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Patrick Patino, Millennial Small Firm Practice GAMECHANGER (Part 1)
191 Plays1 year ago
Y'all, these millennials keep teaching me all kinds of stuff. Patrick Patino is a small firm practice renegade, thought leader, and pioneer.
Like many of his peers, the statement "That's the way we've always done it" gets no traction with him.
He has a passion for providing excellent client service in a way that is more efficient and affordable for the clients, and more sustainable for the professionals providing the services.
Pair that with some tech-savvy and an infectious creative energy, and yo have a stellar example of a different way to thrive in the practice of law. Enjoy!
(And please forgive the lack of a polished intro--this was another "get-to-know-you call" that had to become a podcast! :-) )
You can find Patrick and keep up with him here: https://patinoking.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Law Firm
00:00:00
Speaker
firm. Okay. We have four attorneys in three locations. Okay. One in Hastings, Nebraska. We have an office in Omaha, Nebraska. And then I'm here in Minnesota. And we provide legal services kind of in the Midwest core. Okay. I primarily practice in the area of bankruptcy and debtor creditor. Okay.
00:00:27
Speaker
We have an attorney that does primarily estate planning, business succession planning. Then we have an attorney who primarily does litigation.
00:00:39
Speaker
OK. And then we have a relatively new attorney and she is doing kind of a little
Modernizing a Family Practice
00:00:45
Speaker
bit of everything. OK. And how did you all find each other? Because that's kind of like a I'm thinking of like Money Pothits. It's like, you know, a total collective sort of. Yes. Yeah. A mix of people coming together. But yeah. And so it's really fascinating. So I out of law school joined my father-in-law's practice. OK. He was a solo practitioner for three decades. Oh, wow.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah, so change, I came in and basically changed a lot of stuff. He didn't quite know what he was saying yes to when he said I could come join him. I hired somebody who has a little bit, I'm guessing a different sensibility with regard to maybe technology and marketing and all kinds of stuff.
00:01:27
Speaker
You ought to know what, it's really fascinating. He was a traditionalist in a lot of ways and didn't like change in a lot of ways, but in certain ways, like he loves Star Trek. Okay. And he loved technology. And so like he was on the forefront of like leaving the phone book and going exclusively to using his website.
00:01:54
Speaker
Okay. So, he was a little bit of an early adapt in some regards. That's nice. Yeah. Or remote. He... Okay. Like, when I joined him, that was in 2014. Already had set up, like, VPN and could work for him anywhere. Okay. Oh, yeah.
00:02:09
Speaker
So in some ways he was ahead of his time and was open to technology. I think it was more or less if you don't know how to use it or set it up. A lot of these technologies nowadays for solo small require that you do a lot of the
00:02:31
Speaker
setting up yourself. Yeah. You either have to have somebody knowledgeable or figured out yourself. There's varying degrees of what kind of support the vendors will provide for sure. Exactly. And so, like, for example, like when we demoed Cleo. Okay. He was like, we need this. He honestly, while we're doing the demo, took out his credit card.
00:02:56
Speaker
That's a great sign. Like, I want to... I want this. Let's do it. And so I modernized his practice. We went from three support staff people down to one. Just in implementing technology and getting rid of a ton of paper.
Challenges of a Merger
00:03:13
Speaker
And what was his practice? Was it a general price or did he have a particular niche? Bankruptcy. Bankruptcy. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So you have a lot of, I would imagine, repeat, you know, similar forms. Maybe you just need to...
