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Hosted by Jared Correia, Legal Late Night is a weekly, pop culture-infused romp through the latest & greatest business management ideas and technology tips for lawyers, featuring engaging guests, and constructed in the format of an old school television variety show.
Jared Correia (00:00):
Hello everybody. We've got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I'm your host, Jared Kria. I'm the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting for the monologue. I'm rolling out another travel log from my younger days of unrecorded indiscretions. You can't prove a thing. In the interview, we've got Nancy Jang of billables AI on the counter program. Chef Nancy and I discuss world cuisine. Some of it doesn't actually exist. Now let's discuss my adventure filled trip, the province of Quebec around the turn of the last century.
(00:43):
Yes, friends. It's another episode of our travel log series. Travels with Jared in Search of America. This is chapter 514. Travels with Jared in Search of America in Search of Canada. The weekend of July 14th to the 15th of 2001 was a pretty dope one for your boy. I was just 23 years old. It was still practically the nineties and I was in Canada drinking my face off after having finished my first year of law school. It was pre nine 11 and privacy was alive and well. I didn't even own a cell phone. It was amazing. My friends from college and I decided to go see the red. So play the Montreal Expos at Olympic Stadium for our big summer trip. This was still kind of a big deal at that point because inter league playing Major League baseball had only started four years before. This would be the third time.
(01:42):
The red size had played a series in Montreal for inter league play, and they had sucked against the expos in Montreal. This was another three game series and the red size were oh and six in inter league play at Olympic Stadium to that point in two prior three game series, this was about three years before the red, so won their first World series since 1918. So the fan base was still pretty rabid. So there are about 12 of us, I think. And because we were young and poor, we decided to save money by buying a single hotel room and splitting it 12 ways. Yeah, the plan was Ted up on Saturday morning, go out that night, watch the game Sunday and then drive back. So we check into the hotel and he realized I forgot my toothbrush. Now, I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm very into my teeth.
(02:35):
My family was too poor to get braces, and I realize I have summer teeth. My teeth are all fucked up, but that's precisely why I am obsessed with keeping them clean at least. Here's a pro tip. After brushing your teeth with toothpaste, go back over them without toothpaste, then you'll be clean as a whistle. Anyway, forgetting my toothbrush was a big deal for me. So I called the front desk and they said, send a housekeeper up. So she came to the door and I pretty quickly realized that she only spoke French. Naturally. I started miming the act of brushing my teeth in the hopes she would understand like this.
(03:13):
Wow, I shouldn't have done that and I'm going to be prosecuted on AI forever. So meanwhile, as you are probably doing right now as well, my friends are cracking up behind me because they know that it's pretty clear that it looked like I was asking to get my dick sucked, or maybe I was asking if I could suck someone else's dick. In any event, I closed the door pretty quickly, didn't get my toothbrush and didn't brush my teeth the whole weekend, which was pretty jarring. So we go out that night and head to the bar and we run into some Red Sox players. Now, one thing you should know about me is that I have a better memory for the names of obscure red size middle infielders than I have for the birthdays of my children. Rick, the Rooster Burleson, Marty Barrett, Jody Reed, mark Bellhorn, and Pokey Reese.
(04:09):
You get the idea. So my friend John and I are standing at the bar and sitting right next to us is Mike Lansing, a former Wichita State shocker, and Montreal Expo Lansing would play shortstop for the red sauce the next day. Now, Lansing's sitting at the bar drinking kaa and milk randomly all by himself and not talking to anyone. It's one of the most fucking depressing scenes I'd ever witnessed. This is a professional athlete. Never meet your heroes, folks. So John and I start making fun of him. Look, I'm an asshole. We're just talking loudly to each other about how Mike Lansing is just a huge pussy sitting at a bar, drinking clue and milk by himself. Moments later, Mike Lansing sighs heavily and leaves the bar. I told you I'm an asshole. Then as I'm walking across the bar, I see Red Sox manager Joe Kerrigan.
(05:01):
Now, you may not remember Joe Kerrigan. Interestingly, he was a former Montreal Expo player as well, and in 2001 he replaced Red Sox manager, Jimmy Williams, Jimmy with one M. Yes, look it up. And Kerrigan went 17 and 26 in 43 games as manager and then got fired after the season he was ass. And so I may have the best Joe Kerrigan story of all the Joe Kerrigan stories because I saw him pick up what I can only describe as Inuit prostitute and leave the bar with her. She was bundled up and had a big hat on her head and everything, and it was July. I'm still perplexed by the whole thing. By around 3:00 AM I am fucking amortized like nobody's business, and my friend Jeff and I are the muchies. So we hit up the 24 hour and I saw that the menu had a French translation.
(05:53):
I mean naturally, but it was a surprise to me. I thought it was the funniest fucking thing that the chicken sandwich, the McChicken in Canada was called the Mick Poole. So like a drunken fuck, I cut the entire huge line for food march right up to the cashier and say, loudly, I am an American tourist night demand, a large Mick Poule entirely forgetting that McDonald's sandwiches don't actually come in sizes. Now this is the great thing about Canadians. They're really fucking nice. The lady took my order, handed me my Mick Poule, and no one in line said a goddamn thing about it. Of course, for years afterward, every time we were out together, any order of any kind would start with I'm an American tourist and I demand.
