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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 mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. First, let's address a new angle on winding down a law firm, the kind that gets your ass paid, so you're going to want to pay attention to this one. See what I did there? Then we talked with Keith Lee, the inventor of Velcro that you didn't know that about big firm lawyers and their finances. Finally, I take things way down home all the way to Alabama Roll Tide or war Eagle depending on your preference. Did I do that right?
(00:52):
Lawyers are not the savviest business people ever. No offense guys. That's how I've been able to stay in business for as many years as I have. So I want to talk a little bit about succession planning, which is actually a big topic for bar associations especially. They're always asking me to do succession planning programs, but I kind of throw a curve when they ask me about that because I have a very specific take on this. When you talk to a lot of people about winding down a law firm, and there are a ton of different bar associations that have content about how to do this. They have guys like the lengthy guys, like 150, 160 pages, and they're all about how do I stop practicing law and get out? But they're never about how do I sell the law firm? And that's what I think people should be focused on because I think the other stuff is relatively straightforward given all the technology tools are now available.
(01:58):
So when you're talking about transitioning a law firm to somebody, if you have an unexpected accident or you become disabled or you pass away, it helps to have a backup attorney if you're a solo lawyer, so get a backup attorney. You're asked to do that on your malpractice insurance anyway, and when you fill that out, you're probably just picking someone randomly and not even telling them that they're your backup attorney. So maybe tell 'em and you can create a backup attorney contract if you want. Those are available, but really this is more about giving people access to your files and their locations and the passwords to access the software in which they're saved. And in a cloud-based environment, that should be way easier than it was 10, 20 years ago when a lot of these guidebooks came out. You practice, you get a password management software that's an enterprise version.
(02:55):
People can access your stuff in terms of where the software is and where the data is. I'll tell you, I've closed down law firms before and one of the big issues has always been like, well, where's the stuff? How do we get into the bank account? How do we get into the software account That should be easier than never before. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on that and a lot of that. How do I transition data? How do I set up a backup attorney or how do I transition this to a lawyer in the community or how do I give this to my associate? You're viewing the law firm as a liability in that context, and if you're looking to shut down your practice five years from now or any longer term, you should be looking at building the law firm as an asset that you can actually sell and get money off of.
(03:42):
How do you do that? Well, you want to generate as much revenue as you can. I know no shit, Sherlock, should I make more money in my legal business? Yeah, that's something you should think about doing, said you know that, but then you may have certain ways to do that. Do I build a marketing program that's different than what I'm doing now? Do I change my pricing structure right now? It'd be the time to think about those things, but I think the biggest thing in terms of transitioning a law firm, selling a law firm is building out turnkey processes. So if you've got a firm and you don't have any kind of workflow management built in whatsoever, it is time to do that shit like yesterday. And the way I look at it's there's four workflows that you want to have as a law firm owner.
(04:31):
There are intake processes, so how do we onboard people and convert them to clients? Then there's case processes. So what's the workflow for moving through a case in the firm? How do I take the steps necessary to close this file? Then there's administrative processes like, okay, what happens if we need to put new toner in the printer? Is it a fucking fire drill every time we need to do that or is that something that I necessarily have to think about doing on a high level and do I have to write that down somewhere? You should probably write it down somewhere or save it somewhere in an electronic file so people know it's coming. And then what about marketing processes? So do I have turnkey marketing approaches? How do I get clients? Is that systematized? Can I hand that off to somebody else who's going to be able to do it on a go forward basis?
(05:25):
Basically, if you can say, Hey, here's how we get clients. It's not attached to me personally. Here's how we manage the firm. It's not attached to me personally. Here's how we run cases. It's not attached to me personally. Here's how we intake files. It's not attached to me personally. You're in good shape because that business is less reliant on you than a traditional law firm would be. The reason why law firms hardly have any value. The reason why law firms sell like one X gross revenue is that everything is tied to a single attorney name of the firm's tied to that attorney's name. If you can move on from that and create a business that's more transferable, the value of your service goes up. So some of the stuff we haven't talked about, adding a brand name, that's part of the marketing that you can sell to somebody.
