The Future of Law Firms Won’t Be Built on Billable Hours

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Tired of the billable hour, overlearning, and feeling like your tech stack still owns you? In this episode, Tyson Mutrux sits down with subscription‑based attorney and Practi co‑founder Mathew Kerbis to break down exactly how AI tools like Perplexity, WhisperFlow, Paxton, Gemini, and agentic workflows are reshaping how modern law firms are built and run. You’ll hear how Mathew went from insurance defense litigator to “AI‑native” transactional lawyer, why he believes the billable hour is bad for both clients and lawyers, and how subscription models and recurring revenue can unlock more freedom, better margins, and a saner life.

They dig into real‑world examples: using AI dictation and desktop agents to draft and format complex contracts, running redlines across multiple tools, replacing parts of traditional case management, and orchestrating systems so that actual legal work keeps happening while Mathew is teaching a CLE or recording a podcast. Tyson and Mathew also wrestle with big‑picture trends, MSOs and private equity in law, BigLaw’s addiction to the billable hour, and how bar regulators and ethics rules might respond to the AI wave. If you’re a law firm owner wondering how to actually use AI to save time, make more money, and serve clients better (instead of just “playing” with tools), this one is packed with practical insights.

What You’ll Learn

• Why the billable hour breaks incentives and how subscription/flat fees create better results for lawyers and clients
• How Mathew’s AI stack (Perplexity, WhisperFlow, Paxton, Gemini, Google Workspace) powers his daily legal work
• What agentic workflows look like in practice for reviewing, redlining, and improving complex contracts
• How WhisperFlow lets him talk instead of type across apps and replace traditional dictation
• Why he runs his practice on Google Docs, NotebookLM, and AI search instead of case management software
• How standardized templates plus AI speed up NDAs, MSAs, and other routine documents
• The core business model behind Practi and how it helps firms launch subscription legal services
• Why solos and small firms may be better positioned than BigLaw in an AI‑driven legal market

Highlights

• 00:00 – Challenging the status quo and taking aim at the billable hour
• 06:10 – Lawyers as “professional students” and the trap of endless overlearning
• 09:01 – Why many women and lawyers of color leave BigLaw to start their own firms
• 12:10 – Perplexity, WhisperFlow, and Paxton as Mathew’s core AI tools
• 15:01 – Using WhisperFlow for OS‑level dictation, prompts, and text expansion
• 27:43 – Orchestrating AI tools to clean up, analyze, and redline contracts at scale
• 31:00 – Running a subscription practice on Google Workspace and NotebookLM
• 45:15 – MSOs, private equity, and why Practi is being built as an alternative path
• 49:08 – How subscriptions and recurring revenue unlock growth beyond hourly billing
• 56:59 – Letting AI run recurring tasks so work continues while you’re offline
  
  

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LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerbisverse/

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Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06)
All right, so Matthew, you spent I'd say most of your career really challenging the status quo. And I wonder where that comes from. Because I mean, you you've really attacked the billable hour, which I I don't really want to get into like 'cause we've we've talked about that before. Yeah. and you've there's videos of you all over the internet talking about why you don't like the billable hour. But ⁓ I I guess where does that come from?

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)
well, first of all, Tyson, thanks for having me here in person on your organic food podcast. I thought it was you I was laugh does he organic food podcast, but hey, okay, that's cool. no, th thanks for having me. ⁓ and and it's you know, I think it comes from I I don't know, like you this whole nature versus nurture ⁓ debate. And like I've just got like entrepreneurship in my DNA. ⁓ my

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)
My father's mother was one of the first like working women doing real estate in Chicago way back in the day. And she was part of the conversion from ⁓ apartments to condos in Chicago. And now, ironically enough, in the last five ish years, they've been converting back. So sorry, Bubby. your work's being undone. and then my my mother's father ⁓ was like a door-to-door salesman, but also was always inventing things and he even got like a patent.

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)
Once. I mean, he like and neither of them became like super rich or ultra wealthy. Yeah. So it's not like I'm like I'm coming from that. But like just those examples where, you know, it's in my DNA. Both my my parents were the first generation college ⁓ students, and I'm a first generation attorney. But just the nature of being entrepreneurial is to challenge the status quo. You know, you see the cracks in the matrix and you need to go and fix it or like just break it, right? And so there's something just inherent in like who I am. And and I think

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)
on the on the nurture side, that was just fostered in me through ⁓ teachers, ⁓ you know, my parents, ⁓ mentors, and just when I saw the problems with the billable hour, I just had to attack it.

Tyson Mutrux (02:04)
Yeah. So your your grandma, ⁓ I think it's funny how you said your father's mother, ⁓ your grandma. ⁓ yeah. What I guess

Mathew Kerbis (02:13)
Because on both sides, right? Yeah. Each side had a entrepreneur.

Tyson Mutrux (02:17)
Well, I'm wondering like, is that who you looked up to the most? Like that your grandma or was it

Mathew Kerbis (02:21)
She's

Mathew Kerbis (02:21)
still living today. She's ninety three years old and she's down the street. She's in the what y was formerly known as the John Hancock Building. Holy

Tyson Mutrux (02:27)
Hell, like she can good good jeans, man. That's fantastic.

Mathew Kerbis (02:30)
Good genes. And on my mother's side, her her grandmother, my great grandmother lived to be ninety nine years old. And and my my my Bubby's father lived to be a hundred and he was a boxer.

Tyson Mutrux (02:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Well with AI, which we'll get to in a bit, you y we then you may live forever. Like you you might with your

Mathew Kerbis (02:47)
Longevity escape velocity, baby. I've got good mitochondrial DNA, that's for sure.

Tyson Mutrux (02:52)
That is fantastic. But but do you I guess do you look up is is that who you looked up to the most? I'm wondering like was was there something that that she did that challenged the status quo that makes you want to challenge the status quo so much?

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)
no no, no, not not in particular. I think ⁓ some of it too is ⁓ they've always been especially that my father's side of the family has always been extra theatrical. my dad was actually even a theater major. He went into sales. ⁓ and actually a good source of of business for my firm is I'm involved in my local community theater program. I host and produce the podcast and help on the marketing side of things. And I do it just because I love it. And so why do people hire you? 'Cause they know like and trust you and so

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)
Turns out people who have time for community theater, you know, have some resources to spend on attorneys as well. But like just being able to foster that creativity that comes from that side of the family, I think allows your imagination to run wild. And I was always inventing things as a kid too. ⁓ but I never like the type of entrepreneur that I am is I don't look at the way somebody else has done something and say, I could do that too. It's I just pursue my own path. ⁓ so it's not like I'm like looking to her specifically, but

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)
you you learn through st we learn through stories. And I just always heard her stories growing up from her directly and also about her and about my ⁓ my grandfather on the other side. ⁓ and and I just think like hearing those stories and learning about how it's like it's in my family, and I don't think they could only come from inside the family, but for me that that was my experience. it just helped inspire me or or start, you know, stoke the flames of a fire that became me having to do something

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)
differently in my own way.

Tyson Mutrux (04:33)
All right, so you've done you've gone away from the billable hour, you've done subscription model your way. Are there other things you can point to where like, I'm doing ⁓ the the law is doing it wrong, I'm going over here and doing this.

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)
I mean it all comes back to the incentives of the business of law. And so one of the reasons I I attack the billable hour is because if you stop

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)
making money based on how long something takes, which personal injury attorneys know well, you know, already. ⁓ it just creates all the incentives to solve so many other problems of what's broken with this profession. Right? You've got ⁓ substance abuse issues. You've got burnout. You've got more women attorneys going women going to law school and becoming attorneys than we've ever had in history. And yet they're still not in leadership at big

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)
And mid-sized firms. Mm-hmm. Right? Why? ⁓ so there's all these problems with the legal profession, lack of technology technology adoption. You know, we could talk about AI, but it really was was way before AI, right? Lawyers were not adopting technology. And yes, we're profession based on precedent, and there's no precedent with new technology. But we also figured out that we could apply horse law to motor vehicles. And so we're also incredibly creative in other ways. So I think if you strip the lawyer of

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)
What ails them. You open up and free up their creativity to do more things. And so I saw the billable hour as the largest friction point from lawyers being able to go and do that. I'll pat ourselves on the back here. I think lawyers are some of the smartest people I know.

Tyson Mutrux (06:10)
Sure. Well we're just we're very versatile. Like that's the that's the great because of our law degree, we can be very versatile. I think that that is where like the benefit is. It's like if you're a doctor, your medical degree is pretty limiting. ⁓ but when you have a legal degree, I mean you can go anywhere with it, which is pretty amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)
Yeah. Yeah. And we're we're just really good learners. I've been talking to the my high school, their careers in law class and prior to that, their law club for thirteen or fourteen years. And I just did it last week again for again the thirteenth or fourteenth time in a row. And when I used to go there and talk to them, I would explain how being a lawyer is kind of like being a professional student. You're reading and learning and talking to people all and interviewing all the time.

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)
And then you put that work together, usually in a written format, and then you go and present it to the class, to the jury, to the judge, to your clients at a board meeting, whatever. Right? It was like being a professional student. I had to throw out that talk entirely though this year because how AI is radically changing the game. Because it used to be, I could go and talk to them, and even in ten years from now, the way I practice law is relatively going to be similar to the way they will practice. The game has changed. But

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)
The being a professional student thing I think still resonates because we're just really we foster that part of our brain and we create all these neural pathways about l being able to learn more in that scale, I think, than maybe other industries.

Tyson Mutrux (07:35)
So there is that's that's a really important part. There's also a big mistake that lawyer f lawyers make too is where they will become an overlearner where like they don't ever take action. And that's that's one the that's the other part of it where like they just keep learning and learning and learning and then they don't take any action. And that is the that's like the double edged sword of that.

Mathew Kerbis (07:53)
Right, right. So lawyers tend to fall into the visionary camp instead of the integrators. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (07:58)
I I would say I think that's probably true. What do you think? Yeah

Mathew Kerbis (08:00)
Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (08:00)
yeah. I I mean we could you play both roles though.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)
Yeah. I do want to ask you, cause you mentioned the because I don't I don't really focus much on like big law at all. And you mentioned the thing about ⁓ the lack of women in big law leadership. That's not how you put it, but I'm that's how I'm putting it. And I w what I have noticed, it does seem like there are more more women opening their own law firms, which I think is great. I don't know what the percentages are. I did see a percentage. ⁓ so we do these insight briefs on all of our guests.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)
One of the guests for today, ⁓ she had put in her in some of her information about that only three percent of all law firms are are owned by women. I that's a stat I've gotta look up 'cause that's a shockingly low number if that's right. But it can't it's gotta be increasing with what I've seen. ⁓ I know it's more anecdotal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do wonder what ⁓ when it comes like the big law leadership, like what do you think the issue is there? 'Cause that is there there are more women in law right now than there are men, I think.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)
And so I c how is that possible?

Mathew Kerbis (09:01)
Yeah. ⁓ s some of it is and and so my my podcast lost subscribed because for those of you who also have podcasts, you always have to plug your podcast on a thing.

Tyson Mutrux (09:09)
Absolutely. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (09:09)
And I plugged you you actually helped me play. You you mentioned you were very nice about plugging the podcast. So you I think you plugged the conference too. Yeah. Which you spoke at.

