Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

What if your law firm’s case management system was designed to be as engaging as Duolingo or TikTok?

In this episode, Tyson breaks down an experiment he is currently testing inside his own law firm: using the psychology behind habit-forming apps to make everyday work more engaging.

Tyson shares how his firm is building features like daily streaks, personalized quests, team wins, badges, rewards, and even mini games directly into its case management system. But the goal is not to make employees addicted to work. Instead, Tyson explains how these same behavioral principles can be used with intentional guardrails to help employees know what to work on, recognize progress, and make completing important tasks a little more enjoyable.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why Tyson decided to gamify his law firm’s case management system
• The four-part “hook model” behind many habit-forming products
• How variable rewards keep people coming back to apps like TikTok and Instagram
• Using AI to create a personalized daily list of important tasks
• Why Tyson built streaks—and “streak freezes”—into his firm’s system
• How automated recognition can celebrate employee wins without creating unhealthy competition
• Why Tyson is hesitant to use traditional employee leaderboards
• The importance of giving productivity systems an actual finish line
• How to use behavioral psychology without encouraging employees to work constantly
• Why Tyson built a “kill switch” into the system in case gamification creates unintended consequences

Tyson also explains how the firm’s new “Daily Run” identifies important work from each employee’s real task queue, including client communication, overdue tasks, and upcoming deadlines. Once employees complete their most important work, they can earn rewards and maintain their streak while still having a clear stopping point for the day.

Timestamps

00:00 — Why Tyson is making his case management system more addictive
03:00 — The psychology behind habit-forming platforms
05:00 — Why law firms are competing with social media for employee attention
07:00 — Building streaks and rewards into everyday work
09:00 — The five hooks law firms can borrow from social media
10:00 — Using AI to create a personalized Daily Run
14:00 — Tracking work and employee activity inside the firm
16:00 — Variable rewards tied to real accomplishments
19:00 — Streaks, loss aversion, and giving employees grace
21:00 — Social validation without ranking employees
24:00 — Why every productivity system needs a finish line
26:00 — Building guardrails and a kill switch into gamification

If you are looking for ways to get your team more engaged with the systems your firm already uses, this episode offers a fascinating look at how behavioral psychology, AI, and gamification could change the way work gets done inside a law firm.

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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
Welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. I'm Tyson Mutrux. Today I've got an interesting one for you because this is from something I'm working on right now for the firm. I started something this week that sounds a little bit terrible out loud, so just stay with me. I am deliberately testing out making our firm's case management system more addictive. I know that sounds kind of crazy.

Tyson Mutrux (00:20)
But we've been studying how TikTok, Instagram, even Duolingo—how those different platforms hook people. And what we've done is we've built those same mechanics into the case management system. Now, it's not active for all users yet. It's only being tested out a little bit at the moment, but we've built those same mechanics into the case management system.

Tyson Mutrux (00:40)
And I will tell you, I'm hoping that it's effective, but I've been very, very careful whenever we're building this out to make it clear that we want this to be done in a healthy way. So if it in any way would harm someone, we don't want that to happen, obviously. So yes, we've gamified our system a little bit. I've built literal games into the system.

Tyson Mutrux (01:04)
Okay, they're very basic games, but you hit these rewards, you play a game, right? So it's kind of an interesting thing where you get rewarded. And it's going to become more advanced as things go. But it's really kind of interesting, and I want to talk about that a little bit versus—or really in addition to—the principles that are used by the social media platforms.

Tyson Mutrux (01:27)
And I do think we can do this in a healthy way because there's obviously some tension here. "Addictive" is not a term usually used in the same sentence as "healthy," but there is that tension between addictive and healthy that we're trying to balance a little bit.

Tyson Mutrux (01:47)
Because the way I'm looking at this is I want the work to be more enjoyable. If you think about it that way, I really want the work to be more enjoyable for people so that they want to keep doing it. That's the idea. Make work less like work and more like fun, in a way. Okay, so let's go through some of these tactics, some of these different models that are used by these different platforms.

Tyson Mutrux (02:13)
The first one I was talking about is the Hook Model, where every habit-forming product runs the same four-step loop. You've got the trigger, action, variable reward, and then the investment. And that loop repeats until that response becomes automatic. It's like an automatic response, I guess, as a way of putting it.

Tyson Mutrux (02:36)
And that's really what everything hangs on for social media. You've got that trigger, action, reward, and then investment. And they make it very clear that it's a variable reward. It's not always the same reward. It's a different reward. Then you've got the slot machine in your pocket, right? Your cell phone. That variable reward is really the whole trick behind everything.

Tyson Mutrux (03:00)
And this is from B.F. Skinner. It's called intermittent reinforcement, where you don't know what's in the feed until you pull it. That uncertainty is what makes checking compulsive. So a big part of it is that it's variable. Every time you open it, it's different. And so I've made what we're calling our "addictive screen" different from the dashboard.

Tyson Mutrux (03:21)
That's one way I've tried to make it a little bit healthier. If people want something more consistent, just go to the dashboard and see things. That's fine. You want more consistency in your dashboard. You don't want it to be variable. But the other screen—let's just call it the addictive screen for now—you don't see the same thing each time. It also has a live feed of things, like wins and stuff.

Tyson Mutrux (03:51)
You can win prizes. You can win badges. You've got the game. You've got your top three for the day. You've got things like that built into it automatically, and I guess we're growing it. There's also a quiet button, too, which I kind of like. If you don't want all the noise and you want to be on that screen, you can quiet the noise. Like I said, we want to make this thing healthy while also making it fun and something that's effective.

Tyson Mutrux (04:22)
A really interesting part of this is, I don't know if you remember this from around 2017, but Sean Parker admitted that they'd created this social media validation feedback loop where it really exploits the vulnerability of humans, right? And they understood this. They understood this from the beginning. That's why so many people got angry when it came out that they were intentionally making it addictive.

Tyson Mutrux (04:45)
That's why I want to talk about this, because I think it can be used in a healthier manner. You do have to be careful with this because there have been some regrets since then. It's been described as behavioral cocaine. There can be negatives to this. I don't want this to become something where people want to check their phones at all times just to see what's going on with work.

Tyson Mutrux (05:13)
Like when they're on vacation. I don't want that. And this is interesting because our book comes out this week, Founder Optional. The major premise of the book is to make yourself optional. That's the main premise. There's a section in there where I talk about how a lot of people say they take vacations, but they're checking their phones just hours after actually getting to their destination.

Tyson Mutrux (05:38)
That's not what I'm wanting here. I don't want that. Maybe we can even build in something like a vacation button where they can't access it or something. We might do things like that. The sky's the limit for this, it really is. But you have to be really, really careful with it because I really do mean that it needs to be healthy. You have to be very conscious about this.

Tyson Mutrux (06:10)
And I know there are some people out there—not listening to our show, but maybe listening to other shows—who might take it that extra step. And I think you're playing with a hornet's nest, maybe, and I think that could be a problem. So be careful with what you're designing here.

Tyson Mutrux (06:32)
But here's another part of my thinking: your employees are on Instagram. They're on TikTok. They're on Facebook. They're on all these platforms, right? And those platforms are fighting for their attention—your employees' attention and your attention. The thing is, you can't opt out of this war. Your employees are already in it.

Tyson Mutrux (06:57)
So you have to do what you can to fight that addictiveness yourself. You've got to get into the fight. That's part of my thinking here, too. We're already fighting for attention. I guarantee your employees are on their phones throughout the day. I guarantee it. If you think they're not, you're blind as a bat. You're ignoring the obvious. You're crazy if you think they're not checking their phones throughout the day.

Tyson Mutrux (07:28)
So we're fighting that, too. We're combating that a little bit, too. We have to get into this fight, and you have to find a way of doing that. This is a fun little way that we're testing out, and from what I've played around with, I think it's actually going to be pretty effective. I think it's going to be fun.

Tyson Mutrux (07:59)
Because we've built in things like streaks. How many days is your streak? And then you have two misses—I can't remember what we call them actually. They're not called misses. You basically get a mulligan. You get a pass. You only have two of those a month. So if you miss a day of hitting your streak, you've still got that buffer.

Tyson Mutrux (08:32)
You have to hit your top three for the day, and if you skip more than two days, then basically you've lost the streak for the month. We found a way to keep them in the game when it comes to finishing their top three. Part of this, too, is that we could probably add a reward system where you get entered into a lottery to win something if you've hit your top three every single day, aside from the two that you're allowed to miss.

Tyson Mutrux (09:02)
I think that actually might be something we'll do. What I want you to do is take some of the things we're going to talk about here, take whatever ideas you can, and try to apply them in whatever way you can. I know some of you are using a platform that you didn't build. I understand that. But you can use these hooks in other ways and build them into what you're doing.

Tyson Mutrux (09:31)
Here are the five hooks that I want to talk about and some of the guardrails that you can use. These are the things I want you to steal. These are the things the social media platforms do. So here's the first hook: the trigger. Give them a reason to open it. That's the trigger in a nutshell. Give them a reason to open this tab. I'll call it the tab because that's what we have—it lives in a separate tab.

