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 (00:00:00):
Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Legal Late Night. We've got to show the promises to be at least mildly interesting. For my monologue, I'm discussing retention strategies for law firms. In the interview, it's Jonathon Fishman of LeanLaw. That's right, it's Law Firm Financial Management for the next seven hours. That was a joke in the counter program. We're playing holidays on holiday. Can Jonathon figure out which defunct holidays are real and which are fake? Can you now, let's talk about how to keep your best employees. The job market remains pretty tight for law firms these days. That means that the competition is fierce for lawyers, staff, people, paralegals, admins. And so a lot of shit's going on, including poaching employees, lawyers from other law firms, trying to find other attorneys or staff reaching out to them directly, making them better offers, paying them over market.
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This is happening a lot on LinkedIn where folks are reaching out through direct messages and not even using a recruiter, but just on their own, trying to grab people from other folks. Law firms, lots of hands in lots of cookie jars. Of course, law firm employers are still looking for talent in traditional ways too, so everybody's trying to get grabbed here and employees are more willing to move from job to job than they have ever been before. So you really got to watch your back when it comes to staffing up a law firm. Now, when I talk to most people about staffing up a firm, a lot of what they're focused on is, well, how do I hire the right people? But really, if you've already hired some good people, the bigger challenge is how do you keep those good people? And I think that's more of a challenge, frankly, then hiring people in the first place, trying to keep people onboarded who are great, they become targets in a marketplace like this.
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So let's talk about how you protect your investment in your best people. What can you do to prevent them from leaving to the extent you can, assuming they don't want to just start a new business on their own or they have some kind of family issue or a medical reason that causes them to leave or move to another area. Let's assume that that's all square and you just want to keep them in the job by maintaining their interest in it. Well, here's the thing I've got for you. Seven tips on how to retain employees in a law firm. Here's number one, clear transparent incentives, and I'll talk about this with Jonathon A. Little bit in the interview portion as well, especially younger employees. They do not suffer the bullshit that has traditionally happened where people are just like, oh, we'll figure it out as we go along.
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Or I'm running the law firm on vibes. The younger employees are the less likely they're going to have patients free. You running your law firms on vibes, which is how every law firm has run ever. So I also think that transparent incentives are good for employers because it keeps the employers on track and it also reduces the number of disputes you're going to see. Frankly, if I have an issue with an employee, I'd rather be like, Hey, I have this very specific issue which I can quantify. Rather than saying something like, Hey, I have this specific issue, but it's specific to me and it's very qualitative and I don't know how you feel about it. You got to have something to hang your criticisms on. And having a transparent incentive structure, that's really helpful if people aren't meeting incentives. But let's talk about the hopeful world in which people are meeting those incentives because in theory, the people who are your good employees are going to be able to meet those incentives, not relatively easily, but effectively in an environment like this, you've got the right incentives in place, you can create a performance culture and then you can reward exceptional effort and achievements, and that's the way it should be.
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This is real world. This is like fourth grade soccer. There's no performance trophies here, but there's no participation trophies I should say. There are definitely performance trophies and they're large and golden. So how would you create an incentive program? Well, there's a whole host of ways to do it. A lot of law firms focused on revenue, so some will have hourly billing bonuses set up into tiers usually. So I hit hour 1201 for the year through 1500. I get a certain percentage of many hours that are billed or collected. I move to 1501 to 1800, there's another tier. I get higher percentage, so on and so forth. You know how that goes. That's pretty straightforward and that works because there are a lot of hourly billing firms. Now, if you're not an hourly billing firm, there's a whole host of things you could do. You could bonus on projects on an hourly basis.
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You get people hour credits for the projects, or you could just figure out what project bonuses look like and you could have project bonuses as well outside of just traditional legal work. You could have projects that people do for marketing in the law firm or improving the administration of the law firm. I worked for LEAP for a little while, which is a legal tech company that's still around and global in nature, and they used to have these top fives every quarter that you had to meet. So you have these five goals that you need to hit, and that's a portion of your compensation that worked effectively to raise their revenue significantly over time. You could also do a bonus structure or incentive structure around efficiency, kind of lean methodology. How quickly do we move cases through law firm and who is instrumental in making that happen?
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You got to be able to attract that first. And again, we talked to Jonathon about that in the interview as well. See, people think, I don't put this together in any kind of structural way. There's a method to my madness folks, I promise even if it's not clear most of the time. So I really like those efficiency bonuses because it's just a math equation as to how much money you can make in your law firm. The more cases you can move through your law firm quicker, the more revenue potential you have. Lastly, origination bonuses and bonuses. Sometimes that's serious shit if somebody can actually bring in work, but a lot of time that's a bone you can throw to people who may not be the best originators in the world, but they have to available to them if they want to change their tune at some point down the line.
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So put that all together, put it in a bowl, mix it up, come out with something that works for you. But there are a whole host of incentive structure around finances, projects that you can build into your law firm that'll make people excited to continue to work for you. Now here's the second part of the incentive structure, which I think is important, which is that you need regular incentives. So this is tip number two. A lot of times, especially in big firms, people are waiting until the end of the year to get their bonuses and they hang on and they hang on and they're really pissed off that all time, like my law firm is holding me hostage. Yes, your law firm is holding you hostage, but also your law firm is creating a cashflow problem for itself because you're going to have to hit up these crazy high bonuses at the end of the year.
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Whereas especially in smaller firms, it's better to do weekly or monthly incentives where somebody hits the incentive and they get paid out that is better for the employee so they're happier, which is what we're going for here because they get the immediate gratification. But it's also more helpful for the law firms, the owners of those law firms because they can get the cashflow going more effectively because they're making those bonus payments more regularly. Instead of paying 120,000 at the end of the year, maybe you're paying $10,000 a month, which is a little bit easier to swallow. You don't have that big nut to crack at the end of the year. It's also easier to calculate because you're utilizing less data at that point. So the more frequently you can give out incentives, the better. Number three, titles give people titles. Titles are bullshit. They mean absolutely nothing.
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If I wanted to, I could make up whatever fucking title I wanted to and have that be my job, and I could do that whether I own a business like I do or whether I work for somebody else if they're willing to give me that title. Here's the thing, lawyers love stupid titles. They fucking love them. So if you can keep somebody happy by giving them a title that doesn't require you to offer equity. So non-equity partner would be an example that is great. Non-equity partner, managing partner, chief legal officer, whatever the fuck, I don't care. As long as it's an appealing title to your employees, they'll stay happy, they'll stay engaged. The other thing here that I think is important is that those titles, while some of them may be bullshit for the big ones like partner, you should have some clear promotional plan in place, meaning a partner track.
