland, so it sort of balances out. What was fascinating is I was looking at one of the pole stars, and their special is on a 27 month lease. But if you try to front end load taxes on a 27 month lease, that’s massive, and all of a sudden I’m like, I gotta somehow figure out a way of leasing this in a jurisdiction that doesn’t have the upfront tax load. Otherwise, you’re screwed. 

 

Jay Ruane  15:22  

You know, if you are in the market, there’s an influencer. I guess you could say, I follow. He comes up in my feed all the time. We should probably have him on the show. It’s really interesting. He is a Mercedes dealer. He’s the sales manager at a Mercedes dealership. I’m quite I’m not sure where it is. The guy’s handle is at Benzsandbowties, because he wears a bow tie every day, young guy. And he talks through the deals with the online, like on camera, he’ll talk through the deals with the salesperson. Hey, this is how we can structure it. This gets them to the price they want. But they’re going to have to do this. That the other thing, you should reach out to him and get the link in his description, and because it would be worth it for you to have that link, because there’s a ton of followers. And I love watching 

 

Seth Price  16:12  

this is what’s fascinating. I bought cars before, not often, but like, I love it, because I basically figure out what I want and then send an email to 12 places and left. 

 

Jay Ruane  16:21  

That’s what I did with my latest car. 

 

Seth Price  16:23  

Exactly. There’s no better way. If you’re watching and you haven’t done this, it’s a game-changer. Once you know and you say, I’m ready to buy, the numbers change, I’ll buy today. What’s your best deal got? Can you beat this? It’s a real thing. What’s fascinating on the lease, which I just again, had never played that game before, was that there are only so many buttons, right? There’s price, there’s an interest rate that you don’t care about, and what they care about what they’re using. There’s the value of the car after three years. Again, you don’t set it. It’s their artificial number, right? And, you know, a couple of other things, but essentially, it is such a black box that I’ve gotten away from caring. I just it sounds awesome, awful, but and it sort of goes counter to what we deal with in the law firm negotiating part, which is you got to just almost pick a number. And I don’t care what they call it. There’s a tax credit for this. There’s this day. I don’t care. This is my number. You guys do your work if you want to sell it to me. And it takes it almost flips the power on its head, saying, This is what I have. You got to work with me. No, this is my number. If you want it, it’s there. If you don’t, that’s fine too. And it’s because all of that stuff is interesting, those videos and this and that, but that’s your business because…And I see this over and over again, the more I look at business is what is an artificial paradigm that you’re working within and that we start to use that language. And some of the better coaching programs have those languages that people are using, and once you start to adopt it, once you say, “Hey, I got, you know, it’s the car, you know, has this depreciation on it, or this is the interest rate,” or whatever it is, within reason, you lose control of that. And we’re now at the point where, you know, you’re almost the only way to regain that control. Say, I don’t care that’s your rules. You figure out how to play the game. I’m not going to learn how to play your game, 

 

Jay Ruane  18:25  

right, right? 

 

Seth Price  18:26  

And it’s really empowering. I feel once you’re able to give it back to them with, you know, oh, there’s an extra $25 great. I don’t care what you call it. I just want this number. And that has been, because normally it’s just this black box that none of us can see inside of. 

 

Jay Ruane  18:44  

Yeah, it’s really interesting. And I mean, obviously, when you have purchasing power, when you know when your firm is at a place where it’s paying for it, and you know the money’s going to be there, and you have the credit score to go with it. I mean, I, you know, remember the very first car I bought was to commute to law school, and I had no purchasing power. And my $256 a month, I went in saying, I can’t pay more than 250 and I’ll remember it was, it came out to be 256 97 and I paid that for four years to buy my geo prism, right? But now, you know the and that I struggled with. But then now I was just sending off an email to somebody saying, I know I want the UConn XL. I hit a couple of dealers, and I said, what can you do for me? And this is where I want to be. And guess what? A couple of weeks later, I get a call. I got what you want. I got it at the price point you want. And so I never went into the showroom. I It was all by email.