00:03:25
Speaker
Should be in the particular data, but you're going to be saying the same things a lot, filing the same kind of things a lot. It's very rote. Yeah. And you need efficiency also because there's not huge, you know, high margins and, you know, yeah, that makes sense. In the volume, yeah, you need to, you know, and it's flat fee. So, you need to be able to provide the same value, the same service, and create the same work product in
00:03:55
Speaker
less time. Yes. And that's the constant pursuit is spending the least amount of time to provide the same amount or more value, better value, same work product, get through the process. Yes, which is counter to the traditional hourly fee for service model. It's incentivized. It's the opposite.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah. And so, and this is fascinating. So we then, um, I'm, you know, got his practice to be a lean mean fighting machine. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to see what other opportunities there are. And there was a law firm, family law firm in town that was growing and expanding. Super cool brand, mission driven. Um,
00:04:39
Speaker
their whole thing is like thought leadership, business development. And this was like 2016 before that was kind of like, yeah, cool. They've been doing it for 20 years. Nice. The founding partner was an executive coach and then shifted completely into coaching. Interesting. And like 2010. Okay. Which was also
00:05:01
Speaker
kind of ahead of its time. Very much so. And so it was, how do you marry two law firms that have been around for decades, process systems, models? Right. And in some ways it works very well. Okay. Because some things are transferable no matter the practice area. Sure, sure. Like business development, thought leadership. Right.
00:05:29
Speaker
training, becoming more empathetic. Yes, which is huge. Oh my gosh, you're speaking my language, definitely. And so had the coach, had that person left law altogether and become a coach or they were still kind of being a coach and using that learning and that mindset as they continue to do family law.
00:05:50
Speaker
They had stopped practicing. Okay. And they were part of like, so every employee got monthly coaching. Okay. And then we- So that person had stopped practicing, but they were running a practice. They were, yeah, part of the partnership team running the practice. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And so it was a really unique
00:06:12
Speaker
management model. Yeah. And what we did was from the lens of like growth and personal and professional development. And so the takeaway from doing all this had nothing to do with my substantive practice, right? That didn't work. That ultimately, my father-in-law retired and in the three plus years we were there,
00:06:41
Speaker
bankruptcy practice never quite fit in. They didn't get it. They didn't understand it. It was like this in bankruptcy in and of itself as a practice area is like this alien thing. It is. It is. People here banks are like, Oh, yeah.
00:06:56
Speaker
I don't know anything about that. I don't really want to know. You want to have somebody on speed dial who does, but, yeah, I had to wait in. I did a lot of construction litigation. Occasionally, I'd have to wait over in a bankruptcy court. I'm like, your world frightens and confuses me. What are all these words? What are all these new words that are only here? That's what I tell people. It's like,
00:07:19
Speaker
In bankruptcy court and bankruptcy laws, there's things, there's jargon you will find nowhere else. Well, I remember going one time this, and I still think about the story in fact, I was just telling somebody to it a couple of weeks ago, but I had a subcontractor that was owed money by a general. I think that's what it was. And I wanted to get money from them and file a lien, or I had filed a lien, I can't remember,
00:07:47
Speaker
Or I was representing a general who wanted to say, hey, I don't owe them money or something. I had to come from a construction case into the bankruptcy world. And whatever it was, I didn't know how to do it. And so I was looking in the pleadings in the case to see who else is in a similar position to my client and what did they do? And they had done three different things.
00:08:12
Speaker
Like, they had gone about it, they're in a completely different place, and I'm like, well, those can't all be, right? And they all seemed like really smart lawyers, and it turned out there was another guy who had it figured out, and the judge said, actually, y'all listen to Mr. Durham. He's the one who actually, this is what you do. And your son, nobody had, am I right? Yeah, right. Welcome. Like, we have 10 heads. So, yeah. Yeah, so that's kind of how it always was when I was...
00:08:39
Speaker
when I was there was like, you're practicing, we don't even concern the budget. Okay. We don't... And what led him to join with the other firm then? What was the initial... Push. Okay. Well, it had to do with assisting him into retirement. Okay. Got it. So it's sort of a transition kind of thing. Maybe there's a practice that can be, you know, continue to monetize into the future. Yes. I've worked with a practice broker on that
Going Solo and Navigating the Pandemic
00:09:07
Speaker
kind of thing. Yeah. And in it...
00:09:09
Speaker
Kind of made sense. You know, family law and bankruptcy and estate planning is another thing to do. Kind of all go together pretty well. They're all consumer facing at least. Yeah. Yeah, they can. And, you know, as divorces pick up, bankruptcies usually wane a little bit. Okay. And vice versa. Okay. You know, as people don't have money to get divorced, they usually are filing bankruptcy and they're kind of a nice pairing. Yeah.
