Jay Ruane  0:07

Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, drinking his morning coffee there, Seth Price. Seth, how’s your week going this week?

Seth Price  0:19

It is going great.

Jay Ruane  0:21

Fantastic.

Seth Price  0:22

I was in on a business junket to Panama. Spoke to some lawyers there.

Jay Ruane  0:27

Oh, nice! Not Panama City, Florida, like spring break, Panama, 1990. I mean, okay. I had a good time in Panama City, Florida.

Jay Ruane  0:32

No Panama, Panama.

Jay Ruane  0:33

I mean, okay. I had a good time in Panama City, Florida.

Seth Price  0:35

I’m sure you did.

Jay Ruane  0:37

Listen, I spent a day, or like a good better part of a day, drinking gallons of Miller High Life with the guys from House of Pain. They were down there to perform. We wound up in this bar called the Daiquiri Factory. I’m sure it’s long gone. It was all $4 for a gallon of Miller High Life, and so we stopped in there. And turns out Everlast and Danny Boy were cruising around because they had a show that night. They came in, they started playing pool with us, and we hung out for like seven or eight hours. And I had an absolute blast. That’s back when Jump Around came out in, like, the spring of ’93, I guess it was. Or ’94. I went there two years in a row, so it’s a little hazy, little hazy. A little hazy.

Seth Price  1:23

Now this is less hazy. A buddy of mine from when I was a baby lawyer, when I first started at Big Law 95, the guy who was sort of a practice group admin. He, you know, he was from Panama. I always heard about it. We’ve been buddies for the last 30 years. You know, I’ve been to his 50th and 60th birthdays. This was his essentially turning 70 and retired, just retired from big law as you know a legal assistant, and had some extra miles. So I flew him down there. So when I was not speaking, he could take me around and show me the show me the the land. And it was, you know, again, this is, you know Panama, fascinating, right? We know the canal. You know, essentially Colombia that we took a little piece of land to build a canal, and you know when Carter gave it back, gave it back in ’79, and became theirs in ’99. So it’s relatively well to do, right? You know place. But what’s incredible, and you see the difference-you know how blessed we are living where we are-is that, you know, the ability to make a buck is so incredibly difficult there. You know, the wages for $5 an hour, working for Dell, $10 an hour. You know, it’s a different world, and just, you know, very, very, very humbling, and it makes you appreciate a bunch. You know, you know, we talk about in the states, depending on what zip code you’re born in, you may be more or less successful. We forget that, and this is not third world. That’s what’s so incredible. This is you, you know, downtown looks like Miami, with beautiful buildings. But the average trickle-down to the regular person there, not so much.

Jay Ruane  3:10

No, no, it is definitely the haves and the have-nots in these areas. Interesting. I’m surprised you didn’t start looking for remote workers and how to set up an office of Price Benowitz down in a in a high rise down there while you’re down there, because you’re always thinking

Seth Price  3:26

You know, so I got to have dinner with one of our people. She’s a manager on the benefit side and got to have dinner with her and her significant other and a bunch of them from the conference and it was you know, it was. Look, she’s lovely. We had a great time, and you know, it was. We talk a lot about international, the global workforce. You know, thankfully, we got rid of the term, gotten rid of the term VA. But you know, as global workers, and you know, we had, you know, a couple of offline you know discussions about you know how do you balance you know when we first started it was like oh okay we’ll pay X amount there people work X hours and with time you know again time wanting retention wanting keep culture you know how do you mix in we talked about have and have nots but benefits how do we mix in elements of what we’re doing in the U.S. there? And this is a discussion that I think we’ve had on the show before, and sure won’t be the first or last time. But that balance between putting things into salary and letting people spend it as they wish versus different benefits, paid time off, things like that. How do you, you know, would you be better off with a slightly lesser salary numerically and adding different bells and whistles in? I think when we first started down this journey, as we both did around January of 21, you know, you sort of just. You jump off a cliff. You start doing it as you do a lot in business, and we are left with now. Okay, now what you know, and that you know you don’t want there to be have-and-have dots within your own organization. You want it to be a true global workforce.

Jay Ruane  5:17

Let me ask you something. Do you pay the Aguinaldo? The Aguinaldo is a traditional 13th-month payment that Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America give to their employees. It’s sort of like your Christmas bonus, right? Right.