 

Seth Price  19:42  

You know what car we ended up buying. We ended up buying the Kia EV nine, not the sexiest, amazing. We love it, you know, I wish they made a two-row version of it, because their EV six is not the same. EV nine is beautiful. But I literally did the whole deal by text. 

 

Jay Ruane  19:59  

Yeah. 

 

Seth Price  19:59  

I was like. Like, every minute I spend with them costs me money. I don’t want to, you know, I’ll sit there watching the, oh, you need the driver’s license. Here it is, you need the, you know, insurance. Here it is like, but what, you know, it’s similar to when you sell a house, sitting at the closing table, in my opinion, only costs you money. They can only takes, like, to me, give me documents. I’ll sign them. I don’t want to be part of it. 

 

Jay Ruane  20:21  

Oh, yeah, I never went to I’ve never gotten to any of my closings. I’m buying another place up in Vermont in a couple of weeks, and I’ve already let the 

 

Seth Price  20:28  

Nobody you’re buying a place, in theory, you could have an advantage if you’re there, the seller is there, you get some sort of concession potentially, right? But when you’re selling, it can only cost you money. 

 

Jay Ruane  20:42  

So I’ve, I’ve heard of people showing up at those closings and being like, Yeah, I know we agreed on, you know, $100,000 I’m gonna give you 95 and everyone’s at the closing, and the lawyers are scrambling to adjust the numbers, and people are just being it to nudge and get a little bit more 

 

Seth Price  20:59  

Exactly that. That’s exactly the point. Why I don’t show up to the I mean, I don’t want to be part of that circus, 

 

Jay Ruane  21:04  

Right. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so the other thing I want to talk about is, and it’s all over. 

 

Seth Price  21:10  

Yes.

 

Jay Ruane  21:11  

Everybody’s feeds. It’s Mr. Alex Hormozi on his book. What that? 

 

Seth Price  21:15  

It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. And I’ve been following him for a while. They, they’ve, they’ve a very elite group. They’ve invited me out several times. I’ve just never pulled the trigger to sit in Vegas. But wow, has that guy mastered the art of attention. 

 

Jay Ruane  21:32  

Well, here’s the thing, and this is, this is the thing that I want to sort of, kind of, I guess, push back on, you know who he is. I know who he is. A lot of people listening know who he is and what they do. I can tell you right now I got buddies who own restaurants. They have no idea who he is. My mom and dad no idea who he is. Even my wife no idea who he is, and she’s married to an entrepreneur. He has amazing attention in the space where he needs to be 

 

Seth Price  22:03  

Correct. 

 

Jay Ruane  22:04  

But he is not just give everything to everything. Robbins may have more. 

 

Seth Price  22:11  

He transcended it because he has a consumer-facing product that’s not just for entrepreneurs, 

 

Jay Ruane  22:15  

Right.

 

Seth Price  22:16  

And he’s been on he’s also decades. He had tape set my I remember talking to my uncle about in the 90s, and he was already established. Then he probably comes down. So look, this guy’s come, you know, you know, this guy has come rot, you know, super fast, right into the, you know, Gary V-esque, you know, arena of entrepreneurs, but he knows who he wants and those people who is, 

 

Jay Ruane  22:45  

And that’s the point. Like he has us in his web. We may not be food yet, but he’s got his web. He’s got his hooks into 

 

Seth Price  22:57  

I got the book. I didn’t buy the 8000 books, but I bought the single book. 

 

Jay Ruane  23:01  

I bought the single book too. I probably shouldn’t have bought the single book because now I have at least a dozen in my group. 

 

Seth Price  23:09  

The free I paid for shipping and handling. 

 

Jay Ruane  23:11  

If that means that’s what I did, that’s what I did. But now I have at least a dozen people in my friend group saying I have 200.

 

Seth Price  23:16  

 I still think that comes with the shipping and handling. 

 

Jay Ruane  23:20  

Oh, it does. 

 

Seth Price  23:21  

Yeah. 

 

Jay Ruane  23:21  

And you know why? Because he wants, he makes, he wants to email now he wants the email address and physical address of all the people that these books are being sent to. 