00:09:36
Speaker
but it never gelled. You never got there. They didn't understand the incentive of what we just talked about. They'd be like, well, why aren't you calling clients more? I'm like, well, you shouldn't. In bankruptcy, you don't want to be standing up an unnecessary checking call. Or it'd be like, why are you leaving the office some days at 2.30?
00:10:04
Speaker
I'm like, well, I'm really efficient. So there's nothing more for me to do. I can't just like build the client. Like it's not how it works in flat fee. And so it kind of reached a point where their brand was so strong and their systems were so strong that once my file and I retired, I'm like, I can't compete.
00:10:30
Speaker
with the brand of the firm. The money is known for its family law kind of niche.
00:10:36
Speaker
Exactly. It was synonymous. This law firm was synonymous with family law. Right. Yeah. So then I went solo. It was going to be a virtual office. And then the pandemic hit. I'll say what you're saying. 2020, April 1st, I went solo. Oh, wow. And I took my entire book. But bankruptcy is not like
00:11:03
Speaker
That one client is going to give you multiple things of work. No. No, you don't get repeat business, hopefully. No. If you're on the consumer side, if you're on the debtor side, if you're on the creditor side, it's a different animal, but different business model altogether. And so, and I diversified. I do creditor stuff too. I'm one of the rare people that does every chapter of bankruptcy, debtor and creditor. Wow. Okay. For diversification. Yeah.
00:11:31
Speaker
And so that proved to be useful because bankruptcies in the pandemic hit like 30 or 35 year low. Wow. So I'm looking around, I'm like, well, shoot, I would get referred a lot of litigation work.
00:11:49
Speaker
But I'm not a litigator. And I start dabbling. And I'm like, this is miserable. Okay. This is dangerous. This is real dangerous. Oh, God, it's horrible. There's a reason why I didn't want to do this. Right. And so, but alternatively, I was referring a ton of work out. Okay.
00:12:06
Speaker
And I made one law firm a bunch of money during the pandemic. Because I'd done so much business development at my prior firm, people just came to know me as like, if there's a messed up situation and it kind of maybe is like bankruptcy or maybe bankruptcy.
00:12:27
Speaker
And so it just so happened that an attorney, he's been practicing over 30 years, his name's Sam King, reached out to me one day, out of the blue.
00:12:39
Speaker
And it was like, hey, I've got this farm case in Iowa. I'm like, you do farm cases in Iowa? He's like, well, I'm thinking of leaving my firm and starting to do debtor work. Fascinating. And I was like, well, Sam, how about we just like partner up? I get a lot of litigation work and I can just hand it to you. Yeah, yeah. I'll feed you and we'll come up with this structure where if you originate the work, you get 20%.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah. The firm keeps 20% and then you get 60% based upon the work that you do. Yeah. And he was like, cool. So we did that November of 2021.
Expanding the Practice with New Talent
00:13:22
Speaker
Okay. And I filled him completely with work. Wow. And so it was kind of like we were like, you know, another practice area that's really good is estate planning.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. So it's crazy. I post on LinkedIn about just like new way of practicing law and how we have that organizational structure. I've seen some of your stuff. Yeah. And it's definitely thought leadership trying to, you know, hey, look, don't just follow the old lemmings over the cliff. Like you've got to adapt to this whole new environment. The new client base that's out there has different expectations.
00:14:02
Speaker
Exactly. They are okay with and want something different, something new. And so we made a LinkedIn job post for an estate planning attorney.
00:14:22
Speaker
with no real expectation and we don't have an estate planning practice. And it was really fascinating that we ended up getting two bites on it. Actually more than that, but two good ones.
00:14:37
Speaker
One of them was one of my client, former clients, sister-in-laws, who was pregnant and was a county prosecutor out in rural Nebraska. And also the on-call emergency, she'd have to go look at the dead bodies.
00:15:00
Speaker
For the, for the morgue? Yes. For the coroner's office? Yes. Uh-huh. She's the aunt, you know, it's like old school. Wow. You're the county prosecutor, but also the on-call, on-call coroner or whatever to come look. Gosh. Yeah.