Seth Price  5:37

I’ve seen it out of the Philippines. I’m not sure. I, you know, we again. It’s like anything else. Some of those places, the salaries are so low that this is sort of subsistence. It’s holidays, etc. I’d like to think that in most of the places that we are, you know, like to think. Hope that I’m right. That we are paying at a number that is, you know, a professional number in that area, right?

Jay Ruane  6:04

But even the professionals get that bonus in Central and South America, and if you don’t give it, people get upset. I mean, we actually listen to this is crazy. We actually went to a profit partnership model, and two of our three of our people who are in that profit partnership pool, so they will get quarterly bonuses of a significant amount of money. When told that they would have to give up the Aguinaldo, said no, I want the Aguinaldo. I don’t want to be part of the profit pool, and I literally had to document for them, hey, this one-month payment that you’re getting will be dwarfed by what you would get four times a year over your quarterly bonus, and they said yes. But the Aguinaldo would be guaranteed; those quarterly bonuses rise and fall with the profit of the law firm. I want the guarantee in December. I don’t want to wait for a February 1 quarterly payment. And I said, I think this is incredibly short-sighted, but I mean, in the end, it’s going to profit me more, so I’ll do it. But it’s amazing how territorial some remote workers are, and I honestly, you know, as an American-based company, I don’t think we should necessarily have to pay that because if it’s culturally down there, you’re working for an American company, like you get things that we don’t.

Seth Price  7:19

I think right, so and that’s what I’m talking. This is the discussion we started to have post-dinner, which is, you know, what do you do that mirrors how things are for the states? How do you balance those pieces? And look, I think we saw this. You know, you see this when you do holiday parties. You know, and the international global workforce doesn’t benefit from we’ve this this particular woman we’d flown in for events at the firm and you know and as we’ve had with a number of people and it’s a tough balance like things are we are a lot of stuff inflation and other workforce you know if you’re in a fee-for-service climate, getting getting funds from clients, it’s not an easy time to be in business. Not there’s ever an easy time, but it’s challenging time, and so you’re you’re balancing all of that, and you hope to do right, and you’re trying to figure out what is meaningful, and you know, are you better off at $5 an hour, which might be local wages with that end of year bonus, which is a what is that a 1/12 bonus versus eight percentish? You know, are you better off with that, or are you better off paying eight, nine, $10 an hour and not dealing with that world, but it’s you know, you know. And I’ll leave you with this: for many years, way more than I’d like to acknowledge, we started the firm with payments every two weeks, and it killed us. So anybody listening, don’t do what I did. Paying twice a month and dividing a salary. Let’s say somebody’s making, you know, $60,000. If you pay twice a month, that means that you’re going to have equal payments 12 into 60, 24 into 60, and that’s what they’re getting. If you do it every two weeks, which a lot of people like. That, as a firm, it’s the same amount of money over the course of the year, but for cash flow purposes, two months out of the year you have three paydays,

Jay Ruane  9:32

right

Seth Price  9:32

And that really hurt us early on, cash flow wise.

Jay Ruane  9:36

That’s why I, I since I started, Seth, I pay weekly. I pay every Friday, and I know I’m go. I know I’m going to pay more in my payroll costs.

Seth Price  9:48

No, no, no, no. Forget payroll cost. What I mean is that means that two months a year, you have an extra week.

Jay Ruane  9:57

Right, but I pay weekly, so every week. I pay payroll.

Seth Price  10:01

No, I understand that.

Jay Ruane  10:02

Right,

Seth Price  10:02

But if you’re budgeting things out, like as you start to look at stuff monthly and quarterly, that means that two months of the year, two

Jay Ruane  10:10

Two months of the year, you’re paying three payrolls, not two.

Seth Price  10:13

Or in your case, five.

Jay Ruane  10:16

I pay 52.

Seth Price  10:17

No, understood.

Jay Ruane  10:18

But see, I’m able. But since I pay weekly, I’m not budgeting, you know, for payroll or anything other than weekly. So my cash flow stays even.

Seth Price  10:29

Well, yes and no. If you’re looking at your profitability for that month, if you’re looking at your month,

Jay Ruane  10:35

right? But that’s why we look at profitability over a quarter.