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)
Of course, of course. So so on my podcast, ⁓ I interview attorneys who have ditched the billable hour and are leveraging alternative fees and just like tons of technology. and the majority of attorneys I've interviewed are women and attorneys of color. They definitely outnumber the lawyers who look like us. Yeah. On my podcast. And so at least from my own anecdotal experience, it's majority women and women attorneys of color and attorneys of color who are

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)
leaving other firms, sometimes big law, and starting their own practice. And it's because it's simply not built for them, because it's built for attorneys that look like me and you. And w for women in particular, and and gosh, like I I I kinda want to stop talking because like you should be interviewing a woman about this. But if you go go on my podcast and check it out, ⁓ I also built a a resource ⁓ for practice at notebook.practi.ai, which is 244 today, 244 curated sources with

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)
Over a hundred of them are interviews I conducted on my podcast. And you could just ask that resource, which is i it redirects to a Google's notebook L that's shareable, you know, how many women versus men attorneys have been on the podcast? And it could it should be able to tell you that that answer. It's great to build second brains using AI. And ⁓ and it's definitely the majority of them. ⁓ so it's it's just like they I have a daughter, so I'm biased here. I think at least at

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)
At a younger age, girls are definitely smarter than than boys. We and we mature far slower than they do. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (10:53)
I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of science backing that up. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (10:56)
I I think so. And and so like here they are, super creative, really intelligent, more mature, and they're able to manage, you know, family stuff, which we could debate whether or not that that that's a fair pressure that society our society puts on them, and yet go and work their their big law job and find faster ways to do things and get better results, and yet they're penalized for that 'cause they're not hitting their billable hour quotas. Well, of course, they're out of there. And I've got ⁓ dozens, if not like fifty plus, women attorneys who I've interviewed who have said some version of that on my show.

Tyson Mutrux (11:26)
Yeah, we did a panel ⁓ at MaxLawcon I was like twenty eight twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. I guess it would have been twenty nineteen 'cause COVID we had to cancel twenty twenties. ⁓ or it might it it was that or or twenty twenty two. We're like that was a big concern. We had we had a I can't rem I d I know that ⁓ someone suggested it ⁓ was someone had messaged us and she wanted a mom's panel. And so we did like a mom's panel, which was really interesting. That it talked a lot ab about that stuff.

Tyson Mutrux (11:26)
I do want to shift gears because you you mentioned AI a little bit. Let's I I I think this is funny because I could probably ask you this every six months and like I know my answer would change and I wonder what yours is. Like as of right now, as we sit here, what is your favorite AI tool?

Mathew Kerbis (12:10)
⁓ man. That is so like I can't pick one, right? It's like I need my holy I need my holy character.

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)
Isn't that tough then?

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)
Pick

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)
one. You gotta pick one.

Mathew Kerbis (12:19)
So perplexity still wins for me. And and and perplexity I don't ⁓ man. Perple Yeah. Yeah. If I had to pick one perplexity, but a close second right now is whisper flow.

Tyson Mutrux (12:22)
Complexity is the greatest.

Tyson Mutrux (12:22)
I've heard a lot of people talking Whisper Flow. I still have not used WhisperFlow.

Mathew Kerbis (12:33)
So shout outs to Ernie the attorney. He also has a his podcast, I think the 8020 principal. Mm-hmm. And Ernie tried to get me onto Whisperflow and his whole community. He's got a community a little smaller than the association, but but in a similar vein. And he's not even practicing anymore. ⁓ but he talked about Whisperflow, he even had the the founder in, and I I I'm I kick myself for missing that conversation he had with him. Cause now it's like Whisperflow is blown up. Right. And I don't think

Mathew Kerbis (12:33)
That CEO is coming down to a rinky dinky little. I mean, Ernie's community is great, but it's like compared to like the audiences he's in front of now. But what I love about Whisperflow is it lives on the operating system level and there's an app for mobile. And so whether I'm inside of Perplexity or I'm inside of a browser, Comet Browser, which is Perplexity's browser, or ⁓ Paxton AI, which is another like it's up there for me for legal.

Tyson Mutrux (13:27)
Really? For legal

Tyson Mutrux (13:27)
I so it ma i unless it improved, I was using it about a year and a half ago. Yeah. And we dumped it. I was but I would love to hear I hope I hope it's better.

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)
Hey,

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)
hey, look, ever whatever other legal specific AI tool somebody's using, that's just the one that I like to use. And I orchestrate in an agentic workflow through Perplexity Enterprise Comic Browser, it's AI assistant and Paxton and Google Workspace to like orchestrate like all this agentic workflow stuff. So like I'm using Paxton as as part of that workflow. ⁓ but I could use Whisperflow in everything, in my text apps, in in what whatever. So it is at the operating system level and it's context aware. So when I could

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)
when I'm s talking to older attorneys who are still like dictating into a dictaphone and having a human like secretary d write that up. Which is crazy. It's crazy, but it's still out there. I tell them of all the AI tools you should be using Whisperflow because just like a human listening in to dictations, Whisperflow is context aware. And it also you could program it so that it's a verbal version of text expander. You you you press the button to talk to the Whisperflow ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)
software on your computer and you say personal email and it puts in your personal email. You say work email. You say tech startup or startup email is what my I have for for practice. and and you could have like the like default prompts that you're like ⁓ buyer side analysis prompt. And then it puts out that long prompt that you have set up for buyer side analysis for a contract. Right. So you you've got that version of it, but you could just mind dump, I mind dump into a Google Doc.

Tyson Mutrux (14:43)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (15:01)
Using Whisperflow and it organizes all of that for me. I think Plod Pin does some version of this too, but Plod doesn't live in all my apps where I could access it, right? It's just a major time saver. I've gone from in October of last year thinking Whisperflow wasn't going to be useful for me, to in December signing up for the free version and starting to change my habits to go from typing to talking. Lawyers are excellent talkers. It's what we do professionally, whether we're transactional or litigation, because you're talking to your clients, you're negotiating deals.

Mathew Kerbis (15:01)
Right as a transactional attorney, which is what I am now. I I last month I was in the top nine percent of Whisperflow users.

Tyson Mutrux (15:36)
wow. So there's they gamify then. They they

Mathew Kerbis (15:39)
gamify test

Mathew Kerbis (15:39)
and they show you how many words you've you've you've dictated, you know, this this month, this week, like they have a running tally and they have a total number. Yeah, the gamification is awesome. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (15:50)
So I have my laptop whenever I'm out and about, right? I've got my work desktop, which is like for the firm stuff. Yep. And then I've got a a ⁓ show desktop with s for like more like the studio area. So I I do things on all of those devices and I've got my phone. Do I have to download it onto each of those devices to make it work?

Mathew Kerbis (16:09)
Y yeah. So interestingly, I mean Whisperflow is still a startup, right? Yeah. and and and and by the way, for like I'm paying for the enterprise version of all these things 'cause it promises HIPAA, Soctu ISO compliance, zero data retention, which is not always great for like an AI tool that could like learn from your stuff. True. But it's still a game changer for me, even though I have all that stuff turned on for Whisperflow. And it's still like Perplexy Enterprise is four hundred dollars a year per seat.

Mathew Kerbis (16:09)
Whisperflow is two hundred eighty eight dollars a year per seat for and these are for the enterprise hyper secure versions that as law firm owners we have to worry about that kind of thing. So

Tyson Mutrux (16:45)
The

Tyson Mutrux (16:45)
Enterprise version is only four hundred dollars for

Mathew Kerbis (16:47)
Really?

Mathew Kerbis (16:47)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (16:51)
'Cause I've got the I've got perplexity max. So way more.

Mathew Kerbis (16:55)
⁓ Are you using comp

Mathew Kerbis (16:55)
are you using like the computer features? You're overpaying.

Tyson Mutrux (17:00)
Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (17:00)
I am overpaying for it. You're overpaying. Yeah. 'Cause the pr I I find I kinda find computer junk. Like it it's ⁓ interest. interesting. Okay. So

Mathew Kerbis (17:05)
I disagree. How

Mathew Kerbis (17:05)
do you use it? I use it inside of comet browser mostly. Okay. So then that way when I don't Yeah, when I don't know what to do s something with computer, like I've vibe coding now. Not for my firm for practice, but still. Sure. because my CTO is a former Google software developer. Very nice. ⁓ one of the reasons we're

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)
Bowser two.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)
The very nice.

Mathew Kerbis (17:28)
getting into things like Iltacon's startup hub is because he's got some amazing credentials. And I've made a name for myself, but like he's got phenomenal credentials. And he's low we're he's local. He's in Chicago too. Shout out Shomari if you watch this. So ⁓ so now he's too busy building integrations with like Clio and 8 AM. Mm-hmm. So I could vibe code some other features that then he could take the code and use cursor and claude code and like build it into the Practice platform. Right. But I might able to do this, but I don't know

Mathew Kerbis (17:28)
about how to do this API key and this other thing and cloogle cloud or all this JSON whatever language. So I just tell the AI assistant in comma browser, hey, look at what Perplexity Computer is saying and go and and do that for me. And then it just go it like the AI is talking to itself and it goes and does the things that I don't know how to do.

Tyson Mutrux (18:08)
Interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (18:08)
So that's how I use Claude. So I use Claude to then talk to Bolt to build out things and it's it which is so funny to watch it. Like they'll they're like communicating back and forth and it's like it it or and it'd be like and Claude'll be like, You're not doing this right and Bolt like, you're right, I'm so sorry. And it's so funny 'cause they'll talk like humans.

Mathew Kerbis (18:33)
And it's so inefficient. I think the AI should just be able to just like, you know

Tyson Mutrux (18:34)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (18:34)
Connect and like just get it right. Right. No, you're right. Right. Very inefficient.

Mathew Kerbis (18:42)
It's very inefficient. And and the way that I do it, it actually clicks around on the screen and opens up different tabs and stuff 'cause it's all happening inside of Comet Browser. But but but I find and and and look, it's like it's like flavors of ice cream, right? Yeah. Have you ever had Jenny's ice cream? Did I

Tyson Mutrux (18:56)
Jenny's ice cream is amazing. It's the strawberry is the best. I

Mathew Kerbis (18:59)
I

Mathew Kerbis (18:59)
like salt ⁓ salty caramel, which I know is a little bit of like, well, everybody likes that, right?

Tyson Mutrux (19:04)
I don't know. I don't I'm not a huge like salty in my ice cream fan, but whatever. Well here's here

Mathew Kerbis (19:09)
Here's

Mathew Kerbis (19:09)
the thing. So you've had it, so you know it's got the best ingredients. It is more expensive. It's like twice as much as Ben and Jerry's. Worth it. Totally worth it. So just because there's multiple flavors of ice cream doesn't mean that like that like they're all equal. Like some are actually better than others. I think perplexity falls into that camp. And it's reasonably priced, unlike you Jenny's. I agree. But even then it's like, okay, so like all right, well, you don't like Jenny's. Well, there's other like high end ice cream out there, right? So there are plenty of flavors of ice cream. So I don't think there's one AI tool that's the best tool.

Tyson Mutrux (19:12)
It's so good.