00:15:18
Speaker
And so reservation. Wow. Right. Right. You don't even know. Hey, the things they don't play in law school, you might end up having to go look at dead bodies. No, no. And so it's really fascinating. She was like, I feel like my options are if I'm going to be a mom, I can't also be an attorney.
00:15:36
Speaker
Oh. And so I said, is that right? That was what you thought. And I said, well, what if what if we could create an environment, an opportunity where you would have complete autonomy to make your schedule, whatever works for your family, work as much as you want to work, have a career, also be a mom.
00:15:58
Speaker
and we'll give you instant equity in our law firm. Wow. You are totally breaking the mold now. Yeah. I love it though. I love it.
00:16:08
Speaker
And she was like, wow, this is so generous. I'm like, no, this is just how it should be done. Yeah, yeah. And you get to be compensated just like everyone else. So, you know, it's what you make of it. There's gonna be no bill by all requirements. There's no expectation of when you work, how much you work. The why you work should be in alignment, but all those other things,
00:16:36
Speaker
And so she joined. We opened an office in Hastings. And you didn't have an estate planning client yet. And she hadn't done any estate planning work yet. Nope. Wow. That is gutsy.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, so, yes, we're entrepreneurial. Right, but she's barred in Nebraska, and I have read enough to know that Nebraska is one of the places that has a significant underserved population in rural areas in particular. Wild. Wild. It is most, a lot of my clients still today, I haven't lived in Nebraska now for a year and a half, are from greater Nebraska. Yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker
Even when I was there, I'd have clients seven hours away that there was no bankruptcy attorney who specialized in what I did until they hit Lincoln Omaha. So the other thing is some of the big law firms, what they've been doing is acquiring small law firms along I-80 that goes from Iowa across Nebraska to Colorado.
00:17:46
Speaker
And so I was like, well, shoot, we can do this. So I was like, how much? She had a family friend who owned a building on Main Street. And so I was like, well, how much is rent? Three hundred bucks a month.
00:18:01
Speaker
Nothing. Gosh. Plus we get to put our, we get a whole window panel. Oh yeah. Four feet by 14 feet. Nice. We can put whatever we want on it. So I'm like, oh my gosh, we can't even advertise for
00:18:21
Speaker
3,600 bucks a year. No, no, that's incredible. So I love it because it's a blend of brick and mortar, you know, old-fashioned signage, plus the technological capability to serve people wherever. Exactly. Great combo. Wow. And so we've never met in person.
00:18:39
Speaker
She's now worked with us since January. And we collaborate like this. Yeah. And her and I do in every other week, what I call jam session, where we just talked about like, her ideas. Yeah. What input she's like, Hey, can I start a Facebook page? I'm like,
00:18:58
Speaker
run with it. Is like, can I start taking like appointments from the county courts for like juvenile stuff? I'm like, yeah, I don't, whatever you want to do, like cool with me. And so, yeah, she's like gotten her Facebook page up and running has been creating content. We use Canva. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And then the other guy, this is even crazier. This is even crazier. So he's at a law firm that's,
00:19:27
Speaker
He was at a law firm that was dying, okay? It had started, the person who had started it had a similar vision. Like, hey, we can set up these satellite offices kind of all over the Midwest and kind of lost his way. And the office culture just torpedoed. Yeah. People were leaving left and right. Left and right, left and right.
00:19:50
Speaker
And this attorney, his name's Colin, absolute rainmaker. He, business development, like, no problem. And he got in with a financial advising firm that exclusively refers to state planning to him. Oh, wow. Nice. That they just schedule it. It's like an immediate handoff. Yeah, here's our guy. Yeah.
00:20:13
Speaker
hey, do you have estate planning? Or do you need to update your estate planning? We are cross selling here is our state planning guy. So he approaches me and goes, hey, are you interested in adding an equity partner? And I'm like, easy, yes. So we talk and he's like, yeah, I do, you know, about three quarters of a million to a million dollars in revenue myself a year.