(06:05):
There's a whole host of things that you can do now that will require you if you're going to be using processes, if you're going to be trying to automate things, which you should also be trying to do to update whatever software you've got in your practice right now. So first of all, you want to be cloud-based with everything you're running, and then you want to have a certain set of softwares available. So I talked about enterprise software for password management. You should definitely be considering that. You also want to have cloud-based productivity software, so email documents, file sharing. You want to have cloud-based accounting software. You want to have cloud-based case management software. You want to have cloud-based customer relationship management software, CRM. So you can set up that intake process. You want to have cloud-based task management software, project management software because if you've got workflows, you kind of need that. And then ideally, you may want to have human resources management software as well so that you can figure out a way to make sure that whoever's taking over your practice has access to information about your employees and how they get paid and how they're managed. So if you're thinking about winding down your law practice, think twice about that and instead start thinking about how you might want to sell your law practice. Now there's one person I would never sell out and that's Keith Lee. He's up next.
(07:40):
Well, I've effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I'm going to back away slowly into these bushes. Now I'm just fucking with you. That sounds awful. Listen, interview our guest instead. That seems like a better idea. Our guest today is Keith Lee, a partner at Big Law Investor. That's right. Keith Lee. Keith's back.
Keith Lee (08:02):
How are you? I'm great. It's good to be here. I'm back still around.
Jared Correia (08:08):
So I was trolling through your LinkedIn. I was like, I haven't talked to Keith A. Little while. What's he been up to? And I think we first started talking when you were doing Lawyer Smack, which is an online lawyer community, which is still around. Is that right?
Keith Lee (08:24):
Still now It's called Sidebar. Sidebar Rebrand. Well, IP issues. Originally it was Lawyer Slack and I owned that. Wait, slack. Did someone
Jared Correia (08:37):
Own Slack? No, go
Keith Lee (08:37):
Ahead. Someone owned a company name Slack. The weirdest thing is they followed me on everything back when I had a verified account and you couldn't buy a verified account.
Jared Correia (08:48):
Oh, that's really
Keith Lee (08:48):
Funny. They were following me. Their developers were following me because I think I was just one of the first lawyers. This was 20 16, 20 17.
Jared Correia (08:56):
You were early.
Keith Lee (08:57):
Yes. You were pioneer, sir. Yeah, I was very early on the Slack train, and so I think they were kind of like, yeah, man, go for it. Promote us to lawyers and law firms. We did that. And so they were okay with it. But then I was like,
Jared Correia (09:11):
Maybe not so much. And
Keith Lee (09:13):
So then I switched it to law. I was like, well, let's change the L to an M, and it's kind of funny, lawyer smack or talking smack. Then if a woman, European attorney, she was like, oh, lawyer, smack, smack. And I was like,
Jared Correia (09:28):
You're like, no,
Keith Lee (09:30):
Not at all. And so eventually more IP stuff. So still exists. It's sidebar sidebar.net. So yeah, sidebar still exists and yeah, that's probably how we first met. I was writing for Above the Law around then for a
Jared Correia (09:47):
While. Oh my God. Yeah. Wow.
Keith Lee (09:48):
You were too for a little bit. Then I was speaking, talking consulting. I went and I was the chief marketing officer for Case Status
Jared Correia (10:01):
For
Keith Lee (10:01):
Three years.
Jared Correia (10:02):
I remember that. Put a pin in that. We're going to talk about that later.
Keith Lee (10:05):
Oh yeah, we'll come back to that. Yeah. Now
Jared Correia (10:10):
That's when you started doing the big law investor thing, which is what I wanted to talk
Keith Lee (10:13):
To you about it. Then I left Case status
Jared Correia (10:15):
To do that eventually.
Keith Lee (10:17):
Josh, who is also a lawyer, Josh was a PE m and a guy, Goodwin Proctor. So biggest of big law, and he had been running big law investor and he and I had been friends for years originally for me doing Associates Mind Above the law lawyer Slack now sidebar. And we just started talking about things and we were like, we should just join forces. I mean, we were on very similar wavelengths about how we thought about the legal industry, how we thought about technology, how our approach to work and what we wanted to do. So we formed Vultron and
Jared Correia (10:58):
Yes, yes. That's how we know we're old. I'm like, oh, Voltron. Hell yeah.
Keith Lee (11:02):
Yeah, I know you would appreciate the reference, which is why I went there. I do. So we got together and yeah, I've been together ever since and had just been growing it like crazy. So fun ride.