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And this is a big bugaboo with a lot of firms because again, you've got these older attorneys who are running these firms and you've got younger attorneys who want transparency. So no older attorney wants to build out a partner track that they need to stick to. But younger attorneys, they all want a partner track to understand how do I move forward in this business? How do I get to have a say and have a role and make some decisions? Well, there should be a program for that that should be outlined. There should be specific things that they need to achieve. And again, the idea is we want exceptional performance here. This is not about just giving anybody a promotion. This is about giving the best people a promotion and you have to stick to that. But if you can set up an environment wherein you're promoting your best people based on metrics that really drive the firm forward, you shouldn't have a problem.
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Not only should you have great employees working for you, but you should be able to maintain them in their place. Alright, number four, professional development opportunities. Again, a lot of this is around what would I do to make younger employees happy because they're the ones who are going to need to move your business forward in the future and maybe even, I don't know, acquire the business from you at some point. So especially for those younger lawyers, those younger staff people like in-person programming, virtual CLEs conferences and fun places, travel perks, that kind of thing is really valuable and can keep people invested in your law firm. But it's not just all about sending people to conferences and building their professional development that way you can also have internal resources that folks can access. So I know a lot of law firms that will have a law firm university and they'll build it out on an internet and people can access that information, whatever they want.
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Couple that asynchronous learning with real-time access to senior lawyers and partners who can provide feedback on what the younger attorneys are doing. And then you're in business, as you probably found if you run a law firm, younger attorneys, they want feedback on a recurring basis. So build that out as part of your professional development. So when you've got a professional development program that you're trying to put into place in a law firm, you're looking at not only external opportunities but also building out an internal backbone for that. That'll keep people happy, that'll keep people working on your team and not landing side long glances at other law firms. Grass is not always greener, especially when the grass at the current firm is pretty green. Yes, I'm talking about money. Number five, marketing opportunities. So obviously if you're going out and doing professional development, you're talking to other attorneys, but a great way to allow people on your team, both attorneys and staff, again, to feel like they're part of the group, is to let them help with the marketing that could help with an origination bonus if you have one available that can be a backdoor to helping people understand profitability, which a lot of folks don't, unless you're transparent about your financial data more in that in a second.
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And this is also a great way to develop content for your law firm, which will help you to bring in more clients and potentially new hires depending on how you lay it out. If your people are really happy to work for you and you can build out a what it's like to work here page on your website, then that's a great way to attract new hires. And those people may approach you directly. You might not even have to send out a job posting for somebody to reach out to you and say, Hey, I want to work for the firm. They may just view that page look like it's a cool place to work, come in and want to work for you. So think about how you might involve your whole team in marketing opportunities. So part of the idea here is not just about cash, right?
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We're not just giving people money. What we're trying to do is make people feel like they're involved and they're part of the team. I know when I worked for law firms when I was younger, I never felt like I was part of the team. I felt like I was always an outsider and I felt like people were making decisions around me. And if you're a younger attorney, it helps to feel like you're part of the mixed. Alright, two more things. Number six, financial transparency. So I am a big advocate of financial transparency in the law firm and I think it's about how you treat your staff because let's be honest, we're all big boys and big girls here. If you've worked for any length of time, you know what the deal is, there's a business hierarchy. You might not understand profitability, but you know that you have a place in that hierarchy and that everybody needs to do certain things to move the business forward.
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Again, even if you don't have a very specific idea about how the profitability works. Now, if you're someone who works for a law firm and you understand how the profitability works and you understand that there's a pathway in place to get you to a next step to advance in the organization, are you going to work more or less hard? Probably more hard, harder, harder? And then are you going to be as likely to move to another firm that may not have that transparency, that accessibility, probably not. So if you are willing to put incentives in place, make your financial data transparent and allow your people to feel like they're truly part of a team, it's going to be very hard to unlock someone from your law practice. Last thing number seven is flexibility. I know a lot of firms are moving to working in the office again, but working in the office sucks.
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As you can see, I have an office in Boston. I never go in there because I fucking hate going into the city. I'd rather work in my dining room, which is where you're seeing me right now. And every time, for the most part, I come on this podcast. So if you can offer somebody who works for you, flexibility as well, that's great. But to be able to do that, you also need to understand, well, these are the tools I need to promote that flexibility. This is a software I need to utilize in the firm. This is how I need to manage it. So there's a little bit of legwork on your side as well, but if you can do these seven things, then you'll be able to retain employees that are higher than you may have previously. So here they are again, clear, transparent incentives, regular incentives, titles that don't force you as a business owner to give up equity, professional development opportunities for your team, marketing opportunities for your team, financial transparency towards your team, and flexibility for the people who work for you. Do that stuff. You're far less likely to see your good stat people get poached. Next up, we're poaching Jonathon Fishman of LeanLaw, at least for this podcast interview. He's got a great set of tips for practicing law in a fiscally responsible way, both with respect to managing your client's money and your own. That's right. We're covering iolta, everybody's favorite topic, and we're also going to get all the way in on agent ai or at least a little bit of the way in as one does. That's up next.
(00:16:29):
Well, welcome back. Sadly, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because it's a podcast. So I'm going to take some time to learn American Sign Language and I'm going to sign the rest of the podcast novice fucking with you. That does sound amazing, but I don't think we have enough time for all that. So let's just get to our interview instead. We've got a great guest today. That's all right, we're already starting. Our guest today is Jonathon Fi, Jesus Christ. Sorry, do
Jonathon Fishman (00:16:59):
You want me introduce myself?
Jared Correia (00:17:02):
Yeah, would you please evolution? Should that in it be helpful? I just say to the world, he's our
Jonathon Fishman (00:17:05):
Guest. I'm Jonathon Fishman. We've never done this before. It's pretty straightforward it, it's not an apparently not for me, not today. You said it was challenging to be Monday, but well, this roll, I'm Jonathon Fishman of the world to run a company called Lane Law.
Jared Correia (00:17:23):
Very good, thank you. Jonathon, would you like to take over from here? Feel free to interview yourself.
Jonathon Fishman (00:17:26):
We ran an extensive conversation about hats, so we could just do a half hour on hats.