Tyson Mutrux (19:12)
Agree. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (19:38)
It's like, well, how do you work, Tyson? How do I work? I am able to create incredible images and video inside of Gemini and Vio and Nano Banana that just when I tried using ChatGPT, when I tried using these other image models and video models, it's just I'm not getting the result. So it does like I'm this is why capitalism is good and we need competition.

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)
No.

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)
Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)
I agree. Well, it's funny. Chat GPT not good for video, gr but I think I do think Chat GPT is best at image creation, ⁓ and image editing. But but that's what's interesting is like you d you could have ten people and they could have ten different products that they use that that to edit a a product or whatever it may be. ⁓ so you mentioned the Holy Trinity though. I'm curious what the third one is because you you mentioned perplexity and then what were the other you mentioned okay, what are the other two officially?

Mathew Kerbis (20:07)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (20:27)
Is it WhisperFlow is that?

Mathew Kerbis (20:29)
Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (20:29)
so so it's it's the because I'm using them all the time. Yeah, right. Perplexity and whisper flow like my daily drivers. For legal work, I have the holy trinity I bring in Paxton because I want a legal specific AI tool. It's not perfect. Yeah. Right. And I and and I hate how it wants to export everything as a Word document because I'm in Google Workspace. Yeah. Right. But then outside of like legal specific work, Google Workspace and Gemini come in as the holy trinity. Yeah. So I've got different holy trinities based on the different kinds of work.

Tyson Mutrux (20:39)
I'm so shocked that you just accidentally.

Mathew Kerbis (20:58)
And my CTO of Practice will tell you, you know, Claude and Cursor and I I don't know if he's using Codex or or Gemini's version of code stuff. I don't know. That's so outside my wheelhouse. But he's got his own holy trinity of AI tools.

Tyson Mutrux (21:11)
I wonder why okay, so I have kind of it's interesting how the way I work has changed since twenty twenty two, since Chat GPT came out everything. It is but like r like right now I have replaced I don't use Comet anymore, I don't use Atlas anymore, which I loved both of them. I think that they're both actually really good. Yeah. I now just work in my regular Chrome browser and I use the Claude extension, which I think is really good as well. I wonder why you don't use like the Claude extension. I

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)
I'm

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)
using Claude's large language model dominantly inside of Perplexity's comic browser because that's the model that it uses more than any other model, are the Opus models. Yeah. And I but I also don't really care. Like, why do you hire an expert? So the expert could do the expert things. Sure. And AI will not replace subject matter expertise. It will replace low-level work from subject matter experts, for sure. But

Tyson Mutrux (22:05)
a challenge to that. Okay, okay. you I do, but ⁓ we'll keep going. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (22:10)
think it's also replacing higher level stuff. ⁓ we don't disagree.

Mathew Kerbis (22:10)
Okay. That's why I said for sure. For sure the lower level stuff. Right. And and yes, on some higher level stuff too. ⁓ but perplexity, why do I use perplexity? Because it's n I'm just not I'm not locked in to the Claude LLMs. It's using those, it's using GPT five point five a lot more on the computer stuff and the more complicated things. It's finding five point five is better. It's using Gemini on things sometimes.

Tyson Mutrux (22:16)
Gotcha.

Tyson Mutrux (22:16)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (22:38)
Because I'm using the prop the the the enterprise version, I don't think it's using the open source models really ever because there are security risks there. ⁓ but for the pro version, because of course I have like I have for my consulting company, I'm paying the two hundred a year for pro, and then for my law firm, I have to be paying the four hundred a year, you know, for the enterprise. my gosh, it's like it's like nothing. they they they're undercharging. I hope for the amount of Arvind isn't watching this right now.

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)
Get

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)
out of it? Yeah. Way undercharging. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (23:05)
So

Mathew Kerbis (23:05)
so in the pro version I use for ⁓ like for my podcast and and all that stuff, ⁓ I'm sure they're using the open source models for certain tasks that I'm assigning to it. I I I mean, so I'm ⁓ again, if when I'm using Perplexity Computer, I I could check which models it's using for which particular things, but I really care. Like that's why I'm using perplexity. I don't wanna build my own PC. That's why I'm a Mac guy. Right.

Tyson Mutrux (23:14)
Codecs using Codecs at all?

Tyson Mutrux (23:14)
I that's why yeah, Max disappear. But ⁓ so I'm gonna ask you so have you used the Amazon the medical thing that they're like it's like a is that what it's called one medical?

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)
I'm a one medical subscriber.

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)
So so one medical was ⁓ was like a subscription based like membership program that Amazon didn't own. And then they they purchased it and there's in my town there happens to be it's just like my literally my loc my closest doctor that's local to me, like the closest doctor's office. So I was like, awesome for nine bucks a month paid annually, like I'm in and I could text my doctor whenever I want.

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)
So yes, they have integrated AI into this. Okay. And I have tried asking some questions. And it's like, my gosh, I'm like giving up my data and privacy.

Tyson Mutrux (24:12)
Well check that because the reason why I ask you, check this out. One of our employees, she was she was asking me about it the other day, and I'm like, I I've heard I've heard them advertising the hell out of it. Yeah. And I've never used it. She's Well, check this out. So she she goes on for something for her son in in a matter of minutes. Okay, a matter of minutes. I'm talking not not like not 30 minutes, not saying I'm talking like a few minutes. She had told all the symptoms, a prescription was written, and it was said it was available at the local pharmacy.

Tyson Mutrux (24:12)
And I'm ma I'm like, how is that even possible? Yeah. There's gotta be a human that looks at it somehow because you can't just give a prescription without a human, like a doctor saying, Yes, this is okay.

Mathew Kerbis (24:53)
So so there are these AI native law firms now. Mm-hmm. I've actually interviewed one of the co-founders, JP Moeller of ⁓ General Legal, which is a YC backed like MSO style structure, ⁓ AI native law firm. and I for those for the audio-only listeners, I used quotes when I said AI native. Yeah. Finger quotes. ⁓ so

Tyson Mutrux (25:14)
You didn't hold him up high enough, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (25:15)
I

Mathew Kerbis (25:15)
did it. Yeah. So so sorry, cameras. Here we go. Here we ⁓ there there, there's there's my camera. So ⁓ so like they do do human in the loop review, but it goes so fast that it's hard to do that for every single contract, right? So I have to imagine that at least with medical, there's enough gap time between them actually getting the script that they've got some kind of automations or something set up where like the doctors are reviewing all of that stuff.

Mathew Kerbis (25:15)
you know, within twenty four hours because then it's not like they're gonna get the medication delivered within twenty four hours.

Tyson Mutrux (25:51)
No, it was to be picked up. It was pick to pick up at the local pharmacy. well.

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)
within like a few hours? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)
Hey,

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)
here's the good news, Tyson, and for all those personal injury attorneys out there, is when self driving eliminates motor vehicle accidents, at least you're gonna be able to go after everyone's accident.

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)
It's well that's funny. a court reporter that we use most of the time, like ninety percent of the time, she's like, I cannot believe you bought a Tesla. I'm just like like if we can eliminate all injuries, fantastic. That's like I my profession doesn't if if insurance companies were honest, my profession wouldn't exist. That's the thing. And there are some there are some honest adjusters in insurance companies, but the vast majority they're not. They're trying to to build people out of money, but that's another topic for another Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)
You had made a comment about all these a d a agentic workflows that you were working on and we won't be able to show them on screen. Now, I hopefully we will. Hold on. Do you wanna give the tease?

Mathew Kerbis (26:47)
Yeah, yeah. So so for those of you ⁓ that are watching this, ⁓ we're gonna have I'm gonna have a special link in the show notes, but but also we'll we'll only ⁓ I don't know, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have to I I I'm new at this time.

Tyson Mutrux (27:00)
We'll play some of that at the end, that way you have to stick around to the end of the episode. yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (27:04)
So stick around to the end of the episode and maybe I'll send you a video of it. There we go. Okay, so there we Stick around to the end of episode. but by the way, you're watching this, it's too late, but you'll probably do this next year. ⁓ Tyson and the team at Maximo Mloyer are putting on this awesome YouTube how to do you how to YouTube, I'm gonna call.

Tyson Mutrux (27:18)
YouTube accelerator, yeah. How

Tyson Mutrux (27:18)
do you I like it. We should just call it how do YouTube. Yes.

Mathew Kerbis (27:24)
Yes. yeah, the YouTube accelerator and like ⁓ and so you should come out to the next one. If you're watching this it's too late.

Tyson Mutrux (27:30)
I mean it's and I'll tell you I I love your city. Chicago's fantastic. we were having it this year, but it's this is it's really cool. But your Egyptian workflows. yeah. What are like what are the cool ones you're working on right now that you're like this and sometimes cool's boring. It it

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)
It is, but you know what? I no, I think this is awesome. And and now every time I start a C L E, I I run a version of this agentic workflow because I can show that while I'm teaching this C L E, actual substantive legal work that I've orchestrated is happening right now. And I I can't build by the hour for this because I'm doing something else. And it's not like a human's working on it. I've orchestrated AI to work on it. And I think the word orchestrate is really important. This is what I was talking to these students about.

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)
When we think of ourselves as any kind of professional or business owner or just employee or anything, even like in my life, we are the conductors. Right. We don't need to know how to play the vi we don't need to actually be able to play the violin, but we have to know how the violin works and how it's played and how it resonates with the drums and the other strings, right? And like we begin to orchestrate all of these tools to perform the symphony that we want.

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)
And when we don't apply our own taste, our own creativity, or think about the listeners, the audience and what they like and change the orchestration to that, that's AI slop. When we let these AI tools just make me a symphony, analyze this contract, slop, basic, the average is being raised.

Tyson Mutrux (29:01)
Yeah. Right. Well the way I put it is people spend so much time when it comes to like hiring and firing and learning people. Like you need to do the exact same thing with the AI. All the the same things you've done learning people and how to hire, how to fire, all the ins and outs of that, you need to be able to do the exact same thing with the AI.

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)
Absolutely.

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)
And I but I think that context is really important for what I'm about to explain. ⁓ so I will like get a new master services agreement. Right. And I pulled one from the SEC for demo purposes. And then I I open it up. I I I I mean, I use a lot of tools for this, right? So I like I still like Adobe Pro. I think they're, you know, twenty bucks a month is good for what I'm getting for value from it from it. So I'll open up this PDF of this SEC MSA, you know, for these two publicly traded companies.

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)
⁓ and I'll convert it to Word. And then I open up the Word document inside of Google Workspace and Google Docs. And then I convert it to a Google Doc. And then I go into ⁓ Gemini sidebar, which has gotten incredible. Just in the last three months, what you could do in Gemini and Google Docs is astounding. It used to say, I'll give you instructions on how to do this. And now it just doesn't work. So I could say, hey, does anything in this document not make sense? It was one of my favorite prompts now inside of Gemini.

Tyson Mutrux (30:11)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (30:17)
⁓ and it will say it will give me all the things that's wrong with this document, including formatting.

Tyson Mutrux (30:21)
giving it rules or are you just g generally asking?

Mathew Kerbis (30:24)
Well well, because I'm using Whisperflow for all this communication too. So I could just like verbally like blah, blah, blah. We're moving so fast, right? Because I'm just talking to my machines. Yep. And then it finds all these weird formatting things that are invisible to the human eye, but visible because of of the weird conversion process. So I'm like, great, fix all those. And then in like ten seconds, all those formatting problems are fixed. Think about how much human time is spent on formatting crap. Yeah. Fixed in seconds inside of Google Docs with Gemini now. I wonder Seconds.