00:20:41
Speaker
What's he looking at? He needs to leave the sick culture or? Yeah. Okay. Oh, my God. And he doesn't like how he's being treated. Yeah. And so how does a law firm not figure out how to treat somebody like that, like the cash cow they are? Right? That should be, yes, what else do you need? And can you train everybody else to do that? Exactly. That's a serious thing. Rainmaker. And he's just bringing in, they won't get this.
00:21:10
Speaker
the firm doesn't want to solicit Google reviews. Okay. So he goes out and says, Hey, I'm just going to create my own Google My Business for myself. Yeah. And just starts
00:21:24
Speaker
Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. And outcompetes the law firm and the law firm has grotesque overhead. Like they have support staff that is just wholly unnecessary. So he sees what I'm posting online and stuff and goes, you know, I could go solo.
00:21:48
Speaker
but you have all the systems technology and the way of doing these things that is attractive to me and then I don't have to try to do it. Yes, I resonate with the appeal of that actually. And so it's like, so kind of what we're going for is like you have the benefit, the beauty of the autonomy of creating the practice as if you were solo. Yeah.
00:22:13
Speaker
with the benefit of a shared central brain. Yes, yes. It's like almost a, it's almost a, it is a new model of how to even assemble a law firm because, I mean, Patrick, nobody, and I say this with absolute delight, nobody says, oh yeah, I want to be an equity partner right away. Sure. You share the risk, but you share the upside. Everybody has this mindset of, well, you got to prove yourself, pay your dues, you know, let me feed off you for a while and then we'll see.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yep. But this is the man. So it's it's entrepreneurial risk that attorneys typically shy away from. Oh, oh, yes. In fact, because all of our legal training is like, you know, this risk thing, everybody just know we all risk is bad. All risk is bad. All risk.
00:23:01
Speaker
But we go so far as to we can't, I feel this myself. Even I know it, I've done entrepreneurial things. In fact, it was weird when I started, I'm like, I'm gonna do something that I'm not gonna get paid for by the hour. I'm not gonna create this film or create this program. And guess what? People buy it lots of times.
00:23:21
Speaker
How cool is that? Instead of selling these hour units of time, then I can only sell, you know, so many. But you feel weird. You feel like, I don't know, golly. And once you get a taste up, you're like, who sold me on that former model? It's kind of nuts.
00:23:36
Speaker
So is he able to bring in business then that estate planning woman that you mentioned? Yeah, so this is crazy. This is all just great. So he joins in January, and we now are officing with the financial advising firm.
00:23:56
Speaker
they were like, hey, we have this extra, we rent the entire floor and we have this bank of offices plus a conference room. We'll furnish them all out for you. Just in bed. Yep. And so that's what we've done. And where is
Innovative Legal Model and Culture
00:24:12
Speaker
that? Is that in Lincoln or is in? That's in Omaha. In Omaha, okay. So we now there have a sick setup of like a conference room that's all teched out and they paid it for it. They like Collins so much.
00:24:24
Speaker
He does such a good job that they, yeah, like basically brought us physically into that space. So he has so much work that he's originating. The issue we're having is now is how do we bring in support staff? Right, right. That fits into this unique
00:24:50
Speaker
brand, the city culture. We are not your typical law firm. Right, right. No, clearly. Clearly. But you're responding to a market and you're creating something that is giving people that entrepreneurial freedom. And some would argue before you know if they're a good gamble or not, but the only way to know in a lot of cases is to find out. I mean, you're looking for the fit of the personality. Exactly. Somebody who wants to kind of, hey, I'd like the vibe that you're after and the general principle.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yes, because we've talked with some other attorneys that I'm not in the space. We're not trying to convince you. Yeah. To join us. Like, either you like what we're doing and are comfortable with it. Yeah. But I'm not trying to sell you on it. Well, it's sort of like, I'm familiar with there's a law school that's starting up in North Carolina and a couple, it's launching in fall 2024. And
00:25:46
Speaker
I was at a symposium recently that was about professional identity formation in law and experiential education, all of this. And these were some of the people who were speaking were some of the people in the vanguard, people who are like, we have to shift. AI is going to gobble up all this legal analytical stuff.