(06:45):
After that, I stumbled back to the hotel and pass out. Of course, we had a hotel room with one bed with 12 guys sleeping in and around 12 guys who had been drinking all night. So I woke up gagging inside a literal cloud of fart gas with evil intentions. That room smelled worse than anything I have ever smelled before or since it was like wandering around inside of Satan's butthole. In any event, I eventually escaped when we make it over to the game. Now, Olympic Stadium is a dome stadium because it's cold a lot of the time in Montreal, and this was back in the day when people could smoke inside. And let me tell you, French Canadians love to smoke inside. This was a professional sports event and there was a halo of smoker around the top of the stadium. And the expos also had these scantily clad waitresses who would take food orders in the stands.
(07:34):
This is what it must have been like watching professional sports in Las Vegas, which I've never actually done. Maybe that's another travel lock episode. Now, back in the day at this game, I was again too poor to afford a real Red Sox jersey. So I had one of those t-shirt jerseys. They used to sell logo in the front name and number on the back, and my favorite player on the Red Sox at this time was Rich Garis. Rich Garis was from Venezuela, and he was a relief pitcher for the Red Sox. He was also shaped like a bowling ball. He was six foot tall and weighed 250 pounds. His nickname was El Guapo, which means the handsome boy El Guapo was the fucking man. My Jersey shirt on the back by the way said El Guapo not Garce. Now at this point in time, baseball was still split in that the American League where the red size played had a designated hitter who would bat for the pitcher while the National League where the expos played would not have the dh.
(08:37):
Now both leagues have the dh. So in this game, the pitchers had to hit, which was still an anomaly for American League baseball fans. So this gave rise to the delicious possibility that El Guapo might have to bat if he came in to pitch. The stadium was filled with Red Sox fans who were traveling for the, and in the sixth inning, Garces rolls in from the bullpen and relief of Starter Hiday O NoMo, who had one of the best windups in baseball history and who had thrown a note hitter in his first star with the red. So earlier that year, inexplicably kerrigan, perhaps reeling from his prior night spent with the Inuit prostitute, left Garthus into bat without pinch hin for him. And so the moment had arrived, there was a runner on first, and everyone was expecting El Guapo to strike out looking, but miraculously he hit a ground ball to the shortstop, the crowd full of Red Sox fans as it was Roses won since Garis was now going to have to run to first base, we were roaring like a jet engine as a shortstop through the second for the force out.
(09:41):
The second baseman turned to throw the first for the double play. But to everyone's surprised, Garis was engaged in a full sprint to the bag, like a fat blur. Everyone was going fucking nuts because he actually had a chance to beat the throw. Now, that would've been the greatest moment in Red Sox's history, but I'll ask. He was thrown out by a step. Garces only had three at bats in his entire career, but this one was decided to lead the most glorious, and the fact that he was thrown out is the only reason people remember Dave Robert Steele from game four of the 2004 A LCS. Oh, and Chris Stein had four RBI that game see obscure red size middle infielders, but you know who's not an obscure red size middle infielder. That's Nancy Jang of the Billables AI team. Why don't you track some of your time with us and listen to Nancy talk about how to improve your ability to do so? It's all next. Well, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is the podcast and well, now I'm going to carve a complex scrimshaw pattern. Hold on. I'll get my whalebone, which I have on hand obviously, actually. Well, that sounds amazing. I have no idea how to do any of that. So you've called my bluff. Let's bring out our guest instead. Our guest today making her first appearance on the show is Nancy Jang, the co-founder of Billables ai. Nancy, welcome to the show. How are you? Hi,
Nancy Jeng (11:17):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm doing great. I think probably doing a little better than you right now in California. I think the only state that's not buried in snow potentially,
Jared Correia (11:28):
It's crazy. I've just finished shoveling for the last two and a half hours, and as I look out my window, the snow is beginning to accumulate again, but I'm feeling good. As you can see, I have my Patriots, my Patriots hat on, and the Denver Broncos can suck it basically in the Super Bowl. All right, so I do a little precursor for founders, which is I want to dive into your background a little bit before we get into the product that you have sell are pitching. I noticed that you went to the University of Texas at Austin
Nancy Jeng (12:10):
Hook 'em, Horns!
Jared Correia (12:10):
Tremendous School. Yes. What was your favorite thing about Austin when you were living there?
Nancy Jeng (12:19):
I mean, Austin's such a great town, and I'm not going to take full credit for putting them on the map, but it did kind of blow up like tech wise you can. But yeah, it's just such a wonderful town. I mean, obviously huge music and kind of arts and film culture now. A big tech scene there, which kind of started to balloon towards the tail end of our time there. And then
Jared Correia (12:44):
Because you were there,
Nancy Jeng (12:46):
Yeah, obviously, I mean obviously, but it's been great to see because obviously a lot of mutual interests and transplants that go back and forth between Austin and San Francisco, which is where I live now.
(13:00):
So a lot of like-minded people, and actually my co-founders also went to UT Austin. That's where we met over 20 years ago. So I have a lot to thank ut for including our current company.
Jared Correia (13:17):
My son's a big Kevin Durant fan.
Nancy Jeng (13:19):
Oh yeah. Played was our era basketball era. That's dating me, but that was
Jared Correia (13:22):
Okay. I was going to ask you, were you there when Durant was playing for UT?
Nancy Jeng (13:25):
I was. Vince Young...
Jared Correia (13:27):
How was that? Was that crazy?
(13:28):
I don't think they won. Oh, you were there for Vince Young too?
Nancy Jeng (13:32):
Yep.
Jared Correia (13:32):
Damn.