Tyson Mutrux (30:51)
Why wouldn't you and maybe you're doing this and maybe you're just doing it as an example, why wouldn't you like upload that to your case management system and then just have it automatically do that?

Mathew Kerbis (31:00)
Google Workspace does it all for me. I don't have a case management system. And with Google Studio, have you have you come across Workplace Studio yet? Yeah. It's the Zapier killer, basically. Yeah. You could create all these agentic flows. And yes, of course, like we love our ⁓ our our LPMs that we're integrating Practi with, you know. But also, like, man, for $14 a month for Google Business Workspace Standard with Gemini baked in per seat.

Tyson Mutrux (31:03)
You never

Tyson Mutrux (31:03)
I can't believe you don't use a case management system. Like how do you organize notes and files and all that?

Mathew Kerbis (31:30)
Perplexity computer or personal computer now organizes all that stuff for me. And it does cost computer

Tyson Mutrux (31:36)
Here if if you want to go look at a matter, like how

Mathew Kerbis (31:38)
It doesn't

Mathew Kerbis (31:38)
matter 'cause you just tell it what you need and it will orchestrate it all for you.

Tyson Mutrux (31:41)
Well, okay, let's say that you need to ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (31:45)
And I'm a transactional attorney too, so it's a little bit of a different ball game than a litigator.

Tyson Mutrux (31:48)
'Cause like like sometimes I need to go like through the the actual case notes on a file to like s just to get it up to speed on things. So

Mathew Kerbis (31:54)
So I I maintain a a living Google Doc for every single client. And I also have that inside of Notebook LM so that I can create and and I I I prefer notebook LM because all the stuff you can make from it, but even just Gemini inside of Google Docs now, I could probably be like based off the last month of activity, generate a report for for my client for all the work that I've done. Because in the transactional space, and when you do subscription, you want to do like these monthly updates to your clients. Right. And so

Tyson Mutrux (31:58)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (32:22)
Notebook LM, I still think you could like you could make a video overview of it, which is awesome. Like a click of a button or here's an infographic of your last month with like all the stuff we've accomplished for your business, where we've where we've come, where we've gone, or even like of like the last year, you know, inclusive of the last month, right? So I really like Notebook LM for that. But like, yeah, I I just keep a a running tab. I could ask, ⁓ Go Google ha workspace has a cloud search feature, which basically searches your whole ecosystem. So not just you it's like, was this a Google ⁓ chat conversation?

Tyson Mutrux (32:26)
Which is a yeah. Right.

Mathew Kerbis (32:50)
⁓ you know, is this living in Google Drive or email or where is this? Google Cloud Search just searches everything for for stuff like that.

Tyson Mutrux (32:57)
So are you b with what you do, do you ever I'm assuming you have like draft things based off of template, right?

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)
So for that, I'm gonna use a third party outsource provider like a six fifty. and look, I full disclosure, I am talking my book a little bit. Some of these companies do sponsor lost subscribe, but I was always using them before they became sponsors and I was already talking about them. So they're like, hey, let's throw some sponsorship dollars there, right? ⁓ and if they're bad, I'm not I'm gonna stop using them and they'll stop sponsoring me. Right. Right, yeah, yeah. and and like I said, I ⁓ and my agreements with them, I could say whatever I want and I interview competitors all the time on my podcast. But ⁓ but six fifty I really like because

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)
For and their pricing is different. So I can't really say exactly what their pricing is, because depending on your circumstance, it will be different. They mostly sell to in-house teams and HR departments now, but fractional GCs like myself could also use them as like back office for compliance and updating ⁓ employee handbooks and employment docs and all this stuff. Like they have templates and they have workflows. I also use formula, which is formula with a W at the end.

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)
Very creative, the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education. And it's like it it's not great technology. Look, it's 30 bucks a month. ⁓ and I think it's like hot docs like integrated, and I can't change the questions, but I have some other like have I heard about SOP. I I know, I know. It's really old school. That's why they're not charging a lot. But like I'm using like template databases that it's their job and I'm paying them so that they update the templates. Yeah. Right. And then I could take the generated documents.

Tyson Mutrux (34:09)
Had I.

Tyson Mutrux (34:09)
Gotcha.

Mathew Kerbis (34:23)
from those template third party providers that I'm subscribing to and I could use Paxton or Perplexy Enterprise realistically both to update and improve and check compliance and all that stuff. Right.

Tyson Mutrux (34:35)
Did use like Clio or anything like that back in the day?

Mathew Kerbis (34:37)
No, because of the the lack of billing features that for to because it it didn't bill the way I needed to bill and now I'm paying for all this extra stuff that I'm not using.

Tyson Mutrux (34:45)
Yeah. Well have you ever used like a doc gen function on anything? Well I used

Mathew Kerbis (34:49)
Gavel for a while. Even back when it was Documate?

Tyson Mutrux (34:51)
Yet

Tyson Mutrux (34:51)
they code it, like code the documents and everything.

Mathew Kerbis (34:54)
Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (34:54)
so so back then, I mean now what they've done is really incredible because you could just upload a document and using AI it will like suggest all the automation. So it like it's in like one or two hours, you've got a fully automated document that used to take one or two months.

Tyson Mutrux (35:06)
So that that's the reason why I ask is because our our CTO Kashav had built out something where like we used to have to code all of our documents, whether it's Filevine, whether it's CloudLex, whether it was TrialWorks, whether it cla ⁓ Clio. And it's interesting. Now we just upload the document and the AI reads it and says, Okay, this is where this would go. This is where like and you can you can always change them if you needed to, but it's like there's no more like there's the need to code documents is is It's done.

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)
And I actually love standardized docs. I don't know if you've ever heard of this company, Bond Terms. No. B-O-N-T-E-R-M-S. Like a bonfire, bond terms. ⁓ Todd Smithline is one of the co-founders, and he actually had a subscription-based law firm like well over a decade ago, but he pivoted into standardized docs. There's also Common Paper, one NDA, which I think might have been acquired by Simple Docs or some there was some acquisition there. But there's this movement starting with non-disclosure agreements to move towards standardized docs. What I love about bond terms is they don't just have NDAs.

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)
They have ⁓ service level agreements, professional services agreements, like all these open source docs. Now they make money when enterprise companies or or or growing companies at scale need to like auto do all of this stuff, but they give away all their docs for free. And so when like my playbook, and and I've built this inside of a notebook in Notebook LM, and this is one of the things I teach about how curation and taste are our superpowers as subject matter experts and lawyers, is ⁓ is now I could.

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)
have this training ready to go and customize it with updated prompts and notebook LM of how to use bond terms for standardized documents that are open source and vetted by hundreds of lawyers from different stakeholders. And so when you get in a non disclosure agreement, look, I don't bill by the hour, right? So like let's get to deal close as fast as possible. And so when they you get this crazy NDA with all these non standard terms like we don't even look at it anymore. It's like here's bond terms, here's why we use bond terms. It's really stupid simple. It's mutual and it's not our paper.

Tyson Mutrux (36:47)
Absolutely, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (36:58)
And since it's not our NDA that we're saying we're fighting over NDAs, no, it's an open source standardized NDA. And so it's not like it somehow favors us over you. It doesn't favor either party. That's the point.

Tyson Mutrux (37:10)
Do usually I mean, I wonder like the other side do they fight that that much? No. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (37:14)
Whoa, this is amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (37:14)
That's usually like when I ⁓ when I'm done with a deal on the other side of a lawyer and they're like, So you bill on subscription? Tell me more about that.

Tyson Mutrux (37:23)
Yeah, like the litigation side of me wants to say, like, No, I gotta win this. I gotta I've gotta I've gotta make sure this is more favorable to my client than your client. That's that's you don't

Mathew Kerbis (37:31)
This is what I love about being a transactional attorney. I litigated for eight years, Tyson. And I I like we're just trying everybody's trying to close.

Tyson Mutrux (37:39)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (37:39)
How long how long did it take for the litigation side to wear off of you?

Mathew Kerbis (37:44)
I never really was that like like I so I I I I should say I only litigated for eight years. Yeah. Right. Like I never became this antagonist

Tyson Mutrux (37:51)
Eight

Tyson Mutrux (37:51)
years, man, it br that like that that's that's a l I mean, it aged you, I guarantee it aged you. Well yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (37:57)
Well well sure, and the billing hours didn't help.

Tyson Mutrux (37:59)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (37:59)
For that I've never had a bill, which is a blessing. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (38:03)
Yeah. ⁓ 'cause even when you're being productive, like it just drains the heck out of you, man. And like you you know like you're just racking up the bill for your client. And even when I was an insurance defense attorney for five years, like still like you're gonna have to fight over it with your client. Right? Like the bill.

Tyson Mutrux (38:18)
Like I hear I hear them talking about all the time. Like they're complaining to me about having to argue with their client about billing time, which I think is interesting.

Mathew Kerbis (38:25)
I I I know, it's wild. so so so I I I was the guy that they would bring in when two of the attorneys on a case were fighting with each other. I would come in I I would have to go to that hearing and like keep things cool. I just never was super antagonistic.

Tyson Mutrux (38:44)
I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. Yeah. I I do wonder I or yes. the the all the money flooding into legal tech, I have I I'm baffled by it over the last two years. I don't understand it. And I c I think if I were at the head of a legal tech company, I would be pretty scared. But I it's money keeps flooding in. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mathew Kerbis (38:48)
Organic food. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (38:48)
Are you into like ⁓ like the moonshots and A sixteen Z podcast at all? No like Peter Diamandis and Andreessen.

Tyson Mutrux (39:19)
I

Tyson Mutrux (39:19)
I know I I I I like Andreas and and then Peter Demondis, I I know who it is and I I I like Peter Demondis. I don't know the podcast.

Mathew Kerbis (39:26)
Okay. So like these

Mathew Kerbis (39:26)
Sure, sure. So I I they put out so much content. I I end up just having like Gemini summarized it for me. Yeah, yeah. But ⁓ but they are super optimistic about the future. And that has definitely rubbed off on me a little bit, right? In that like we are bringing about a world of abundance.

Tyson Mutrux (39:45)
I one thousand percent agree with that. Okay. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)
And so like, yeah, like all this money's flowing in, but like, you know, these are coming in from capital allocators that like it's a gamble. Like venture capital, less so private equity, but especially ventures, it's like it's gambling. You don't bet money that you can't afford to lose. So there's part of it there, right? And because of the power law, you know, if they make a hundred of these investments and one of them hit, it pays for ⁓ you know, way more than the hundred investments that they made. And that's the game that they're going after.

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)
And so I think the VCs are gonna be fine, Tyson. I think they're gonna be just fine. There's gonna be some winners, there's gonna be some losers. That's capitalism, baby.

Tyson Mutrux (40:25)
Yeah. Right. But if you were let's say you were the head I actually won't pick on this company. Let's say you're the head of a ki of of a major like case management system, like like wouldn't you be a little concerned?

Mathew Kerbis (40:37)
I'll I'll talk about these these companies. So, I mean, Jack Newton and what he's doing with Clio with the V Lux acquisition is freaking genius.