Jared Correia (11:19):
So would it be fair to say that Lawyers Max stuff associate mind stuff, which you also did, was that more angled to solo small firm attorneys and then you moved up the ladder? Or was it more like a smattering of big law, small law, mid-size law?
Keith Lee (11:32):
Yeah, it was a smattering I feel like, because at the time I was practicing a small law firm, and that's technically, although I veered all the time, and Brian Tannenbaum had been the small firm columnist at
Jared Correia (11:44):
TL. Yeah, I remember that guy.
Keith Lee (11:46):
He left and that's when David said, Keith, we want you to come do it. So I was the small firm columnist at Above the Law, but I was writing Associates Mine, which was about four associates, which attracted
Jared Correia (12:01):
Big law associates,
Keith Lee (12:02):
Spectrum of people who were small firm associates, big firm associates. And then I was writing for Above the Law, which is generally more speaking a big law, mid to big law audience. Anyway, so it became this real weirdness of who kind of knew me and followed me. And I'd say even today in the sidebar community, there's plenty of solo small firm people. There's plenty of big law people, there's a lot of in-house folks. It's just a total mishmash of folks all across the industry.
Jared Correia (12:38):
I got to tell you, man, the big law pivot is all right, I mean, I will tell you I've never walked into a small office and seen a suckling big, but I have seen that in a big law firm. Oh yeah. I'm like, this is pretty sweet
Keith Lee (12:52):
People. Again, it's one of those things, 70% of there's 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. 65, 70% of them are solo or small firms. And so that's typically when you interact with lawyers, that's where they are. Big law is maybe a hundred thousand lawyers maybe. So you're less than 10, you're talking 8% of the industry and it is just a different world. Totally. It's a completely different world. The whole lawyer salaries are bimodal. Everyone's like, oh, the average lawyer salary is this. Well, there's this kind of big hump at the 60,000 and it goes way over and then suddenly at $200,000, this a giant spike like a rocket. And it's like unless you're right here, you're not making this money. And that's why that's where it becomes this huge blood sport to get into the T 14 schools. That's a good way you can get into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan, Georgetown, because if you can get in there and make good grades, you'll get it to big law. And we're a big law investor. We are the source of truth for big law associate salaries and starting big law associate salaries right now are $245,000.
Jared Correia (14:19):
Yeah,
Keith Lee (14:19):
So you can graduate law school and be 25, 26 years old a kid and be making a quarter million a year at your first job.
Jared Correia (14:27):
So much cocaine. Anyway, I didn't say that
Keith Lee (14:30):
So much.
Jared Correia (14:32):
So can I attempt an elevator pitch for big law investor? You tell me how wrong. Sure, go for it. Personal financial management advice for big firm attorneys, associates, and affiliated products. How was that?
Keith Lee (14:47):
That's pretty good.
Jared Correia (14:48):
Well, correct me, I'm
Keith Lee (14:49):
Fine. No, that looks good. Certainly. I mean if someone comes to our site right now, that's definitely what you would assume. You're like, oh, this is,
Jared Correia (14:57):
Yeah, it's a lot of information in addition to obviously stuff you're providing them.
Keith Lee (15:03):
Yeah, I mean the whole premise originally of the site was, it's so weird. If you go into medicine and doctors, there are a dozen sites by doctors for doctors about personal finance and how they manage their money and how to do things from surgeons to general practitioners to all these different things. And there's more lawyers than there are doctors. We're the only site about money for lawyers.
Jared Correia (15:29):
It's crazy.
Keith Lee (15:30):
The only one,
Jared Correia (15:31):
Yes, it's really lacking.
Keith Lee (15:34):
And so nominally we attract big law attorneys, but realistically speaking, we attract essentially any lawyer who starts to being like lawyer money question mean we are the default choice because we are the only choice and we provide immense amounts of information. I mean, if someone's like, that's a good idea, I'll start. Good luck. You're 10 years late from us. I mean we've got so much information.
Jared Correia (16:04):
It's a lot of shit on there. Yeah, I will say that
Keith Lee (16:07):
We provide so much and it's all just for free. You can get it. But if I was, we've grown a lot in the sense that we've actually got another company, a new brand coming out later this year
Jared Correia (16:22):
Because can you talk about that or is that secret?
Keith Lee (16:25):
Not yet because we're like 60 days from getting approval through the U-S-P-T-O for the name. We had this IP come
Jared Correia (16:35):
Back on. We'll talk about it then. Yeah.