Seth Price  10:38

If you’re looking at it month over month, which we do, it makes it very difficult. And so, at one point, we finally-I forget-there was a moment in time where we could switch to twice a month, and it allowed us to do it without pain. The problem was once you set it, it’s very hard to undo it.

Jay Ruane  10:58

Oh, I’m sure. I keep getting pitched, you know. Oh, you should move to first and 15th and do that. And I’m like, nope. I like I like seeing my pay. My payroll’s significant every week, but this way I know, um, you know, I’ve got my money sitting there, and I’m not getting these huge hits, you know, because, from my perspective, the way I my brain works, I like knowing that my weekend intake guy makes my payroll by Sunday afternoon, and I’m good, and that week I know I’m good. Bottom could drop out, my payroll’s covered. You know that

Seth Price  11:36

Part of that’s just Michigan, but it also again if you’re looking at your month-over-month numbers, you’re going to have two months a year that are less profitable than others. Again, yours is only by 20% in this case. What it was every two weeks- that’s a huge difference. That’s

Jay Ruane  11:54

a huge nut. Yeah, no, I talked different about it. Okay, so I have a topic that I texted you about earlier, and I want to get into it, and it’s because, you know I’m leaning heavily into AI. I’m using a lot of tools. I’m creating my own tools. I’m doing all sorts of fun stuff with AI. I had the time freedom to to try new things, and so this past August, now it’s the beginning of October. This past August, I spent a lot of time creating a series of tools that is essentially an AI executive assistant. I have it monitoring my, you know, my coaching business and the payments that come in, scheduling speakers. It’s it’s it’s executing. It’s executing. It’s executing. I found a service called Duckbill that is that like last-mile delivery, but for AI tools? So it’ll get a human to make a phone call for me. I was able to get them to, so it’s great. I can send them a text, or in my case, I have an AI tool. I talk to the AI tool, and the AI tool says, “Hey, it’s staged. Just press go, and it’ll send it to this team that’ll make the phone call, make the reservation-you know, all of those things did great for me. Like helping me plan a route and book hotels from Arizona to Las Vegas in April next year, and it is also monitoring a bunch of other things for me. So it’s a great tool, right? Get Duckville if you want a referral. Just let me know. I think I can send you a free month, and it’s great because you can do it by text message, by their app, whatever. And then after spending all this time setting this up, and it’s working just fine, it’s working. It’s working really well. It’s keeping me on top of things that I have a tendency to get rid of. This week or last week, we’ve got docs come out by OpenAI, which is essentially a personal assistant that can book things for you. You know that type of thing. Gemini can now make phone calls for people on the Pixel, and so phone calls are coming to AI. And then you’ve got Muse, which is I owe all the rage, and it’s you know it’s you don’t really need any knowledge base to do it, and I’m wondering how do you because I’m thinking I just wasted you know three weeks of my life digging in figuring out how to plumb all these things together to get a functional thing, and now within a quarter, all of these AI companies are now coming out with a thing that I said I need and I need to put together because nobody’s offering it, and now it’s here. So to be fair, I was somebody had tipped me off a few months back, and there I had one that’s pretty scary in that it goes through my emails and finds issues, like hey, you’re checking into a hotel in Panama. It says it’s for 2027, not 2026. Or I intentionally have two flights back from somewhere because in two different airlines in case something cancels, and if I have to be somewhere, it’s like, you know you have conflicting flights. The level of discerning and ability to make res.

Seth Price  15:00

So, I Jay, I’m gonna like you have done over the years certain things that the average person would not do, right? You built your own software. You stayed. Yeah, I’m not. I’m not normal. I’m insane. No, no, no, no. I know, but I think what makes you special that that time is not wasted time. You know, you Mark Twain always had that same time. You enjoy wasted time; it is not wasted time. I would say the fact that your brain was putting you in a position to do that. You know, if you had spent millions of dollars and stopped the business to do it, it was your side hustle. You played with it. Right. The fact that you’re doing that. You know, yes, somebody else is coming out with that. Great. The opportunity cost was low. You created something that’s useful, and the fact that you are understanding how this works and using it to me, an easy trade-off. You’ve been ahead of the curve on this on this work, and that it will serve you well, despite the fact that somebody’s going to surface any company.

