Jay Ruane  0:00  

Hello, hello. Welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint. This is a very special edition, because unlike normal, we have a special guest with us today. Seth, why don’t you do the introduction and talk about our topic? Because I think it’s something that’s really important for all of our listeners.

 

Seth Price  0:24  

Well, we’re honored to have back, Chad Dudley. You know, he’s the driving force behind Dudley Debosier. He’s a marketing genius. He’s one of the smartest guys in the legal operations and marketing space. And we’re honored to have you back. Welcome back, Chad. 

 

Chad Dudley  0:39  

Great to be back. Thank you for having me 

 

Seth Price  0:42  

look lots happened over, over the last couple of quarters. You know, you know, pe has always been in the marketing space, and BluShark and CJ have had a fun ride over the over the last couple of quarters, and excited to see where that goes. But we’re here to talk about what comes next for many of our listeners here, as far as private equity entering into the legal space. for years, this was a no, no, couldn’t, you know, couldn’t get there from here, and all of a sudden the buzz is there. And, you know, the deal that Dudley Debosier has put in place seems to be, at least, you know, for many a landmark moment, as far as you know, what is possible and what the future may hold. So just give us a little bit of a,

 

Chad Dudley  1:27  

Yeah, it’s been very interesting because, you know, we’re not the first one to form an MSO, and there’s other law firms have done it, and they’re out there. I think maybe we just made the first one that people go, “Oh, I know those guys.” you know and like, and maybe just they see us doing it, and it’s really has resonated. And so maybe, maybe it is a landmark moment in our practice. But, yeah, it’s been, it’s been a long journey. And I think, I mean, you know, we owned an advertising agency, and we saw private equity came in and consolidated in that space, on part of that and now on the law firm side. So I might be, you know, we might be the unique individuals that done it in two different areas in our in our space, right? But it’s been a wild ride, and I think we’ve seen private equity, sort of dancing around the edges and different services that were being provided to law firms, whether it was medical record collection, summaries, etc, other things. We saw it then in the marketing and advertising space, where there’s a move to consolidate there, and then now in the law firm services space, and, yeah, it’s been a wild journey. It’s something that we’ve been looking at for a very, very long time, and happy to tell you how we got there, but tell me what you.

 

Jay Ruane  2:50  

I mean, that’s my question, because, you know, it’s very newsworthy now. And you know, there comes an announcement, hey, we’ve done it right. But I gotta imagine this is not something that you do in a month, you know, certainly not a week, definitely not a month. Probably, this has been something that’s been in the process for quite some time, because there’s operational challenges. There are structural needs within the firm that you need to, you know, set up, maybe your org chart differently. So talk about that journey, because I think it’s something that people something that people need to appreciate, if they’re even thinking that this is in their future, what the steps are going to be needed to, like, get even ready for considering this?

 