Jared Correia (00:17:32):
We have, we have, so I guess I should, we talked about this a little pre-show. We, I've got my Cedar Rapids kernels hat on today, which I didn't even know until a couple minutes ago. So maybe
Jonathon Fishman (00:17:46):
I have a problem. I think you should announce, make sure that you clearly tell your audience what hat you're wearing because I've watched multiple episodes and was very confused.
Jared Correia (00:17:57):
Yeah, it's a lot. We try to move it around a little bit. I try never to wear this name one twice, but Jonathon, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. I've done some stuff with Gary over at Lean Law and we've done some webinars in the past, so I'm glad to be able to have you on this show. You're CEO co-founder at Lean Law and you're working on Boise, Idaho. And I guess my question to that is why?
Jonathon Fishman (00:18:29):
That's a good question. It's a longer backstory. I worked.
Jared Correia (00:18:35):
Give me the backstory. We good time.
Jonathon Fishman (00:18:38):
I was born in Michigan, went to college in Arizona, fell in love with California, spent 25 years between San Francisco and Los Angeles, all in early stage tech, typically mostly B2C. I moved for lifestyle reasons to Boise, Idaho in 2009. My dad was in Ketchum and my stepsister was here and I would roll through Boise to get to Ketchum and like I had a son going into kindergarten and another one right behind a daughter. And I was like, this looked pretty good. But it was 2009 and it was a complete recession and not only was that
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It was a housing recession, which was doubly bad for what we call the Greater Treasure Valley area. So as I began to network, and I'll kind of segue into why and how as I began to network in the neighborhood, I was introduced to Gary Allen, that's Gary you mentioned earlier, who's now a 40 year plus practicing land use attorney and had been practicing in Idaho and we had different companies and we were introduced by a mutual mentor. And I just thoroughly enjoyed working with Gary and we were raising a little money and one of the investors said to me, is he in or out? He's got to be in. And there was some ties there. So I said, sure, let's join forces. And Gary was the subject matter expert, and I had never done anything in legal. So a lot of people will ask me, am I a lawyer? And no, I'm not a lawyer. I certainly talk to lawyers, no lawyers and understand the profession. But what's interesting about Boise and the Y is that it was part of my own aspiration to have a certain lifestyle but still have the ability to start a company, build a community, and have the economic opportunity that we had sought. So I kind of wanted my cake and eat it too.
Jared Correia (00:20:28):
That's cool. Yeah, I mean I was kind of joking a little bit because I do know a lot of business people who live in the Boise area.
Jonathon Fishman (00:20:35):
It's changed time in the last 20 years for sure.
Jared Correia (00:20:40):
Yeah, it's interesting. So what about a legal product appealed to you as somebody who was not involved in the law? I'm always addressing that because lawyers, they have to do the
Jonathon Fishman (00:20:52):
Law. Yeah, we've had little to do for me and still with the fact that it's legal, although I've grown to love legal. And on one of your previous episodes to guys from Hona, were talking about lawyers and how they don't never trained to, they were talking customer service, but really the broader sense of how to run a business and what is pure joy for me is helping these law firms be better businesses. And we work in small mid-market, so we love that five to 50, we go up to a hundred and down to one, but five to 50, it's the sweet spot when you go up market, you lose the opportunity to engage with the principal stakeholders of the business. You're just talking to the CS in the wheel.
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And I sold and I talked for the years and years and years I was knee deep in these law firms. And really what I was doing was creating trusted relationships with these principal owners and firm administrators. And that's what the joy is for me is fellow small business owners and helping them be better. And when you get to put your platform out and they get to use your tech and you actually see transformation, that's just a plus stuff. So legal was cool because at first I was super intimidated by lawyers and I think most people are, and I had this, I think so too. People are freaked out about lawyers and rightfully, but I had this sort of epiphany moment in dealing with a lawyer. It was a well established trial attorney in Denver. And I had gone, I'm selling them, I'd gone through the lower ranks and he like, oh, you got to go meet with Dave. And I was like, okay. And I meet with David and David's sitting in his office, we're on a Zoom meeting and I realized, and I have this epiphany, David is deposing me, and I was feeling a little intimidated as he is looking such a lawyerly
Jared Correia (00:22:55):
Such a lawyerly thing to do.
Jonathon Fishman (00:22:56):
You had said previously that it did this and now you're stating that and I'm like getting flustered. And then I realized that's just how his brain works. He doesn't know how to interact with me in any other way. And when I just flipped the switch and recognized how his brain worked, that helped me. I don't create empathy. Maybe for him that was David's ability is to dispose of, I can't imagine being David's child coming home late on a Thursday night
Jared Correia (00:23:24):
Getting to post because my homework's not done.
Jonathon Fishman (00:23:27):
Yeah,
Jared Correia (00:23:28):
No, that's a cool perspective though. I think now you've been in it for a while at this point you said you've been in the
Jonathon Fishman (00:23:32):
Legal industry. We've had I think three lives in Lon. And candidly, all of us were not fully in the company until like 2021. And we had in a more out kind of moment. And with that part of that was the leadership change and I became the CEO and the latter part of 22, early 23. And it wasn't because Gary didn't do a good job. It was just, hey, we needed to move forward. We had to drive the company in a different direction. And so it's been a very exciting four or five years that we've now from that point where we all doubled down and committed to the business and raised some money and really have grown the company.
Jared Correia (00:24:16):
Yeah, I think you've been in the tech space for a while, pandemic rolled around and everybody was like all of a sudden, oh, I guess we need cloud software. We should probably make that to think
Jonathon Fishman (00:24:27):
It's
Jared Correia (00:24:27):
A good time to get
Jonathon Fishman (00:24:28):
Involved. That was a driver. But you to be surprised at how many firms are still not. And even with the pandemic, they're doing stupid, stupid crap. And
Jared Correia (00:24:39):
Sadly I'm
Jonathon Fishman (00:24:40):
Not. Yeah, I think you were talking about AI and it's all going to move much faster than any other technology, I will admit that. But when you get into the real heart and soul of small and mid-market law, they are unbelievably slow to adopt. And my biggest competition, my biggest challenge in closing and growth is inertia and the status quo. It's not Cleo or some other competitor, it's just people doing nothing.