Jay Ruane  16:04

But. So that so that’s the that’s the million dollar question. How fast should us as law firm owners, be moving, be pivoting, be seeing something that we know we can make a difference in and going for it, or is a better role for us to be the wait a minute, let’s think this through because you know I have a tendency. I’m sure a lot of people in our audience have this tendency to see something shiny and say, ” Ooh, ooh ooh, I want that and however we can make that happen whether it’s us doing things or I mean I can remember being at one of Fisher’s mastermind experience, where somebody had been through like four CRMs over a two-year period, right? Right, and that kept finding something. Yeah, and I, and I,

Seth Price  16:50

no, no, no, no. This isn’t just Fisher’s, man. This is something I see all the time. They’re, they’re in the solo world of people that switch every year.

Jay Ruane  16:56

Yeah.

Seth Price  16:56

Like, people switch marketing companies every year. I mean, like there are people that like Rolling Stone. Going back to this thing, gathers no moss. So, like again, no software is perfect. But you know what? The fact that you built it, I love. To me, like, obviously, you’re allocating. We always use it’s your words. You’ve allocated a certain amount of time for R and D,

Jay Ruane  17:17

right

Seth Price  17:17

And it’s R and D. Not all of it works. Some of it, the competitor is going to come out with better, but the fact that it’s there, I think that look, I struggle with this at a firm with scale. I’m impatient. I want more, but right now there’s a big decision to be made in the PI space amongst the prepaid, you know, sorry, the very expensive per-client third-party AI tools versus what is we what are we going to be able to get with just native AI?

Jay Ruane  17:48

Well, a lot of those tools, to be honest, are just a wrapper around ChatGPT.

Seth Price  17:55

But if it’s not, but if if the wrapper allows you to use it, great. The question is, what is the cost? And you know you say, “Hey, I’m just passing on to clients, but that has a limit. And it’s, you know, the question: Do you want to be the first mover, or are you better are you better off taking a pause on software? I never want to be the first mover. Like I, you know, there’s there’s there’s some new softwares case management systems coming out that are that are very you know AI first, and I’m like you know what I’ll let others experiment with that. I don’t need to be the first. It’s not going to make or break the law firm. And you know what? If you were the first mover on Filevine or Lidify, it was pretty much hell back in the day.

Jay Ruane  18:43

Oh, I’m sure. I can’t imagine. But you know, I mean, I built my software because the only thing that was out there at the time was Time Matters, and it was a server. And I see them. There were plenty

Seth Price  18:54

There were plenty of moments where you could have moved over to a Clio very easily, and moved it. But you didn’t want part of it. Was a badge of honor. It was what you liked,

Jay Ruane  19:03

And also, I was used to it. Like, and it worked for what we needed, and I wasn’t seeing anything in Clio that gave us something more than what we had.

Seth Price  19:12

No, it was just you know and when I just at the time I looked at it years ago, and I saw you know there was you know my case and a bunch of others out there, and I thought, okay, I when when software went when we started, software was purchased. You bought something, you downloaded it on your computer, you paid for it once, and maybe you’d buy updates over time. Right. And so he said, hey, hold my beer. I can do this and charge a per-seat license. But the advantage of that is that everything is updated in real time as you go, and like, did Clio do what I really needed back in the day? No, I was just betting on the fact that they would continue to evolve over time. And you know what? Sometimes that time was a year, and sometimes that time was six years. You know, but I, I, it kept me out of the software business. Allowed me to build my business, and that was sort of the trade-off that I looked at.

Jay Ruane  20:03

Yeah, and that and that’s really the the thing is like, do you have hard and fast rules of when you like jump on something and you go right for it, or do you? Is it an it depends situation? Like, are you like, okay, hey, if this thing is going to cost me less than 5000, and you know, like, do you set an arbitrary number? Like, this is an investment. You know, I’m okay with any investment under 3000 or $5,000 if it’s going to save us something and it’s worth a flyer on it, or is it? I think it’s the R and D number of hours.