Chad Dudley  3:31  

No, absolutely, you know, I’d like to kind of start with a brief kind of how we got there, and it goes back, because, you know, I was telling the story the other day where, you know, I came, I’m the first attorney my family. I went and I did a defense firm. I clerked for the defense firm, and I quickly realized, within the first seven minutes that I didn’t want to build the rest six minutes of my life every six minutes for, you know, forever. And that was gonna be miserable. And I was really bummed out because I’d gone, oh my gosh. I went to law school be the first attorney my family be the first one that also quits being an attorney. And then I got a chance to work with a personal injury firm, really awesome firm, and I’m like,” Oh my gosh. This is, this is, you know, there’s a family, then they need our help, and we’re going to go do everything we can to get them a recovery.” My first case was actually, it was a case where a family bought a trailer home and it got invested with mold and got their money back and in right then and there. I’m like, gosh, this is pretty cool, what we do. And I fell in love with practice, and I was off and running and just whatever I could do, and had a really great mentor. So all that is the same that, you know, early on, just a passion for helping people. And then what that translated to, and it’s taken different iterations over the years, is that the camaraderie that we have in the plaintiffs bar is pretty awesome. I mean, you know, we call each other up. We talk about best practices. A lot of us are open books. A lot of us have an abundance mentality. We’re. Say, Hey, look, my success doesn’t have to come at the cost of your failure. And so with all that going on in the background over the past 15 years plus, I spent a lot of time working with other firms, sharing what we do, getting under the hood, and we had been helping other firms grow for a long time. And we’ve done management contracts where we’ll manage them for, you know, and help them behind the scenes. And they’ve been using Billy Debosier services so to speak to on their on their best cases, or how to the firm operations. And so that’s been kind of going on. We got to the spy money. Okay, this is great. There’s got to be a cleaner way to do this and a better way to scale this. And then around this time, you start getting rumblings of private equity coming in or getting interested in the personal injury space. And so that’s probably about three years ago, because, again, doing consulting, I had worked with firms selling parts of their firm to partners. like they want to bring in people inside the firm and make them partners. Maybe they want to sell to the firm across the street. I’d done that. And you run into it every couple months, maybe a couple times a year, and then probably about two years ago, you start getting called, hey, I’m really interested in looking at this and looking at that, and they would bring me on board as a consultant to the buyer, sometimes a consultant to the seller, sometimes middleman. And I start seeing these deals happen. I’m like, “Okay, this is getting more interesting.” The pace is picking up. And then, you know, you kind of start studying kind of what happened in other industries, whether accounting, medical, etc, to kind of see how it is all coming together. And all the signs are there that, hey, this is going to start happening at a rapid pace in our industry. And we said, look, we can either sit on the sidelines and watch it happen, or we can jump in. And jumping in just seemed like a good fit for us because  we had owned an advertising agency whereby we worked with bunches of firms all across the country and see what it takes in different jurisdictions to help them grow. We had done consulting with other firms, and again, spent a lot of time with them, actually applying these concepts of best practices and, you know, we look at all these things and some some stuff we even just did for free. So many times, people have attended our meetings. They’ve come to our seminars. They’ve asked for forms processes. They’ve talked to our key people who are like, look, have it, we’ve had some of our top competitors come over to our office and learn how we get great results for our clients. And we always look at that going, gosh, if we can raise the overall bar of the plaintiff’s practice in any way, shape or form, and then that helps our clients. And when I say our clients all the people that plans firms represent, and so that was the mentality going in. We’re like, okay, if we do something like this, this could allow us to scale that and create a group of firms that have extremely high standards for client service, for legal representation, delivering it on a consistent basis across the country, and that was sort of an extension of this whole journey that we had been on for a bunch of years. And you know, as we sit here today, you know me and my two partners, we own 100% of our law firm. We make all the decisions at the law firm. We run it as we did, which is, you know, what’s in the client’s best interest, and everything should funnel to that. And what we did, though, is that we broke out all the monitoring, all the services part of the firm into a separate entity, and that’s where we were getting people to invest and form a partnership with uplift to scale that, because we’ve already been providing services back office services to other firms. This is just a way to scale it, and that’s this. So the journey has been going on for a long time. We started looking at this particular solution probably about a year, a year and a half ago, and the question I often get is, Well, okay, that’s great. What should I do if I’m interested in doing something like this, is there something special I should do at my firm to get ready for that? And my answer is that all the things that you would do to make your firm great, like really build a great personal injury firm, are the same things that you would do if you wanted to be sort of attractive to either being in a consolidation or even going and doing your own consolidation, they’re the same things. I mean, running a great firm is running a great firm, and if you do that, you’ll be in the mix

 

Seth Price  9:29  

you alluded to, sort of the elements of it. But the MSO, which is not unusual in the medical space,

 

Chad Dudley  9:38  

It actually exists more in the legal space. And a lot of people know, I mean, again, we’re not the first person to do this. They exist all over there, just for whatever reason, timing, notoriety. We got a lot of we got a lot of attention.

 

Seth Price  9:54  

I think for good reason, though, because there have been some that have been sort of like DC-centric firms that were built to be an MSO to bring capital in, to be as high profile and as proficient as you guys were, and you look, you’re a unique beast. You’ve been out there, you’ve been consulting. You’ve taken equity and firm. You’ve done all sorts of interesting things. This seems to be sort of like the graduate program, you know. 