00:26:03
Speaker
that we've held as our stock and trade, you know, we're toast on that. That can't be our value proposition anymore, just like knowing the law can't be our value proposition anymore like it used to be. You used to have to find a lawyer to know what the law was. That is not the world anymore. That happened in my practice. And so they're talking about, well, if you're making these changes, how do you get past the old guard and the naysayers? And they're like, well, number one, it helps that the ABA is making us, you know, this thing you have to change and do these things. Oh, yeah.
00:26:30
Speaker
The next gen bar is going to make everybody change this. And then I look at these two guys who are starting up this law school, it's like, or you just don't hire anybody who thinks the old way. That sounds really cool, doesn't it? Yeah, you break the mold. And that's, and so the fascinating thing with like our firm is our age range. So our youngest attorney is not even 30. Our oldest attorney is almost 60.
00:26:53
Speaker
Wow. And Sam, even his whole thing was he's been at firms. He was partner. He's like, I sacrificed all the stuff. I sacrificed time with my kids. Yes. And I got to a point and he was like, why am I doing this? The firm, it was like, they didn't want me to have my own clients. They didn't want me to really do business development. I was always working on someone else's stuff. And he was experienced. He was a partner. Oh my gosh. And he's like, Hey, I want to start doing
00:27:23
Speaker
this kind of work. Yeah. And they're like, we're not interested. Our firm doesn't do that kind of work. Like, it's beneath us, that kind of work. And so even so we have the spectrum. Yeah. We have we have someone who's gone through it as a career, almost as long as I've all of the rest of us attorneys have been alive. Yes. Yes. I saw it. I've lived it. I lived the cycle. I clerked for a judge. I did everything they say you're supposed to do. Exactly. Yes.
00:27:51
Speaker
And here I am on the kind of last phase of my career. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want something different.
00:27:59
Speaker
That's gorgeous though, that's gorgeous. It reminds me of sort of what my partner and some other business that I've had is real time creative learning experiences we do educational programming. It's been in the CLE world, we're trying to morph it to make it something different. But when we opened up our whole premise was we're gonna watch movie clips about lawyers doing stuff and talk about that and kind of shake it up and have discussions. We're not gonna talk at people, we're gonna get people talking
00:28:28
Speaker
And we're going to use movies to kind of liven up and all that stuff. And we thought, this is so young and cool and hip. This is early 2000s. Like, we'll have all these young lawyers flocking to it. And it was actually the opposite. We noticed, gosh, we have a lot of older lawyers who are coming and loving this. And we're like, what's up with that? And they're like, well, we've seen everything else. And we're sick of it.
00:28:49
Speaker
And they were like doing something new and different and they could recognize, hey, there's value there. And we're like, oh, well, that's kind of cool. Yeah. But I love that you found people who but you did it by kind of it's culture centric. It's sort of creating the look. These are the principles.
00:29:07
Speaker
by which we're going to operate a firm, and they're not what you ever are used to or would have seen. It's these, but what I'm hearing is market receptivity, leveraging technology, and giving people autonomy and freedom and encouragement, which will make some people's heads just spin.
00:29:26
Speaker
Oh, they don't. They can't even they can't even believe it. I've been on. So one of the cool things here in Minnesota is there's a very active solo. It's called a solo and small firm experience practice experience. Yes. Group of the bar. Yeah. And they do a monthly like just kind of open dialogue about a topic. OK. So I come on here and I'm talking to people like. I what? Like you're paralegal sheet.
00:29:54
Speaker
Like, you don't have set hours. I'm like, no. If she want to work at 10 o'clock at night, that's cool. They're like, how do you get people to work? I'm like, well, attorneys are achievers by nature. One. And two, if you don't work or you don't originate work, you don't make money. Right. Right. And you try to do that. And, you know, and so people are motivated and they directly benefit. So like the one attorney, you know, he was making that other firm a ton.
00:30:25
Speaker
of money, you know, compared to their overhead. I'm sure exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, now it's just we're and we're okay with saying we don't know every answer. Right.
00:30:41
Speaker
Like, we don't know how this is
Future Growth and Technological Integration
00:30:43
Speaker
gonna go. We're trying something there's no playbook for. Right. There's some amount of, there are some firms like that. I think it's called Scale that is doing something similar, but their model is, hey, you're at big law.