Jared Correia (00:25:13):
Maybe inertia and Excel spreadsheets. Would that be fair to say? Exactly. Okay. So we've gone a little ways here, but I want to talk a little bit about lean law. So if folks are listening and they haven't heard of the company before, what do you guys do?
Jonathon Fishman (00:25:28):
So I think fundamentally we started with a very simple premise and we want to help law firms be better businesses and we stay true to that. There's been some other moments where we've had aspirational, we help law firms manage the full financial lifecycle, how they onboard time fees, track those, how they draft, deliver and collect on all their invoices and the full financial reporting. We kind of have three uniques in the world. One is we take a very integration mindset. So we never aspired to be a practice management tool. Rather we wanted to narrowly focus on the firm's financials. We felt that was the most important workflow if you swear on this bad cost. So they fuck up. Yeah, I noticed that. You can swear on the podcast we go, if you muck up your financials, everything downstream for that doesn't really matter.
(00:26:23):
We never wanted to reinvent what others did better than us. So our idea was to integrate. So you'll see QuickBooks is a strong integration for us. We have a payments partner, Indo with a strong integration, and recently we have met docs for document management. The second focus was our clients, our ICP. And we as I mentioned earlier, love the small mid market. That five to 50 is wonderful. We grow up to about a hundred, 120 attorneys and certainly have some of the larger ones on our platform and have lots of micros. But we do that. And so when clients come to us, they're really looking saying, I want a narrow financial tool because maybe I'm using a niche specific practice management tool because I'm an electric property returner or I'm bigger and a practice management tool is too clumsy and cumbersome and too light on the financials. And when I say financials, I mean the financial workflows, the dashboards for the lawyers to understand their productivity, the whole kit. And Kubota,
Jared Correia (00:27:31):
The net docs thing is interesting to me because I know of a lot of larger firms that use them. And so when you sound to mid-market firms, are people like, oh, I need to buy one software and other softwares? Or are they more like, Hey, this is great, I can integrate what I want with the system I like
Jonathon Fishman (00:27:51):
I'm going to answer it's respond back by saying sort of a theory I have and then I'll come back to it And I strongly believe that's cool. We're in what we call the fourth phase of legal tech with the third phase being the cloud native platform.
Jared Correia (00:28:08):
Oh, I love this type of shit. Yes, go ahead
Jonathon Fishman (00:28:10):
Please. When I say that CLE won Cleo just the home run company, right? They're a unicorn billion dollar player and they kind of muck up the whole environment because their marketing is so strong. Everyone has this idea of what good looks like and it's really not good for a lot of users and it's great products, don't get me wrong. I don't want to dispar clear, but when we talk about the fourth phase, when you think about the influx of all the investment capital that's gone in the markets, what you're seeing is niche based tools because the API architecture, the way that one software tool can talk to another through the internet has modernized and matured. So you've got players like lean law that say, Hey, I'm going to ignore or not focus on all this broad set of tools and I'm going to go in and narrowly focus on something I do really, really well.
(00:28:57):
And so NetDocs is a tool that does really, really well at what it does and it goes down small market. I mean their roots and energy is in smaller market and they love that audience and sell a lot of small markets. So what we believe is that especially as the boomers age out, which is happening now, and Gen X is, I'm 57 slowly, but Gen X is like me take control and you have a lot of pressure from millennials is that there's this idea that we should pick the tools that we want to use and those tools should be awesome at what they do and the software vendors should make sure that the data flows properly. So when you onboard a client to in-law today that's queuing up QuickBooks, that's queuing up net docs that's ready for your payments partner with our partner vido. So we're facilitating that when you add to Angen AI that just goes on steroids in terms of what the possibilities are.
Jared Correia (00:29:52):
Oh yeah, I don't want to get too far ahead of it. I do want to talk about ai, but I don't want to do it right now. I want to get there. I have a pathway. I mean we're talking on a Monday holiday. You're kind enough to come on. I've just about got my shit together now. I'm getting there. You're
Jonathon Fishman (00:30:10):
Doing great.
Jared Correia (00:30:10):
Lemme ask you like I'm,
Jonathon Fishman (00:30:12):
You're just doing great. You're just thank
Jared Correia (00:30:13):
You. Thank you. This is my first podcast.
Jonathon Fishman (00:30:15):
You're doing great. Just keep up the good work. Keep going.
Jared Correia (00:30:22):
Let me ask you a little bit about the QuickBooks thing because I find that really interesting. So you guys are deeply embedded with QuickBooks. You got a two sync and now what does that do in terms of talk generally, but also one of my interests is like that's got to supercharge the reporting capabilities
Jonathon Fishman (00:30:40):
For the software like this. You talked to Gary Allen again and he and I early on had a very strong mantra, which is what can we integrate with, what can we automate and what are the data opportunities? And the first personification that was into its QuickBooks and what we did is it's one of our ICPs, we make it work for law firms and we do it better than anyone in the industry. And I know that sounds like a CEO speak, but really I could talk that in bolts. So the first premise of all of what we do is that QuickBooks is the source of truth. It's a really important piece. At any time a law firm or a back office accounting person or an outsourced accounting person can pull p and LA balance sheet, a statement of cash flows, and it will be a hundred percent accurate all the time every day.
(00:31:23):
And that's a critical function for us. When you take reporting, what we do is extend the reporting of QuickBooks so that you have legal specific reporting. We do compensation tracking and we do it better than I believe anyone in the industry. We do productivity tracking all sorts of things, which takes collected revenue as a fundamental component of it or build level and then shapes it in a way that law firms need to see it and understand it. Now, what's cool about QuickBooks and QuickBooks data is that we see the whole stream of QuickBooks data. So we can start to look at firm profitability, lawyer profitability, practice area profitability in a far more astute way because historically we have this sort of disconnect for all QuickBooks users. The real overhead, the real cost is sitting over in QuickBooks and then they sort of juxtapose some high level, not very insightful data and they come up with their reporting.
(00:32:17):
And then in the law practice side, they're looking at realization of really just, Hey, what did we bill and what did we collect? And there's a whole set of other data that is very impactful on that process. So the opportunity is we have a ton of data, whether it's from QuickBooks Land law or from some other tools. The question and the challenge is always how do you shape that data in a way that's meaningful to the end users and the stakeholders? Because I think one of the things that many people making software for law firms overstate is the sophistication and the capacity a stakeholder has in digesting data. We get all geeked out thinking we're going to life, not tell me who owes me money and what I'm going to make. I mean really that comes down to that. So we take a very, I don't know, we take a very mindful approach to how we're thinking about data and data presentation. You can quickly overwhelm the end user, but having that full financial landscape of QuickBooks be exposed to lean lock crates a slew of opportunities.