Nancy Jeng (13:33):
I know
Jared Correia (13:33):
When they won the title.
Nancy Jeng (13:35):
Yeah.
Jared Correia (13:36):
Oh wow. Now...
Nancy Jeng (13:38):
I'll take credit for all that too. We'll just add it to the...
Jared Correia (13:40):
I mean, you did great things down there. So when Durant was there, I don't think they ever won the championship, but they made it to the the final, didn't they?
Nancy Jeng (13:49):
Very close. Yeah.
Jared Correia (13:50):
Or the Final Four
Nancy Jeng (13:51):
Came in second or something like that.
Jared Correia (13:52):
Yes!
(13:53):
I think they lost in the final. Oh,
Nancy Jeng (13:55):
Whatcha going to
Jared Correia (13:56):
Do
Nancy Jeng (13:56):
Was, yeah, really great sports era at the time. Again, you're welcome.
Jared Correia (14:00):
A Rich History. Okay. So your partner, you said you met when you were at ut, but your latest project billables ai, you launched that formally a few years ago,
Nancy Jeng (14:16):
Right? Yeah. Yep, exactly. So
Jared Correia (14:17):
What happened to between, did you go to Reunion and then you're like, Hey, I have this amazing idea. How'd you guys get back together or were you working together on other stuff for a little while?
Nancy Jeng (14:29):
Yeah, so we've been friends for a long time, since freshman year is when we met, and we both ended up in San Francisco on different career paths over the years. And so I moved out here and I worked for a decade in advertising where I was a billable timekeeper myself. Good times. His name is arb, and my co-founder, he came out to get his PhD from Stanford in machine learning. So he's kind of been in the AI space actually before it was even cool. And we've just kept in touch and a few years back kind of reunited, if you will, over this opportunity of using AI to solve this problem that came up and it just really sparked something in both of us, even though we've been working in different fields and kind of had different career trajectories. It really kind of united us and brought us back together in this lens. And our founding VP of engineering also joined early on, another friend from ut, and so I think it really was that connection and the pain point, as cheesy as it sounds that brought us
Jared Correia (15:44):
Together. Okay. So you got the product, but I don't think you worked in legal before this, is that right? Or am I wrong on that?
Nancy Jeng (15:55):
No, that's right. I have not worked
Jared Correia (15:57):
In legal before. So where were you keeping time? Where were you doing that?
Nancy Jeng (16:00):
Yeah, so the first decade of my career I worked at a bunch of national advertising agencies. So they actually function, I think in many ways similar to firms in terms of it's all in the professional service.
Jared Correia (16:15):
You mean poorly
Nancy Jeng (16:16):
Industry? We work with clients, it's all about relationships. We also build hourly or on retainer, but we'd had had to keep time hourly. And so that was a big part of my first decade of my career, was submitting time sheets every Friday. If I didn't, they would turn off our internet. All sorts of different things that they would do to kind of enforce
Jared Correia (16:40):
Crazy,
Nancy Jeng (16:40):
The timekeeping. I know. Yeah. I've heard worse at firms though. People will withhold pay and all sorts of crazy things. Such an annoying part of the job.
Jared Correia (16:51):
Yeah, no one wants to keep time. So maybe I'm dating myself now, but you remember Office Space, the movie Mike Judge movie.
Nancy Jeng (16:58):
Yep. The stapler and
Jared Correia (16:59):
Lumber hanging out at your desk being like, I'm not sure you've gotten the memo and the TPS reports. I feel like that's timekeeping in a nutshell. Everybody's like, Hey, did you get your time in? Okay.
Nancy Jeng (17:09):
Yeah, exactly.
Jared Correia (17:11):
So a lot of people, I mean, I dunno, do you still find people who keep time on paper and pen? Is that still a
Nancy Jeng (17:19):
Thing? Yeah, I think the thing with timekeeping is it's such a habitual process, so whatever habits you form, anyone
Jared Correia (17:27):
Carving their time into stone tablets.
Nancy Jeng (17:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Jared Correia (17:29):
Is any of that happening?
Nancy Jeng (17:32):
I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Jared Correia (17:35):
So you're come across them old school methods still even now.
Nancy Jeng (17:40):
Or people will call assistant and tell them their time and then they will kind of transcribe it. That's a good one. That's what happens. So I think that's equivalent to kind of etching in stone.
Jared Correia (17:54):
Yeah. Alright. So you found this to be sort of like a cross industry problem. I mean, this is an issue obviously in any industry where anybody keeps time. What made you decide to focus on the legal industry?
Nancy Jeng (18:11):
The problem was actually kind of brought up by my co-founder's wife, who's a partner in a law firm in San Francisco. So she kind of posed this question to him and to us around this is my most hated task. I love being a lawyer. I love the practice of law, but I hate doing my time sheets. And this just seems like the type of thing technology could solve. Don't you think that's the case? And when we heard this, it really just, it brought back my PTSD, but it kind of sparked in both of us this idea of like, Hey, I think there is something there. This is something that unites so many people, not just in the legal space, but obviously I think having been immersed in the legal tech industry for the last few years, I would say lawyers definitely have it worse when it comes to timekeeping and what is the 0.1 hour, the detailed narratives billing guidelines. It is very complex and really the type of thing only AI could solve for with really advanced machine learning, not just about the time.