Seth Price  20:34

Is that the R and D budget? You know, time and money. That’s what you’re talking about, essentially. And look, you also like it. It’s gotten you where you are. You were ahead of the curve on marketing and got you there. You’re ahead of the curve on this on efficiencies. It’s getting you there. And look, I that’s why I love the the Jay Ruane six month rule. It’s not just you. I use it with David Hanel and other friends of ours, which is it’s amazing. You know, you went AI voice. You were ahead of the curve, I was like, I didn’t buy it, and you know, it’s there’s there’s a place for it. Yeah, you know,

Jay Ruane  21:06

Yeah, you know, I can report back on AI voice. This is interesting. This is interesting. So we went into AI voice early for our after-hours answering service, and it’s been doing well. But I said, you know, maybe people are getting tired of AI voice, and maybe we should think about going to an analog, basically an old-school answering service, and give people the opt out to leave a voicemail message. So, Ring comes in. Hey, we’re offices closed. You can do one of two things. You can talk to our intake team, or you can talk to our live answering service, or you can leave a voicemail. Figuring some people they don’t want to talk to a bot; they want to talk to voicemail and just leave their messaging and get back. So we did that at the beginning of September, and it was amazing to me how many hangups we got? So much so that by the third week of September, we went back to AI voice answering the calls after hours, and I think it was the AI voices are good enough so that people don’t know it’s AI right up front, and they’re saying, “Hi, can I get your phone number and your name in case we get disconnected? So then we capture that information, and then they’ve already engaged with the AI tool. So then, at that point, they’ll have more of a conversation. Because when people were being offered the option of speak to a live person or press two to leave a voicemail, and we’ll get back to timeout.

Seth Price  22:35

What? Why not the look? To me, you’re missing the obvious, which is what I would do if I if I was moving there. Which is, you know, I’m here. I’m here to answer all your questions. If you ever want to speak to a live agent, press zero at any time. So it’s giving them that option. You know, to me that that’s the that’s the difference. Is and again, it is. There’s no magic answer at all. Look, all of these AI voice companies are they just rappers on something that Meta is going to come out within a couple days?

Jay Ruane  23:08

That’s, and that gets to my point. Like, should I even bother doing some of these things if I see it’s like I okay? Here’s an example, right? So I have two podcasts that I do without you, but I actually do them without anybody. They are AI-driven, AI-scripted, AI-edited, AI-posted. I set it up. It took me you know 60 hours of figuring out all the hiccups and getting it running. But now they’ve been running for months without any involvement by me. One is the Connecticut Case Law podcast and one is called Unreasonable Expectations. If you’re in the audience, take a listen to both of them or either one of them. One, it’s Unreasonable Expectations. That’s a National Fourth Amendment Search and Seizure podcast surveying all the cases every week that come down on Search and Seizure because it’s relevant to my industry. I wasn’t going to build it for something else, but it’s it’s voiced by me using 11 Labs. It’s edited by Ofonic. It’s it’s stitched together, and it goes up. Right now, that’s not something that the market is going to create because it is a very niche product for a very niche industry, and it works to help me in marketing because I’ve got lawyers across my state now across the country hearing my voice, hearing about me, and and potentially being able to send referrals to me, and it’s fantastic. It’s it’s good quality content. I use a couple different AI tools for hallucination checks. No one’s ever creating that automated podcast process in the market, but the hey, I want to book a restaurant and I need AI to do it. That stuff, like Muse, that came out by Meta, like that stuff, or call my doctor’s office and coordinate my appointment. You know that type of stuff. That’s going to be solved by the market because there are millions of people that could use that technology. So maybe I need to have a sort of a breakdown of. Who is this affecting? Who is this impacting? And if it’s something that everyone’s going to need, factor in that somebody’s probably working on that problem. Whereas for me, if it’s something that only I’m going to see, or maybe a handful of people, shit, that’s where I put my attention, and I wait to see if, in six days or six months, an AI tool comes out, because maybe that’s the way to approach this thing, but I don’t want to waste time because I could find the time to put it into other projects.

Seth Price  25:31

Like that-that’s the million-dollar question. But I-I like the fact that you’re. I think that over time, being ahead of the curve and messing with this stuff will pay dividends. Just because the market caught up to you on one doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t. You know, like I don’t agree with your decision to keep your software in-house. You do a lot of stuff in-house that to me is not would not be my sensibility. But what did you say? What do you save year over year not using a third-party software.

Jay Ruane  26:01

Well, I mean, I don’t know what I can do the math real quick. Let’s say what’s the seat cost?

Seth Price  26:06

$80 a seat.

Jay Ruane  26:08

$80 a month per seat?

Seth Price  26:10

Yeah.

Jay Ruane  26:11

Okay, so 80 times 12. So that means that you’re spending $1,000, $960 a month a year per employee,

Seth Price  26:21

just right.