Tyson Mutrux (09:56)
With social media, their version is push notifications engineered for FOMO. That's what they're engineered for. They've got the red badges. That's why you're reminded by these platforms so often about notifications. If you're like me, I've got my notifications off, so I don't get the red dots. I've got those turned off. But I get reminded all the time, "Are you sure you don't want notifications?"

Tyson Mutrux (10:18)
You have these red badges that tell you someone tagged you, you've got a message, or someone commented on something you commented on. You've got all these things, right? Those notifications are the trigger. They've got that trigger to bring you back in. So what's our version? Every weekday morning, the system builds each person a short quest list.

Tyson Mutrux (10:46)
We call it the Daily Run. It's their little quest for the day, and it's built by AI. It looks at all their tasks and all the work that needs to be done. It pulls out what it thinks are three really important things they need to do that day, and it's pulled from that person's real queue.

Tyson Mutrux (11:08)
So maybe it's clients who haven't heard from us, overdue tasks, or today's deadlines. Opening the app answers a question every manager wakes up with—or really every employee wakes up with—which is, "What should I do first?" Boom. It's right there. It tells them, "Here's what I do first."

Tyson Mutrux (11:24)
Here's the guardrail you can use for that: the trigger needs to serve the user, not necessarily the metric. No manufactured urgency. No red dots for things that don't matter. The day's list is built from actual case needs.

Tyson Mutrux (11:51)
It's not fake stuff. This is actual, real stuff they're working on. That's the guardrail. It serves that particular user, and it serves the clients as well. The morning list also caps. You can have a bigger list if you want, but right now it caps at 10.

Tyson Mutrux (12:19)
What it tries to do is go with three. You can actually increase it to 10 if you want. I think we'll probably remove that and make it closer to five, but right now you can add up to 10. We want it at three. And if you've cleared your queue—let's say you have nothing in there—it says "Clear Queue." That's an earned day, and it gives you the day off. That's not likely to happen.

Tyson Mutrux (12:48)
You might think I'm crazy for that. You might think I'm absolutely nuts because we're very busy. But I think it gives them something to shoot for. If someone were to clear the queue, I'm all for them taking the day off. I am all for it. Is that going to happen every single day? No, no, no. That's not what it's going to be. But if people have cleared their queue and they're actively pushing for that and they're done? Deal.

Tyson Mutrux (13:17)
I'll give you the day off. That means you are hustling. You're totally hustling. Could some people game this? Maybe. I don't think they could. I really don't think they could. We've got tracking on everything. That's the great thing about building our own platform—we can track everything. It's pretty interesting. I have charts on every file.

Tyson Mutrux (13:46)
I can open a file, and there's a tab that only shows to admins that gives me user activity. I can tell you every single person who's touched a file. I pulled one up right now. I can see total actions on the file. I can look at all time, 30 days, the last seven days. I can tell you the number of actions taken on the file.

Tyson Mutrux (14:14)
I can tell you the total time the page has been open and by whom. I can see the last date of activity. It gives me the names. I can open each user and see the activity they've had on the file, the time they've spent on it, everything else. I can tell you the work type they've done. Have they added a note? Have they created something? Have they opened a document? Have they uploaded something? All of those things.

Tyson Mutrux (14:42)
And then I can see daily activity. I'm just giving you some of the Cliff Notes here, really, but we can track everything. So for someone to game it would be really hard without us knowing. They'd have to be cheating in some way, like checking things off without actually having done them. Good luck with that. But we have good people, and I don't expect that.

Tyson Mutrux (15:09)
Our employees do listen to this show, too, so they'll know. I'll know and they'll know. And I trust them. All right, let's get to the second hook. The first hook is trigger. The second hook—these are things I've already mentioned, but I'm going through them in more detail—is variable rewards. But these need to come from real work. Again, all of this needs to stem from real work.

Tyson Mutrux (15:32)
Here's the social media version. They've got the algorithmic feed—that's hard to say—a feed that's based on an algorithm. You never know what's next, so you keep pulling that lever. You keep updating and updating and updating, or you keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. You don't know what's going to be in it.

Tyson Mutrux (15:54)
You can't open any of those feeds and get the exact same feed. You can't. It's different every single time. That's the whole idea. Our version of this is a little different and, I think, a little healthier. It's got "This Week's Wins." There's a little panel down below that's like a feed. When someone sends a demand, gets an offer on a case, settles a case, or earns a badge, it shows up.

Tyson Mutrux (16:17)
You can earn badges in different ways. A card will appear automatically. It's not a post. You can react to it with an emoji—a heart, a thumbs-up, whatever it may be. You can definitely emoji it, which is kind of nice, but there aren't posts from people. The work itself is what generates the surprise.

Tyson Mutrux (16:47)
So instead of someone posting, the work that people are actually doing creates the post. They don't have to go brag on themselves, which is kind of what social media is—people mostly bragging on themselves. This is a little different because the system is bragging on the employee for the work they're doing. You open the app or open up the tab and find out, "Hey, my gosh, this teammate sent a four-million-dollar demand." Heck yeah, dude. That's awesome.

Tyson Mutrux (17:15)
You've got those things built into it. So that's hook number two. Let me get to the guardrail because I almost skipped it. I want to make sure we get through these last three because I've taken my time on the first two. The guardrail here is that the variability comes from reality, not from some algorithm.

Tyson Mutrux (17:42)
That's the difference. We're not trying to create some sort of engagement optimization from this, and we're not trying to rank what people see. That's a key difference. This is different from a slot machine. With a slot machine, you pull it and something randomly pops up. Ours is a little more predictable. So it's probably less addictive because of that. But here's the thing: I can play with it, test it out, see how it works, and then we can adjust from there.

Tyson Mutrux (18:05)
Okay, the third part of this is streaks and loss, but with some mercy built into it. That's the healthy part of it. The social media version is things like Snapchat streaks. Duolingo has the streak flame. You get that loss aversion. What we want to do is make sure people don't want to lose what they've built up.

Tyson Mutrux (18:33)
That's really the way of putting it. Duolingo's single most effective retention mechanic is that whole idea that people don't want to lose what they've built. That's their number one thing. Our version of this is finishing the Daily Run. When you finish your Daily Run, you build that streak. We have the streak in there, but it's only for weekdays. It's not for weekends.

Tyson Mutrux (18:57)
Everyone gets two freezes. That's what we call them—streak freezes. You get two a month. So if you miss a day, let's say you have a day off, you've got court and you're not on the app because you're traveling, or you've got a sick kid, then that freeze just burns silently. You can't even click on it. It's just there. Boop. It's gone.

Tyson Mutrux (19:28)
You've used your freeze. You have one fewer freeze. It's kind of like if you die in a video game and get a do-over. You don't lose your streak because you got the do-over. There's no guilt message that pops up. Nothing like, "You're about to lose everything." No notification. There's nothing like that built into it.

Tyson Mutrux (19:45)
So that's the guardrail. You've got the loss aversion, but it gets that mercy valve. That's our guardrail for this—to keep it a little healthier. So that's streaks and loss. Okay, hook four: social validation. Recognition without rankings is what we've got.

Tyson Mutrux (20:09)
The social media version is likes, follower counts, leaderboards, the social-validation feedback loop. You know, Sean Parker—the Facebook guy. Anyway, you've got followers, likes, all that kind of stuff. Our version is teammates can react to win cards with a small, fixed set of emojis.

Tyson Mutrux (20:38)
It's a limited set of emojis. We have four or five options, nothing major, kind of like the way Facebook does it. That's it. We don't have a bunch of them built in. There are no leaderboards, although I'm considering leaderboards. That's something I'm thinking about doing.

Tyson Mutrux (21:10)
But we don't have people ranked. Nothing like that. We didn't want to build that in. We're a little hesitant about doing that. If we did a leaderboard, I'd have to find a really creative way to do it.

Tyson Mutrux (21:26)
The case managers do more tasks than anybody else, but they also have more tasks assigned to them. So you can't base it on tasks alone. You've got to find another way of doing it. We'd have to get creative. Our guardrail for this right now is that we celebrate events and never rank people. That's the big thing right now—not ranking people.

Tyson Mutrux (21:59)
If we did it, we'd have to come up with some sort of creative way. This part is based on research called self-determination theory. Lasting motivation comes from autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I'm just reading straight from it here. Recognition feeds competence and relatedness. Rankings feed comparison.

Tyson Mutrux (22:22)
And in a small firm—I mean, we're 22 people, so we're still a small firm—a leaderboard really has one winner and you've got 21 losers, right? I don't know how I feel about that. That's not the greatest. So we'll see. If we did it, it'd have to be a fun thing, maybe a challenge or a one-off.

Tyson Mutrux (22:47)
Something else we've built in is our quarterly rock. It's built in there as a meter that pulls straight from the system. There's no manual entering into it. So you actually see it at all times as it's growing. If you've done something on a file, boop, it's added to it. It's pretty cool. That part's pretty neat.

Tyson Mutrux (23:23)
And then let's get to the last hook. The ending. The most radical feature is a finish line. The social media version is infinite scroll. That's Raskin's invention—and Raskin's regret. The feed never ends because an end is where you'd leave, right? You get to the end, you leave.

Tyson Mutrux (23:52)
Our version? Everything terminates. The Daily Run has a last quest. Finish it and the app says, "You're done for the day. See you tomorrow." That's what it says. That's sort of tongue-in-cheek. We may play with the wording a little bit. Again, we've not rolled this out to all employees yet.