Jared Correia (19:22):
Well, that's a good point. If you're looking at firms that will submit billing to companies too, you got to have the billing codes correct, and you have a sense of what ones are going to be accepted and what ones aren't going to be accepted. So it's not like that in other industries that you've experienced at least
Nancy Jeng (19:37):
Nom less formal. I mean, there's some things that are similar that you'll find some things getting written off if it's kind of more administrative. But in terms of the rigor of compliance and client billing guidelines, it's pretty unparalleled with the legal industry. And yeah, we've seen all sorts of things like people having to use or void certain language in their narratives. Don't use the word research because your clients want you to already know everything. So instead you're reviewing and analyzing, there's a lot of insider baseball knowledge that has to be applied.
Jared Correia (20:18):
So I think I buried the lead a little bit here because we've been talking about the need for a product like this, but let's talk about your product a little bit. So there have been many ways to track time. There have even been automated time tracking tools previously, but I haven't run across a lot of them that are AI based. So what makes your product different or special because it features AI versus your automated background timekeeper?
Nancy Jeng (20:50):
Yeah, it's a really good question. This is one we get a lot. What part of it is actually AI enabled? And we use AI in really generating the end to end time entries. So if you think about what a time entry entails, the timekeeping aspect is actually just a portion of it. Knowing how much time you spent on something, that is something a pretty rudimentary timer or screen monitoring technology could do. And that's probably what you've seen before in the timekeeping apps of yesteryear,
Jared Correia (21:24):
Right? Yeah.
Nancy Jeng (21:25):
And that's helpful and we definitely have a lot of folks that have been using that, but it's only a part of the problem because once you have the time, you need to assign it to the right matter. You need to sometimes assign A-U-T-B-M-S code, you need to write a really detailed narrative. The narrative itself takes a lot. It's like an art and science of nailing the language and being compliant, and all of that still has to be done, even if you have the timestamp itself. And that's really where AI comes into play. So an AI enabled timekeeping platform can not only capture the time, but also assign it to the right client matter, generate the narrative and even group time intelligently. So recognizing you may have come back to this document or task five times throughout the day, you're not going to bill for each of those. So it kind of groups it in an intelligent way, again, using machine learning. So all of that's really been unleashed only in the past few years with the advances that we've seen in ai.
Jared Correia (22:27):
And that's cool because now you're talking about feeding into another problem lawyers have, which is keeping track of your time is one thing, but then aggregating that time, getting into an invoice, revising it, submitting it to a client, it sounds like you can help with that pretty significantly.
Nancy Jeng (22:45):
Yeah, exactly. We're trying to solve the quality and precision upstream so that you're not having to spend a lot of time refining that the time to bill as much shorter and you're not re-litigating things with the client too. There's fewer write-offs needed. There's fewer pushback on the time entries and the invoices.
Jared Correia (23:08):
I mean, I'm sure you've seen it, but when a lawyer tries to bill three, four months after they've done the work,
Nancy Jeng (23:14):
Which
Jared Correia (23:15):
Happens more I think than people would like to admit. If I'm a consumer,
Nancy Jeng (23:19):
We're not name names, but it happens. Yeah.
Jared Correia (23:20):
If I'm a consumer, I'm like, why am I paying for this, bro? Why didn't you bill me four months ago? It's crazy. My long guy doesn't do that. All right. I think that's great. I think one of the questions attorneys have in terms of using AI software, including one this, everybody has a sense that, okay, AI is intelligent, so it works better when it's trained. What is the training methodology for something like this? Let's say I'm a law firm and I'm like, this is cool. I like the concept. I want to adopt it. What kind of effort do I have to put into training a system like this to work in my practice?
Nancy Jeng (23:58):
Yeah, it's a really good question. I think anyone who's used any ai, any AI tool has kind of seen how it gets better the more that you use it. And that's true of our platform as well. And so we take into account both implicit and explicit signals. So for example, you can upload your client billing guidelines. Most firms will have a PDF of something that their client sent them of this is what you should bill for or what you can't bill for. We'll ingest that and use that to automatically generate entries that follow those guidelines. So that's more explicit. You've told us what the rules are, we still automate that in a way that is less work to you.
Jared Correia (24:37):
And those could be client rules or those could also be internal law
Nancy Jeng (24:41):
Firm rules. Exactly. Firm rules, client rules or your own, you can put in your own, I just prefer to bill this way or I prefer to use
Jared Correia (24:48):
As an individual attorney as also, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Go ahead.
Nancy Jeng (24:53):
Yeah, it's such a personal endeavor.
Jared Correia (24:56):
The other piece, Billy is very personal to people. I feel
Nancy Jeng (24:58):
Like he is. Yeah,
Jared Correia (24:59):
They're like Gollum. They keep their precious billing and they want to do it a very specific way.
Nancy Jeng (25:05):
It's so funny that you say that because we've literally been in meetings and training sessions with firms, and this is just within the same firm itself. And people will get into these fierce debates over, I use a semicolon. No, I use a period. And there's not one right or wrong.
Jared Correia (25:23):
They'll bite your finger right off. Exactly. Don't dispute the billing methodology.
Nancy Jeng (25:27):
People have an opinion and that's good. And so the AI really also takes into account those implicit signal. So even if you didn't have any rules that you set up front, when you're approving the entries that we generate for you and making small edits here and there, it's learning from that. It's learning. You present tense versus past tense, or you're a semi guy or a period gal, whatever that might be.
Jared Correia (25:52):
I'm a semicolon guy
Nancy Jeng (25:54):
Team, period. But yeah, it's learning from that too. So without you having to kind of coach it, it's just learning from your natural approving process.