 

Seth Price  23:31  

Yeah, but they… 

 

Jay Ruane  23:32  

Like, if you had the 200 books and you want to send one of them to me, you’d have to give him my email address and my phone number my address. Now he’s building his list,

 

Seth Price  23:43  

And you’re paying 10 bucks, which means you’re covering the cost of printing and shipping done wholesale. Those books are five bucks a piece, maybe. And haven’t seen it yet. It’s probably coming today, and the shipping is probably five bucks in volume. 

 

Jay Ruane  23:56  

Yeah. So it’s really, sort of it really was. It was an amazing use of knowing your audience, giving them what they want, which is, I want extras. I want scripts. I want, you know, the ideas thing I can put into place 

 

Seth Price  24:17  

And leveraging FOMO.

 

Jay Ruane  24:21  

yeah. I mean, it’s really real. I mean, maybe we should apply some of that to the law firm blueprint somehow. I don’t know we could, but it really, really worked and got a lot of people to spend money that, you know, may have been over their normal budget, but they wanted, 

 

Seth Price  24:38  

I know who bought the numbers a book to get access. What’s crazy is, you want to access for $5,000, you too. I mean, granted, it was an application thing. I legit businesses, but you can, you know, you too, can go and sit there and let him work on your business with you. And yeah, just I, I’m, I’ve liked the way he’s operated compared to a lot of the get rich quick guys out there, that I feel like he’s building a pyramid to see the deals he wants, is my impression, while at the same time realizing that if you don’t build the attention this way, you know, there’s nobody in our extended circle that is not aware of what he’s up to.

 

Jay Ruane  25:16  

Right, so my point being, folks, if you’re listening to this and you are one of those ones who bought bulk so that you could get that time with Alex and Layla and their team. Please reach out to us. Let us know. We’d love to have you on the show to talk about the whole process of what you went through when you went and did the sit down with them and you know how they opened your eyes things that you were disappointed with. I’d love to talk to somebody who’s going to attend that, and I’m sure we know somebody in our extended circle who’s going to be there 

 

Seth Price  25:51  

Absolutely, and I feel, you know, had the opportunity before it was all that, and was just like, hey, not another trip to Vegas. 

 

Jay Ruane  25:58  

Well, okay, so that’s the thing. So what conferences are coming up that, you know, it’s quick? There’s usually a crush before the end of the year. So what do you got? 

 

Seth Price  26:09  

A lot of stuff. I’ll try to give you a tough top of my head. You have… Fireproof has a user conference as well as a conference for everybody else. First week of September. We back up. You have Lawyer.com in Vegas. Fireproof will be in Detroit. It’s a Lawyer.com in Vegas, the Fountain Bleau. I think Nalini will be out there and speaking. We have Mickey and Chad from Accelerate, double your fee. We have John Fisher’s Mastermind.

 

Jay Ruane  26:38  

I can be down there.

 

Seth Price  26:39  

Awesome. And we’re gonna do that pre-day that we did last year at BluShark. Andrew Finkelstein, kicking off. McCready. We got Jay Ruane. We’re gonna, we got, you know, my intake person now runs a 30-person intake team. She’s gonna, she rarely speaks, and she’s very, very good. So we have a whole bunch of really high-end, excellent people for this. What else do we have? We have, oh, we have our buddies from the lunch hour marketing are, you know, 

 

Jay Ruane  27:10  

Yes. 

 

Seth Price  27:11  

Now, why they put it over the Jewish holidays? I’m not sure, but they’re doing their lunch hour marketing for like, I think it’s aimed at CMOS, which I think is brilliant, because I think it’s an untapped market. What am I missing? I feel like there’s something else. Oh, then coming after that. We have MTMP. There is no shortage of pretty cool September happenings. And glad to hear you gonna be down in DC, because it’s always good to 

 

Jay Ruane  27:41  

Yeah, I’m going to be in I’m going to be in Chicago for a law conference for DUI DLA, and I’m going to be speaking to that one in early September. And then the only other thing I have on my horizon after Fisher’s in DC is the best era, AI era thing in Charleston in November 

 

Seth Price  28:03  

Is that related to the case status conference, because the case status conference is another conference coming? 