 

Chad Dudley  10:17  

Yeah, exactly right, yeah. 

 

Seth Price  10:19  

But walk us through, like, take a step back and talk about, because for years, it seemed impossible getting outside money into the legal space, and all of a sudden, like, oh, just do an MSO. It’s that’s been an option for years. What is it that’s being done specifically understand, like, what is part of the MSO, what’s not,t and what are some of those steps that allow it to be ethical and to get the money in?

 

Chad Dudley  10:41  

Yeah, I mean, you know, all of us use different third-party services today, right, to get medical records, medical chronologies. Sometimes it’s answering intake after hours. Sometimes it’s legal work that, you know, there’s a million different ways that firms currently use third-party services to supplement what they do as a firm, right? And so the idea was, okay, well, what if we took a lot of those services that we currently use to serve our firm and we currently use to serve other firms, and just separate it out from the actual law firm proper, and then it would charge market rates to the law firm to deliver those services, and it’s like, okay, and then we can scale that, because you can, you know, you don’t need to be an attorney to own a services company, right? And so that’s the general mechanics. And yeah, I got some theories. I really wanted to hear your thoughts on it, because I think when the first sort of non-attorney money that came into the space was probably through DC, right? Wasn’t DC the first place where you could own up to 25% of a law firm if you weren’t?

 

Seth Price  11:49  

 It was set up for the lobbyists and K Street lobbyists, and it was just DC, yeah, Maryland, Virginia. Like, we’re gonna do it. Like, no, just it has to be only DC.

 

Chad Dudley  11:59  

So they Yeah, that’s how it happened, right? And we’re basically the lobbyists are bringing these firms a lot of money, and they’re gonna actually be great if we keep sharing some of this profit law firms that, Oh, that would be great too. Fortunately, you’re not a lawyer, and you can’t, we can fix that.

 

Seth Price  12:12  

And right? So DC did it, and you have the ABS is out in Arizona that seem to have been sort of, you know, there are areas where it seems great, but a lot more complicated than people thought at first.

 

Chad Dudley  12:23  

Yeah, I think that what? And kind of here again, I would love to get your thoughts, because you’re right at Ground Zero, I think, where all of this started, which is, you know, I think, you know, the lobbyists kind of did this thing, and then a lot of mass tort guys said, hey, what if we, what if we use these DC firms, and we’ll get some money. we’ll do mass torts, and we can sign up here, and we can, you know, we don’t, and you kind of saw that. But then mass torts take a really, really long time, and and then people are like, gosh, I’d love to get I’d love to get by, you know, something a little bit more, maybe economical, efficient, quick. And then when the Arizona ABS came into play, you know, you had advertising agencies. You had non-attorney money looking at this and going, hey, here’s a way to get some type of percentage of the fee. But the issue with the ABS is that they’re murky in the division of what was being delivered to the client, right? They’re murky in the sense like, Hey, we got them all in this bubble. And, you know, there’s some non-attorneys, some attorneys, and you’re who you’re interacting with, and the MSOs were clean in the sense of, like, Hey, this is the law firm. It’s owned by lawyers. And yes, there’s a services company that helps supplement the work that they’re doing. But it’s separate and clean, right? And I think that’s what the structure is. once a lot of the private equity guys looked and said, hey, you know what? I think we’d love to get involved with these things, but the ABS things a little fuzzy. Let’s go back to the MSO structure that’s been in place for a while. And that’s just a cleaner vehicle, and that’s why they ended up there.

 

Seth Price  13:56  

Do you think that there’s going to be, you know, look, we’re, I know that you’re there’s been a lot that’s been done, but as you get to higher profile situations where it’s an existing firm, not built as an MSO to begin with, right? Not somebody, this is one of the larger firms that’s bringing this in, in this division, where do you think? And I’m just, I want to spend much time on this part, but ethics wise, that’s what a lot of our artists could say, hey, is there, is there a friction? Or where do you see the dance playing out? As far as private equity comes in, they’re usually not quiet about wanting certain returns. Like, is that going to is that something, you know, give it given thought to and figure out how that’s going to play out? 