Jared Correia (26:08):
I'm assuming that the best way to do this is to involve as many people in a firm as possible. So if I'm a mid-sized to large firm, I'm probably looking at attorneys having access also maybe paralegals or billing and accounting people. Is that the idea? Let's get everybody involved who's in the billing process and let's try to adjust as much information as possible and then watch the system learn.
Nancy Jeng (26:32):
Yeah, exactly. We usually see success when every timekeeper is adopting it, and for a couple of reasons. One, it saves them time. Obviously, they're not having to generate their time entries. Two, they're usually under billing. For the most part, people are not great at capturing their time, so having an automated tool allows them to capture usually 10 to 30% more billable time. But then there's also some benefits from a firm wide level of just having wide adoption because you can actually see the amount of time people are spending on different clients on different matters, on different types of tasks. It's almost like the Spotify wrapped, but for your work activities,
Jared Correia (27:16):
Fucking love Spotify
Jared Correia (27:16):
Wrapped.
Nancy Jeng (27:18):
Exactly! And you'll be able to see how much time you actually spend on email versus meetings versus document review, and that can have really powerful impact on the core business of a firm, even if you're not billing hourly. We have a lot of flat fee firms that use that data to inform how they set their rates and how to resource allocate.
Jared Correia (27:40):
You want to guess my number one artist on Spotify rap this year?
Nancy Jeng (27:43):
It's obviously Taylor Swift.
Jared Correia (27:45):
Well, it is Taylor Swift, but that's because my daughter and I share an account non daughter version of Spotify. It's a 1970s country rock band called Poco. Just want to shout out Poco here po
Nancy Jeng (27:59):
My
Jared Correia (27:59):
Favorite band. Yeah.
Nancy Jeng (28:00):
Wow.
Jared Correia (28:01):
Check them
Nancy Jeng (28:01):
Out.
Jared Correia (28:02):
Great. It's a deep cut. Cut. All we do here is deep cuts. What is your
Nancy Jeng (28:07):
Loosening age?
Jared Correia (28:09):
Oh, my listening age is like 87 or some shit like that. I think mine loose It embarrassing. Yeah, my kids were like, holy shit. That's even older than you are in real life. Okay, so before we get back to billable stuff, who is your number one Spotify rap artist this year?
Nancy Jeng (28:25):
Mine is the same every year and it is Mariah Carey.
Jared Correia (28:29):
Well, are we talking like the Christmas stuff? Do you have All I want for Christmas is you order feet. Really?
Nancy Jeng (28:37):
Yeah. Wow. But yeah, definitely during the holidays. But yeah, I've just been a super fan. I'm a member of the Laly, if you will.
Jared Correia (28:44):
What is that? I didn't even know what that is.
Nancy Jeng (28:46):
That is her fan base. Yeah.
Jared Correia (28:48):
Really? Oh wow.
Nancy Jeng (28:49):
Yeah, there's the Swifties and then there's the Laly, which is the Mariah's Lambs her. Fran,
Jared Correia (28:55):
No shade against Mariah Carey. She's great. She has an amazing voice.
Jared Correia (28:59):
Yeah.
Jared Correia (29:00):
All right. I'm learning so much about you. Okay, let's get back to the billing stuff for a second. We'll learn more about you later. Now, when lawyers and law firms, see, you just mentioned like 10 to 30% more collected. If I was an attorney and I got that number, I'd be fucking thrilled. Are people surprised at the results once they start using an AI product like this?
Nancy Jeng (29:27):
Yeah, I think they're definitely, they come to us knowing that they're losing time and that's the problem that they want us to help solve. So they're not surprised that we help recover time. I think they're shocked actually by how quickly we recover time for them. Usually they'll start seeing time within the first day or two that they would've forgotten to bill. And I think the amount in which we recover for them is surprising because even knowing you're missing time here and there, I don't think people really often appreciate, especially with things like the amount of time you spent working on a document, it's really easy to underestimate that,
Jared Correia (30:06):
Especially when you're jumping in and out of it. Right?
Nancy Jeng (30:08):
Exactly.
Jared Correia (30:09):
You just have to aggregate all those various segments,
Nancy Jeng (30:11):
And everyone I think thinks they do things a lot faster than they actually do. I think that's just human nature.
Jared Correia (30:18):
That's funny. This morning I was telling my wife I'll be done shoveling in like 45 minutes.
Nancy Jeng (30:23):
Exactly.
Jared Correia (30:23):
She's like, the fuck you will. And you said two and a half hours, right? Two and a half hour. But yeah, it's going to take me longer when I continue to shovel later. There. No, continues to fall. I did a demo of your product. I thought it was really good, especially early stage product, which you're still in. You had all the features I would want. So what are you developing right now? What's coming next on the pipe in terms of features for you?
Nancy Jeng (30:47):
Yeah, we are rolling out a pre-bill feature, so that will be coming out soon. I like
Jared Correia (30:53):
I like that.
Nancy Jeng (30:54):
Where you can easily review a copy or preview of the bill that goes to the client. We're building out our analytics a lot more. So today you can already see time spent by client matter, different activity, but we want to try to map that to firm goals and even more granular data because we are getting more and more firms that are either looking at different billing models or even firms that have been operating with a flat fee or contingency or whatever their billing model is, and kind of wanting that analytics to back it up. So those are kind of our biggest investment areas.