00:31:01
Speaker
and you're in cybersecurity and you're in LA and we can do that. Well, this is kind of a, how do we do this where you have a small firm
00:31:15
Speaker
that can provide services in a whole geographic region where the startup, like we have an opportunity right now to practice in Illinois. I'm from Illinois and Colin, the state planning guy goes, hey, are you licensed in Illinois? I'm like, no, I'm like, why? It's like, well, I have an opportunity to do a state planning represent high net worth individuals
00:31:43
Speaker
who have assets $40 to $50 million plus.
00:31:49
Speaker
I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I have a guy there. He would just, he said he just wants to feed me work. He's a broker, like a financial advisor broker. I'm like, I'm like, we can be licensed. We can find somebody who is, we can staff them. So that's what I did. So I posted on LinkedIn. Okay. And lo and behold, someone reached out to me who is from Nebraska and now lives in Chicago, goes, hey, I'd be interested in this.
00:32:18
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. And I was like, 15 years experience has been a partner at a firm. Yeah. What she's been doing recently is for law firms just setting up their estate planning process and procedures. Okay. Oh my gosh. Uh-huh. That's okay. Yeah. So LinkedIn has been just this awesome avenue for creating community.
00:32:45
Speaker
Well, what you're describing is, as I'm thinking about the democratization of law, the flattening of law, and part of this is you've got to give some credit where credit is due to the pandemic, helping everybody's tech game and getting us over the, we can't do that. It's so hard.
00:33:03
Speaker
What about video conferencing? I don't trust Skype, all that stuff. We leveled all that, but I think we're going to see more of this. The other thing is the differences in the states are becoming
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm not saying not important. I don't want to be a blasphemer, but, you know, everybody's taking the uniform bar exam, and they're about to take the next gen bar exam beginning in 2026. The differences between states, you know, and there were a lot of people. I know somebody who runs a very successful family law firm in Minnesota, actually.
00:33:37
Speaker
I don't know if you've met her. Oh, gosh, her name is, she jumped out of my head. Emily. Oh, gosh. But she's very forward-thinking, worked with her some during the pandemic. And she's sort of tried to do, you know, family law a different way, flat fee, trying to, you know, serve people with miles, means, all that stuff. But she actually relocated to, like, Puerto Rico, I think it was, or somewhere like that, and, like, was like, I don't have to be in freaking Minnesota in January.
00:34:07
Speaker
I'm still, you know, Minnesota barred. I'm serving Minnesota clients, but I can be here and the service is good. It was a revolution for me because as a live workshop person, as a workshop facilitator, I was always about got to be in the room. I want the magic in the room and all that.
00:34:26
Speaker
Take that away from me, though, and I had to figure out, okay, well, you can do a lot. There's things you can do to connect with people. It's not ever going to be the same, but you can make it a good experience, and it is a different experience. You don't just do the same thing you were going to do in a live room if you have only a virtual audience. You can. And this is the next iteration is there are some things that can stay virtual. Yeah. There are some things that...
00:34:54
Speaker
shouldn't or can't. And that's been, I think the next iteration is people are raving human interaction. And community. And so one of the goals with what we're doing is our physical hubs will be facilitators of creating community.
00:35:18
Speaker
I love it. Where it's purposeful and intentional. It's not that we're in a physical proximity and that's enough. Yeah. It's how do we utilize that physical proximity to be intentional? Yes. And that's the next, I think, iteration of this. Yes, yes. Is that I don't think
00:35:45
Speaker
completely virtual all the time. Works. Is ideal. No. For everything. And there are certain things that, gosh, in person, if you just set aside a day, you could just hammer out a bunch of stuff in person that, quite frankly, in a virtual sense,
00:36:07
Speaker
Things get scattered. That is true. That is true. And also, you don't always know if you have like I do mediations and like if somebody is appearing virtual, I'll let people appear virtually. But I can't I don't have the same assurance that I have their full attention.