Keith Lee (16:36):
IP is bullshit and all intellectual is particularly trademark attorneys. No, their practice area is the most bullshit area of practice of law. It's a complete roll of the dice. It's like what examiner do you get? Who knows? One might be like, this is fine. The next one may be like that's, I mean, precedent out the window doesn't matter. It's all about who you get and how they feel that day anyway, and I complained about this to our IP lawyers and they're like, yeah, we know.
Jared Correia (17:04):
They're like, sure. Hey, it was Keith again. As they slowly hang up the phone,
Keith Lee (17:12):
They're in the community so they got to hang around.
Jared Correia (17:14):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so we'll talk about that when you're ready later on.
Keith Lee (17:19):
Yeah, really quickly is that we've grown.
Jared Correia (17:22):
That's great.
Keith Lee (17:22):
We need a bigger tent because we get a lot of doctors now. We get CPAs, we get vets, we get all these other people who are coming to us for all this information and yeah, there's a bit of a K as dissonance happening where they're hitting, they're like, oh, this seems to be really good financial advice and information, but it's for lawyers, but I'm A-C-R-N-A and it seems like it applies to me, but it says big law everywhere. It's funny,
Jared Correia (17:53):
You slap a label on and people are like, that can't be me. Can't possibly
Keith Lee (17:56):
Use that information. Yeah, the advice is a hundred percent accurate, but well, it's not for me I guess
Jared Correia (18:02):
Moving on. Okay, so I guess the analog is so if you're like 25 years old or whatever and you're making like 250 k, I kind of feel like that's similar to you're 19, you get drafted by a major league baseball team and all of a sudden you get a million dollars in your pocket, you're going to fuck that up
Keith Lee (18:24):
Probably on some level. I mean that's why the site really started existing was like, because usually it's a kind of combo once you punch, I think the most recent statistics from the ABAs a couple of years ago, it's probably changed, but the average law student graduates law school with $165,000 in student debt, right?
Jared Correia (18:48):
Forgot about the student
Keith Lee (18:49):
Loans.
Jared Correia (18:49):
That part sucks,
Keith Lee (18:52):
Which if you can make big law, no problem. If you're on that other curve of the bimodal thing we were talking about earlier,
Jared Correia (19:00):
Problem,
Keith Lee (19:00):
You're screwed. It's a big problem. They're like, I want to help people. I'm going to go be a public defender. Good luck having two mortgage payments for the rest of your life.
Jared Correia (19:10):
I know no 3D pancake printers for you, sir,
Keith Lee (19:13):
You are not getting that. But even with a big loss salary, you need to plan, you need to create a budget, you need to think through what you do. Suddenly you're making 20 grand, 25 grand a month. Alright, that's a lot of money. And a lot of people are like, sweet, I'm going to go get a brand new five series and I need a cool place to live and this that and the other. And
Jared Correia (19:40):
Hoverboard maybe, I dunno,
Keith Lee (19:42):
Just throw it out there, all types of stuff. But it's about how can you be mindful with your money and really lock it down? Otherwise it is golden handcuffs, right? You're on a hedonistic treadmill of I'm making all this money, but then I'm spending all this money and you've got to figure out how to signal, interrupt that cycle in some way such that you know what you're doing with your money and be intelligent about it such that you don't get trapped there because alright, you make quarter million a year, awesome. You're probably going to be required to bill 60 to 70 hours a week. That's not work. 60 to 70 hours a week, that's bill 60, 70 hours a week, which is very different
Jared Correia (20:37):
If you're listening, it's fucking hard.
Keith Lee (20:39):
Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean that's saying, are you going to the break room? Are you getting a cup of coffee? That's not billable time. That's not time at work. You might be in the office, but that's not billable,
Jared Correia (20:51):
The billable, but that coffee down coffees for closers.
Keith Lee (20:54):
Yeah, exactly. I mean the billable hour requirements in big law are incredible. Yeah.
Jared Correia (21:00):
One of the things you were talking about I think was interesting is you talked about student loan payments and you talked about mortgage payments and you're basically like, Hey, you're going to be paying two mortgages for the rest of your life, which is the way you want to look at it, but you guys work on both sides of that equation. So you actually help people with student loan refinancing or get 'em pointed in the right direction for that. And you have a product called JD Mortgage, which is how I first heard about this. So you want to talk a little bit about that because I think that's really interesting.