Jared Correia (31:35):
That's a great point. One of the big problems I see with law firms that charge on a value-based model, which I think more and more law firms are going to have to do with the advent of AI, is they're really bad at tracking how much time something actually takes,
(31:51):
Which is a value. So that's part of what you're looking at, it sounds like. I think that's really smart.
Nancy Jeng (31:56):
Yeah, absolutely. It's reconciling what you think it'll take and what your estimate is, and frankly what you put in front of the client as the fee. And then comparing that to the actuals. And I think people who aren't billing hourly have even less of that habit in place so that the data is missing. They just don't know what that time actually is. So it's like you estimating 45 minutes to shovel snow and charging based on that, and then come to find you've,
Jared Correia (32:31):
I realize,
Nancy Jeng (32:31):
Actually spent, that's two hours of wasted energy and resources. And not to call you out, but
Jared Correia (32:40):
No, that's fine. You can call me out. I deserve it. Now, you could build a product like this that does soup to nuts, collecting time, billing, invoicing, but especially in the legal industry, people are already using products for that, whether it's case management software or an accounting software. So how are you managing the integration part of this?
Nancy Jeng (33:04):
Yeah, so there's kind of two categories of integrations we have. One is with your actual work software, so the things that you're using to do the work, Microsoft Office Outlook, Google, Adobe, et cetera. And then there's the latter is our practice management integrations, which is I think most related to your question. And so what we really look at is
Jared Correia (33:29):
Where are there, well, no, you talk about the other part of it too, because if I was a lawyer and I was using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, that's where I'm spending most of my time. So that's where I'm picking up the data
Nancy Jeng (33:39):
From.
Jared Correia (33:40):
So I don't mean to just bypass that,
Nancy Jeng (33:44):
I think that's important. No, they're both important. I mean, they're both critical ingredients for getting to a streamlined process. But yeah, we definitely look at where there's a greater need and that really is in the manual time tracking part of it. I don't think people have as much issue with actually drafting a bill or sending it out. That is pretty covered. I think there's a lot of different platforms that do that. Where people have issues is getting the time into the system, making sure it's accurate, making sure they're not losing time. And that first bucket of integrations is really critical for us to be able to do that for people in an automated way. So we integrate directly with Microsoft, with Adobe, with Google, with Zoom, with teams, and we're able to get that time data directly from the source, and that's how we're able to recover so much time that they would've otherwise lost. And it allows us to capture time across devices. This has been huge for people that are sending emails on the go or joining a teams call from their iPad. More and more work is happening in different locations.
Jared Correia (34:52):
The cloud,
Nancy Jeng (34:53):
So people forget. Yeah, exactly. The cloud, when people are in the cloud, they still need to bill, and I think it's easier to forget to bill when you're not in front of your computer. And so
Jared Correia (35:06):
Oh, sure. Yeah,
Nancy Jeng (35:07):
That's been huge for us to just be able to capture activity across all your devices.
Jared Correia (35:14):
I'm capturing activity as I work, and then in many cases, you're probably pushing your data set to a Clio or whatever other case management software there is out
Nancy Jeng (35:24):
There. Exactly.
Jared Correia (35:25):
For most lawyers.
Nancy Jeng (35:26):
Yeah. We integrate with Cleo, with my case, with SurePoint, with Lean Law. We have a center-based integration and we're rolling out more and more and have other, I mean, we have a lot of firms that work on,
Jared Correia (35:38):
It's a lot of software.
Nancy Jeng (35:39):
There's a lot of them out there. I think we have customers in pretty much every single one. It's just a different setup depending on their software solution.
Jared Correia (35:48):
Now, I also wanted to, I did a little research on you. I want to know if you, I'm afraid of what's
Nancy Jeng (35:53):
Coming,
Jared Correia (35:54):
Your cookbook author.
Nancy Jeng (35:57):
Yeah, that's right.
Jared Correia (35:58):
And it looks like you've collected a book of mom's recipes. Sounds delightful. And now you've got a book I think is coming out, not out yet, called a Very Asian Guide to Taiwanese Food. So tell me a little bit about that.
Nancy Jeng (36:18):
Yeah, that actually just came out a couple months ago. Hot
Jared Correia (36:22):
Off. Congratulations.
Nancy Jeng (36:24):
Thank you. But yeah, both of them. So the first book was like you mentioned a passion project. It was me wanting to document my mom's recipe. She's an amazing cook. She makes a lot of Taiwanese food that's phenomenal and all that lives in her head. And so I wanted to create those recipes myself, and it was just a painful process of calling her and how much of this sauce do you use? And she's like, I dunno enough. You just peel it out. And so that turned into this cookbook that I photographed and I did the watercolor illustrations in it and released that actually about a week before we incorporated our company.
Jared Correia (37:10):
Oh wow.
Nancy Jeng (37:10):
Yeah, definitely. So you're busy a busy year. But yeah, huge passion project. And that kind of spawned the second book as well, which is actually a children's book.
Jared Correia (37:21):
Oh, it is?
Nancy Jeng (37:21):
Yeah. It's for elementary school kids and it's more educational about Taiwanese food and the culture and how people experience different
Jared Correia (37:29):
Types. I got to get that in the hands of my children so they can cook food for me.
Nancy Jeng (37:32):
Yeah, we'll get you a copy.
Jared Correia (37:36):
What is an example of a Taiwanese dish? I don't know that I've ever had Taiwanese food before.
Nancy Jeng (37:43):
The most famous one that I'm sure you've tried is like Boba tea.