Tyson Mutrux (40:45)
I th I thought that was a brilliant acquisition. Yeah. I do agree with that.

Mathew Kerbis (40:49)
Yeah, because cause now they've got the data from large language models. Okay, so history lesson here of of of me and and AI. So in twenty twelve, I was a law student still. I was a second year law student. And I watched this TED talk on the TED channel, which I was still watching instead of just the YouTube channel, I think, because there were no ads. And there's this talk about machine learning. You go back and find it from twenty twelve, and I talked about it in medicine. And I saw that and I was like, whoa.

Tyson Mutrux (41:09)
Yep.

Mathew Kerbis (41:18)
The data. It's all about the data. And so I was thinking, how can we capture all of this court level data where now we can like train these machine learning models back then to like better predict outcomes for like what judges are going to decide for like just orders at the tr at the court, like entry court level of everything. Every jurisdiction calls it something different, right? So ⁓ and then Trellis actually came out.

Tyson Mutrux (41:21)
Toll is.

Mathew Kerbis (41:46)
Controlis is still, I think, killing it. But now Cleo already has all this data because all of their lawyers are uploading all this data into it. And now they've got these ⁓ if not language models, like this architecture around the language models that they got from V Lex, and they have some innovators' dilemmas type situations where they're not able to really throw out all their old tech and all their old code. But if they were to like just build from scratch, and they're probably doing this, all that data.

Tyson Mutrux (42:13)
Right. You have a

Mathew Kerbis (42:17)
From all these law firms and it's they're getting new data that's proprietary all the time.

Tyson Mutrux (42:21)
can this th this concerns me though. Okay, so you have like a company like Even Up Law. You ever heard of E have you heard of them? Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (42:28)
Talk to

Mathew Kerbis (42:28)
them back when they were like only like five employees. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (42:30)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (42:30)
They're they're like at now six hundred employees. Like they're massive. Like they they wall the data off, which so my firm, like they're not the the company is not using your data and my data. They're allowing me to use my data, you're they're allowing you to use your data, but you can't use my data, I can't use your and your the company's not using the data. So

Mathew Kerbis (42:51)
So

Mathew Kerbis (42:51)
they might be able to ⁓ check your terms of service and probably what what will I check because they probably can anonymize data and use it in other ways. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (42:54)
I don't have it. I don't use it.

Tyson Mutrux (42:54)
I would have to ask them. I I I've got a a pretty cl close contact over there that I can actually ask that. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (43:05)
I want them to.

Mathew Kerbis (43:05)
I want them to and I want Clio too and I want all these practice management platforms to start leveraging that data because legal stuff takes too effing long. And if we're able to manage the data better, it we could get to outcome faster.

Tyson Mutrux (43:21)
Let's say you're like a Lidify though, okay? Which I think Morgan and Morgan may have sold or John Morgan may have sold Lidify. I don't know if he still has

Mathew Kerbis (43:29)
Just announced

Mathew Kerbis (43:29)
private equity coming into Morgan and Morgan. Have you seen this?

Tyson Mutrux (43:32)
I did not. Let's let's let's okay. Let's come back to that 'cause I do want to ask you about CMOs and all that. ⁓ so when it comes to them, like let's say that Morgan and Morgan still owned all of Litify. There's no way as an injury attorney I would ever use Lidify because I don't want them to like they're are we a direct competitor? No. But they're also another injury firm. So in a way we are a competitor. So I would I wouldn't want them to have all that data. Now

Tyson Mutrux (43:32)
With Cleo, now Cleo's not competing with me. So I could see Clio anonymizing it and and it benefiting all of us. I could see that. Even Uplow, I could see that as well. But ⁓ if there's a law firm, which there's a lot of there's an I mean they're like Filevine, I I don't know if the injury firm that Ryan Anderson came from, if they've got any ownership stake in Filevine, but I don't think I'd want them to have access to that data. So I do have a concern if there's if there are firms that are using that data that other people don't don't have access to.

Mathew Kerbis (44:24)
know man I just don't worry about stuff like that right like you just gotta like why why do people hire you? ⁓ because they know like and trust you and you've built a brand. Yep. Like so I like I I I like to I like to analogize like our current age with like like medieval times. Yeah. So like the people like Okay so like the people like building the tools. Yeah. Right?

Tyson Mutrux (44:44)
Like I w I wanna hear this.

Mathew Kerbis (44:49)
are like blacksmiths. Okay. And then you've got those who are out there using the tools are like the knights in shining armor. Right. So building my sword, my shield, my armor, okay, my lance, all my my weapons I get to go out and use on the field, right? The way I use a sword or lance is going to be different from the way you you use it. And just because a blacksmith made the same lance for both of us. Doesn't mean we could what we could achieve with it is the same thing.

Tyson Mutrux (45:11)
Collapsis analogy. Here's how CMOs and the pr yes. Private equity comes in, right? Okay. now now the the blacksmiths are now the knights in shining armor because they're competing with everybody else. That's that could be a problem. I here's the thing, I'm all for private equity. So I actually veer make it very clear. I'm actually all for private equity coming in. I think it will make us better. W do you have any strong opinions one one way or the other?

Mathew Kerbis (45:15)
Bring up the

Mathew Kerbis (45:15)
Yeah, I think the legal industry needs more competition. Yeah. And so bring on the competition, right? Like that's part of the reason why the billable hour has survived as long as it has. I think like economic forces at play right now make it simply untenable today. ⁓ and and legal ethics too. ⁓ say and you know, don't get legal ethics advice on a podcast and I'm not giving any. But my interpretation for for me is if you don't use technology

Tyson Mutrux (45:53)
Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (46:08)
And you're billing by the hour, you're engaged in wasteful procedures that are against most rules of professional conduct, if not all. Right. And so you have to use the there's like the implicit rule of you must use technology to save time if you're billing by the hour. And lawyers are just not doing that. So like let's bring in some economic competition, some competition and let the economic forces at play win. ⁓ and then we're gonna innovate. Lawyers are some of the smartest people I know to bring it back to that, right? Present company included.

Mathew Kerbis (46:08)
And ⁓ and like we will innovate if we're forced to. But you also see lawyers in my state too, Illinois, like the Illinois State Bar Association has some some folks over there who like lobby and legislate to create like protectionism rules. And I just think that's the wrong play. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (46:53)
I've I have wondered for a while when the bars are gonna start to like put try to put up bigger fences around and I I don't think that that's the right move but I I think that that's definitely a

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)
We will lose

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)
our monopoly power to regulate ourselves if we continue to do that. True. And I don't want to lose that power. But also the fact that we are essentially a monopoly and that you have to have a law license to practice law means that ⁓ there's lack of competition and innovation. So like part of me is like, yes, get rid of our monopoly power. And the other side is like, can we just like innovate from within so we don't lose that? Because as a trained attorney, I understand.

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)
some of the ethical concerns of maintaining that power.

Tyson Mutrux (47:34)
So ⁓ I you and I were on a panel years ago. ⁓ it is is that what it was? I think that's what it was. Yeah. And I've I I've I I took the position then and I like I I I'm still with us. ⁓ I think if I'm a b as a business owner, I want the billable hour every day. I that's what I want. However, however, if I'm a client, I want I want a subscription model or I want a flat fee. Like and what the and this gets ⁓ I'll make my point. Okay. My point is.

Mathew Kerbis (47:42)
Law for management or office management.

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)
What we focus on too much as as attorneys in law firms is what we want as opposed to what the actual client wants. Like true marketing is like focusing on what the client wants, not what we necessarily want. And there has been for years like this whole idea that it's all about the attorney, right? It's all about you, the attorney. ⁓ I've seen it you've probably seen this too. Like there's a lot of attorneys like kind of full of themselves that like I r really early on, there was this guy, ⁓ I heard him like yelling at a laur at a

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)
⁓ a a law clerk, ⁓ like that worked for the judge. It was a clerk for a judge. And like I'm like, what is wrong with you? She probably makes thirty five thousand dollars a year and you're just screaming and he he felt like just very entitled to do it and it pissed me up. And I think the vast majority of attorneys are not that way. Right. There are a select few where like they just focus too much on on them as opposed to like what the actual clients needs. Or which kind of gets to your point about like

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)
the ethics part of the billable hour and everything else. But I think if we really looked at what what do the clients want, like what's in their best interest, it's probably not the billable hour, if I if I'm being honest.

Mathew Kerbis (49:08)
Yeah, it's it's definitely not. And and I really don't think it's in the lawyer's interest either, because your ability to scale becomes I mean, if not infinite, like damn near close, right? Yeah. Because there are only so many hours in a day, right? So the most limited resource is our time. And just because I don't assign a dollar amount to my time doesn't mean I don't extremely value it and protect it as much as possible. I'm just not selling time. Yeah. Nobody wants to buy time. You can't literally buy time. You can't. True. Or if you could, ⁓ you know, Musk would live forever.

Mathew Kerbis (49:08)
Right.

Tyson Mutrux (49:39)
So

Tyson Mutrux (49:39)
so you're saying that the Bill of Bower is more limiting on the on law the law for Mona?

Mathew Kerbis (49:42)
So it's not that it's not a profitable business model. absolutely. I mean, lawyers have become millionaires. Yeah. Right from billing time. But it's it's limiting because there are only so many hours in a day that you could bill. Billers are expensive, right? To hire a biller costs six figures. Mm-hmm. Right. And you're only getting a margin on that. What are clients actually going to pay? You're exhausting all these time this time and resources into collecting those bills in arrears, right? So that's all waste of time that you can't do productive things with. Meanwhile, if you know a client's willing to pay

Mathew Kerbis (49:42)
fifteen hundred dollars for three hours for five hundred dollars an hour on a particular legal outcome, then it doesn't matter how long it takes. And now you could do it again and again and again and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. So tracking time as law firms transform their their revenue model from hourly to subscription, which Practice helps with, practice.ai, in case folks didn't know that. Like practice, spelled like practice, ⁓ then

Tyson Mutrux (50:31)
Cracky dot AI. Yeah. Check it out.

Mathew Kerbis (50:37)
Now what they're able to do is okay, that task took three hours. Clients willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars. How do we make it take an hour and a half, an hour, fifteen minutes? Automate it. Now how many more times can we do that for how many more clients?

Tyson Mutrux (50:53)
So it's kind of how mechanics do it. So my dad's a mechanic and he ⁓ it's it's interesting 'cause they have let's say the job they bill based on the job. So let's say that the job is is a five hour job. If they get it done in an hour, they still get paid for the five hours, right? So it's it is kind of a nice nice thing. It's a similar way of doing it. It's just it's flat fee but based on an hourly basis is kinda how is kinda how it works. I do think from a business understandpoint, it is almost

Tyson Mutrux (50:53)
It is a very it's close to perfect. I I completely get your point, 'cause if you truly do dial things in, you could make more money. But I and I do agree with that. But I also do think that you I see these big law firms, they what what was the big one that just like they were paying their partners forty million dollars as a bonus? Did you see this recently? like holy crap. Like forty million as a bonus? Like what are they making on a regular basis?

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)
And get recurring revenue. Which is predictable.

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)
I forget which one, but yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)
many ⁓ and let's be real man like like we talked about earlier, how many wives are they on? Because we're talking about white men here, right? Right, yeah. Do how many kids do they have from different marriages? Do they even know their kids? Probably not. You cannot pay me enough money to not be involved in my daughter's life.