Keith Lee (21:29):
So definitely on the student loan front people, if you get into certain student loan programs, especially now, all the student loan stuff, everything that Biden had done with repay and everything, all that's going to get nuked. And so we're going to be back into this rate environment where people are going to be graduating law school with student loans around probably 9% in terms of what they're paying. It's fucking
Jared Correia (21:57):
Crazy. That's why I don't talk about my just loan interest rate that I had.
Keith Lee (22:03):
So if you can get a job that's really solid, like a big law job where you know have the money refinancing can make sense. We have exclusive relationships with pretty much all the student loan refi companies. If you come to us, we'll connect you, we'll get you bonuses, $500 bonus, a thousand dollars cashback bonus if you go through us. We've negotiated these things with them to where we can get people's a little bit of extra money, get them better rates. So that's one side of it. And then on the residential side and the home side, we own, we trademarked, we created a JD mortgage, which a JD mortgage is a lot of banks, not all banks have certain, these are things called sort of professional loan programs, meaning if you've got a jd, if you've got an md, you've got the right acronym after your last name, they will give you way better loans than you can get conventionally just walking in the door of a bank.
Jared Correia (23:05):
Yeah, that's right. I never even knew that. And I was a lawyer who bought a house like 15 years ago.
Keith Lee (23:09):
Yeah, no, PMI 0% down up to, depends on the bank, but I mean I know banks that will for lawyers, no PMI 0% down up to a million dollars financing. So meaning that's wild. If you've got the right job and everything's the right, right, you've got some employment history and you say, I want to buy this home, they won't charge you PMI and they'll say, here's a million dollars, go for it, ta. Now, those are hard to find. It's amazing. And that's what we've done. We know all those banks. We have them all in a giant backend database. People come to us and again, no one can advertise JD Mortgage because we own it. So if someone sees JD Mortgage somewhere, tell me because
Jared Correia (23:53):
You got it,
Keith Lee (23:54):
We're going to come after them
Jared Correia (23:56):
Going to report that shit. You'd be like Slack.
Keith Lee (23:59):
That's the part of IP law I do like
Jared Correia (24:03):
What is this lawyer Slack shit, we're all over this. I mean, that's really cool though because that never even crossed my mind to somebody who was an attorney buying
Keith Lee (24:16):
House. Yeah, we want to get it out. It's something we've been kind of slowly building. We're getting ready to really start to push it out. There he goes. It is. I mean, essentially if you're a lawyer that wants to buy a home, you should absolutely go through us. I mean, it will cost you no additional money. Actually, what it will do is save you a lot of money. There's nothing that's all upside, frankly. And you're going to get, as opposed to some random whoever walking to a bank or if you call a call center, you're going to get some Yahoo. Anybody who works with us are loan officers who specialize in dealing with professionals. They specialize in dealing with lawyers, they specialize in dealing with doctors. So I mean, you're going to get someone who understands your employment, what it means to work in a law firm. They're going to understand your student loan debt to income ratio. There's all these things that kind of go into factor and you're not always going to get the zero down, but you're going to get less down. But I mean, it's always going to be a better deal than going just straight into a bank.
Jared Correia (25:19):
Everybody, big law investor, we'll have the LinkedIn, the show notes, check it out. Yeah. Keith, I want to turn to another JD Mortgage. I want to turn to another subject matter, which I believe I know the answer to is legal tech bullshit.
Keith Lee (25:33):
Yes.
Jared Correia (25:36):
Ly speaking. Next question. Yeah. Alright, go ahead. Tell me. Give me your thesis. I like
Keith Lee (25:40):
It. Legal tech is not bullshit and it is. Schrodinger's cat, legal tech is Schrodinger's cat. It's simultaneously bullshit and not bullshit at the same time. I feel like a lot of the culture around legal tech is bullshit.
Jared Correia (25:58):
That is bullshit. I agree.