 

Chad Dudley  14:38  

Absolutely. I mean, there’s the, obviously, the law firms got to continue to be owned by attorneys, and it under the direction of attorneys and partners, and that has to continue to exist, and that the mission. And look, you and I have been around a lot of different firms. We have a lot of really great firms that are passionate about serving their clients. There are some personal injury firms today that don’t. I mean, and so that will continue. You’re gonna have firms that are still really passionate about serving the clients, and that’s but then the services company also has to serve at the direction of the firm. They have to help, and they’re there to, again, through the firm, serve the client. And the question is, I mean, like today, there’s still third party services, overseas, labor, medical record collection agencies, demand letter writing services that serve at the direction of the firm, right? They’re telling it what to do, what not to do. Now, private equity can say, hey, we want to run a tighter shop on the services side, but they cannot direct the law firm, and they can’t have any channels to do so, right? And so, yes, I get it. It’s a little bit different than other industries, right? And so, you know, we’re looking for, we spent nine months, almost a year, looking for the right partner, and all this stuff was at the core of what that relationship looked like. And we found partners in uplift that said, hey, look, we understand it. We understand that. You know, the firm’s gotta call the shots. 

 

Seth Price  16:15  

 What’s left of the firm? As you sort of pull out the MSO, are paralegals part of the firm? Are they part of the MSO? 

 

Chad Dudley  16:24  

No, all non-attorneys are part of the MSO. 

 

Seth Price  16:27  

So all non-attorneys are part of the MSO. It’s just the lawyers are left at the firm itself. 

 

Chad Dudley  16:32  

Correct, correct.

 

Seth Price  16:33  

Anything else that somebody might not think intuitively when you started down this, like, how is that separated?

 

Chad Dudley  16:39  

No, I mean, it’s, like I said, it’s pretty clean, and if somebody wanted to, you know, our intent is we want to create a group of firms, again, that share our culture, share our values, and share the desire to create excellent law firms, and even in mastermind groups, right? And it’s an awesome thing. It’s one of the best things you can do. You’re sitting around a group of your peers, you’re sharing best practices, you’re trying to help make each other better. Well, this is that on steroids, right? Where it’s like, oh, not only are we trying to make each other better, but if you get better, we all benefit, right? And we’re all tied at the hip, and, gosh, you know, there’s resources that we can access where imagine, you know, you have this episode and for you to go hire three, you know, amazing AI, engineers might be a little steep, but if we have a group of firms that hires a team and they’re able to work on all of our stuff at scale, then ultimately, I believe the client benefits, right. where, okay, we’re able to deliver better service, better interaction can be, you know, more stream- like, all the stuff, and I think down the road, we see that in a big way, and it’s tough to do those things on your own. Right.

 

Seth Price  17:54  

Is the play to have a national brand, or an affiliation of different brands, an

 

Chad Dudley  17:59  

An affiliation of individual firms, individual brands, right? I think there’s so many firms that we’re communicating with becoming part of this all have very, very strong brands. They’ve been doing it for decades. They’re well established. Who wants to change that?

 

Seth Price  18:19  

Gotcha? And you know Jay, Jay’s on the criminal defense side. My firm has areas outside of personal injury. What do you foresee? Is this much of the money right now, chasing plaintiffs’ work specifically? Or do you think that this is going to end up becoming something that, over time, hits all different verticals within the legal space? 

 

Chad Dudley  18:38  

I think it’s going to hit a lot of different verticals in the legal space. I think there’s a heavy interest here right now, but I believe on the defense side, I mean, the same conversations in the same dialog are going on and maybe even progress further than that. But I think you’re going to see it in a lot of different sorts of areas.