Tyson Mutrux (24:21)
I don't know how I feel about that text yet. I don't really want people to leave for the day, but I also don't want them to feel like, "It says I can leave for the day, but now I've got to stay here." So that's one of those things we'll probably play with a little bit. But it will have a termination point where it just stops and doesn't keep trying to pull you back in.

Tyson Mutrux (24:50)
The wins panel shows one week, and there's no scroll back. You can't go back through the history on it. That's one of the ways we want to keep it limited. Even the reward mini game we built is limited. It's a 30-second fox runner. Like I said, it's really simple. You hit the space bar and it jumps over things. It's kind of fun.

Tyson Mutrux (25:19)
But you only get three attempts. You have three a day. Once you've hit your goal, once you've hit your top three for the day and finished your Daily Run, the game pops up. You can play it three times, and then it's done for the day. So we have these things where it's limited. You can do it so many times, and then you're done.

Tyson Mutrux (25:48)
So those are the five hooks. I'm sure you can find ways of adding these into your firms, even if you don't have your own platform built out. Just remember, you have to be really, really careful. We built a literal kill switch for this thing where, if we find that this isn't working, we turn it off. You have to find a way of having a kill switch.

Tyson Mutrux (26:18)
Be very, very careful about that. Be very careful if you're going to build a system like this. You want it to be a healthy system. You don't want it to be a system that's addictive in an unhealthy way. You just don't want that. So be very, very careful.

Tyson Mutrux (26:45)
But that's all I have for you today. Hopefully you got something from this episode. I'll report back once we roll this thing out live and once we get more feedback from our people.

Make sure you check out BeccasList.co for all the best vendors. Make sure you go to MaximumLawyer.com if you're interested in the Association. And don't forget about the conference in October. Go to MaxLawCon.com and get your tickets today.

See everybody. Have a great week.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

What if your law firm’s 401(k) is quietly costing you tens of thousands of dollars each year?

In this episode, Tyson talks with Paul Sippil, also known as the 401(k) Vigilante, about the hidden fees and confusing payment structures built into many retirement plans.

Paul explains how he reviews publicly available Form 5500 filings to determine what firms are paying for recordkeeping, administration, custodial services, and financial advice. He also shares why two firms with the same number of employees can pay drastically different fees simply because one plan has accumulated more assets.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why many firm owners do not know who their 401(k) advisor is, or what that advisor actually does
• How asset-based fees can cause a successful firm to pay more without receiving additional service
• Why Paul believes every retirement-plan provider should send a clear invoice
• Which 401(k) fees may be negotiable or eliminated
• How excessive fees can affect both law firm partners and employees
• What attorneys should know about the ABA retirement program
• The shocking story of a company that paid nearly $49,000 in commissions while its listed advisor had been dead since 2014

Paul also shares practical questions law firm owners can ask their providers to better understand their plans, uncover unnecessary costs, and determine whether they are actually receiving the services they are paying for.

Timestamps

01:14 — What a forensic 401(k) consultant does
04:34 — Why many owners do not know who their advisor is
09:28 — Why every provider should send an invoice
12:19 — The problem with asset-based fees
13:38 — Why nearly every 401(k) fee is negotiable
15:31 — How small law firms can pay up to $50,000 a year in fees
19:09 — The ABA retirement-plan option for law firms
24:11 — Making hidden participant fees visible
31:43 — Could AI disrupt the retirement-plan industry?
34:06 — The company paying an advisor who had been dead since 2014
41:45 — Alternative approaches to health insurance and employee benefits

If you own a law firm and have not reviewed your retirement-plan fees recently, this episode will help you understand what to look for, what questions to ask, and where your firm may be overpaying.

Connect with Paul

LinkedIn

Website

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Resources:

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• Follow the Facebook Page
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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:17)
All right, Paul, so you go by the four one K vigilante. I think that starting with the nickname is the great place to start. So what is that? What does that mean?

Paul Sippil (00:17)
Vigilante, I think, is a really good term because it describes someone that isn't willing to simply accept what the system presents. you sometimes have to take things into your own hands. Of course I mean legally. True. But not necessarily accepting the status quo. And everything I do and

Paul Sippil (00:46)
really it reflects the way I think, is very much in the spirit of challenging the way the system works and asking deeper questions and looking at patterns and taking both fifty thousand foot view and a granular view at the same time and not being able to say something is wrong and how could things be done better.

Tyson Mutrux (00:46)
So you you're big into the forensic side of the four a wake four one K

Tyson Mutrux (01:14)
Realm, I guess is what you'd call it. You you said you were talking about how the more accurate definition might be a little so we would talk about that because I want to give people an idea as to what you do. Sure, yeah.

Paul Sippil (01:14)
And it's not not the easiest thing to describe because there really isn't a category for this. I've been for the last several years trying to explain just what this category is, what exactly is, and I've often described myself also as a forensic 401k consultant and what does that really mean? A lot of people have heard of forensic accounting.

Paul Sippil (01:43)
And forensic accountants are often used in court for expert witness testimony, for business valuations whenever there's a dispute on certain facts or values of what a business is for divorce cases, and there's a clear market for forensic accountants. I also happen to be a CPA, recovering CPA, but forensic 401k consulting is not something anybody has ever talked about before. And I call it that because

Paul Sippil (02:09)
So much of what I do is based on reviewing publicly available tax filings and going through what's known as Form 5500 and looking at the entire makeup of the plan, the assets, the contributions, namely the service charges that show up. And this is how I know very quickly by looking at a 401k plan tax form, looking at both the employer and the employee contributions, the plan assets, and the service charges, namely in proportion, not to the asset so much.

Paul Sippil (02:39)
as in proportion to the number of participants, I can very quickly tell whether the services are commensurate with the level of work the or the fees charged for the services are actually commensurate with the level of work that's required.

Tyson Mutrux (02:39)
So let's say a company brings you in to to do what you do. Like what's the end goal? Is it to bring down costs or like what's the end goal of it?

Paul Sippil (02:39)
That's part of it, but it's a lot more than just bringing down costs.

Tyson Mutrux (02:39)
Okay.

Paul Sippil (02:39)
So we have to make sure

Paul Sippil (03:07)
To understand what these services are for and what would reasonable compensation actually be for these services. So to back up, just defining what the services are, which is a very rarely understood, are primarily known as record keeping, administration, and advisory services. And there's different types of advisors out there. And sometimes there are fees for what's called custodial services. Custodians are like Charles Schwab or Fidelity simply for holding the money if it's set up

Paul Sippil (03:36)
where there even is a custodian and on what's called group annuity plans there is no custodian. But it's primarily record keeping administration and advisory services. Nobody really knows what advisory services are because there's often an advisor that doesn't actually perform any services. The perception is the financial advisor is managing the account. However, these accounts are what's known as typically participant directed accounts. So if you ever had a 401k plan, you know typically you have 20, 30

Paul Sippil (04:05)
50, maybe a hundred funds to choose from, depending on the plan. And you just have to figure out which funds are best. The advisor doesn't make any buy sell decisions. The advisor doesn't control what you invest in. That's up to you. The advisor might help make a pool of twenty or thirty funds or so available, but it's not actually the advisor that's making those buy sell decisions. And in many cases, well over ninety percent of the participants don't even interact with the advisor.

Paul Sippil (04:34)
And don't even know that an advisor even exists.

Tyson Mutrux (04:34)
Well it's funny you say that because we have R four one K through Vanguard. I mean I don't know who our advisor is if we have one. Or if there is one. Yeah. So I have no idea who who it would be if there was one.

Paul Sippil (04:34)
Yes. And there's different ways advisors get paid. Now it's almost always automatically deducted from participants' accounts, regardless of whether or not the participants are even using the advisor's services or the owner, the plan sponsor, is even

Paul Sippil (04:59)
Using the advisor's services in terms of evaluating the other record keepers and administrators and custodians out there, and ensuring that their fees are reasonable and ensuring the advisors' fees are reasonable. Advisors don't send invoices, which is really crazy. So not only are they getting paid from participants' accounts, disclosing their fees not in dollars but in percentages, which is not a way to make employers more cost sensitive because

Paul Sippil (05:24)
Half a percent or one percent doesn't sound like much it's kind of brilliant because like I I know we just pay a set amount, it just comes out every single month, and I have zero idea what the fees are. No idea, no one really looks, nobody even understands there are fees, they don't know what reasonable fees are because if you don't even know what they are in the first place, how can you make reasonable comparisons?

Tyson Mutrux (05:24)
Sure. So what the advisor's actually supposed to do, and by the way, there are brokers who can only get paid a percentage of the account value

Paul Sippil (05:50)
Through these asset-based kickbacks known as commissions or sometimes called revenue sharing that are built into the cost of certain investments and not others. So there's a clear bias to only make certain funds available that ensure that the broker actually gets paid. The broker can only provide what's known as investment education, not actual advice. If you give me a hundred dollars, I tell you what to do.

Paul Sippil (06:15)
That's advice. If I sell you an investment and I get $100 in commissions, that's not advice. That's simply limiting me to providing what's known as educational services, not actually giving advice.