Keith Lee (25:59):
There are all these nonsense about what it is and people, all these people who are ninjas, no income, no job type of situation who are having all these attitudes and what it means to be legal tech. And five years ago they were cloud experts and four years ago they were blockchain experts and three years ago they were crypto experts and now they're,
Jared Correia (26:31):
You forgot the metaverse,
Keith Lee (26:34):
Skip. They were metaverse. Oh, metaverse. We've got to open law firms and the metaverse. And it's like, do people forget these things? It's like, I don't know. My memory works. It's like I've seen you change all what? All that I think is bullshit technology appropriately developed technology, the deployed in an intelligent way and that is then adopted and trained within law firms is well underdeveloped, undersold, right? Lawyers are largely leadites. They are feel bound by precedent. They are restricted by bar associations and disciplinary boards and ethics opinions. Do you remember back when there were all these ethics opinions about it's okay to not have an on-premises email server and that you could have your email on the cloud? People were not doing that until all the ethics boards wrote opinions on it.
Jared Correia (27:45):
Can I use Google Docs? Yeah. I remember every ethics opinion ever. In 2011,
Keith Lee (27:52):
I talked to the head of Google Docs at, I could go find somewhere on Associates Mind. I talked to the head of Google Docs at the time
Jared Correia (28:00):
Because
Keith Lee (28:01):
I mean the guy who was the lead product developer and we had an hour long conversation going through why ethics sports and we were going back and forth and I remember that literal conversation
Jared Correia (28:14):
I had. It's so funny. They were obsessed with one feature of one product suite. It was so crazy to me.
Keith Lee (28:20):
It was so unusual. So that's a whole nother layer of bullshit in the way of all this. But that law firms, I mean, it's such a multiple problem. Only lawyers kind have equity and law firms. Okay,
Jared Correia (28:36):
Well then that means, oh, now we're doing a BS. Yeah, let's hit that. Why not? I
Keith Lee (28:40):
Mean, no shit. If you're in a regular company, oh, no one can have equity unless you have an MBA what? Right?
Jared Correia (28:50):
Sorry, Chester. You're not also a plumber. You cannot buy into our plumbing business. It's weird
Keith Lee (28:55):
Gil stuff. Yeah, exactly. Like no, you can't own a percent of that. I mean, all that becomes a problem. So suddenly you get people siloed with only one area of domain expertise practicing law. They don't know how to run a business. They don't know how to manage a business. They don't know how to operate market anything. They certainly, whatever. And then I've had conversations literally in big law where they actually have a CTO. So the guy, they have a full-time, they're paying this guy hundreds of thousands. It's about millions of dollars a year to operate their multinational. Thousands of employees and lawyers comes in, they talk leaves, and then it's just the lawyer room and they're like, ha, what a bunch of bullshit that dumb ass was saying because he is not a lawyer. That's all that matters. There's this
Jared Correia (29:49):
No trust for anybody who's not an attorney. Yeah,
Keith Lee (29:52):
Yeah. There's this guild mindset that really hampers operational efficiency technology adoption within law firms in a huge way and it's too bad and it's sad. And so legal tech could be, I mean, 10 times bigger than it is. I mean we were talking about this before we got started. I mean, another thing is
Jared Correia (30:18):
Total addressable market is something that people rarely talk
Keith Lee (30:20):
About. Yeah. Everyone misses the tam of the legal industry. There's 1.3 million lawyers. That's it.
Jared Correia (30:25):
And just if you're not familiar with that term, that's like how many people are buyers effectively and then
Keith Lee (30:29):
Correct.
Jared Correia (30:30):
That's not even everybody who owns the law firm. That's just like all the lawyers.
Keith Lee (30:34):
Yeah. I mean there are pretty small. It's very small. I mean that's why there are no really, people like to talk about. If it was in big law, you'd talk about something like Relativity, which is the biggest eDiscovery platform. Everyone's like, oh, they're so big. No one. Who knows what the shit is. It's so small firm Clio. People are like, oh, Cleo is this big. And look, no offense to Jack and all the Cleo people, lovely people, but their market cap size is the equivalent of one password. Is anybody going around be like one password is going to change how people use computer? It's like, no, it's a small company and it's just not big. Realistically,
Jared Correia (31:21):
Relatively speaking.
Keith Lee (31:22):
Yeah,
Jared Correia (31:23):
Relatively. Cleo, if you want sponsor us, you're a big company for part.
Keith Lee (31:27):
Yeah. I mean, no, and again, I'm not saying anything bad about them. I'm just
Jared Correia (31:31):
Saying No, I get it.
Keith Lee (31:32):
People don't understand. Again, because lawyers are so,
Jared Correia (31:37):
They're inside the bubble all the time. Yeah, absolutely.