 

Jay Ruane  18:59  

So I have a question for you. You know, you’re on the back end, right? It’s, it’s complete. You’re moving forward. Everything is great. Is there anything or what could you tell me? I guess it would be better. Is that sitting here now, do you have something that you could say, Man, I wish I knew this, or, man, I wish I did this nine months ago, 18 months ago, because the journey would have been a little easier, or I would have gone in with my eyes a little more open. Is there an I wish statement that you could share with our audience? Because I think you know, they’re thinking, Oh, my God, this is all changing. I’m not ready for any of this. But maybe, just maybe, if they understand the I wish part, they can wrap their head around it earlier, so that they’re not dealing with some of the struggles that I’m sure you ran into and said, shit, if we had done this three months ago, it would have been a lot easier, right?

 

Chad Dudley  19:54  

You know, like in all these things, I always believe, like, hey, go if you’re trying to do something, go talk to somebody that’s done it. And go talk to somebody that spent some time with them, and whoever will give you access, right? And I think that when we were going through this, there was just very much like, you know, being an early adopter, being sort of on the front cutting edge, you know, being nice to pick up the phone. Hey, how did you deal with this issue? Or tell me about this a little bit. And, hey, did you run into this and so to the extent that, if so, you’re gonna have a representative in your corner that’s going to work through the details and deal points. Your representative and your advisor are huge. Like, there’s some firms out there that that have not hired them, that I’ve interacted with, and it’s not that, that they don’t know what they’re doing, or it’s not like this, it’s, it’s really bad, but gosh, the they’re just kind of, it’s, they’re going in on their own. It’s like, you know, a personal injury. But if I were to go try and handle a family law case, it’s out of my water and kind of fumble through it, maybe, but I’ll just go higher on family law, same way you can, you can fumble through some of these, these processes and procedures, but having a good advisor is is critical. We were fortunate enough to have a really, really good team on our side. And the other thing is just beware. There’s, there’s a lot of people that are out there saying, hey, you know, let me see your numbers, and I’ll tell you. And they share your numbers. That’s not fun. You know, it’s like these beware. There’s a lot you gotta really, you know, do some due diligence on the people that you’re talking to and that you’re interacting with and exploring these things with because while there’s some really, really great people in the space trying to make this happen, there’s some people that will be very loosey goosey with your data, your information, your numbers? 

 

Jay Ruane  22:01  

Yeah, I mean, it seems to me like you need to have a Sacajawea, right? If you’re going to be Lewis and Clark, if you’re doing this for the very time, you still need that. 

 

Chad Dudley  22:09  

I’m gonna borrow that 

 

Jay Ruane  22:11  

at a walk, right? 

 

Chad Dudley  22:12  

Yes, yes.

 

Seth Price  22:15  

So look, one of the things that I’ve seen at NTL this year, there was no shortage of people sort of poking around, you know, looking to talk to firms. And, you know, you could see that this is a thing that’s very exciting, but you know, as a platform company, you’re probably getting some multiple of EBITDA that is significant. The knock that I’ve seen to date, before this was that historically, it was pretty low for non platform company, like a two to 4x and when you start to sort of say, Hey, you’re not selling the whole piece of the firm because you’re, you’re basically, you know, the I assume, because the MSO is only part of the value of what You’re you have to offer. Yeah, it almost felt like you just operated a firm for three more years. It was kind of like a break even. This is historically, talk to me a little bit, because, you know, if you know difference between, like, what you’ve built, which is ridiculous for those that haven’t seen Dudley Debosier and what Chad has put together as partners is remarkable on culture, on operations, but for most of us, sort of, who’ve built decent firms with with good revenue and decent EBITDA, you know is, is there, you know, is there a point where, like you, what makes it worth being part of one of these things? And you say, watch out. A number of them that have spoken to me, at least their offer seems like, give us your firm, and you’re playing for an even a roll up that will someday go to market or become public.