Tyson Mutrux (06:15)
So what the advisor should be doing is actually telling you what to invest in, telling the plan sponsor which funds to make available, helping you make distinctions between what's known as the Roth and traditional 401k. People think a Roth is an IRA, but a Roth has nothing to do with IRA or 401k.

Paul Sippil (06:44)
It simply means making contributions to a retirement account with after tax dollars, where you get the tax deduction or tax-free withdrawals on the back end and no tax deduction on the front end. That's what the advisor should be doing, along with helping people create a budget and helping determine how much to contribute, as well as using the retirement plan calculator on the record keepers website where you enter in all your data, your assets, the expected growth and inflation rate.

Paul Sippil (07:13)
And it spits out how much monthly income you'll have and it shows how much more or less monthly income you'll have as a result of, let's say, reducing or increasing your contributions. Advisors should ultimately be sitting down with participants on an individual basis and helping them make those decisions, but they almost never do. And the plan sponsor has no incentive to care if the services are being used because not only is the employer not paying for the services, but there's no invoice to reflect the participant fees.

Paul Sippil (07:41)
So there's no pain being felt. Kind of like people who don't have that pain mechanism where if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain should be a warning because your hand is burning off. But imagine if you didn't feel pain and your hand was on a stove and you didn't even realize it was hot, you wouldn't even feel your hand burning. And that's not that bad of an analogy to not being able to feel the pain of the fees. So there's no incentive

Paul Sippil (08:04)
To reduce or negoti to negotiate or even eliminate the fees. You don't even have to pay an advisor, but people don't know that. There's also record keeping and administration fees. The record keeper, such as John Hancock, Fidelity Principal, simply keeps track of all the records, loans, provides a website, a customer service number for both the plan sponsor, the owner of the business, as well as the participants, should they have any questions about using the website. Then there's administration fees.

Paul Sippil (08:32)
Which have to do with preparing the tax form, known as Form 5500, as well as what's called discrimination testing, which are these stupid rules in place to ensure that the non-highly compensated employees are contributing enough in proportion to the highly compensated employees. If they don't, then you fail the tests and the highly comp compensated employees get what's called redemption checks at the end of the year. So they can't actually max out their contributions.

Paul Sippil (09:01)
unless there's sufficient participation amongst the non highly compensated employees or the employer makes a contribution on behalf of the employees like three percent, which is known as a safe harbor plan. So basically you have to pay a bunch of money to the employees just to make sure that the tests are being passed. I hope that wasn't too much information. No, it's a lot lots unpacked. I would say let me let me do this. Let's I'm gonna take a different approach. What would you say is your most

Paul Sippil (09:28)
Extreme view or extreme opinion on things. Well, that nobody should ever do business without sending an invoice, because nobody sends an invoice. The administrators sometimes send an invoice for some of their fees and they issue what's called a credit if they're receiving revenue sharing payments out of the funds. So if they're charging five hundred dollars and they received two hundred dollars in revenue sharing.

Paul Sippil (09:55)
Then they'll show a $200 credit, which makes it look like a discount. But it's not a discount. It just means that they're getting their fees somewhere else. And because nobody sends invoices, and because I've actually suggested to the Department of Labor, I've had conversations with them about changing their policies. And instead of mandating a fee disclosure document that nobody knows exists, or if they do know it exists, they don't understand, and it's not even clearly disclosing all the fees.

Paul Sippil (10:21)
Why don't you mandate invoices instead? And I don't love mandates, but that would be a more logical mandate. And voluntarily I would suggest that everyone send an invoice with a description of their services, which would change the entire industry overnight. I know it's not extreme to me, but other people think so.

Tyson Mutrux (10:21)
So let's say it's as you're a business owner, right? You're you're you're doing the three percent, you're you've got a four hundred one K that you o the you ha have for your business. We'll use law firms, right? Sure.

Tyson Mutrux (10:49)
So you got a law firm, you're running a a four one K, you're doing it through like what's one of the biggest companies that does four one Ks for other companies? well like principal or Fidelity or big record keeping. Let's use ph let's use Fidelity. So Fidelity, they're they're administering the four one K. Is that the right terminology? yeah, record keeping administering the four one K. so the law firm is not let's just call it Smith and Smith. Smith and Smith is they're never getting an invoice, it's just getting, you know, they're paying every single month what they're paying

Tyson Mutrux (11:19)
The employees are contributing what they're contributing. I guess in that situation, there's never are you suggesting that the business, the law firm Smith and Smith should reach out to Fidelity, or are you saying Fidelity needs to start d sending invoices to the law firm? I'm actually suggesting both. And let me add something, and this is especially relevant for law firms.

Paul Sippil (11:19)
Fidelity typically earns its money through asset based fees, specifically

Paul Sippil (11:48)
Kickbacks known as revenue sharing payments built into the cost of certain funds and not others. Sometimes they can simply assess what's called an asset charge where they don't get kickbacks, but it's still a percentage of the account. Many law firms have lots of money because law firms are there's lots of profitable law firms out there and lots of law firms have been around a while. Imagine a law firm with 20 participants with $1 million versus another law firm with 20 participants and $5 million.

Tyson Mutrux (11:48)
Which one requires more work?

Paul Sippil (12:19)
Probably the I would assume the five million, but may I'm I'm guessing you're gonna tell me the one million dollar one? Neither. There isn't more work. the same amount of work.

Tyson Mutrux (12:19)
Okay.

Paul Sippil (12:19)
Because twenty participants is what drives the work, not the assets. The assets have no bearing whatsoever on the level of services required. So it would be foolish for any company, law firm or any kind of business, to enter into an arrangement and

Paul Sippil (12:45)
Where the service charges are based on a percentage of the total account value if there is a significant account value and if there are significant contributions. You don't want to be charged based on five million and essentially paying a huge penalty for your own success when there are other very comparable and reputable companies who charge based on not the assets, but on the number of participants.

Tyson Mutrux (13:11)
Stay on this for a second because this is really this is really important. Okay. So Smith and Smith, so they've they've contracted with Fidelity.

Paul Sippil (13:11)
Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (13:11)
I guess this is like kind of like a two part question. based on that. So we we don't want to be paying them a a percentage of the overall assets, right? Can I negotiate that with Fidelity or if I i is my only option to go with another company?

Paul Sippil (13:11)
Both.

Tyson Mutrux (13:11)
Okay.

Paul Sippil (13:11)
You can go with another company.

Paul Sippil (13:38)
so no, it's not your only option. You absolutely can negotiate with Fidelity.

Tyson Mutrux (13:38)
Okay, because I did not know that.

Paul Sippil (13:38)
And that's one of the biggest points.

Tyson Mutrux (13:38)
So you stole my idea. That was a great point because I was gonna mention that. Or you actually helped me remember so I don't forget to mention, but every fee is negotiable. Every fee. Everything. And because people don't have an invoice, it doesn't occur to them to negotiate.

Paul Sippil (13:38)
Oftentimes you can negotiate a lower percentage.

Paul Sippil (14:05)
They might agree to a fixed fee structure, but their fees are still going to be based primarily on the assets. They're just going to go up as the assets go up. You can also negotiate with the advisor and you can eliminate the advisor's payment entirely if you're not using an advisor. And it's actually much more dangerous from a fiduciary liability standpoint to pay exorbitant fees to an advisor whose services are not or are hardly being used by participants because then you're passing on excessive fees to participants.

Paul Sippil (14:35)
Than not having an advisor at all, because the question often is don't I need an advisor helping me? Well, yes, if they're actually doing something, but you want to document the services they're performing and you want to make sure that the fees are reasonable. But having no advisor at all is actually much less precarious than having an advisor that's overcharging the participants for services that are hardly being used and not being documented. It's really interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (14:35)
Okay, so I mean, how much money are we talking? Are we talking about a significant amount of money? Okay, so let's say on the five million. Let's say that on the five million,

Tyson Mutrux (15:05)
If if we go from n having not negotiated anything to to negotiate like how much money are we saving a year?

Paul Sippil (15:05)
Well, there's many instances where there's plans I've seen and I actually have an Excel spreadsheet that I've documented.

Tyson Mutrux (15:05)
As a CPA, I would expect nothing else. Nothing else.

Paul Sippil (15:05)
I'm proud of this Excel spreadsheet because I've gone through tens of thousands of 5500 forms, the form file with the Department of Labor, and I have documentation going all the way back to 2009.

Paul Sippil (15:31)
Because these tax forms are matters of public record. And this is how I got into the business due to a conversation with one of my colleagues who told me you could look up the tax forms online.

Tyson Mutrux (15:31)
Wow.

Paul Sippil (15:31)
And I started documenting everything. And there are law firms with 10 or 20 people who are passing on expenses upwards of fifty thousand dollars per year. And here's the worst the most egregious example. I've even gotten to the most interesting part.

Tyson Mutrux (15:31)
Yeah.

Paul Sippil (15:31)
Most of the partners

Paul Sippil (15:58)
have most of the money in the plan. And these fees are actually passed on in proportion to the account balances. So if 90% of the money is the partner's money, guess who's paying 90% of the fees? The partners. But it actually gets worse. It's more interesting than this because the fees passed on to participants are not tax deductible. And even if they were, they still wouldn't even be known to be deducted because you can't deduct something that you never knew existed in the first place. Because it's all just wrapped into everything. You can't deduct a percentage. You have to

Paul Sippil (16:27)
Give a number on your tax forum as to what you paid. So ultimately you have to get down to the dollars. But it gets even more interesting than this. These are tax-advantaged accounts.