Keith Lee (31:40):
They only think of themselves. They don't step outside and understand. The rest of this is that they're really a very small part of, I mean, think of business
Jared Correia (31:52):
In Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Keith Lee (31:54):
You're trillions and trillions of dollars. I mean, the legal industry is small. It's very small in relative terms.
Jared Correia (32:03):
I want to do one more thing with you, which I know is another topic that you enjoy. Well, one more thing and then we'll get into the last segment, but one thing lawyers are good at is doing just the craziest bullshit when it comes to legal ethics. This is true, and you have been tracking that for a long time, for
Keith Lee (32:21):
Years.
Jared Correia (32:21):
For years I would say you might be the most preeminent expert there is in terms of wax shit that lawyers do around legal ethics. You want to give me a good story?
Keith Lee (32:31):
Probably.
Jared Correia (32:32):
Yeah,
Keith Lee (32:32):
Yeah, yeah, I'll say it. Yeah. Yeah, so I used to do it a lot on social media and then the social media started to suck like five or six years ago, so I kind of stopped.
Jared Correia (32:43):
Yeah, social media is the worst,
Keith Lee (32:46):
So ethics wise, so what I do now, I will, one thing is last week in law, which is a newsletter.
Jared Correia (32:53):
Yes, I was just going to ask you about that, that you
Keith Lee (32:54):
Can go to.
Jared Correia (32:55):
That's still weekly, so coming out
Keith Lee (32:57):
This still week. Yeah, you can go to last week law.com, enter your email address. You'll get all the assorted
Jared Correia (33:05):
I
Keith Lee (33:06):
Hand
Jared Correia (33:06):
Up.
Keith Lee (33:07):
Everyone should subscribe it. It is crazy. I mean, people are really insane. I mean, this past week they are, respondent goes to jail, he's in this county jail. Respondent requested a visit with an inmate who he knew to be an adult film actress and whose arrest and conviction was widely publicized. Respondent had no official business with his inmate, and inmate did not request a meeting. Respondent engaged with conversation about her case advising that he could not really help her, but then proceeded to ask the inmate if she would be interested in engaging in sexual acts with him while she was being held in jail.
Jared Correia (33:47):
Shoot your shot.
Keith Lee (33:49):
Respondent stated he would video record and subsequently publish the video of the sexual acts in exchange for putting money in her jail account. That
Jared Correia (33:58):
Is crazy. Just
Keith Lee (34:01):
Hard.
Jared Correia (34:02):
I feel like that's got to be like a standard porn plot point though. Would you like to take dictation, Sheila? I could be in one of these That was just off the dome right there,
Keith Lee (34:14):
And it just goes like that forever. I mean, there are so many of these.
Jared Correia (34:20):
That's crazy. Keith, let's take a quick break then we'll come back for a short segment. Welcome back everybody. We're at 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. Keith, welcome back.
Keith Lee (34:47):
Good to be back.
Jared Correia (34:48):
I want to take things down home today, way down home.
Keith Lee (34:52):
Alright.
Jared Correia (34:53):
You're a resident of Birmingham, Alabama. This is true. Let's play a little game. I'm going to call Alabama slammer. Keith, this game is going to be pretty simple. I'm going to make a statement and all you have to do is tell me whether it's the name of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song or something. Forrest Gump said.
Keith Lee (35:10):
Alright,
Jared Correia (35:12):
All Alabama. Are you ready? I'll start. I'll start. I'll start. Slow.
Keith Lee (35:16):
Roll tide. Let's do this.
Jared Correia (35:18):
Roll Tide or war eagle, whatever your preference is. Roll
Keith Lee (35:21):
Tide. Roll tide.
Jared Correia (35:24):
Life is like a box of chocolates. That for that is
Keith Lee (35:28):
Forret Gump.
Jared Correia (35:28):
Okay.
Keith Lee (35:28):
That's Forret Gump.
Jared Correia (35:30):
Okay. All right. I'm going to make it a little bit more difficult from here. I know a little. Is that something that Forrest Gump said, or is that a Lynyrd Skynyrd song? I know a little. That's a Skynyrd song. It is. It is. Are you a Skynyrd fan? I may oppose myself here. You might just
Keith Lee (35:46):
Destroy this whole thing. Not so much. I'm not particularly a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, but I have been to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
Jared Correia (35:55):
Oh, you have?