 

Chad Dudley  23:48  

So you know talking about is the market? Yeah, the market’s definitely going up. I think two years ago, three years ago, there’s, you’re looking at it, you’re like, All right, that’s not quite interesting. And it is getting more more interesting and more attractive. And there’s a bunch of different ways to approach this, right? We have, you know, a lot of the firms we’re talking to, some have partners. They all want to get out. They’re like, You know what, we’ve done this, and we’re ready to do something else, or or just get a lot more discretionary for your time, or some variation of that, right? And that’s a little bit different. Then you got some firms are growing at a really, really rapid rate, and they’re like, man, we’re we need, want some help with scaling and doing that responsibly, and maybe some access to capital to to see if there’s ways to to grow, right? Then there’s firms that are like, okay, we’re kind of in between where we’re growing, but this, we want to be part of a group where we can, we believe that there’s some efficiencies to be had if we, if we do some common things, like, for example, that I mentioned as the you seen it. I mean, AI is changing weekly. I mean, is that? Is that a fair statement? I mean things that are coming out is like, oh my gosh, you know, now it’s writing code, and it can do this, and we just, you know, all these different anthropic comes out, and everything is changing so quickly. And so there’s firms are going, Hey, we’re running good shop, but we want a bigger marketing stuff like that, that we can feel like there’s a more we’re bigger. We’re part of a bigger hole that will help us navigate these rapidly changing environments more efficiently. And so all these things are sort of happening, and then our deal is a little different the way that we’re approaching it, because right now, we’re like, Look, if a firm wants to come in and join the MSO, where there’s some really no one, it would be less expensive, in the sense of, like, the amount of of money we put into making sure we got it right with national ethics attorney, local ethics attorneys firms, and, you know, hiring firms on both sides, both sides of the fence, that are making sure that we structure it correctly, and all those things was scary. Firms that come in don’t have to deal with all that stuff, right? Because we forged it away. The other thing is that there’s this belief, well, okay, we’re the platform firm, and are you coming to work for Dudley DeBosier? It’s like, No, we’re creating partnerships with other firms that are like minded, and when they come into the platform, they’re getting very attractive valuations for what they what they deliver, right? And so we want to have those conversations, because there was a belief at one point, and I saw it, and it’s changed where, like, Okay, if you’re call it a platform from, platform from basically, Hey, you’re the first one in, and everyone else kind of gets a lower multiple. And that’s not necessarily the case,

 

Seth Price  26:45  

As far as like, not mistakes, but what are some of the things that you’ve seen out there being offered that, knowing what you know, a firm should be wary of, like you turned out a lot of deals. Saw a lot of different permutations, you know, one, you know, I’ve seen ones where I just don’t understand the economics, where you get some money up front, some money in three years, and you’re basically betting on a collective to carry your, you know, your money forward. What? What are some of the things you saw out there that you’re sort of like, hey, this, this does. I would be wary of these.

 

Chad Dudley  27:24  

Yeah, you know, I think in my book I got, I got a book coming out. It’s called Seven Disciplines for Successful Firms. And it’s basically say, Okay, from the last 15 years working with, you know, hundreds of personal injury firms across the country. What are the seven things I’ve seen them all do very, very well on a consistent basis. And the first thing is, you know, know where you’re going, right? And so knowing what you’re what you Why are you doing this? Like, why are you looking at this? And I do that often when I’m consulting with the firm, I go, did you bring me on board to make more money? Is it to create more discretionary free time, create less friction for how your firm operates. What are you trying to get out of this? I would say one of the that you have to do some time asking yourself, what do you want out of this? Right? And be very, very clear, and then you can structure the outcome and the and evaluate the deals through that lens, right? Because, again, you know, talk with firms. One firm working some serious hours, 68 hour weeks, and these are partners, and they’re saying, hey, you know what? We want to start taking some vacation time. And if you were part of this, can we take some of the operational load off of off of us? We don’t want to be done done, but we want to kind of do it more at our pace. That’s so they’re looking for a solution that looks like that, and a partner that can help deliver that, right, versus, you know, another firm might say, hey, I want to grow and so therefore maybe I want to sell, you know, less of my services, part of my firm and there, and possibly get, you know, get access to resources that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And so, you know, to answer your question, it’s a little bit different for each person. Some are saying, hey, you know, I got a really great team, but the the I got a great attorneys and great marketing and great but I want to make sure, if I were to step down, that there’s someone that runs firms that can give some guidance, and that’s a different solution. So they got into the solution and then craft what you’re, you know, the partnership from that, that angle, does that help? I mean, is that the answer that?