Tyson Mutrux (16:27)
So you don't want any money coming out of tax advantaged accounts. And again, you don't even get a tax deduction. And again, the partners are paying all the fees almost all personally anyway.

Paul Sippil (16:27)
Wouldn't it be better if they did, to your prior point in question, actually demand that both Fidelity or

Paul Sippil (16:54)
whoever provider they have as a record keeper and administrator and the financial advisor actually send them a bill. Not only would they be able to get a business tax deduction like they would any other business expense, because business expenses are deductible, but they would save everybody else significant amounts of money, make their plan more competitive. And I could even quantify the savings through a Department of Labor example showing how 1% additional in additional fees actually cost

Paul Sippil (17:19)
A participant with a small balance, about sixty-four thousand dollars over their investment lifetime over a thirty year period from thirty-five to sixty-five, ages thirty-five to sixty-five, which is about twenty-eight percent of the balance. But the law firm also would naturally be more sensitive to the cost because when you get a bill, you're naturally gonna scrutinize it more than when you have a fee deducted from the accounts without seeing an invoice and

Paul Sippil (17:44)
You would be much better off from a fiduciary liability standpoint to the extent that there are zero fees passed on to participants because there's essentially almost no liability when there's almost no fees. Not zero, but you would significantly mitigate it.

Tyson Mutrux (17:44)
So you say the form five fifty or fifty-five hundred?

Paul Sippil (17:44)
Five five hundred.

Tyson Mutrux (17:44)
Okay, form f it on the fifty-five hundred, it's not even separated by fees and everything like it was just one number, basically.

Paul Sippil (17:44)
Well, there's two several different line items. One of them is line

Paul Sippil (18:11)
8F on the short form and it's Schedule C on forms where there's over a hundred participants, where it shows the combined fees between the record keeper, custodian, administrator, and the financial advisor. So it's not it's not invoiced out. It's not broken down.

Tyson Mutrux (18:11)
Okay.

Paul Sippil (18:11)
It's not although the financial advisor's fees, if it's a broker, can show up on line ten E as commission payments. So sometimes you will or oftentimes you will see the broker's fees separately, but nobody

Paul Sippil (18:40)
Or very few people often look closely at that fifty five hundred form.

Tyson Mutrux (18:40)
So what I've done is send companies summaries going all the way back to two thousand nine.

Paul Sippil (18:40)
Here's your fees in two thousand nine, here's your fees, like showing them the dollars each year and the extreme escalation and how the number of participants often only increases a little bit or stays the same. And yet just because of the assets going up, I can show just by going through all the forms, which anyone can look up themselves but often don't, the

Paul Sippil (19:09)
Dollars paid out each year and that is extremely eye opening.

Tyson Mutrux (19:09)
Can you go retroactively and get your money back?

Paul Sippil (19:09)
No, you can't get your money back, but you can set it up in such a way so you if you're a law firm, you basically can avoid all those fees. This might be the most important part for any attorney that's listening to this, is the American Bar Association has a special program called the ABA retirement funds program.

Paul Sippil (19:33)
And if you set up what's called a self-directed brokerage account, which is an account where you can have literally any fund you want, you can avoid basically all of the advisory, record keeping, custodial, and administration fees, with the exception of non-recurring fees such as plan amendments, which are billed to the employer like a few hundred dollars a year, and something called cross-testing, which is a form

Paul Sippil (19:56)
Of disproportionately allocating the profit sharing contribution more to the highly compensated employees, which is very common amongst law firms, which is a separate one to $2,000 fee per year. But these fees are typically $40,000, $50 grand a year or more combined with the advisor and the record keeper and the administrator. It's administered by VoyA. And if you put your money in one of the core funds in the program, they have this revenue sharing built in.

Tyson Mutrux (19:56)
So you're stuck paying for those.

Paul Sippil (20:24)
Record keeping administration advisory services if you choose one of those limited funds. But if you put all of your money in the brokerage account, there are no advisory record keeping or administration fees. And if you have a financial advisor, that advisor has to bill the employer, which they should, and they can't make as much money that way, or they have to come to an individual agreement with each participant if they want to get money from their accounts, as opposed to 99% of the arrangements where the advisor gets an automatic fee.

Paul Sippil (20:53)
Based on a percentage that escalates from everyone's accounts, regardless of whether or not they even know that the advisor exists. The only restriction is you have to have a minimum of $2,500 in one of those core funds. And as of three years ago, the annual fee of $250,000, $250 per participant per year wa was waived that they otherwise would have had to pay if they set up a brokerage account. This is a

Paul Sippil (21:19)
Gold mine for law firms. I don't make any money off the program.

Tyson Mutrux (21:19)
Sure.

Paul Sippil (21:19)
I'm just letting attorneys know that they have that option. And every law firm, especially small law firms, if they understood how that program worked, should immediately take advantage of it.

Tyson Mutrux (21:19)
Okay. So I'm gonna ask you this question based on what you just said. how do you benefit from it then? I that's I'm very curious about that. I like what's how like where is your benefit? There's gotta be like something that you would get as the forensic.

Tyson Mutrux (21:47)
CPA.

Paul Sippil (21:47)
So I I nothing directly. It's brand awareness. I'm just being honest with people. And the question is, well, how do I benefit from being honest? Well, it's good for my reputation. It makes me feel good that all of my years of research and all of my work is actually being recognized. So there's I guess you call it an emotional benefit because when you work that hard to get information out there, you want people to actually take your advice.

Paul Sippil (22:15)
And of course, it's just good business. If any company out there wants to engage an advisor who actually sends invoices, who has a conversation about whether or not the employer would be better off paying the fees, and who charges in a way that's commensurate with the level of services provided, and goes further and takes the time to recommend administrators and record keepers and evaluates them not only in terms of services and technology, but also in terms of cost that's a fit based on the makeup of their.

Paul Sippil (22:45)
plan, then hey, they might want to talk to me. But sometimes what advi what companies do is just take my advice and use it to get a better arrangement with their existing providers like their advisor. Now I would wonder why they'd want to keep their advisor if they've been overcharging them all these years or if they've foregone the opportunity or didn't even tell them about the opportunity for the employer to pay the fees, which makes so much more sense for the reasons I stated. I'd be surprised if they would want to

Paul Sippil (23:13)
keep the advisor, but often they do. And then I'm happy that I help them get a better arrangement.

Tyson Mutrux (23:13)
Okay. So I'm gonna go back to something you said before. Let's say I do get an invoice. Let's say they they break it down for me. Sure. Is that tax deductible?

Paul Sippil (23:13)
Well, depending on what you mean, if you get it the invoice itself is just a means to show the fees. It's pretty much a receipt, essentially the the tax deduction has to do with whether or not the fees are paid by the participants.

Tyson Mutrux (23:13)
So you can't

Paul Sippil (23:42)
For individual participant fees, deduct those fees on your own return.

Tyson Mutrux (23:42)
What if it's broken down by what the cut it's cost the company?

Paul Sippil (23:42)
So now the company can deduct those fees if the company pays for it. Now, if the company is billed, you're n they they have to send you an invoice, so it'll be nice to get a description of services as well.

Tyson Mutrux (23:42)
Sure.

Paul Sippil (23:42)
But my major criticism is that it's even more important to get an invoice to show the fees and the dollar amounts for fees deducted from participants' accounts because that's where

Paul Sippil (24:11)
fees become so invisible because you don't see it when the employer isn't paying for it. And even though the fees aren't tax deductible at the participant level, if every plan sponsor who was passing fees on to the participants got an invoice with a s description of services where the advisor every single quarter would have to write that he or she did nothing because there might have been no participant interaction, then I think fees would go down drastically overnight because it would be in your face on a quarterly basis.

Paul Sippil (24:41)
And you couldn't avoid that whatever twenty, thirty thousand dollar annual fee or or ten, twenty thousand dollar quarterly fee that's being charged collectively or individually by the advisor and record keeper. Those are big numbers. And if you know that nobody's talking to the participants, or if you don't even know if the advisor services are being used, boy, it's kind of hard to keep looking at that ten thousand dollar quarterly fee and not asking the advisor what the heck is going on. What am I since I'm I mean

Tyson Mutrux (25:10)
This is all kind of blown my mind. I'm I'm I'm new to this topic. So what is something else I need to ask you about or that people should know? Cause I want to make sure because we don't like we're lawyers, we don't have the technical expertise. So sometimes we don't know the question that we need to ask. So what's another question you think I should ask you about this? Cause I wan I wanna make sure people get the most value. Cause I I sure you've already saved people thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars.

Tyson Mutrux (25:35)
like what what else should I be asking? there there's a lot more too.

Paul Sippil (25:35)
But those are I mean those are the main points, but there's some other areas that are important too, such as are there any restrictions on on the investments I can choose? And there's multiple layers to this. If you only have twenty or thirty funds available, then that's all you can pick from. But oftentimes there are thousands of other choices available for the owner and or the advisor to potentially add

Paul Sippil (26:04)
To the what's called the default fund lineup.

Tyson Mutrux (26:04)
And am I getting any kind of discount because there's some kind of proprietary fund?