Tyson Mutrux (52:03)
You and I are both we've talked to this w before, like we both drop our kids off at school. Like that's th that's that's a really important part of like I think both of our lives. So I completely agree with that. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)
It's just not worth it, man. You can't pay me enough money. So so like but but the thing is too is like how you pay your people, I think matters too. And I think paying them by the hour is nonsensical. And while I've always been a solo practitioner for my law firm and I I you know I outsource things always project based, right? Never hourly. ⁓ and as an independent consultant and podcaster, I do it all myself. I produce it all myself. With Practi, it's the first time I've worked with somebody in a long time. And now that I have a co founder and we're able to bounce ideas off of each other and work together now

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)
Obviously we have equity in our company and I'm paying my co-founder before I'm paying myself, actually. because he's a software developer in like big tech, he could go make crazy money somewhere else, right? So we'll pay him first. But as I think about who we're going to be hiring for practice as we grow in scale, I'm thinking I don't want to pay anybody by the hour. I'm gonna pay them a set amount, you know, th they'll be quote unquote salaried for like tax purposes and such.

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)
But I'm going to give them super bonus structures. So it's like, here's it requires real leadership and real management. Hourly billing and hourly paying for employees is just lazy. Right. Especially those in the maximum lawyer community and the association. Like you guys are leaders. You're not lazy. And so okay, how many hours did it take? Okay, well, why does it take so many hours if not you're paying the employee? Right. And of course that's why the clients have the same conversation with Bill Black. Well, now it's like, okay, here are your projects that you need to get done this every single week.

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)
Here are your stretch projects. Here are your super stretch projects. You have to hit every super stretch project to get your 1.5, you know, like 50% more of what I'm already paying you. And I will double your salary if you get these super stretch goals, but you have to get all of them done. But it requires real management. Well, AI actually makes this a heck of a lot easier. ⁓ and I'm not talking about like monitoring all your keystrokes and stuff. I'm about measuring outcomes, KPIs, okay.

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)
That's what matters. It's not how many hours did it take. Because now I'm creating the incentive for you to just get your stuff done high quality still and as fast as possible because we're still measuring ⁓ quantity and quality of output that keeps clients happy, speed to deal time or to resolution if you're a litigator. Right? And how long didn't it take? And client retention. Right. And client retention. Those are the four important KPIs that we're measuring now. And but I have to.

Tyson Mutrux (54:30)
How long didn't it take? I like that. Right.

Mathew Kerbis (54:37)
come up with and strateg and think about what are the things that this person needs that this employee needs to get done. AI will help with that.

Tyson Mutrux (54:45)
Yeah, I I completely agree. And like w how much are you I guess you're you are I mean you're still true solo. Is that how is that how you are?

Mathew Kerbis (54:52)
For

Mathew Kerbis (54:52)
the firm at this point, I mean like we didn't actually explain some of this orchestration that I'm doing with the Gentec workflows 'cause we we went off on a tangent, but ⁓ but like I'm like I p I will happily pay another three thousand dollars a year for an AI tool because I don't have to hire an employee and it could just take care of all that work for me.

Tyson Mutrux (55:08)
Wa I wonder how it's since I mean, you're a great example with this because you have done it before AI and you're doing it now with AI and you were doing it true solo the back then too, right?

Mathew Kerbis (55:20)
Yeah, I I said when I launched my firm in March of twenty twenty two, which was pre Ch Chat GPT. Yep. I said I am a tech company that happens to be a solar practice law firm. Today we call those AI native law firms. Yep.

Tyson Mutrux (55:32)
That's how we were that's how we've always kind of positioned ourselves too, 'cause it it it does make sense to be that way. ⁓ I do wonder how much like what is your work week look like now versus let's say, you know, ten years ago? 'Cause I do wonder if you've are you working less now? Yeah, why?

Mathew Kerbis (55:47)
No, I'm working way more.

Mathew Kerbis (55:47)
Way more. Well, there's so much more I could do. I also have three companies. Yep. ⁓ but I will like like since September, which is when we incorporated Practi and we got into a pre accelerator program, shout out to Founder University, ⁓ Jason Calicanus's ⁓ pre accelerator program. I basically stopped the marketing flywheel for my firm.

Tyson Mutrux (56:12)
Have you did you see Mark Andreessen talking about AI vampires? yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's it's funny 'cause I I've kind of caught myself working more. Like I've gotten up in the middle of the night just to check my agent to see like if it's was doing what I was asking it to do. Like have have you gotten to that level?

Mathew Kerbis (56:29)
So no, because I still try to get a yeah, I'm I'm not that crazy because I've also like like the stage at which all my companies are right now doesn't necessarily require that. I think it may in the in the near future. ⁓ but even then like Perplexity Enterprise is integrated in my whole workspace and my computer and I have you you could you could run what they call tasks inside of Enterprise or I think any perplexity could do this. I I have more access to do more of them because I'm paying more. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (56:31)
Hours of every day.

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)
Intr interestingly enough, it's it's under the notifications tab and settings. And so you could schedule it to run any kind of research inquiry, deep research, regular search, create a document, all these things as ⁓ for me as many times as I want or need. And I could have it referenced back to an earlier one. And so by the time I sit down at my desk at like eight thirty, nine o'clock every every day, it's already done most of the work for me. Right. And I just have to like do human on the I consider this more human on the loop because I like come in.

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)
And then I have I do more and then I come in and I I like to say I have my I the AI do work for me in chunks instead of like doing all the work and then having to go in and do human in the loop like verification, because it just takes way too long. But if you verify in chunks and you do more human on the loop, which is what Damian Real explained to me, what you call what I do. Otherwise I wouldn't know that that's what you call on the loop versus in the loop. By the time I'm doing that final verification and review and analysis.

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)
I've already done all these steps along the way that it doesn't take as much time. and just like my mushy meat brain like is able to handle that better than like have to review a 30 page, you know, AI and analyze and redline document versus being able to just do it in chunks. So it doesn't like I'm it doesn't take me a lot of time to do work anymore. Like I'm doing very, very high level work and thinking about what I need the AI to do. And I'm not just letting these tasks that run every single morning ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)
Just go. I'm like looking at the output and I'm thinking, how could I improve that prompt to make that task better? And how could I maybe create another task that looks at the previous task and creates that better? Like right now we are actually for part of our go to market startup lingo for for practice is we're building out a new podcast network.

Tyson Mutrux (58:44)
Really? Interesting.

Mathew Kerbis (58:46)
Because

Mathew Kerbis (58:46)
pod podcasting, really important. Thank you to the podcast studio in Chicago here for I really think podcast like we call it podcasting, be like, what does that even mean? Like I'm just creating content, right? ⁓ I think creating content is one of the most important things you could do as any business, period. Hence the YouTube accelerator that you guys are teaching. The how do YouTube. But how but it's not just on YouTube. You gotta be on Substack, you gotta be on Beehive, you gotta be on ⁓ all the podcast apps, you have to be everywhere.

Tyson Mutrux (58:51)
They're great.

Tyson Mutrux (58:51)
The how do you two?

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)
You know, on and on the meta platforms, right? Yeah, I mean, YouTube is one of the number one places you could do because it's video, it's the second largest search engine after Google, right? ⁓ but content's so, so important. And also being able to segment the audience, right? So we're not just launching one podcast for Practice, we're launching a podcast network because for people who just want to hear from lawyers on how they've used Practi to save time and make more money, we're gonna have that channel. For those who want to just hear

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)
From experts that we bring on to teach about how they can do all the things that Practice doesn't actually help them with, because we don't help with service delivery or getting clients or marketing. It turns out though, because even though I've turned off my marketing flywheel, since I advertised my pricing online and I've done it for four years, I have AI even clawed recommending my firm because putting your pricing, advertising your pricing, the AI likes that and it services that to use to users of AI, potential clients of law firms.

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)
With practice, like that's one of our dominant things that we could help law firms with, because we give you an e-commerce store-like experience for your law firm that says what your pricing is.

Tyson Mutrux (1:00:23)
Will you will you go a little more detail about what practic is? 'Cause I don't think we've really explained what it does. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)
Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)
yeah. And and you know, it's hard because I know your audience is broad. ⁓ and and I explain it in different ways, more narrow my aud you know the audience is, but it's the same way that Shopify let any business have an e-commerce store, both brick and mortar or just virtual online store. You could even do like drop shipping now with it and they're focused on agenda commerce with AI agents buying stuff for people. We are basically building that for law firms where in a really frictionless, seamless way, you can

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)
⁓ build out subscription packages for your firm and clients could click and subscribe and agree to your engagement terms right there in a seamless, frictionless way. And and and I love ⁓ intake companies like Lawbroker, Shout Out, you know, like they're they're doing great stuff there. And that's still necessary for certain practice areas to have a really good intake system. But you know what's gonna really prevent people from like trying to sign up for your law firm fraudulently? When they have to sign up and start paying a thousand dollars a month right away.

Tyson Mutrux (1:01:26)
That's true.

Mathew Kerbis (1:01:27)
Right. Like why do you need like all this extra intake when it's like like they have to pay you before they even get access to you? And I have entry level pricing at twenty dollars a month and even that keeps some fraudsters away.

Tyson Mutrux (1:01:37)
an off topic question okay about that. Do you ever with the subscription model, do you ever have like fraudulent charges like people use other people's credit cards?

Mathew Kerbis (1:01:44)
no no, but that's one of the reasons why we use I use Stripe at my firm. And Stripe is our first ⁓ payment platform that we're using when we were going live with ⁓ with Practi. ⁓ and for those of you that don't know Stripe, ask Perplexity to tell you about Stripe. Mm-hmm. ⁓ it's like the number one, it's like the best, most reliable payment process. Yeah, Stripe's phenomenal. And actually I t speaking of Maximum Lawyer at at MaxlawCon last year, ⁓ I met an attorney at MaxlawCon who was just about to

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:01)
For Maxim Lawyer. Same thing.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:12)
try to leverage Shopify for his firm. Fractional G C for car dealers in I wanna say ⁓ Georgia. I think so.

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:21)
Was it Steven Lefkoff? Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:21)
Lef it had a business. It has with what you just said, he's in Atlanta. He does he he represents dealers, so it's gotta be Lefkoff. Yes, it really

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)
Yeah, it's good to have a niche, right? It is.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)
And so but the problem with Shopify is it takes a percentage. And so we can't do unethical fee splitting when when you do subscription based stuff. And the reason it does that is there's actual real fees on the payment processing side for subscription based stuff. So the way we've architected and set up practice to integrate with Stripe today, and as we look into the eight AM integration, you know, law pay would be a natural second payment processor to try to work with. I also like Confido Legal as well, but like we're just going to market with Stripe.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)
⁓ we just charge a flat monthly rate, right? So our early bird pricing, if you want to get in today, is only twenty dollars a month. And that's after you subscribe your second client. And you better be making more than twenty dollars a month after subscribing your second client. And and later this year, or maybe after we cross our first hundred users, we're we're approaching our 60 first law firms on the platform as of recording. We're gonna up that to a hundred dollars a month. But even then, trying to keep it super reasonable, super affordable, it's not replacing your whole tech stack, it's just hopefully replacing your your billing and time tracking software.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)
So at a hundred dollars a month, you better be making more than that every single month through practi before we start charging.