Keith Lee (35:56):
Yeah. When I was probably 19 years old. If you're going to Seely Skynyrd, seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd play in an outdoor amphitheater in Alabama is probably about hell yeah. Hell yeah. That's how I do it. It was mean. That was 30 years ago, probably almost at this point, but it was crazy and it was a scene. It was definitely a scene.
Jared Correia (36:24):
As a Yankee, I love Lynette Skinner. They're fucking great.
Keith Lee (36:27):
They make a fantastic,
Jared Correia (36:27):
Awesome southern rock band. Yes. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's continue on. You died on a Saturday morning. You died Skynyrd. Oh, all right. I got you. Forrest Gump. Oh man. Oh, that is, that's what he says to Jenny at the end of the movie. Yep. I feel like if I was doing the Forrest Gump voice, that might make,
Keith Lee (36:46):
Oh, that would give away. You can't do that.
Jared Correia (36:47):
Yeah. See, I don't want to do it. Okay, so you're still hot though. Two three. Here's another one. Now we ain't strangers anymore. Forrest Gump or Li Skynyrd. Now we ain't strangers anymore.
Keith Lee (37:02):
Forrest Gump
Jared Correia (37:04):
Correct. Says to the bus driver when he gets on the bus. Alright, I got three more for you.
Keith Lee (37:10):
You're cruising through here
Jared Correia (37:11):
Like a true Albanian. Is that how
Keith Lee (37:13):
Albanian
Jared Correia (37:14):
Albanian, all I can do is write about it for Gump Lynyrd Skynyrd. All I can do is write about it. Skynyrd? Yeah. Oh man. All. Alright. You get two more? You have the rare opportunity to go like seven of eight here. Nice. I think this one might be easy, but we're going to go with it anyway. Don't ask me no questions. Don't ask me no questions. Is that a Forrest Gump saying or a Lynyrd Skynyrd song
Keith Lee (37:45):
That is Skynyrd all the
Jared Correia (37:47):
Way? Yes. Last one to close out your impressive run. Here you are, my girl. Is that something that Forrest Gump does or is that a Lynyrd Skynyrd song? You are my girl.
Keith Lee (38:02):
I mean, I know it's a Forrest Gump line, but I feel as though that could be a double Yes.
Jared Correia (38:11):
It could be a double yes. So I'll give you partial credit, but it's not, I looked up the entire Leonard song list.
Keith Lee (38:19):
There you go.
Jared Correia (38:19):
The other night, because I have a lot of free time, Keith, you have proven yourself as a true alabamian. I'm really impressive. Really impressive. Plus, we learned a lot about legal tech and big law. Thanks for coming on, man. We'll have to do again sometime when you launch your new venture.
Keith Lee (38:37):
Yeah, new venture will be later this year. It'll be exciting. But for the lawyer folks, we're pretty fully locked in. I mean, if you're a lawyer last week in law.com is where you can get the newsletter, which is like a weekly digest of stories around the legal industry, plus the ethics insanity at the end every single time. sidebar.net, which is our private community for lawyers. We've got a couple hundred lawyers in there who are all just chit chatting about their practice or just doing the same bullshitting that Jared and I are doing right now. And then there's big law investor.com, which if you are curious about anything related to money, you don't have to be a big law attorney, but if you want money advice and you're an attorney, I mean, we're sorry we're your only choice, but we try and do a really good job out of it.
Jared Correia (39:36):
Hey, it is what it is. Thank you, Keith. Check those things out and we'll talk soon, man. All right. Thanks for our guest. It was Keith Lee of big law investor. To learn more about big law investor and get access to all the free stuff that Keith was talking about. Visit big law investor.com. That's big law investor.com now, because I'll always be a nineties kid going around saying obnoxious shit, but you ain't got no legs. Lieutenant Dan, this is what I don't do. Accents whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I'm now just doing the modern equivalent 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 all about 1994. That's the year the Forest Gump came out and Pulp Fiction by the way, and it was also an amazing year for music. Just listen, listen. I'll do that again. Just listen. It's sponsored by Blockbuster Video. Wait, what's this Netflix thing I'm hearing about? You get DVDs in the mail. It's kind of crazy. I'm just kidding. By the way, blockbuster Video hasn't sponsored shit because they're defunct. Join us next time when I will eat an entire tion by myself off.