Paul Sippil (26:04)
Like principal and fidelity have their own funds. are we getting a deal on other services because we're investing in principal or fidelities funds?

Tyson Mutrux (26:04)
What if I don't want to invest in principal or fidelities funds? Do I have other options to do so?

Paul Sippil (26:04)
And that's where this brokerage account gets in comes into play, where you can have

Paul Sippil (26:33)
basically unlimited fund choices, and this is fairly common amongst law firms.

Tyson Mutrux (26:33)
And if we do have this brokerage account, do I have to pay like a $100 or $200 annual fee? Sure, that's not doesn't sound like much, but that actually does add up over time.

Paul Sippil (26:33)
And how does this program in terms of like quality of service compare to the American Bar Association's program? That's a very high-end program. It's just for attorneys and for firms who service law firms who are also eligible.

Tyson Mutrux (27:00)
do we can we integrate with payroll very easily?

Paul Sippil (27:00)
And this is fairly common. There's something called 180 and 360 payroll integration. And from an administration standpoint, the more integrated that your record keeping system is with your payroll company, the easier it is for the plan to be administered.

Tyson Mutrux (27:00)
Sure, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. so those are other things.

Paul Sippil (27:00)
And then what exactly is the advisor's expertise?

Tyson Mutrux (27:00)
What exactly is the advisor doing? If if I think the advisor is managing everything for me.

Tyson Mutrux (27:31)
what does managing actually entail?

Paul Sippil (27:31)
And I'll add something to your point. Ted Benna, you might have heard the name, he's the inventor of the 401k.

Tyson Mutrux (27:31)
Is he the Vanguard guy or is the that's John Bogle. Yeah, that's right. Okay.

Paul Sippil (27:31)
Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (27:31)
Yeah. So John, so when people say first of all their plan is with Vanguard, what they might mean is that the plan has primarily Vanguard funds.

Paul Sippil (27:31)
But that doesn't mean that Vanguard is the record keeper and the administrator of the plan.

Paul Sippil (27:56)
So I always want to draw a distinction. But what Ted Benna said is exactly what I've said, which makes me feel a little better about all of the criticisms I've made, because if Ted Benna is making the same criticisms, and John Oliver did a whole video too on this. He's not quite as credible as Ted Benna, but you know still it was still interesting. But my point is that I feel I'm in pretty good company. What Ted Benna has said is that advisors need to get back to a fee for service model like accountants and attorneys.

Paul Sippil (28:24)
They're not doing an original piece of work, which is just bizarre and inefficient. They need to simply focus on helping people retire. And that fee for service model is exactly what I said regarding a fixed dollar fee, just like accounting firms and law firms oftentimes, unless you know they're working on contingency, for the most part, professional service providers send a bill and detail out a breakdown of their services. Now add something about accounting firms and law firms too.

Paul Sippil (28:52)
Accounting firms don't even know about the tax deduction they can get at the employer level because there are countless accounting firms I have come across where the majority of the money is the partner's money, so they are paying most of the fees anyway, out of participants' accounts in a tax-deferred or tax-advantaged account with non-tax deductible dollars, when they could have opted for a fee-for-service model just like their own services and paid at the employer level. And that really tells me something. If accounting firms don't even know they can do this, along with employee benefits law firms.

Paul Sippil (29:22)
That specialize in retirement plan let re legislation. I know this because I've seen their tax forms too. That shows you just how broken the industry truly is.

Tyson Mutrux (29:22)
I want to hear some more about your other controversial opinions. You got any anything else that's controversial? Because here's what's interesting is I don't I I can't imagine this. Is this a is that opinion a controversial opinion?

Paul Sippil (29:22)
Well, what is, I mean, capitalism, for example, is controversial and my mini book and it's free, so I'm not selling anything here. It's right on my website.

Tyson Mutrux (29:22)
Well how do people get it?

Tyson Mutrux (29:52)
Yeah, just go to Paulsippel, S-I-P-P-I-L dot com, because I think there's a Paulsippel with EL.com too, different Paul Sippel. and it's just a litany of information on my website, one of which is my blog and I've written all about the industry and the page is I believe it's called the missing market, I think. And and that's basically what is happening in the industry.

Paul Sippil (30:16)
It's not that we don't have enough regulations. In fact, it's just the opposite. And this is what might be controversial to people. It might sound like I'm a hardcore regulation guy where I want stricter rules. I don't even like mandates of invoices, but if we're gonna mandate something, it would be much better to mandate consistent invoices with dollars so people can experience the fees in real time as opposed to a fee disclosure document that not everyone knows exists and that isn't even disclosed in a way that people can understand.

Paul Sippil (30:45)
So the whole point about the fact that this is not a fully functioning market is that we need more transparency, and transparency is brought by competition and capitalism. And yet this whole industry evolved through tax engineering through a loophole that Ted Benna, the inventor of the 401k, discovered in the tax code, which makes this industry inherently irrational. but I think we need more awareness and competition, just like when you buy a cell phone or a car. I know nothing about cars.

Paul Sippil (31:13)
But I know how to look at the car fax report. I know how to look at the accident history and the mileage. And when I buy a used car, I know exactly if I everything's lined up it's all lined up. It's there's no negotiation anymore because the market has become so much more efficient. But you can't shop for a four one K plan that way 'cause it's way too confusing and convoluted. But it could be made much more simple if everybody just got an invoice.

Tyson Mutrux (31:13)
Yeah. I do wonder if it's something like like there's things like this with like AI that it's just it's bound to be disruptive.

Tyson Mutrux (31:43)
Dr disrupted in some way, you'd think, where like it's it's been done this way for decades, and you'd think with AI now, like people are gonna find ways of disrupting nobody can because they don't have enough data.

Paul Sippil (31:43)
But with my research and maybe someone listening that's smarter that with AI than me, and I've done some AI work analyzing all the conversations I had over the last 17 years, and it actually came with some inter came back with some interesting findings.

Tyson Mutrux (31:43)
Yeah no matter what I said to plan sponsors, no matter how I changed my approach, because I make a lot of cold calls.

Paul Sippil (32:13)
The reactions were always the same. Complete apathy, disengagement, and lack of interest. Because the structural incentives to care about the fees have never been there. You're a CFO of a company, whether or not the fees are excessive is not going to affect your job. It's not going to give you a pay increase. It's not going to affect the employer's bottom line. And it's not even going to get you in trouble because you have no invoice.

Paul Sippil (32:38)
to look at.

Tyson Mutrux (32:38)
So you can't say the CFO didn't look at the invoices because they were never sent an invoice in the first place.

Paul Sippil (32:38)
And because there's no pain being felt, and because the fees are not clearly shown to the participants and there's no context, which is just as important, even if you do see a two, three hundred dollar fee, which sometimes that does show up on a participant statement, if they even know to look, how do you know enough to know whether or not that should have been twenty dollars? So how can someone get upset when they don't have enough information or knowledge to know

Paul Sippil (33:08)
If that fee is even reasonable in the first place. So I would argue that the incentives to care are not there. And AI has shown that, along with the fact that I've categorized all the plans by industry. And I know for a fact that it's professional services firms that are most likely to pay excessive fees or let's say not have a fidelity bond, especially law firms and medical practices. That's interesting. especially lawyers, the ones that you feel like they should probably know the the most about this area, but they don't. That's that's interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (33:38)
so can people hire you to do this and to do the the negotiating or or is that something where you just are giving them the advice? no, that's a very good question.

Paul Sippil (33:38)
A lot of financial advisors will tout their services as including fee negotiation. I beg people to please do not pay me to do this. Please don't. Because it would be like it would be like robbery for me to accept a fee for there there is no skill to negotiating.

Tyson Mutrux (33:38)
What does negotiating entail?

Paul Sippil (34:06)
Calling and asking for a reduction.

Tyson Mutrux (34:06)
What else?

Paul Sippil (34:06)
No, that's it. And here's something even crazier. I d I didn't even mention this part. a as a quick story, I was talking just a few months ago to a plan sponsor who shelled out over forty nine thousand dollars in commission payments over a five year period from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty four. His record keeper was John Hancock, there was a separate administrator. So the plan sponsor is like the company, is that right?

Tyson Mutrux (34:06)
Yeah.

Paul Sippil (34:06)
When I say plan sponsor, I mean like the owner.

Paul Sippil (34:34)
the one who oversees the plan. Smith and Smith.

Tyson Mutrux (34:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Smith and Smith, let's call it. Okay.

Paul Sippil (34:34)
And this was a professional services company, only three employees. So and most of the money was the owner's money. He didn't even know he had an advisor.

Tyson Mutrux (34:34)
Okay. Like like ours. Like a lot of them. You don't even know if you have an advisor.

Paul Sippil (34:34)
But and the fact that there were forty nine thousand dollars in commissions over a five year period, most of which was paid by him with non-tax deductible dollars.

Paul Sippil (34:58)
was enough for him to want to know who the advisor was. So he called he had his HR director call the administrator of the plan. Remember I went over, you know, who the administrator is, and that's sometimes the same or sometimes the s a separate party from the record keeper. In this case it was separate. He called he had her call the administrator just to find out who the advisor was and they gave the advisor's name. And then she, the HR director, Googled the advisor's name because it was natural to want to know who this person was and learn that this advisor had actually been dead

Paul Sippil (35:27)
Since 2014.