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:37)
So that's pretty interesting. So the twenty dollars a month only kicks in after they gotten their second client?

Mathew Kerbis (1:03:42)
Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (1:03:42)
so see I'm a solo practice law firm owner, Tyson, and I get sold on legal tech and I've yeah, and and I've been in the shoes and I get pitched all the time. And now as a as a startup CEO and co founder, I get pitched all the time on all other kinds of technology and stuff. But I'm always like, Well, what's the ROI? Mm-hmm. Like how do I know, like why should I invest thousands of dollars before I know what I'm actually getting back?

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:46)
You're thinking about your customer.

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:46)
Man, I got a horror story. I won't mention the company. You've talked about it. I should. I okay. Like I was flown out and I was wind and dying and I paid twenty grand up front and I was so didn't get anything that they promised us. It never worked. And I was just like, We're just gonna cut our ties.

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:10)
'Cause you've I I listened to

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:10)
Yeah, and and and look, like I I don't wanna do that. Like I don't wanna do that to me. I don't wanna do that to our our customers, our la the law firm owners. And like like I with Lost Subscribed, I'm talking to law firm owners all the time for the pod.

Tyson Mutrux (1:04:36)
I love the approach. Yeah. I really love the approach. That's a that's a w it's a great pricing model. 'Cause like people it's now it's proof of concept. I've played around with it. Okay, I like it. I use it and it's it's making me money, so I'm gonna give you money. Like that that's a brilliant model.

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:51)
And not charging too much so that you don't go vibe code it yourself. Although I don't think you can vibe code practice because I'm pretty technical for being non technical and I couldn't vibe code it. I had to partner with a very technical ⁓ co founder to be able to make it.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:04)
We we've we went through I mean we we're making some massive upgrades this week on our our case management system that we built. It is it is incredible. I mean it's like but the thing about vibe coding is is that you've gotta have some basic technical knowledge, plus probably a CTO like you do that deals with all the other like back end stuff. Plus you have to spend a significant amount of time on it. And

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:25)
You need

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:25)
a product person. Yes. You need a dedicated product person that we're no, but you need a product person if you're vibe coding because you have to make the product better and make sure it works.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:28)
You're not selling us so I don't need a prog person. You do.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:28)
Yep. I get what you mean there. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:38)
Not not necessarily like like if the CEO is also the product person of the firm, if the managing partner has to also be in the product, figuring it out how how to make it better, how to fix bugs, how to do

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:52)
You have

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:52)
to have somebody focused on that vibe coding product or on all the vibe coding projects going on in the firm or in the business.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:58)
It's funny 'cause there is there are some case management systems out there or legal products in general. Yeah. Clearly an attorney has never touched it. yeah. It was created by a tech person. You're like, this is not intuitive at all. This makes no sense. ⁓ but there's also a lot of really good ones too. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:12)
If I see made by lawyers for lawyers, I run far away. Which is why we do not advertise that at practice. And my technical co-founder is amazing in terms of like coming up with and and we're very AI native. Yeah. I'm using AI a lot. Like when I was making our business cards, I like used a previous template business card to like make our business cards. And he's like, No, I like threw it into Claude, and here's what it suggested. I'm like, wow, that's way better. Way better. Way better. Yeah. Right.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:16)
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:16)
So let's okay, I want to shift gears too. Wanna make sure we get to the agentic workflows. Okay. Come back to Yeah, yeah. I want to get your thoughts on thoughts on CMOs because I had a conversation. MSOs. I'm so sorry. MSOs. I I always do that. I think I've done that like five different episodes. MSOs. So ⁓ CMO completely different. MSO, yes. So yes, exactly. MSOs. Thoughts on MSOs. I I wonder if we get your thoughts on it.

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)
CMOs or SOs?

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)
Cheap marketing offices.

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)
Yeah, and so that's a managed service organization for those who aren't sure what they mean. ⁓ and ⁓ like hospitals and medical providers are where this came in first. And it was lawyers who came up with the structure for private equity to come in and buy up all these medical providers.

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:18)
Which is interesting

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:18)
that and that was decades ago.

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:22)
Yeah, and this is why I'm a one medical subscriber now, 'cause my ex my experience with my doctor became

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:27)
Crap. Yeah. Right. But but MSOs are becoming like a big thing in the legal space now. Or or here's the thing. People are talking about it as it's gonna become a big I've not seen it become a big thing yet.

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:39)
I know one investor who is investing in MSOs in the personal injury space. And I basically tried to convince him to not do it. That does not to say that it can't work. It's that I think the long tail of that is not going to be it's not going to work, and here's why. At least on the private equ equity side of things. Because lawyers will outregulate it, which ⁓ is bad, I think, for the reasons we talked about, but also it's going to create competition.

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:39)
From lawyers from the ground up, the solos and the smalls that are gonna be able to now have to compete and leverage technology. And one this is we're actually building practi i in an inadvertent way to be the anti MSO sort of what what what's what's like people talk about crypto, it's like a it's like a D something, what is it? D

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:31)
Centralized.

Mathew Kerbis (1:08:32)
For like

Mathew Kerbis (1:08:32)
the decentralized MSO. Because we're going to empower lawyers to have alternative revenue and now actually be able to adopt other technology and compete and get recurring revenue to be able to invest in more technology and better innovation and actually compete with these MSO structures.

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)
Have

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)
you ever heard of a company called Big Tree Medical? Okay, so they're they're in multiple states, but they're the they were sh found started in Columbia, Missouri. And it's interesting because it's like the reverse, it's what you're talking about. It's decentralized. We're like they go, it's a subscription model, which you would like to Hey, hey, hey. And so you get like a con like when I walk in, so I it's funny, we have health insurance through the firm, but I also have like this ⁓ concierge type of a of a medical doctor I can go into. I can get in tomorrow, by the way. I can't, I don't have to like wait

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)
eight months to get into the freaking doctor. Like if I were to go through University of Missouri or some other system, it takes months sometimes. Yeah. But it is interesting. It's like it's what you're talking about where they were like, okay, we're gonna we're gonna change this. I when I walk in, they greet me by name. They hey, can I get you a water or a soda or something? They get they they it can I get you a coffee? It's not like when you go into a normal medical clinic now where it's like you sit in a freaking waiting area for an hour. And no I I'm in in a minute or two. It's it's very well done and

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)
It is i if I do wonder if that's gonna be what's happening in the medical space where everyone has revolted against the MSOs a little bit 'cause they hate And I wanna now legal space, we're gonna adopt this thing that is not doesn't have a good track.

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:00)
Yeah, and and the thing about it is is we will be able to compete on brand. we'll be able to compete on experience. Right. Because when you stop selling time, you start selling transformations. Mm-hmm. Right. When like the classic whole, like, you know, am I paying like ⁓ like a like a handyman to come and hang a painting? I'm not paying him for his time to come and hang the painting. I'm paying him for the hole in the wall. Except I'm not paying him for the hole in the wall.

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:00)
Right. I'm paying him for his expertise on where to hang the hole, but that's not actually what I'm paying for either. I'm paying for him to actually have the painting in place at the end of the day, the outcome. wait, no, that's not what I'm paying him for. What I'm paying him for is that it has nothing to do with him. It's because when that painting is there, it's going to make me feel something every single day. We are selling not just outcomes, but transformations when you stop selling your time.

Tyson Mutrux (1:10:52)
I'm I'm paying him 'cause I don't wanna do it. That's what

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)
Do

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)
arbitrage. Yes. But with legal, you can't really do it by yourself. Yeah. And so, like for personal injury, it's not about the money. It's about how do you feel when the case is over? Even when you lose, did they feel like you represented them well at trial? Right. It's all about that transformative experience. That's what we're selling. And when you stop selling time and you start selling transformations and value.

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)
It just changes the game and solos and smalls are better suited to do that than anyone else.

Tyson Mutrux (1:11:29)
How do get that with with a subscription model though? Because like I for me, like I've given the like and I'm not saying you don't give them you give them things probably on a regular basis way more than we do. And maybe that's what it is, but like how do you get those outcomes? Cause like we we have a definitive outcome at the end of the case. One way or the other, we have a definitive outcome. So how do you deliver those experiences and and keep them engaged where like they're always pleasantly surprised?

Mathew Kerbis (1:11:54)
Yeah, I mean there is no magic solution, just like there's not one AI tool to use and you just use this one AI tool, right? Yeah. I mean context matters. I don't that that's a fancy way of saying it depends, Tyson. ⁓ so one of the things that I do, and 'cause I've done I did a lot of coaching on how to do subscription before I decided to launch Practice, 'cause it could just scale better and actually help people instead of be like, here's a hundred tech tools, go demo them, right? And see which ones work for you. I found that lawyers want tastemakers to just tell them what actually works.

Tyson Mutrux (1:12:00)
Like this answer. I want a better answer.

Mathew Kerbis (1:12:21)
And if this doesn't work for you, then here's like one or two other solutions. If you don't like Calendly, right, there are here are some other scheduling platforms, right? But speaking of Calendarly, that's one of the ways I give this experience. Every single client gets a custom calendarly link that I gentically create using combat browser. Right. And I don't actually have to go in there and click around. and with Whisperflow, I have a create new calendarly link prompt, right?

Tyson Mutrux (1:12:45)
But if you're using Calendly, do what Matthew's talking about because don't give them your generic link. That's the biggest mistake you could ever do.

Mathew Kerbis (1:12:53)
And when and when they unsubscribe, you just turn off that link. Yeah. And they don't they're not able to schedule calls again with you. ⁓ I don't know. I but but I I I don't actually know, but I do bet they try because I have boomerang clients. And as soon as they resubscribe, sometimes at higher levels, right? ⁓ I just turn that link back on and we're work we're we're gonna be working on t today practice just Shopify for law firms. In the future we also wanna be Roku for

Tyson Mutrux (1:13:00)
I bet they try. Bet they try.

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:21)
For your software as well. Right? And so we want we want it to be so that when a client subscribes and unsubscribes, and if you use Calendly will be our first partner for this for sure. I actually got to meet the CEO of Calendly. He scheduled a meeting with me using my Calendly. That's all is amazing. ⁓ I went out there for their annual on-site for their company as one of their power user customers a couple of years ago. So so we want it to be that it automatically creates that new Calendly link.

Tyson Mutrux (1:13:36)
Awesome. It's so cool. That's pretty cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)
And turns it on and turns it off when they subscribe and unsubscribe. So that's on the product roadmap. We're really focused on just making the best subscription, ⁓ recurring revenue, flat fee experience that you could have today, like a checkout in a cart e-commerce experience. But that is on the roadmap. But today I just tell Comet Browser to make these things for me. And if they subscribe at a higher level, you have different you you could set up all these things inside a Calendarly where it's like, these are my hours of availability for this type of link. And so I just make it from, you know, my $20 a month availability to my

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)
Higher paying ⁓ you know, availability for my time. ⁓ and then like that's just an amazing experience. Here's your customs calendar link that has your name or your business name in it. And you use it whenever you want. No limitations other than when I'm already available, when I make myself available. Right. And I had a client schedule three of them in one day because we were working on a big deal. And that's fine. Totally fine. Yeah. I did have one client schedule like like every single day of the week once, and I had to talk to him and I was like,

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)
We're not talking about anything. You're taking up another slot. This really isn't what it's for. That's why I love month to month subscriptions in the transactional space, 'cause I could fire a client. Right. And we make it really easy to do that inside of practice.