Jared Correia (37:50):
If you've had, I fucking hate boba tea. Can I say that? The balls. Little balls,
Nancy Jeng (37:55):
Yeah. The
Jared Correia (37:55):
Not a fan that creeps me right the fuck out. I will. But you've tried it. Boba tea did not have boba. It would be great. Oh, sugar. The boba part is what freaks me out. Yeah, that part is delicious. But you can with
Nancy Jeng (38:11):
All sorts of different toppings. I mean, people go nuts with that, but yeah, it can be polarizing. Interesting.
Jared Correia (38:17):
Yeah. I don't like the little balls, but the tea itself is good.
Nancy Jeng (38:20):
Okay.
Jared Correia (38:21):
I did not know that was Taiwanese based. That's cool. Can I have another one? If I was going to make a Taiwanese recipe tonight, I wanted dinner, what would I
Nancy Jeng (38:29):
Make? Ooh, scallion pancakes is another one.
Jared Correia (38:32):
Oh, scallion pancakes are delicious.
Nancy Jeng (38:35):
Sign
Jared Correia (38:35):
Me
Nancy Jeng (38:35):
Up. So yummy and
Jared Correia (38:36):
No qualms about scaling
Nancy Jeng (38:37):
Pancakes. Okay, good. We've won you over. But yeah, a lot of people don't know that those are Taiwanese and origin.
Jared Correia (38:44):
That's really cool. Nancy, this has been a pleasure, but the fun is not over yet. Will you stick around for one last segment?
Nancy Jeng (38:54):
Absolutely. Can't wait.
Jared Correia (38:56):
Okay. You paused for a second, but you're coming back
Nancy Jeng (39:01):
Because you made it so ominous sounding. It's
Jared Correia (39:12):
Welcome back everybody. Yes. It's time for another counter program. It's a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Now, as a successful cookbook author, Nancy, I think you're the right person to have on for our newest segment, which I'm calling Woman versus Food. Do you want to how it works?
Nancy Jeng (39:43):
Yes, please explain.
Jared Correia (39:47):
The
Nancy Jeng (39:47):
Name alone is amazing
Jared Correia (39:48):
Going, I am going man, versus food is a thing. So I'm trying to avoid coffee issues. Here it, I'm going to tell you about a bizarre food or meal and you just need to tell me if it's real or if I just completely made it up using ai.
Nancy Jeng (40:08):
Okay.
Jared Correia (40:09):
What do you think? Oh,
Nancy Jeng (40:09):
I love the best. Yes.
Jared Correia (40:10):
Are you ready?
Nancy Jeng (40:11):
I'm ready.
Jared Correia (40:12):
Some of these you may want to include in your next cookbook. I don't know.
Nancy Jeng (40:15):
Yeah, I mean, this is inspiration right here.
Jared Correia (40:19):
I'm going to totally butcher some of the names of these recipes, but I'll do my best. Okay. I'll tell you what it is. You tell me if it's real or fake, and I will let you know if you're correct. So the first recipe is called qui choc todo from Peru. It is an entire Guinea pig flattened under a heavy stone and deep fried until the skin is crispy and the claws are crunchy. Have you ever had this? I haven't personally,
Nancy Jeng (40:54):
I think it's real because I've been to Peru and I know they eat Guinea pig.
Jared Correia (40:57):
Have you had this? Please tell me you've
Nancy Jeng (41:00):
Eaten this. I don't think I've had it. No, I don't think I tried it when I was there, but I saw it on menus.
Jared Correia (41:06):
It, it's real. So the whole thing about eating the claws is a little bit to me. I guess I would eat a Guinea pig, but I don't know. I think the claws, I could see myself chipping a tooth tooth on that.
Nancy Jeng (41:24):
Yeah, I think I would have a hard time with too. I'm not that into eating those kind of bits, but I know it's really popular. Chicken feed is really popular in Chinese food.
Jared Correia (41:35):
Interesting. Alright, well I'm learning so much. This is a traditional dish in the Andean Highlands.
Nancy Jeng (41:42):
Okay.
Jared Correia (41:43):
Okay. You're one for one, not bad. Okay. Are you ready for our next one?
Nancy Jeng (41:48):
Ready?
Jared Correia (41:50):
It's called Wheat Lache.
Nancy Jeng (41:54):
Oh, wheat
Jared Correia (41:54):
Lache from Mexican. Mexican from Mexico. See now you're just destroying the fun of the game. You're supposed to wait until I tell people what it is.
Nancy Jeng (42:04):
Wait, okay. Please explain.
Jared Correia (42:06):
You are a ringer though, because this is real. I don't know if I'm going to be able to stump you. We've had very few people go six for six in these games. You would probably be like the third person ever to do it. Oh,
Nancy Jeng (42:21):
Wow. I don't want to put
Jared Correia (42:22):
Any pressure on
Nancy Jeng (42:23):
You,
Jared Correia (42:23):
But, okay, so this is known as corn smut. It's a pathogenic fungus that transforms innocent maze kernels into velvety jet black earthy tasting galls prized by top chefs. So you are correct. That is a real meal. Two for two. Great. For number three,
Nancy Jeng (42:44):
I'm ready.
Jared Correia (42:46):
I'm going to try my best on this one too. Shia carra, Japanese, small pieces of raw seafood served in a brown viscous paste made of the animal's own heavily salted fermented viscera, which for those of you who don't know what viscera is, those are internal organs. Sounds delightful for the consumer, probably more so than the animal. Is this a real dish in Japan?