Jared Correia (00:33:37):
Well, the compensation tracking thing is really interesting to me because if you've got sophisticated users on a platform, that's something they need. So how do you accomplish that in system or at least the long cycle? But
Jonathon Fishman (00:33:49):
Baffling to me is that I, two thirds of the whole industry is based on hail and door, the finder minder grinder, and then these law firms struggles to track the most basic data. So we approached comp tracking, we early on, Fred, our CTO and I were just talking and talking and talking to law firms. And that was a subject that kept coming up like, Hey, we need that. And what's tricky about it is about eight, nine tenths of it is all uniform, but that last 10 to 15% is unique and every lawyer in the world has their own crazy scheme that they're like, this is the best. So that's the tricky part.
Jared Correia (00:34:36):
That is very true
Jonathon Fishman (00:34:37):
We took an approach that said we didn't want to make it a report. What we want to do is thought about it's a feature and a function of the product. So it's all of the controls that you have in setting it up so that you can deal with some of those crazy scenarios at the firm level, the individual user level, and at the client level, how you can go into get real time reporting all and collected revenue and go all the way down to the details so that you get transparency. It's really important for trust because so much of comp tracking is done at black box, and that's really important for millennials because they just have no tolerance for black boxes. They're just the whole idea of millennial and younger is that like, Hey, we want to be transparent with the data. And then lastly, which I love, and then the last piece is the disbursement. How do you get the money out in a way that you can track it and make sense? So we have that full functionality built into our product and it was one of the anchor components that we said we're going to double down and triple down to make an awesome tracking tool.
Jared Correia (00:35:39):
It's funny though, you're right. Every lawyer's like, I got this brilliant incentive plan and then I'm like, oh, this is every other incentive plan I've ever heard. Sorry everybody. So you've been at this for a little while. So what do you think are the most important financial metrics for a law firm? What should they be looking at on a recurring basis?
Jonathon Fishman (00:35:59):
So I think about that in a different way than most. And it's something that
(00:36:06):
We approach it. So we think a lot about revenue leakage. So there's productivity reports, there's compensation reports as with bill collected. Those are all really important things to look at, but that's basic blocking and tackling. But where law firms really underperform is this idea of revenue leakage. And you think of it in three buckets. One is getting time or getting time into the system and how time trackers just don't do a contemporarily and how much money is left on the table and how time now with AI should be used in any value-based pricing or fixed fee to help you understand what was the effort that went into it. The second phase is from time approved to delivery, which you would think is quick but is not. And this constant herding cats in law firms and the poor performing lawyers late days and weeks if not to get the invoices out.
(00:36:58):
And then the last piece is revenue leakage. So when you take those three together, you're talking, some firms lose 15 to 18% of their potential revenue just based on those three buckets. And what that speaks to is a lack of solid workflow and how they don't run their business as well. So we look at contemporary time tracking, when are people putting the time into the system? Because an easy way to just uplift revenue, we look at time to approved invoice and delivery, that's a really important metric. And then lastly, collections. I have another strong opinion that law firms act like banks and they lend their clients money on their WIP and it's just idiotic. They're not in the business to do that. Some other service provider does work. They don't allow 30 to 60 days to say, no, it's okay, pay me when you can. I mean there's empathetic moments where you need to help your people and that's good to do that, but it's more a lack of discipline and one of the solutions, there are better tools to help your clients pay for it, whether it's credit cards or aach or buy now, pay later, there's lots of different instruments that are coming out so the law firm can be better positioned to collect.
Jared Correia (00:38:19):
That's good stuff, man. I love the focus on workflows sorely lacking. Let's do some big ticket items, hourly billing still the predominant way that law firms bill, is that changing and no,
Jonathon Fishman (00:38:34):
And in certain types of, well first of all, I said what's my biggest competitor? The status quo. And so I think a lot of law firms and a lot of lawyers will be very hesitant to switch to value-based pricing because of the fear of the unknown. How do they do it? How do they price it? AI might accelerate that and there's certain types of law practices that there's so much uncertainty because there's an opposing counsel or there's some activity that it's very difficult to say, I can just bookmark this into it. But I do think that more and more lawyers will look to a component or a hybrid of value-based pricing and bring that as a relationship. I can tell you with my own law firm, the one that services lean law, there's a tension because how much I know how much I know too much about the rates and what they bill.
(00:39:34):
And now with the advent of ai, I'm making decisions, is this worth it to go to my lawyer because I'm getting a pretty good answer with chat gt and if the risk is low enough, I can avoid that. So there's a tension that the lawyers want a more trusted relationship, especially B2B. So value-based pricing can potentially overcome that. I also think that with AI driving so much workflow that you're going to see a pressure on hourly billing because it's all being done for you. So can I still charge that hour? So the natural progression would be go to value-based pricing with overage, right? So I don't think everyone's going to go to value-based pricing, it's just going to be this wholesale uniform. But I do see my law firm might say, okay, I'm going to bill you two grand a month and you get all this, but under these circumstances we'll do some overages. And we have two AI time tracking tools built into in law partnerships, one with billables AI and the other with 0.1. And I use billables just in my day-to-day work. And it's transformative. I mean in terms of how much you can get captured in a fully automated way. So I don't think time tracking goes away. I think it changes and evolves, but I think AI certainly is going to commoditize how law firms think about how they offer their services to company, which creates an opportunity for a different type of relationship between lawyer and client.
Jared Correia (00:41:06):
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I like the idea of it going hybrid first.
Jonathon Fishman (00:41:12):
That makes sense
Jared Correia (00:41:13):
To me, that fits the risk
Jonathon Fishman (00:41:14):
Of risk personality. We built a lot of tools. So if it's a flat rate matter, you can add hours. If it's an hour in the matter, you can add fixed rates. I mean, because that that's, I don't think you get from here to there in a straight line.