00:36:23
Speaker
like I do if they're all sitting in my conference room. And I'm going back and forth and selling back and forth. I may not have there, but when I'm in the room with them, I know, you know, they can't be doing too much out stuff. The other thing that I'm smiling about here is, and I don't know what your experience is like in Nebraska, but I know recently I was hosting, I was doing a mediation training. I had some lawyers in the room, somebody about my vintage, practiced a little bit over 25 years. Another guy had been practicing probably 40 plus years.
00:36:51
Speaker
And we got the word that our local courthouse is all civil motions are always going to be handled by WebEx from now on. We're never going back. OK, and interestingly, their response, I'm I was fascinated by this. Their their response was, you know what sucks?
00:37:09
Speaker
We don't get to see each other anymore. We're never, you know, as much as I like the efficiency, like, I don't think I should ever do a calendar call in person again. I'm cool with that. But there's a loss. The lawyers don't see each other at the courthouse. And our local bar has taken some hits and is doing some changes. And we're selling our bar center and bifurcating the bar and all this stuff. And community has been decimated.
00:37:36
Speaker
decimated. Yes. And the question is, what's going to rise up? Something has to rise up to sort of fill that need. And I love that you're thinking about, hey, how do we use our physical space to try to, you know, develop, drive something, be purposeful about that, because there's a loss there.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's really fascinating is that, so with bankruptcy practice, one of the big things was the 341 meetings, which were in person, they're like catacall. And we would all be there, all the bankruptcy attorneys, this is all the same, 10 people, 15 people. Right. So one of the attorneys, when the pandemic first hit, created a Microsoft Teams. Nice. We're all on. And it's awesome. So we'll chat about topics or different things or,
00:38:24
Speaker
because I do creditor work, too. He set it up, you know, where we can just chat message any attorney in the group. And so there's been now, gosh, to facilitate, like, getting things resolved, I can be like,
00:38:39
Speaker
Hey John, how are we gonna resolve this thing I was thinking of doing stipulation? Yeah, that sounds good. I'll message it to you here. Boom, boom, boom. We have ongoing teams discussion. Oh, that's beautiful. That's wild. You know, so that's cool. You know, and that has really allowed me to stay connected to the Nebraska, you know, bankruptcy, debtorside bankruptcy attorneys without physically being there. Yes, yes.
00:39:06
Speaker
And, you know, even with my law practice is that we use Google. And so yeah, we have chats going, we have different group chats, you know, is it me and my paralegal? Is it me and all the attorneys? Is it, what is it? And the preferred way of communicating is video call.
00:39:31
Speaker
Okay? Because then you can see the person. Right, right. There's an up... Yeah, there's a loss in some things that we don't do in person, but I'd rather have a Zoom call than a phone call when I can. Now, not always, you know, maybe I can walk and talk if I'm doing a phone call, but the flexibility. Yes. But, yeah, it's this community. So it's like, how do you drive community? How do you create community? Yes. And how do you make it meaningful? I think there's...
00:40:01
Speaker
particularly with law firms, this idea that some of the traditional law firms are going back to in person are for the wrong reason. Physical proximity alone does not drive value. It does not build team. This idea that just because you're there, you learn more.
00:40:21
Speaker
He's not. That's not a tautology. That's not that's not an obvious thing at all. No, no. And it's something it's it's almost when you say it that way, it's like, wait, do we really want to resume the the the orchestrated dysfunction we used to have? I mean, you know, if it wasn't exactly, you know, if we didn't have good healthy culture before, it's not going to, you know, magically appear because we come back. So what I want to do, Patrick, is this with your permission, I think I haven't got to ask my book related question.
00:40:51
Speaker
You can hang with me for a little while though. I would like to turn what we just did into a Thriving Lawyers podcast. I host the Thriving Lawyers podcast. We just did an episode if you're okay.
00:41:04
Speaker
This is money. This is so great. This is the exact kind of thing that we try to celebrate, want to celebrate, the whole idea of there being new ways to think about things, that thriving looks different now. And you're putting a face on it that I think is fascinating. I think it's a great conversation story. If you're okay with that.
00:41:24
Speaker
Let it run. I've got to find where my otter person or where my otter went. So hold on just one second. AI abandoned us. Yes, exactly. So I'm going to stop that recording right there.