Nancy Jeng (43:18):
What is it called? Or what was the name of it?
Jared Correia (43:22):
It's called she o Carra raw seafood served in a brown viscous paste, made of the animal's own organs, heavily salted and fermented. This is real meal.
Nancy Jeng (43:38):
I am going to say no.
Jared Correia (43:44):
I'll ask aas. It is real. It is very real. Oh no. See, I jinxed you because I was like, I
Nancy Jeng (43:51):
Know. I blame you entirely for this.
Jared Correia (43:54):
I was like, damn, we're two for two and you're now waiting for me to finish the question where I'm in trouble. It is as noted, it is an acquired taste, even in Japan. So I don't know if it's popular or necessary, but it's real. Alright. Year two for three though. No shame in that and I've got some good ones coming up for you. Here's the next one. Glacier charred moss, glacier charred moss from Iceland. Ancient arctic moss harvested from volcano, fissures flash, frozen in nitrogen, then singed with a blowtorch for a smoky, velvety texture. Are those crazy motherfuckers from Iceland eating charred moss? They could be, but are they?
Nancy Jeng (44:44):
I think it's real. They
Jared Correia (44:48):
Go ahead. Go through your thought
Nancy Jeng (44:49):
Process a little bit. Been to Iceland and I don't think I've had that exact dish, but I think I've had something similar where they don't have a lot of greenery. Like the vegetable selection is kind of limited because of the climate, so that is something
Jared Correia (45:05):
So you're fucking like, let's eat some moss,
Nancy Jeng (45:08):
Whatever. Exactly. Right. And glacier charred. I feel like most things should be, I just love that as an adjective.
Jared Correia (45:14):
That was a great description, but this is entirely made up. Oh, while Icelanders do use fried moss in teas or soups, which is maybe what you had, they don't flash freeze it or blow torture, but maybe they should. I'm just throwing ideas out for your next cookbook.
Nancy Jeng (45:35):
If I go ahead and do that and make that dish, then we can maybe rewrite history and give me that one.
Jared Correia (45:41):
I'll eat it. I'll try it. I don't know if I like animal organs, but I will definitely eat moss.
Nancy Jeng (45:48):
Yeah, right. Just a salad.
Jared Correia (45:49):
I'm probably revealing too much about myself. Anyway, next up, we've got tarantula tempura from Cambodia. Large hairy arachnids are seasoned with sugar and garlic, then fried until the legs are brittle and the abdomen is gooey. Oh, sounds great. Tarantula. Tempura. Is that a real food from Cambodia?
Nancy Jeng (46:13):
My parents went and they sent us pictures of fried spiders. I don't know that they were tarantulas, but I'm going to say it's real for that
Jared Correia (46:24):
Reason. Yes, correct.
Nancy Jeng (46:25):
Okay.
Jared Correia (46:26):
Correct. So they probably were tarula.
Nancy Jeng (46:29):
Yeah.
Jared Correia (46:29):
Maybe they weren't
Nancy Jeng (46:31):
A hair though. Is that necessary?
Jared Correia (46:34):
I dunno why ing myself out. I don't know why chat. GPT felt the need to add that. I feel like the hair would burn off during the cooking process, I guess. Yeah, I guess that's true. It is a popular street food in Cambodia, and many people say that it tastes like crispy chicken or shrimp. So there you go. Alright, you are three of five by my count. Just pretty good. So this is an important one to see if you can get over 500 on our quiz. The last meal is saffron steamed silkworm. Melange from the Persian Gulf. Juvenile silkworms are soaked in rosewater and saffron, then steamed inside hollowed pomegranate rinds until they achieve a custard like consistency. Are people in the Persian Gulf eating juvenile silk worms that taste like custard? Is this a real dish?
Nancy Jeng (47:35):
I don't know anything about the cuisine here.
Jared Correia (47:39):
No pressure, but also all the pressure.
Nancy Jeng (47:42):
I know. I think it's not real.
Jared Correia (47:48):
It is not real. Yay. Tremendous performance.
Nancy Jeng (47:51):
That's not too expensive of a,
Jared Correia (47:53):
Oh, good point. Good point. Silk worms are eaten in parts of Asia, but the Persian Gulf pomegranate preparation is a complete fabrication on our part. Well done. Well done. All golf clap for you. Four of six. That's a 67 percentage crushing it, which by the way is probably what most law firms are doing in terms of their collection rate if they're not using AI doing software. So
Nancy Jeng (48:23):
You
Jared Correia (48:23):
See how I brought it full circle?
Nancy Jeng (48:25):
Yeah. I love that.
Jared Correia (48:27):
Nancy, thank you for coming on. It was delightful. We'll have to have you back on again sometime.
Nancy Jeng (48:31):
Yeah, absolutely. This was so fun. I loved it.
Jared Correia (48:35):
Thanks for our guest, Nancy Jang of Billables ai. To learn more about Nancy and Billables AI visit billables ai, that's billables.ai now because I'll always be a nineties kid who loves no ma, but whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I'm now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. This week's playlist is full of top nutrients. It's the food playlist that's right. Songs about food, and it's sponsored by the Food Network. Well, it turns out it isn't actually sponsored by the Food Network. I'm still waiting for them to give me a show where I make all kinds of different varieties of microwave pizza. I guess I'm going to have to keep waiting. Join us next time when I fight for your right to party.