Jared Correia (00:41:27):
Yeah, that flexibility is awesome. Alright, let's see. Another big topic, trust really by the way, you hear about a lot of software that let's do it, do not want to do it. Should we bypass trust accounting? You introduced yourself, so you just let me know what you want to talk about. I don't know. Nobody wants to talk about trust accounting. Nobody wants to do it. A lot of software is out there say they do trust accounting, they don't really, so if I'm a consumer, what am I looking for from a
Jonathon Fishman (00:41:50):
Vendor? Let's go back and talk about trust accounting. The lawyers refrain from or worry about it because they think it's hard and that's wrong. They just don't take 10 minutes to create proper workflow. So any lawyer listening to this, spend an hour, call me up, I'll tell you how to do it. It's not rocket science. But
Jared Correia (00:42:12):
It ain't that hard.
Jonathon Fishman (00:42:12):
the missed opportunity I think with trust accounting is that when you go back to your basic business and you say, okay, cashflow lawyers should be using evergreen retainers and that is all driven by, yeah, that's all driven by your trust accounting. So trust accounting isn't rocket science. If you have good tools and lawyers should never be extending credit to clients and being in that situation, they should have the money pay the bill from trust and then ask for the trust money to be reimbursed. And if they did that, they will never have ar. And I'll give you an example. One of probably our best performing firm on our platform is in the divorce space. And of course that's a tenuous situation where cash is challenging, but they move from an AR mindset where they'd send bills to a hundred percent retainer based engagement with replenishment and we facilitated that full financial lifecycle.
(00:43:14):
So it's all automated and they're a hundred percent electronic, there's no checks and everything is a CH or credit card and they put a million dollars of cash in their pocket on an annual basis and have zero ar. I mean, think about the back office team having more cash and no ar and that's all because they facilitated a smart workflow around trust accounting and lean law powers that entire process. So there's some really good business sense to do it and it's just not as hard as can be for that. So that's my thing on trust.
Jared Correia (00:43:44):
I agree. That was great. I'm standing on the same soapbox. Evergreen, your trainer's. Awesome. Most attorneys will not do it because they don't want to engage the trust accounting. All right. We've been talking a little bit back and forth on this, so let's do it. I save her for last. Yeah, let's do it. We'll continue to listen on the show. Ai, I guess we're going to have to talk about ai. What are your thoughts generally on where this goes in terms of law firm finances?
Jonathon Fishman (00:44:15):
I have to given an anecdote before I do that. You were talking to one of your other, I think that the Hona guys and you're like, Ugh, I'm sick of ai. It's been like you said this, I'm sick of it. And just the other day was sitting the grocery store and I was watching this guy check out Za looked like a wonderful older man. He wasn't that old. And I'm like, what does that guy know about ai? Wouldn't that be nice to just be able to ignore the whole damn thing and move on your life? Anyways, tell me about
Jared Correia (00:44:43):
It. Is the end of that antidote, him whipping out his smartphone and talking to
Jonathon Fishman (00:44:48):
Gt? That's is what I was doing when I'm looking at 'em. I think about AI in three buckets, at least for land law. I think the obvious that everyone's doing. And there's not rocket sciences using AI to understand what's happened or what's going to happen for law firm insights. And I think that's obvious and easy. We have structured data that's not hard. I also think number two is agentic opportunities. We've rebuilt our whole API architecture to be secure and have essentially, I always call 'em the idea of having the freight, what are they called? The freight boxes? Shoot, I'm the, what are they called?
New Speaker (00:45:32):
Oh
Jonathon Fishman (00:45:32):
Yeah. Oh gosh, it kills my analogy. But anyways, having it'll come back to me. You're doing well. What we believe because we are a stern believe we're in best in class is that agents should be able to come in to lean law, grab financial data on behalf of it and pass it back over. So you have a broader set of insights and a different tool. And so ag agentic AI is going to be important for us and that may help facilitate integrations that may facilitate workflow or might facilitate data. But I think it's super critical and we're going to take a very different approach than I think the rest of the market in saying, Hey, we're open for business and we have this cool API layer. And we think that the ISVs of the world, the affinities and some of these people, 35, 45, the tech consultants that are in the marketplace, these are going to be great tools for them to have deeper and stronger relationships with the clients. So I think that's number two is the agent behavior. But the third, what we're really excited about is because we look at QuickBooks data and because we see all of the whip data containers, shipping containers, that's what they are. Little shipping containers that go through. Think about it as agents, they all have to be organized anyways. The third,
Jared Correia (00:46:49):
We'll edit this, so it makes it seamless.
Jonathon Fishman (00:46:50):
The third area, which I think is really the most interesting for lean law is that we have a strong belief that we'll see a modernization of financial services that is vertically specific. So lemme translate that right now. If you think about banks and other payment center, everything is very horizontal. It's one solution and we apply it to all these different things. You go in your bank and either business or consumer, and there's a lot of movement around the verticalization of financial services. So you have banks that will be legal specific payments that will be legal specific. And where this gets supercharged is that when you look at the data that lie law has, and we then have this AgTech API architecture that's then available, you see some very powerful opportunities for underwriting and insights. So looking at a particular matter and saying, Hey, if you allow them to bill with an A CH, you'll get paid this much faster.
(00:47:50):
Get over your damn bias, right? Hey, here you have this big case you just took on and we think this expenses here is a potential loan. You've heard the folks from 8:00 AM talking about that. So having that data, that structured data, and then thinking of the verticalization of software services, you have a lot of financial entities that are very attractive to bank or to legal. And we're a tiny little company and our clients are collecting over a billion dollars on an annualized basis. We're almost at $1.2 billion. And so there's a lot of people who are feverish to say, boy, that's a lot of cash and transactional activity to facilitate. And then all the derivatives of that. So that's the third use that we think. So insights, agentic behavior, and then lastly, we think for financial services, that'll play a major factor.
Jared Correia (00:48:45):
That's awesome. I like the approach. Okay, last question for you. Everybody's aware that this shit is happening, AI is a thing. Do you find that your clients are actually asking about it, want to use it? Are they doing stuff in this space
Jonathon Fishman (00:49:00):
Yet? No. I mean, I'd like to say yes,
Jared Correia (00:49:07):
Same by the way.
Jonathon Fishman (00:49:07):
but the answer is no. And even when I presented, it was funny. I presented something to my attorney that I'd used chat BT to redo something and they're like, well, I don't really care about that so much. I think they'll be pulled into it. And certainly younger attorneys. I mean we interviewed one attorney who was a little bit younger and he was all over like AI is really critical and he is really excited to hear about lean law. Others, I think there's still inertia unknown, and I do feel like the lawyers are overwhelmed. I call it all of the lawyering that they're doing with ai. I think they're overwhelmed with that in trying to understand that piece of it. So to think about it from financial perspective, they're like, we don't care. They believe they're making a lot of cash and being very efficient, but I think it will move fast for them, especially when we see a really excellent use case like AI time tracking. So that's like a no brainer once you get into those kinds of things. But it's not like every day we have people knocking on the door saying, I want my AI insights tool, but it will happen
Jared Correia (00:50:18):
Maybe by 2030. We'll see.