 

Jay Ruane  28:10  

Well, I know it’s at CaseStatus’ headquarters. It may back up or be in front of the CaseStatus one, but this is, this is, it’s going to be interesting that the lineup of the speakers are, are really good, and it’s all about how to integrate AI into a law practice, which is something that I’m really getting 

 

Seth Price  28:28  

Hopefully, have you and McCready in DC, if you’re gonna make it down there, we’ll have you kick off perhaps on that. Because to me, that’s, that is the sticking point for me. You know, I got a legacy firm. We have AI. It’s being used here and there, but it’s where to leverage it to get the most bang for your buck, because you can’t be everywhere at once. And there are lots of great ideas, but what’s going to, what’s going to, you know, actually drive a better ROI, a better but, you know, a better profit margin sooner than later. 

 

Jay Ruane  29:02  

So one of the things for us, at least, is, and this is something that I’m working on in the third and fourth quarters, is the our people spend a ton of time just wasting on hold with courthouses, with, you know, court, state agencies, DMV, that type of thing. And that’s the biggest time suck. So we’re actually trying to program an agent that can make the phone call and request the things that we need to request, and engage with the clerk who answers the phone and say, I need the following court dates or I need this information. That’s what would be really helpful to us. And some of these agents that are out there. We’re using agents now to do interviews of our clients after they retain not necessarily on the intake side, but on the bio. 

 

Seth Price  29:50  

You know, we know that they’re good. You know, they’re at least a dozen options on the intake side. I know it’s going to get there. And it also depends on what level you’re. Like, you know, if you’re selling a $2 widget, and you don’t care if you lose the phone call, because there’ll be another phone call, you know, when you’re selling the more expensive widget, it just makes me very, very nervous. 

 

Jay Ruane  30:10  

I agree. I agree. I mean, we actually had some an AI agent that we were working on the first half of this year, the first quarter you’re on. This is the we were using a service AI. And it just was not good. 

 

Seth Price  30:23  

Which one were using? 

 

Jay Ruane  30:24  

We were using air AI, which is, 

 

Seth Price  30:26  

Which is the Falcon? Which one? 

 

Jay Ruane  30:29  

Oh, that’s capture now. And how’s that? That’s great. I’ve been using that for two to three years

 

Seth Price  30:34  

Do you use it overnight.? Or what are you using it for? 

 

Jay Ruane  30:36  

We use it for after hours and and it’s been, 

 

Seth Price  30:41  

It’s a lesser cost, and your answering service isn’t great to begin with. So the bar is lower, 

 

Jay Ruane  30:47  

right? But I think, you know, I think there is a role for AI as your phone tree, where it could, it could answer your call, tap into your CRM, give clients, if they want, what’s my next court date? You know, you know, what’s my lawyer’s email address? That type of stuff that could be done by AI. And I’m sure that’s coming. 

 

Seth Price  31:09  

its coming. It’s, it’s like everything else, you know, it’s, and what I’ve always admired about you, I think it’s your strength. Greatest strength and weakness probably is that you’re not going to just buy the off the shelf. You’re going to figure out how to do it yourself. I think there are instances where it’s been huge for you. 

 

Jay Ruane  31:24  

A lot of things I want to do don’t exist yet.

 

Seth Price  31:27  

 Exactly. 

 

Jay Ruane  31:28  

You know that? Like, I mean, I had, I had website chat, what was staffed by, like, a person in my office, you know? And you know that, I mean, that was at least 25 years ago, but you know that now it’s ubiquitous, right? And it’s chat bots and all that stuff. So I tend to do stuff, you know, six to 18 months before anybody else does. But with AI, things are moving so quickly. I mean, you know, three years from now, we’re going to be answering to our robot overlords, because the stuff is moving so fast. 

 

Seth Price  31:57  

Last thing we got to land the plane. Let’s see the question for you. Do you have thoughts or opinions on the Scorpion’s sole exclusive partnership with Clio? That seemed odd to me. I, you know, I’m biased. I mean, I’m not a super fan of the work of Scorpion for an open source group like Clio that seemed to have been made its name on being sort of the ability to integrate everybody in every space, seemed like an odd move. 