Jay Ruane  26:23

And I’m right now. I’m at 49 employees, so it’s $47,000. I’m not spending now.

Seth Price  26:31

You have some expenses for what you’re doing, but not trans. I mean,

Jay Ruane  26:35

I’m probably spending 20 grand a year in updates and licensing. So I’m saving $27,000 a year.

Seth Price  26:43

Right, and then how much are you spending to administer? Do you have to do are you doing it like you know as far as just the actual making sure

Jay Ruane  26:52

$750 a month. I get three hours of support time from my host, so if I need new users, we can self-administer that. This is really.

Seth Price  27:03

And then so for us, I’ll give you an example where we’re starting to see it. We just made a move for years. We kept our credit card processing separate. We just got to the point where we again jumping off the cliff. We now have credit card processing integrated into case management, which for many smaller shops is not new, but for a larger shop is a big deal because you need, as you know, the difference. You know, we could do an entire show on credit card processing, right? Oh God, you know. But the difference between flat-fee credit card processing and the dirty secret for most people on criminal defenses, a heavy percentage of your clients are using debit cards, which costs a lot, lot less than regular credit card processing. So, if you were to use a Stripe or Square, or somebody with a flat 3% you’re leaving a lot on the table. Our blended rate is closer to two because of that, and if you have a true credit card processor, then you’re able to, and whether your software allows you to do it that way. But if there, you know, and then for instance, BluShark is the opposite. BluShark, you know, all the clients, Jay Ruane is not going to not have a rewards card,

Jay Ruane  28:21

right.

Seth Price  28:21

So the average, you know, person there. If we can get a blended rate of 2.7 or 2.8, that’s a deal because many of the credit cards are three or higher, 3.5, you know, with rewards cards, and so there it makes sense. But we’re running eight figures plus, you know, multiple figures on credit cards, you know, and then we had a whole discussion: should we charge? This is another discussion for another day, which is: Should we be pushing forth a? And I want to put this top of another show: Should we be passing through the credit cards charged clients? And

Jay Ruane  29:01

yeah, and I

Seth Price  29:02

I don’t like it.

Jay Ruane  29:04

I don’t like it either.

Seth Price  29:05

But our my new CFO was like, look at what you’re spending, and it was real money. That said, you know, I know that when I go to a restaurant and they charge that, I don’t like it. I pay it, but I don’t like it at all, and I don’t want somebody having that same relationship with the. I don’t want the collections person calling. You can waive it, but what I found was the irony of this was the irony of at least one of the softwares. I want to say by name one of the case management softwares that runs credit cards through. If you do that and they provide that, two things happen. One, they can’t push through a fee for debit cards. You would go restaurant; debit cards are free, but they still charge you 3% for debit cards. So it’s like what? Like you know what I mean? So like that made no sense. And then by the time I did that, if a third. Of my people are on debit cards, then I’m at 1% across the board. You know, if I didn’t, if I pat and I’m punishing my. So by the time I did that, I wasn’t saving any real money, and not doing a great job of explaining it. But suffice it to say, that was going to piss people off, not make me any more money, but make somebody else money. I’m like, no, we’re not doing that, so let’s do that. I think that would be useful for people on the biz. For those of people out there that have a fee-for-service business, let’s do a dive on credit card processing on the next show.

Jay Ruane  30:32

We probably should get somebody to come in and just explain it. I mean, I know you and I can no, no.

Seth Price  30:38

I mean, sadly, I can give you the basics. I think the issue is what are your options, and what we finally got was a third software that was willing to give us a competitive rate that took into account what you want is somebody who takes into account the debit cards

Jay Ruane  30:54

right

Seth Price  30:54

and gives you the blended rate.

Jay Ruane  30:56

There was a service years ago. I’m trying to remember the name? It’s changed its name, but it was like the Netflix of credit card processing. You paid a, yeah.

Seth Price  31:07

We used it. We used it. We used it at BluShark. It is Fat Merchant.

Jay Ruane  31:12

Okay,

Seth Price  31:12

Fat Merchant got sold. That’s where you buy. It was a gimmick, but it was a gimmick that worked. And then they got sold, and you know again, customer services, all the stuff you were paying per $1,000 charge or something like that, and it was at the end of the day, the true pass-through rate, right? There are all these fees that you pay. There’s something passed through, and then add-on fees for the paid for the rewards cards that charge more depending on which part it is, and so.