Jonathon Fishman (00:50:20):
So it's our jobs as software people to help, whether it's through product like growth or other tactics to help them get there, right? I mean, they're lawyers, they don't know about this crap. So we have to coach and prod so we can upsell them. I mean, that's our whole goal. We want upsell them. Ai.
Jared Correia (00:50:40):
Totally fair. My expectation is not that lawyers have deep knowledge of, anyway, that's not even close. That's my AI stuff. Yeah. Thank you Jonathon. This was fun. I appreciate you coming on. Will you hang around for one last second? All right, we're getting to it next. And we thank you so much. Welcome back, everybody. That's right. It's the 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. Jonathon, welcome back.
Jonathon Fishman (00:51:20):
Thank you
Jared Correia (00:51:21):
Training out with us.
Jonathon Fishman (00:51:22):
Excited for the counter programming.
Jared Correia (00:51:26):
I really enjoyed the interview, so hopefully you won't regret moving on after this. Good. So we're recording this on Columbus Day slash indigenous People's Day. I'm not sure what you call it anymore. And my confusion, my general confusion has lent to the creation of a fun game for us to play. I'm calling it Holidays on holiday. Holidays on holidays,
Jonathon Fishman (00:51:47):
Okay.
Jared Correia (00:51:47):
It's very simple to play. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to name a defunct holiday and all you have to tell me is whether it's a real holiday or if I've totally made it up.
Jonathon Fishman (00:52:00):
Can I use it? Are
Jared Correia (00:52:02):
You ready?
Jonathon Fishman (00:52:02):
Can I use AI or any other instruments? No, I'm kidding. No, it's just wrong.
Jared Correia (00:52:08):
You could. Go for it. I've actually had people like Google that use AI before, but one of the reasons I like having lawyers and people involved in legal industry on this show is that they really try to figure it
Jonathon Fishman (00:52:20):
Out. That's the cool thing about lawyers is they're seriously inquisitive people. They are generally inquisitive people. Yeah. Okay, so holiday or not a holiday.
Jared Correia (00:52:31):
Alright, here we go. The first holiday, I'm going to name it, I'm going to give you a little description. It's called the Festival of the Whispering Wax. The Festival of the Whispering Wax from Medieval.
Jonathon Fishman (00:52:44):
Did you say wax like Wax
Jared Correia (00:52:46):
X did say defunct
Jonathon Fishman (00:52:47):
Wax?
Jared Correia (00:52:48):
Yes. Yes.
(00:52:51):
All right, we're off to a good start. A defunct medieval Christian observance from the Bavarian region typically held just before spring planting season. It was dedicated to ensuring a bountiful harvest and protecting the community from crop blight. Townspeople would be required to donate a small personal object to the local church. The priest would then melt all the donations together with bees wax to create a large communal candle. And on the night of the festival, the villagers would whisper into the wax all of their fears, worries and regrets. And then the belief was that the melted wax would absorb all negative spoken energy before it hardened. At that point, the tainted candle was buried in the town square. Well, it's just a real holiday.
Jonathon Fishman (00:53:40):
It's a hell of a description. So right now, it's interesting because right now it's sko, I'm Jewish, and it's the fall festival. So the whole logic pattern of it's fall and we're doing something communal to understand, hey, let's try to get some good stuff going so we don't have a shitty crop. That's good. I like the logic of the coming together in the one candle. So that made sense because small little towns, the only thing that's throwing me to say it's not real, it seems really logical,
Jared Correia (00:54:14):
Is
Jonathon Fishman (00:54:14):
That it doesn't have any religious roots. So if it's some defunct holiday, I sort of think, well, you would've said it was a Christian or Catholic or some other route versus a company. But that's my tension here. The logic works, but I didn't hear anything religious. I'm going to say it's not a holiday.
Jared Correia (00:54:37):
Oh man. Very nice analysis. You're
Jonathon Fishman (00:54:39):
Not a lawyer. Sure. You're not a lawyer. Am I right or wrong?
Jared Correia (00:54:43):
Fake
Jonathon Fishman (00:54:44):
Holiday. I got
Jared Correia (00:54:45):
It. That's totally fake.
Jonathon Fishman (00:54:45):
I got it. Alright, good analysis
Jared Correia (00:54:50):
With a little help from Google Gemini on the description. Well done. Well done. Alright, so bring that same level of analysis to the next one. I got another one for you. Here's number two, the Festival of the Supreme Being France, 17 hundreds. This was a brainchild of Maximilian Rose Pierre. During the French Revolution's reign of terror, it was an attempt to create a new state sponsored deist religion to replace Catholicism. The main celebration in Paris involved Rob Bre addressed in the sky blue coat, personally leading a profession up an artificial mountain built in the sham de Mars where a giant flammable statue representing atheism was theatrically burned to reveal another statue of wisdom. This only took place once as robe Pierre was arrested. Shortly thereafter, the festival of the Supreme being in 17 hundreds, France realer faith.
Jonathon Fishman (00:55:53):
Okay, so following my same logic, what I liked about this one is you had a, I don't know if that person's real or fake, but they sound real. So you had a strong foundation that someone would think about it. You're talking 17 hundreds where there was lots of propaganda. So there was, okay, let's undo a religion with a new religion and let's manipulate the people. So there's a very extravagant process that you would go through. So this one feels more real to me. So I'm going to go with real two for two, correct? Two for two. Two for two. Two for two.