 

Jay Ruane  32:33  

Well, I mean, to me, it just sounds like venture capital says we want more return and we’re going to get a piece of everybody that we connect through to Scorpion. So let’s take that money. It doesn’t sound like it serves the solo very small firm that 

 

Seth Price  32:51  

Or anybody, is one size fits all for anybody on anything.

 

Jay Ruane  32:55  

 No, it’s not but, but Clio is the is like where a solo goes when they first set up shop, right, right? I mean, no and good. 

 

Seth Price  33:05  

And then they’re basically, I think it’s my gut. Is the deals meant the other way, which is Clio is the darling of Wall Street. If at 30, 35% returns year over year, and at some point that gets scary, where you need to, you need a new group of people to be out there. And you know, Scorpion, if nothing else, has been the Juggernaut in sales. And you now,

 

Jay Ruane  33:29  

 right, but, but, but they also lock people in with proprietary platforms. And that’s, that’s like, the worst thing you could possibly do for any growing businesses to be locked in, because you’re going to have to scrape all that and build from scratch. And it’s just, I mean, I’m sure BluShark has taken over Scorpion sites, and it’s probably just a mess trying to do that.

 

Seth Price  33:51  

it is. 

 

Jay Ruane  33:51  

But then Scorpion also seems to, I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t dealt with them in the last two years, but when I talked to them, they were pay-per-click forward, right? And,, a lot of their time and attention and money went into pay per click, not necessarily into link building, into good site architecture, let not into into content, and as a result, you know, you’re just going to constantly pay inflated Pay Per Click prices. And the question then becomes, if, if Scorpion is a proprietary platform, if it’s not doing the things like content and links, are Scorpion sites going to show up in the LLM results? Because, you know, LLM results aren’t making a difference and and if you know it just seems to me like you may be, you may be hurting yourself long term by just doing the whole, well, I’ll just buy one package. I mean, how many lawyers do we know bought fine law? Because, you know, Martindale told him you should buy five law. 

 

Seth Price  34:49  

What was the fine Lord, unless, whatever, the cute girl who was selling them Westlaw, right? 

 

Jay Ruane  34:54  

Yeah, it was just said, Oh, and by the way, we can put up your five page website, and that will be. Are, you know, 

 

Seth Price  35:00  

I do need to fly. But I interviewed people who were Martindale originally selling the Martindale websites. And I didn’t realize this, the Martindale website, they were talking about, like, five was they were talking about $5,000 I’m like, 5000 a month. Oh, no, $5000 a year. Their product was essentially $400 a month for their website. No, nothing wrong with it. I’m just saying right shows you that world. So we got to talk. You were talking. We started with sales and customer service, landing with the fact that that old model of just get people to sign for anything is sort of the piece that I think lawyers got to watch out for, which is, yeah, that process, which is what, what is going to get you to the next level, and not locking yourself into something that will prevent you from moving. 

 

Jay Ruane  35:47  

And the biggest takeaway, if you’re based in Texas and you need a private jet, call Ross at Riada Air. They are fantastic customer service is out of the box. He just happened to be at Teterboro for me, and accommodated us and got us to Miami. We flew at 40,000 feet, 500 miles an hour. We were cruising. We got there with a few minutes to spare, but we made our vacation. And then, of course, the Icon of the Seas, the water slide, broke while we were on it. 

 

Seth Price  36:20  

I hope you landed the client.

 

Jay Ruane  36:23  

I wish I did. I wish I should have, I should have, I should have sell us on them out that’s going to do it for us. Folks, thanks so much for being with us. We’re glad to be back, and we’re glad to have you with us. Of course, you can take us on the go wherever you want to go by subscribing to the Law Firm Blueprint podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. And of course, you can catch us live, live on LinkedIn, 3 pm Eastern, 12 pm Pacific, and of course, live in our Facebook group, the Law Firm Blueprint, that’s gonna do it for me. I’m Jay Ruane. He is Seth Price. Thanks for having us. Bye for now