 

Jay Ruane  29:36  

Yeah, I think it does. I have a question for you just about navigating this in terms of your workplace culture and your team. Because obviously, you know, paralegals, support staff, that type of thing. You know they come to work for a law firm, they have a certain vision of of the hierarchy and that type of thing. And I can see that there could be a bit of a challenge when you say to your long term staff, listen, we’re bringing in a partner. They’re a non lawyer. They’re going to help us with scale. They’re going to help us with efficiencies. All of a sudden, you might have some long term staff start to freak out and be like, this isn’t what I bargain for. This isn’t what I like. How do you navigate that culture bit? How do you get your team on board, because I could see you could lose some talented players if they say, Yeah, this isn’t the right life for me.

 

Chad Dudley  30:30  

You know, our culture at our firm has been very, very open. We’ve been through we’ve been through hurricanes together. We’ve been through floods, we’ve been through covid. We’ve been through weddings, funerals, but like with our team, we have a highly tenured team, and we’ve, we’ve been through a lot of ups, downs, challenges and so forth. And every step of the way through how we communicate with with our firm, we’re very, very transparent like, Hey, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what we’re doing about it. Here’s where we need you. To help, right? And we do those through, you know, we have annual kickoffs, mid year meetings. We do super huddles. We do we do ask a partner anything, where, like, we just get on Zoom call or in person, they can ask anything. We’ll answer it to the best of our ability, and through all these channels, we have communicated the message that we’re always looking to grow. We’re always looking to how do we get better? How do we grow? We won’t want to get lazy about what we’re doing and and as the like, what that looked like maybe three years ago was sort of fuzzy, like, Okay, we know that we want to go if we really want to grow, helping other firms with their operations or helping other firms with their best cases. That’s what it kind of looks like as we sit here today and we went down this path. And like anything else, when you’re innovating, you it doesn’t go easy, right? You make some mistake, and then you course correct. You make another mistake, course correct. Then you figure it out, and then everyone around you goes, Wow, that’s a no brainer. I mean, of course it was right in front of you, like, no, no is it was a brainer. It was tough, like, when you’re in the in the midst of it. So we’ve been doing, you know, we’re doing all that, that kind of stuff, and we were always communicating with our team along the way. And as the picture got clearer. We got more detailed about what we were guys. Here’s what it looks like. It looks like we’re going to find a partner that will allow us to then go invest in other firms and other and grow and scale and so forth, and allow us to to grow that way. And as that picture got clear, okay, here’s what’s going to look like. It looks like we’re going to have the law firm or have a services company. That services company, and we would share that with our team. And as we’re sharing that along the way and answering questions, you know, people get more nervous about what they don’t know than what they do know, right? And because when they don’t know, they fill in the gaps, with sort of the worst imagination of what that looks like, and so with the sort of, you know, Cultural Trust that was we have with our team, and in addition that keeping them informed every step of the way, that’s what helped a lot.

 

Seth Price  33:19  

Cool as we start to wrap up, just what is your thought on timing for non pi firms to get the better money looking at them, you know, right now, I’ve seen the people looking at the PI space very sophisticated. They’re really, you know, very sharp. They understand the market. The people that I see sniffing around outside of that seem more that they’re just learning it. They’re figuring it out. It sort of seemed more like a big roll up than a value add, per se. What’s your feeling on that?