Jay Ruane  31:43

I don’t know your volume has to be to set up your own credit card processor.

Seth Price  31:48

And you know, it’s one of those things you go down any any of these hills, but when you start getting the lower, as it gets more competitive, the better ones are adding like eight to 12 points on top of what you’re pushing through,

Jay Ruane  32:06

right?

Seth Price  32:06

And then at the the the question is, as we got more complex, we were dealing with the issue of the the time it took to go from a third party processor to our software, and that originally, for instance, Clio had had had had law pay. They pushed them out and put their own in place. The good news was it becomes more and more integrated, which saves you time on your end, which becomes more and more important. So, on smaller volume accounts, it was always a no-brainer. What we’re seeing now is these larger companies are getting more sophisticated, and they’re willing to work with you to give you a fair. All you want is a fair rate. May not be the best rate, but you want something where you’re not paying. You know the the argument is if the labor to do the inner the that that piece. And one of the frustrations, for example, when you work with a sale when you work with Salesforce, you know, if you buy a document e-signature program, it might be $50 a month. But if you do it with with Salesforce, it might be three to $6,000 a month. You’re like, why? But once you see the integrations, it saves an entire person moving shit over, and that’s and so what you would love to have is have your cake and eat it too, where you’re getting a competitive rate and at the same time the integrations, which are so important.

Jay Ruane  33:29

Yeah, and especially in today’s economy, where so much stuff is done digitally, I mean, this isn’t people pushing paper in a bank somewhere. This is just it’s going automatically by you know by computers. So the computing cost shouldn’t increase; it should decrease over time and give us a better rate. But that’s how they pad their fat fat banks. You know, they’re they’re making money on both ends. We’re we’re paying money on both ends. You know, that’s just the the nature of it. And it’ll be interesting to see. I read an article in the last week, about how banks are really nervous about AI tools because it can monitor your your bank account and be doing daily sweeps of your money and putting into high yield and then bringing it back when it’s necessary for you to pay your bills because most people have standard bills that they pay every month.

Seth Price  34:18

Every I have two accounts and it kills me that I don’t sweep stuff back and forth.

Jay Ruane  34:22

Yeah. Well, now there are AI tools that’ll do that for you and give you four days in a high yield, and then take it out to pay it, and then you know you get 17 days. And so banks are nervous that people are going to unleash these AI tools and do that because right now they’re happily taking the money without you know with .001 interest in their in their accounts, because people it’s laborious to move things back and forth, and they’re saying banks are looking at this huge surge of having to actually pay out interest for the first time in decades.

Seth Price  34:55

there split like so, for me, I have 80% in. Earning nothing, and 20% earning that-it’s not crazy, but like three, 3% whatever it is-and the idea that I’m not sweeping back and forth. But you know, look, there’s a cost to it. You put the wrong AI tool on there; next thing you know, you don’t have money. So

Jay Ruane  35:16

right, that’s that’s the whole.

Seth Price  35:17

We’ll talk about in a future show. I’m getting ready to join the board of an AI hedge fund. One of my most brilliant friends from college has always been ahead of the curve in putting that together, and you know the ability to just you know how much will AI allow us to pick stocks and and and sort of you know you know be ahead of the curve for for that millisecond.

Jay Ruane  35:44

Well, I’m working on an AI tool right now. I won’t tell you all what it’s about, but maybe I will pitch your hedge fund and get an investment or sell it to them so that they can blow it up or find me some private equity and get me out of this business once and for all. But once this tool comes online, I think it’ll be helpful to a lot of industries, not just legal.

Seth Price  36:03

Very good.

Jay Ruane  36:04

That’ll be cool. All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week here on the Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can take us anywhere you want to go on the go by subscribing to the Law Firm Blueprint podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, you want to check out my other podcast ahead, Unreasonable Expectations. It’s 100% AI, folks. I don’t lift a finger. It’s a wonderful thing, and then you can catch us on Thursdays live, 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 p.m. Pacific, live in LinkedIn and live in our Facebook group called the Law Firm Blueprint. Please join us there if you can. Otherwise, I’m Jay Ruane, and he is Seth Price, and we are the Law Firm Blueprint. Bye for now.