Tyson Mutrux (1:14:59)
Let's talk about a genetic workflows because I won't try to have time to do this. ⁓ because we are getting load on time. But it you what we promise at the end of the episode. So we did promise that. Okay, okay. What is your your highest ROI workflow that you've created and how did you build it?

Mathew Kerbis (1:15:14)
that's a really good, that's a great question, Tyson. ⁓ and I didn't have to build it. I just orchestrated it. So the way that I think about AI, and I've been meaning to, I've said this a few times now. This is the first time I've been recorded saying this though. And I'm gonna create like I'm gonna use Gemini Vio to create this, is imagine you have like a vase. Okay, and the vase is your law firm. Like a glass vase, you could see through it. And you put different size rocks in that vase and different items and different things. And those are your people, that's your technology, that's your AI, that's all that stuff.

Mathew Kerbis (1:15:14)
And then it fills up to the top and it looks full, but there's all this empty space. Rocks. Per perplexity is sand, and you pour sand in the vase, and perplexity fills up all the gaps between the rocks. Right? Comet browser is a pitcher of water. And then you pour water into the vase and it fills up all the space between the sand. Right? And so I don't really have to build.

Tyson Mutrux (1:15:49)
It's like the rocks. The rocks in the bucket.

Tyson Mutrux (1:15:49)
What are the flowers? Is that is that is that the outcome that are the the output

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:15)
It's

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:15)
just rocks. It's just rocks in here. It's just rocks. But the point is is there's it is whenever there's gaps between your tech and your people and whatever you've built at your firm, your stack, I find perplexity fills most of the gaps and comic browser fills the rest. Because you c anything you could do in a browser, it can do. And so what I've done is I take ⁓ and video to come after this, so I'll make sure to record it and send it to Tyson to put at the end of this episode if you're interested. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (1:16:33)
Yep.

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:43)
Is inside of comet browser, let's I get a new master services agreement, let's say I have to fix all the formatting like I explained earlier in Gemini, I always convert it to a Google doc because I like to be able to ask Gemini about things too. But I create a group tab and I have Paxton and ⁓ and the Google Doc of the doc open, sometimes multiple documents open. But

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:01)
thinking by the way while you're doing this, I'm actually hoping we can have it right here as we're talking. So if hopefully when I magically do this it pops up. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)
Kind of cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)
Okay. But you

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)
you got it. And then and then what we're that's awesome. What a vision. Talk about a visionary. A I is not going to come up with that. That's great. So so ⁓ so then what I do is I I upload the doc to Paxton and I have a detailed conversation and analysis with it, right? 'Cause you don't say analyze this contract. You're gonna get blah slop. So I say I am the attorney for buyer. buyer's goals are X, Y, and you're talking using WhisperFlow.

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)
Dude, fantastic, right here. That's great.

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)
Typing this yourself. No, I'm typing

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)
but like it's coming from your brain.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
That's

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
coming from my brain. Use WhisperFlow. So I always say, Who who am I? Who is my client? What's the purpose of what we're analyzing this document for? And who is the ultimate audience at the end of the day? Am I sending the analysis to the other attorney? Am I sending it to my client to review with them? And I say all this to the tool, and then it runs its first round of analysis. And I and sometimes it tries to export it as a g a word a word doc right away. I'm like, no, Paxton, don't do that. No, no, no. and with Paxton, I also could turn on ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
I can't remember what they call the feature, but I could apply like the applicable law. So is it Delaware law? Is it Illinois law? Is are there two states? Does federal law apply? So it's looking at the law that applies in addition to just running a legal analysis. One of the reasons I really love Pakistan. So then I don't just take the first output. I have an I I I analyze the output and I say, okay, for sections one, 10 through 14, ⁓ 20, and and 25, right? Like here are the sections that that I think we need to focus on and and and care about.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
Now what I want you to do is I need you to to look at those sections specifically and actually propose alternative language and and and show share with me what that proposed ⁓ language is based upon you know what I said in the original part of the conversation. Then it gives me that analysis, which I review again. I'm reviewing it in chunks, right? So I look at that and I say, great. Now I'm going to be I and I tell it, I'm going to be using an agentic workflow to redline the document.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
So I need you to put it and explain in very specific detail so the AI agent understands where to put in these red lines inside this document. And then it gives me that, you know, and this is all done in like five minutes. It's very fast. The longest part is just it like ⁓ incorporating the document, like OCRing and understanding and vectorizing the document. And that only takes a couple of minutes. And then I tell Perplexity's AI assistant in the comet browser I've that I have a a group tab open.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)
In one tab is Paxton, only look at the last part of the conversation there because it tells you what you need to do. And then inside of the Google Doc in this document, I want you to go through and using the suggested edits feature, which is Google Docs version of red lines of track changes, put in all of the changes. I have reached, I found the limits of what Perplexity is able to do with this, which is only up to 200 changes, which is still a massive amount. If I'm doing more than 200 changes, that's way too much, right?

Tyson Mutrux (1:19:55)
That's a massive move.

Mathew Kerbis (1:19:58)
And so I orchestrate all of that in about five, ten minutes for any new agreement, no matter the size, although for shorter contracts, it just takes it goes way faster. And then I go and do some something else. And I could run up to a dozen of these at a time because of the hardware that I'm working on. My Mac Mini M4 Pro has never run so hot and it used to run so cold and I never heard it. And I actually start hearing the fan kicking on sometimes.

Tyson Mutrux (1:20:23)
I've got a Mac Studio. I bought a Mac Studio for this purpose because I well I was gonna run some the show on it too, but also because of the you can run a bunch of AI stuff. Like you gotta have something with some meat on it because otherwise it's not gonna it's gonna heat up.

Mathew Kerbis (1:20:36)
And here's the thing, it could take it thirty minutes to an hour to make all the changes. Yeah. Because it's actually clicking around on the screen and like making those changes, right? That's what

Tyson Mutrux (1:20:44)
cool about any of the using any of the agents is you can just set these ten things and just go do something else, which is really cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:20:51)
Yeah, the longest thing I've ever done, and this was vibe coding, was three hours it took. And I had to come in and check. And what I love about the Comet Browser AI assistant is it takes screenshots and you could look at the full audit log. Cause we have to verify as attorneys. Yeah. You have to verify as anything if you want high quality work product, regardless of if you're a lawyer or whatever, subject matter expert. and by the way, if you're not a lawyer and you're doing this and you're an expert in a case, all of this is probably discoverable.

Tyson Mutrux (1:21:18)
yes, there's the the case law coming out about that too. And like defendants or playing party in a in a lawsuit, like using Chad GPT, all that's discoverable too.

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:26)
What what I 'cause I still do a lot of public speaking and training and stuff, and I'm like, in every single production you request, you need to ask for all of the AI chat logs, period.

Tyson Mutrux (1:21:36)
Completely agree. Yeah. And you also need to be advising your your clients to not use Chad's G P T for

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:41)
Or

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:41)
things that you want preserved by attorney client privilege. Yeah. There's a case called Crafton, Crafton with a K. It's it was out of Delaware. Every lawyer needs to read this case. I as soon as it came out, I created a memo just right inside of Perplexia Enterprise to send all of my clients that's like, if you don't want this to be discoverable in any potential future litigation, you have me use my legal specific HIPAA SOC2 ISO compliant AI.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:04)
Great idea. That's fantastic. Are you on X or or Twitter?

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:05)
Subscription baby.

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:05)
⁓ I'm pretty much just on LinkedIn. Okay.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:10)
'Cause Rob Freund do you know Rob Freyn? ⁓ so he he posts about like all the different kind of cra I guarantee he passed he he ⁓ posted about that case. Like it's usually about some AI ⁓ some issue where ⁓ the attorney has put a fake case into a a a motion or something. But yeah he talks about things like that, which is he's he's pretty on top of things like that, which is kinda nice. He's if you ever get on an X he's a good person to follow when it comes to keeping keeping up on those things. I have

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:35)
like twenty or thirty X handles. Yeah. I just don't go on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:39)
Like I I don't I can't go on LinkedIn 'cause of the spam. The spam is so bad. How do you I don't know

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:45)
The

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:45)
algorithm the algorithm has gotten really good. Basically, my whole feed is all about ⁓ the business of law now. Yeah. And it's great. Good. I actually like the algorithm has figured me out on LinkedIn and I do not get crap on there.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:57)
I keep saying I need to spend more time on it, but I just

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:00)
Well it's how you engage. Right. So like all of the posts that I will comment on 'cause I do way more of that reply guy strategy than I do of posting. Like

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:06)
When

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:06)
we went live one on your on your podcast, like you Yeah, you went live in LinkedIn. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I forgot about that.

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:11)
That that that is the my only posts these days are because I did some kind of collaboration or I'm posting about I'm going live on Link.

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:19)
Do you are all of your episodes live on LinkedIn?

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:22)
With the exception of some where they need like like approval from their PR department. Yeah. Right. Like when I interviewed Teen Joe, who is the CEO of Zora, a publicly traded company, and he wrote the book subscribed and coined the term the subscription economy. Right. That was pre recorded. Right. So like certain things are pre recorded. I'll interview reporters sometimes because they're covering this and they need to clear it with like their team. So that's pre recorded. And I use D script's rooms for that and it's really great. It's like Riverside, but it's their version of it.

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:38)
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:51)
But I just go live on LinkedIn because then like we don't have to produce it that much. Yeah. I run it through D script. I I remove all the ums and ahs, but that now there's like a toggle that you could say ⁓ avoid harsh cuts. And then I I chop off the the beginning and the end. I attach my intros and outros and if there's any ads like mid roll ads that I that I do. And then like five minutes after the episode's over, the thing's produced. It's amazing. I'm I'm produced through like we're recording now, and I don't know if should we reveal when we're recording? We're in June right now. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:13)
Nice.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:13)
Yeah, it's fine. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:24:21)
Like I am produced through the end of October for my podcast for a weekly pod. And I always have special episodes in between anyway.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:27)
nice. Yeah. We don't we go a little bit close we go about five to six weeks out. It's we go a little part of it's because we do the in persons too. Sure. So but these are great. Yeah. Well I there's it's so nice. Just being able to kind of like see someone and talk to them. And touch skin, you know you know, loop it back to the earlier conversation. But no it's great. ⁓ pr pr promote the podcast. We talked about practice, practice.ai and what else do you want to promote? Talk about the podcast and then

Mathew Kerbis (1:24:54)
So so this is like six weeks out from now? Pro yeah. So so practipod.com will be the new podcast network. That's the new podcast network. Probably media.practi.ai I will redirect as well. But ⁓ but lawsubscribe dot com. I use Substack for all of my podcasting to back end that. Also on YouTube, it's all these these names as well. Legalai Live is live every month on LinkedIn and then legalai live.com to catch past episodes. ⁓ that's a live panel, that's great. And ⁓ yeah, I I mean, you know

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:57)
All right.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:57)
Very nice. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (1:25:24)
Follow me on LinkedIn. You ask your favorite AI tool to tell you about the subscription attorney.