 

Chad Dudley  33:54  

We want to change that, right? I mean, we want to add value, you know, in working with, you know, I’ve worked with firms for for a long, long time, and the concepts, the principles, again, put a lot of it in my book that’s coming out next month, at trial guides. But it works where, you know, grows revenue, grows profitability, results for the clients, improves a lot of those things. And so I think we’re right now going to see, hey, this is not just a this is not a partner that is saying, hey, that’s great. You’re part of the crew. We’ll talk to you later. You know when we try and sell again is, hey, we want to be a partner in each firm’s growth and and actively help with that through the application of best best concepts, best principle, best principles. Again, I’ve been doing that with, I mean, hundreds of firms for a long time. So this was a natural fit for me, going, all right, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been training for this. This is it’s time to go. We’re going to build a team that then delivers those, those services to firms. So. Think, I think you’re going to start to see, hey, this isn’t just joining a club. There will definitely be a big value add Awesome.

 

Jay Ruane  35:06  

Yeah, it sounds, it sounds like an amazing journey that, you know, having, having, you know, had your firm starting to help other firms. Then had the opportunity for this to arise where you could really scale some of the back end of the business, let the lawyers do the things that lawyers do, great but but take a lot of that stress off them. It seems like the perfect way to move a firm forward and really let the artist be an artist, and let the you know, the the people who blossom give everybody what they do. I mean, I know for a fact that my firm got better once I started taking things off of my plate, once I started taking things off of my partner’s plates, that they didn’t excel in, but they knew they had to do. So it sounds like Shangri La, it sounds it sounds like, is it, you know, the suck of running a firm can be taken away by doing something like this. And you’re not just, you know, getting a check and walking away. You actually get to still do the stuff that you love. So it sounds like, like this is the way, like, is the Mandalorian said, like, this is the lawyer you want to be, get the financial return that you’re looking for, let other people do what they really do well and everybody wins.

 

Chad Dudley  36:29  

Couldn’t, couldn’t have said it better. That’s exactly right, where you know that the lawyers really lean into being lawyers and not admin, right? And, and we always say, you know, like the difference between the art and science of practicing law and the, you know, we talked about, you know, a great chef and a great chef, you know, he wants to go in and the kitchens. You know, everything’s clean, the best ingredients, the best utensil, the best environment, you know, everything. And he can then just be an artist by adding those ingredients together. But if he’s got to concern himself with making something’s dirty, or it’s, you know, crappy stove, oven, or the ingredients got, you know, terrible, and he’s got to figure all that kind of stuff. It hinders his ability to do what he is trained to do. And in the same way, you know, can we create an environment where attorneys get to do what they’re trained to do, which practice law and take that back office piece off their back where they don’t have to worry about it.

 

Jay Ruane  37:15  

Yeah, that’s the thing that drives so many lawyers crazy. So I, I really applaud you what you’ve been able to do and and, like I said, it’s, it’s, it is the Sacajawea, because you come through that woods to take lawyers where they need to go, and so many people will follow. I’m really excited about your book. I can’t wait to get a copy of it.

 

Seth Price  37:44  

Chad, back on once the book’s out, so we can dive into the book.

 

Jay Ruane  37:47  

Absolutely, I asked you to send me an autographed copy. I have a whole Thank you, you know, so I definitely want to get a copy of it. You know, they’re cherished, cherished.

 

Seth Price  37:59  

So no, thank you, Chad. It’s, you know, look, it’s a as for those that have not been in the midst of it, it seems like, you know, the world is, you know, evolving very, very quickly. And you know, I appreciate your tutelage along the way, and can’t wait to see what you guys are doing there. But I think for every law firm out there, you know, I think one of the things this is going to do is just make you look at your systems and processes and like, what can you do to raise the bar? Because if you don’t, other people will be and you want to compete, just sort of you better raise your game.

 

Jay Ruane  38:34  

That’s right. That’s awesome, and that’s a great way to end it, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week on the Law Firm Blueprint. Thank you for being part of this wonderful special episode. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go by subscribing to the law firm blueprint podcast. Be sure to give us a five star review on your podcast player platform of choice, and you can catch us live every week, live on LinkedIn, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific on every Thursday, or in our Facebook group, the law firm, blueprint that’s going to do it for me. Chad, thank you so much for being with us. That other guy over there, that Seth price. Bye for now. 

 

Chad Dudley  39:07  

Thank you guys.