Jared Correia (00:56:24):
Ion there. Roast Pierre. Yes, A real dude. All right. This is impressive. All right, let's get to three. Let's get to three. Let's see if you can keep it up. Old Clems Knight, old Clems Knight from the United States. This holiday essentially died off at the beginning of the 20th century, but St. Clements Day old Clems Knight, which was November 23rd, formally celebrated Pope Clement the first, the patron saint of blacksmiths. The night began with the ritual firing of the anvil, a proto fireworks display generated by packing gunpowder into anvils and then hammering away at them like a man. Man seems dangerous. The night continued with plenty of singing and drinking, but also a Halloween like ritual where the blacksmiths would dress up like old Clem and knock on doors begging for beer. It's basically blacksmith Halloween, but drunken blacksmith Halloween, old clem's
Jonathon Fishman (00:57:28):
Night. Real. So I like the idea of drinking and then getting a sledgehammer. I think that's always fun, right? Like that thing. Me too. And then what feels very authentic is the idea of going house to house, begging for beer. That seems authentic. I am stumped on this one. I don't have a clear idea. My inclination is I started, you can hear my indecision. I started with thinking, oh, it's real because there's a date and maybe that sounds like a saint, and I'm not sure. I'm going to say not a
Jared Correia (00:58:04):
Holiday. Oh, your streak is ruined.
Jonathon Fishman (00:58:08):
This is
Jared Correia (00:58:09):
Actually a real holiday.
Jonathon Fishman (00:58:10):
You always are supposed to go with your first instinct. Right. And then I started thinking, I just lost, who wants to be a millionaire? I didn't go with my first instinct. Gosh.
Jared Correia (00:58:21):
Well, we didn't give you the ability to call a friend or anything like that. So that's our bad. And we also have no prizes, unfortunately. Just our undying respect. It's
Jonathon Fishman (00:58:30):
A surprise. Surprise to be on your show and spend time with you.
Jared Correia (00:58:36):
Oh, good, Evan. Clip that. Alright, I got two more for you.
Jonathon Fishman (00:58:39):
Keep going.
Jared Correia (00:58:42):
We're going to keep going. The right of the seven silences, the right of the seven silences from 17th century Scotland, a short-lived folk ritual that emerged from isolated fishing communities intending to ensure the safety of men at sea. During stormy weather for seven consecutive sunrises, all the married women of the community were required to attend a morning gathering on the beach. During that time, they had to remain absolutely and completely silent to prevent any accidental speech. The women would carry large, smooth river stones in their mouths for the entire duration of the ritual. The silence was believed to create a spiritual quiet spot that the harsh winds and waves could not reach, thus protecting their husband's ships. If a woman dropped the stone or made a sound, it was believed that she was the one who had summoned a squall. So the right of the seven silences wheel or imagined.
Jonathon Fishman (00:59:45):
Alright, so stones in women's mouth at sunrise. I mean at 17 hundreds you said?
Jared Correia (00:59:58):
Yeah, 1700
Jonathon Fishman (01:00:00):
Scotland. Scotland. Who in the heck knows what they did back then? So what I'd like the idea, the theme of it. Okay. We're doing some crazy rituals to protect the people, so that part of it seems accurate. The idea that they put it in the women and the women were response. I'm going to say that is not a
Jared Correia (01:00:21):
Holiday. Not a holiday, correct?
Jonathon Fishman (01:00:25):
No. You killing it. Should. I'm hung up. I'm hung up on the last
Jared Correia (01:00:31):
One. That's because you're a competitor. As you can see, I'm a little competitive. Score all, let's do one more.
(01:00:39):
Let's do one more. I'm having fun. Okay, here we go. I might mispronounce this one. Guil Gull Masin, which is a Welch holiday. Obviously I don't speak Welch. The Welch holiday celebrates a local parish saint, but hasn't been celebrated since the end of the 19th century. It sounds like a blast with highly unorthodox athletic competitions such as blindfolded wheelbarrow racing, a squash like game played against church walls and something called old women's grinning matches. Yes. I have no idea what that is either. No one does. There was also football bando, a field hockey like game, and a little bit of cock fighting thrown into the mix. The mix of alcohol, gambling and crazy games gave the holiday a bad reputation. Ultimately getting it shut down by more mainstream religious leaders. Will Mav sent a Welch holiday, which is real
Jonathon Fishman (01:01:40):
Fake. Well, the idea of crazy wesh holidays makes sense to me. Right? But what's throwing me is What's throwing me is whereabout racing 17 hundreds.
Jared Correia (01:01:55):
No, but I didn't put a timeframe on. Oh, 19th Century. 18 hundreds. Oh, so they could have a wheel was the last time it was celebrated.
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:00):
1800. Okay. So the wheel wearing, there's old women face competition from in left.
Jared Correia (01:02:06):
It's called GRS matches, which I don't know, grin. Do you have the best grin, the most gr grin
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:13):
In each other? I dunno. Apparently my instinct is that it's not a real holiday.
Jared Correia (01:02:24):
Oh. All
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:25):
Right, drew. It's real,
Jared Correia (01:02:27):
Actually A real holiday.
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:28):
All right. What? I got three out of five. I think you got four six
Jared Correia (01:02:35):
X, which is pretty good. If we're talking
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:38):
Back, I win the World Series. Well
Jared Correia (01:02:40):
Done. You would win the World Series. You'd win a panic title. We'll have to have you back on.
Jonathon Fishman (01:02:48):
Oh, yes, that'd be fantastic. Until you get a hundred. Until I get a hundred percent. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to practice my grinning competition. I'm going to walk around and compete with people on
Jared Correia (01:03:02):
Yeah, please do.
Jonathon Fishman (01:03:03):
Grinning Freak 'em out
Jared Correia (01:03:03):
Out. I mean, you never know when there's going to be a grinning competition that breaks out. I think that's a safe bet on your part.
Jonathon Fishman (01:03:10):
Pleasure.
Jared Correia (01:03:10):
Thank you for coming on. Thanks.
Jonathon Fishman (01:03:12):
Nice talking to you.
Jared Correia (01:03:15):
Thanks for our guest, Jonathon Fishman of LeanLaw. To learn more about Jonathon and Lean Law, visit Leanlaw.co. Oh, that's a twist ending. LeanLaw.co. Just remember that. Don't type in leanlaw.com. Type in Leanlaw.co. Check 'em out now, because I'll always be a nineties kid who still can't tell the difference between Simple Plan and Sum 41, 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 signs are tangentially related to an episode topic. This week's playlist is out of the office. The playlist is not me. That's right. It's vacation tracks and it's sponsored by Winnebago Campers, which my mom was stuck telling me to buy Winnebago. Mom, if you're listening, I do not want one. No wait. It's not sponsored by Winnebago campers because I don't live in a fucking car. Join us next time when I finally come to understand what imaginary numbers are. Nah, that ain't fucking happening. Talk to you then.