Tyson Mutrux (35:27)
What?

Paul Sippil (35:27)
Now that isn't crazy. I don't know what is. Dead.

Tyson Mutrux (35:27)
What?

Paul Sippil (35:27)
Since 2014.

Tyson Mutrux (35:27)
So what happened is that the firm had probably been collecting the fees, but didn't bother to let the client know or give them a new rep because if the advisor had known or the a company had known that there was no advisor and they were alerted to that, they might have started demanding either a demanding services or

Tyson Mutrux (35:57)
From another advisor from the same firm, or they it might have occurred to them, which they did b due to my advice, that they could simply eliminate the advisor. So the firm had actually no incentive to perform any services.

Paul Sippil (35:57)
But if everybody at least if companies started voluntarily sending invoices, it would have a ripple effect where the Department of Labor could change its guidance, which are suggestions, but people take that guidance seriously.

Paul Sippil (36:25)
And if the market could solve this problem, which it could if it would if if people would just listen to these podcasts, sure. then the concern over having a really bad reputation in the marketplace and being the only one not to send invoices would force companies to actually start sending bills and then these situations would never occur. But this is not the only time where debt because people die.

Paul Sippil (36:50)
And people don't know they have advisors, so there's thousands of other examples, most likely, where debt advisors are collecting money.

Tyson Mutrux (36:50)
I don't know why you can't get a refund. That's crazy. Like especially because they signed a contract. Even if you have a debt advisor, well, well, what what one company did, and this was with they also had John Hancock, I pointed this out.

Paul Sippil (36:50)
This was an accounting firm that had been shelling out all this money in commissions over time. And they knew the advisor didn't do anything. They knew who he was. And it was like

Paul Sippil (37:18)
Well, over a hundred grand over a five year period. What they had the advisor do, they didn't get their money back, but they eliminated the commissions, but they just forced the advisor to work for free to work it off. that's that's smart.

Tyson Mutrux (37:18)
Now, you mentioned though about getting your money back. You're getting into potential topics like lawsuits.

Paul Sippil (37:18)
So the interesting thing about your question is that the lawsuits have taken place with the large companies where the fees aren't really that excessive, maybe an extra thirty dollars per year per person.

Paul Sippil (37:46)
But because there's hundreds of thousands of participants there and and way more assets, there's w far more money in it for the attorneys to make it worth their while, even though it really doesn't help the participants very much.

Tyson Mutrux (37:46)
Okay, ten years, thirty dollars with interest, a little over over three hundred dollars that you saved. All right, I mean I'll take it.

Paul Sippil (37:46)
But that's nothing compared to the amount of excessive fees charged by to participants in small plans where it might be up to five thousand dollars.

Paul Sippil (38:16)
Every year in excessive fees. 5,000 just in one year. They get charged excessively more per month than these c participants at big companies get charged excessively over, let's say, 10 years. That's so crazy. It is. And here's the crazy thing. I mean, there's a lot of crazy things we've been talking about. These plans are too small for any attorney to care enough, even though the benefit to the participants of getting their money back is.

Paul Sippil (38:43)
astronomically greater. So the only way to change the industry is to get the Department of Labor to take some of my suggestions and just have a grassroots campaign to raise awareness because literally the whole industry could change overnight if people would just take these suggestions. Everyone has the power to eliminate their advisor, negotiate lower advisory fees, and eliminate

Paul Sippil (39:07)
or excuse me, negotiate lower record keeping and administration fees or change providers to the ABA retirement funds program, or if you're not a law firm, use a low-cost provider that's pretty good, like a census or employee fiduciary, whose entire fee structure is a fixed fee per participant, with the small exception of a small percentage that employee fiduciary assesses for the custodial portion of.08% of the assets. And I'll add one other thing. It used to be point six percent.

Paul Sippil (39:35)
But because of these asinine fee disclosure regulations that took place in two thousand twelve, where you had to produce this convoluted, complicated document that a lot of people don't understand, employee fiduciary had to raise their fees to disclose what was already very clear on their website point six percent plus fifteen hundred dollars for the first thirty people, plus thirty dollars per participant for each additional participant, right on their website with big letters, pricing.

Paul Sippil (40:02)
Well, apparently the Department of Labor didn't think that was clear enough. So now employee fiduciary who waived the point six percent fee for plans below a million dollars, and by the way, they had a lot of plans below a million dollars.

Tyson Mutrux (40:02)
I bet I bet there's l yeah, a ton of them.

Paul Sippil (40:02)
In order to comply with the regulation, they had to charge more, and their way of charging more was no longer waiving that point zero six percent fee and raising that point six percent fee to point eight percent just to tell people what was already obvious.

Paul Sippil (40:31)
That I'm guessing they're probably making more money now because even if they're not charging under the the million or less, because they're gonna they're just getting it from the bigger companies.

Tyson Mutrux (40:31)
Yeah.

Paul Sippil (40:31)
Well, they only handle for small companies. because that's like their their niche is like the smaller plans. So the Department of Labor actively did harm to these small plans that already wanted to do business with employee fiduciary, who already had the most transparent practices in the industry.

Paul Sippil (41:00)
And then forced employee fiduciary to charge more to produce a document that was much less clear than the what they already produced on their website.

Tyson Mutrux (41:00)
Okay. Well let's shift gears. I wanna I want to hear I can't tease this before, but I want to know about another one of your controversial ideas or thoughts or opinions.

Tyson Mutrux (41:18)
Before we wrap up, because I wanted to is do you have something else you don't really talk about that much that is like more of a controversial topic or opinion? just general? Just generally, yeah. Outside of like When it comes to like like well, if you were gonna advise like a law firm about something when it comes to money, like see like from like a CPA standpoint, or from a forensic accounting standpoint, is there anything else you're like because like the 401k is very niche, like that's a very but like you you can save people a lot of money. Is there another area?

Tyson Mutrux (41:45)
That you can identify that you can save more money? Like I I'm just curious if there's something else we can Well, like on the for example, for sm like on the health insurance side, a lot of people don't know.

Paul Sippil (41:45)
Like I personally don't have health insurance. I have what's called a medical cost sharing program.

Tyson Mutrux (41:45)
Okay, is that one of those actually you explained what it is? I think I know what this is, but yeah, you explained what the Well, they used to be religious has to be religious based and it had to be a company that had been in business before n since before nineteen ninety nine because there was a mandate.

Paul Sippil (42:15)
But when that health insurance like like mandate got lifted, now all these different medical cost sharing programs pop up. And if you're a small business and you have people who are relatively young and healthy and you don't want to be pooled with a bunch of people, many of whom are are sick and require more medical care, that's actually a much more viable option.

Paul Sippil (42:34)
And they're not technically health insurance and it's scary to some people because it's not blue cross. But speaking of negotiation, like these companies will negotiate your medical bill, and it's all about direct pay. And this kind of ties into everything I've been talking about with 401k plans.

Tyson Mutrux (42:34)
Yeah.

Paul Sippil (42:34)
And a lot of the health insurance legislation about these pharmacy benefit managers and the demand for more transparency because of the opacity in the industry mirrors a lot of what I'm saying in the 401k plan industry.

Paul Sippil (43:00)
So I would say consider not even having health insurance. And for bigger law firms, what they also don't know, and I guess it it's not so much a controversial opinion with people stuff people don't know about, is that you can negotiate the broker's commissions and pay the broker a fixed fee. Hmm. Instead of oftentimes when the, you know, account gets larger, it's not always the best deal when the commissions become out of control.

Tyson Mutrux (43:00)
Yeah, we pay an astronomical amount of money in health insurance and

Tyson Mutrux (43:30)
For a while I've considered, okay, with as much as we spend, would it make more sense for us to put us put this money into some sort of financial product and then and we just pay for people's medical? Like if people just came to and I I d I've not looked into this enough, but I do wonder if like does that make more sense because with how much money we spend?

Paul Sippil (43:30)
Possibly, yes. And p some companies do this and there's a whole book on this and it's kind of controversial. so now I thought of something else.

Tyson Mutrux (43:30)
Nice. And this was written several years ago.

Paul Sippil (43:57)
And it's a company called Zane Benefits that administers it. I forgot the name of the book, but it'll come it'll come to me. And it's controversial about whether or not the individual policies are actually tax deductible if the company instead of has a group policy actually pays separately for indiv everyone's individual policy.

Tyson Mutrux (43:57)
Okay.

Paul Sippil (43:57)
Or potentially the company could do a cost-benefit analysis and just give everyone an extra five thousand in salary and just have them buy

Paul Sippil (44:25)
the individual policy on the open marketplace. But through this company, I don't know if they still do it because it's kind of murky as to w like in terms of the legality of whether or not the employer can get a tax deduction for buying the individual policies and this company will help make that happen, basically.

Tyson Mutrux (44:25)
Why would they do it that way as opposed to doing a group plan?

Paul Sippil (44:25)
Because it can come out as less expensive when you take

Paul Sippil (44:49)
Depending on the kind of group and the ages and the health history, I believe, and this is not my complete area of expertise, sure. Taking the individual tax deduction into account, which is really what puts it over the top, that that becomes a more economical arrangement for certain businesses than the traditional group health insurance plan.

Tyson Mutrux (44:49)
Interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (45:18)
We pay fifty percent is what we pay. We don't pay a hundred percent of health insurance. And w we've had some employees be like, Well, it's cheaper if I go get it through the marketplace, which I was like always surprised by. So it happens sometimes, every once in a while, where sometimes an employee will get it for cheaper. So they'll just do their own thing. And and I think the majority of the people though still go through the firm plan. But every once in a while we do have someone but it I guess I wouldn't be surprised though if you did price it. Yeah. Which it that's kind of insane though, that it

Tyson Mutrux (45:48)
'Cause with how much we spend, you'd think that we would get a better deal.

Paul Sippil (45:48)
You think it'd be better as a group, but I think it's because if if you're willing to push it and take the tax deduction, which is murky as to there's different opinions as to whether or not that's tax deductible, and I think that's what makes it worthwhile. Is some people say it's like a loophole in the tax code. But the real radical suggestion is scrap the health insurance altogether and opt for a group. You don't have to do it individually, I do it individually, a group medical cost sharing program, or at least explore

Paul Sippil (46:18)
that possibility and it works especially well for those with a younger employee population.

Tyson Mutrux (46:18)
Is is that better because it's cheaper or is it are there other benefits to that?

Paul Sippil (46:18)
Well, it's better y yeah, it will be it will be cheaper if it's a young population where I mean, you know, if you're being pooled in a group where the average person is older and unhealthier than you are and you got a group of thirty year olds, then you know, mathematically it should be cheaper.

Paul Sippil (46:46)
But the other thing is there's no networks. So and nobody would have to get rid of their doctor. This isn't this isn't even insurance. It's not an HMO.

Tyson Mutrux (46:46)
Yeah. You just get reimbursed. So they pay out of pocket and then they get reimbursed. That's Yeah. Yeah. How is that different from like an MSA? We've never had an MSA. We just had health insurance. But like how's that different? How's the the cost sharing different from an MSA? I'm not that f I'm not particularly familiar with MSAs. Okay. but

Paul Sippil (47:14)
If MSA is technically like part of an insurance program, I mean this isn't technically insurance.

Tyson Mutrux (47:14)
Gotcha.

Paul Sippil (47:14)
Cost sharing, even though they operate similarly, it's not actually insurance. And then you have what they do is they negotiate your medical bills.

Tyson Mutrux (47:14)
Got it. Help you yeah. All right, before we wrap things up, how do people get into if they want to reach out to you, ask your qu ask you questions, how would they do that? Sure. Just go to my website, P-A-U-L-S-I-P-P-I-L dot com, paulsiple.com

Paul Sippil (47:42)
My email, my numbers on there. I have a YouTube channel. You just literally type my name into YouTube. There's and there's some videos on my site. I have a bunch of YouTube clips with me ranting about all the problems in the retirement industry.

Tyson Mutrux (47:42)
Nice. Okay. any other any controversial thing you want to end on when it comes to the retirement industry? I guess I'll just say do not assume that this industry is under regulated.

Paul Sippil (47:42)
In fact, this industry is already

Paul Sippil (48:09)
Heavily regulated. So if nothing else, start questioning your assumptions about what centrally imposed regulations actually do and the consequences that result.

Tyson Mutrux (48:09)
Good advice. Thank you, Paul. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

What does stepping away from a jiu-jitsu gym have to do with building a better law firm?

More than you might think.

In this episode of Maximum Lawyer Live, Tyson Mutrux shares an unexpected lesson from taking time away from jiu-jitsu and how the sense of community, belonging, and genuine human connection he experienced applies directly to client relationships.

Tyson explores why clients don't stay because of legal skill alone, they stay because of how your firm makes them feel. He breaks down practical ways law firm owners can create deeper trust, build authentic client connections, and transform their firm from a transactional service into a community people genuinely want to be part of.

If you're looking for ways to improve client experience, increase referrals, and build a firm people can't stop talking about, this episode is full of actionable ideas you can implement immediately.

What You'll Learn

• Why legal skill alone isn't enough to build lifelong clients.
• The difference between client loyalty and client belonging.
• How to create stronger emotional connections with clients.
• Simple systems that make clients feel seen, remembered, and cared for.
• Why small commitments build massive trust over time.
• How to engineer authentic connection without being manipulative.
• Ways to turn your law firm into a community instead of just a service.

Highlights

00:00 – Why stepping away from jiu-jitsu sparked a new perspective on law firms
03:15 – The psychology behind belonging and why community matters
08:45 – Why clients stay because of how your firm makes them feel, not just your legal skills
13:20 – Loyalty vs. belonging: the mindset shift every law firm owner should make
17:45 – Practical ways to create deeper client relationships through shared experiences
22:10 – Small systems that build trust and keep clients engaged throughout their case
27:30 – How to create a law firm that feels more like a community than a service

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Maximum Lawyer helps law firm owners build businesses, not jobs.

Resources:

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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:36) All right, we are live. Welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. Today we've got I think a good one for you. It's a little bit of a a weird one, honestly, kind of like last time, where it starts somewhere completely random and then somehow we land the plane on something useful for your firm. That's that's just kind of how my brain works, so bear with me. This one's probably gonna run a little long too, so settle in.

Tyson Mutrux (01:02) So this weekend I was cleaning out the garage, which, if you know me, you know I do not enjoy doing. Like I I put this off for I don't know, it's embarrassing, months, probably like four or five months. And I found this old box of like handwritten thank you cards. Like actual cards, paper cards, from clients. Some of these are from I don't even know, eight, nine years ago maybe.

Tyson Mutrux (01:28) And I I sat down on like an old cooler in the garage and just started reading through them. Which was not the plan. The plan was to throw stuff away. And instead I'm sitting there for like forty five minutes just reading these things.

Tyson Mutrux (01:43) And what struck me, and this is what got me thinking about this whole episode, is that almost none of them, and I mean almost none of them, mentioned like the actual outcome of the case. Like you would think, right, a thank you card from a client, they'd be like, hey, thanks for winning my case, or thanks for getting me this settlement, whatever. That's that's what I expected to see. That's not what was in there.

Tyson Mutrux (02:09) What was in there was stuff like, thank you for always calling me back. Thank you for explaining things to me like I was a person and not just a case number. One of them, I'm not kidding, one of them said thank you for remembering my dog's name. Like that was the thing they wrote down. Not the money. Not the case. My dog's name.

Tyson Mutrux (02:33) And it it really it kind of stopped me in my tracks a little bit, because I think we as attorneys, we we get so caught up in like the result, the result, the result, like that's that's the thing we think we're being graded on. And to some degree we are, don't get me wrong, results matter, I'm not saying they don't. But that's that's not actually what sticks with people. That's not what they remember two, three, four years down the road when their friend gets in a wreck and says hey, who should I call.

Tyson Mutrux (03:02) So I started thinking, okay, like, why is that? Why is it the little stuff that sticks and not the big stuff? And I think it's because the big stuff, the outcome, that's kind of expected, right? Like that's that's the job. You hired an attorney to get you a good outcome, so when you get one, it's almost like, well, yeah, that's what I paid for. It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like a transaction that went the way it was supposed to.

Tyson Mutrux (03:28) But the little stuff, the stuff that wasn't required of us, the stuff we didn't have to do, that's the stuff that feels like a gift. That's the stuff that actually creates the emotional memory. And I think that's such an important distinction for how we run our firms.

Tyson Mutrux (03:44) So let me give you kind of a a real world example of this from our shop. We've got, I've mentioned this before I think, we've got this thing on our intake sheet where we just ask random personal questions. Like what's your dog's name, do you have kids, what do you do for fun, stuff that has zero, and I mean zero, relevance to the actual legal matter. And for a long time I I think some of our team probably thought that was kind of a a a waste of time on the intake call. Like why are we asking about somebody's golden retriever when we should be getting the facts of the accident.

Tyson Mutrux (04:16) But here's the thing. Every single client that's ever come through and been like, wow, y'all really care about me, this doesn't feel like just a law firm, it's because somebody remembered that little detail and brought it back up later. That's it. That's the whole trick. It's not complicated. It's just remembering, and then actually using it.

Tyson Mutrux (04:36) And look, I know, I know some of you are thinking, Tyson, that's that's easy for you to say, you've got a team, you've got a a a a system built for this. And yeah, fair, that's that's true, we do. But it didn't start as some big fancy system. It started as literally one person on our team just deciding on their own to jot a note at the bottom of the file. That was it. That's that's the whole origin story. One person decided to care a little bit more than what was required, and then we just built processes around copying that behavior.

Tyson Mutrux (05:08) Actually, let me tell that story properly, because I don't think I've ever fully told it on here. Her name's Sarah, she was one of our first hires way back, and she just started doing this on her own. Nobody told her to. She'd write little notes at the bottom of the intake, and then when she'd call the client back with an update, she'd open with, hey, how'd Bailey's vet appointment go, or whatever it was. And clients would just light up. Like you could hear it change the whole call.

Tyson Mutrux (05:38) And I remember one of the other intake people came to me and was kind of half complaining, half impressed, and said, Sarah's calls take twice as long as everybody else's. And my first reaction, honestly, was, well, that's a a a a problem, we need her to be more efficient. And then I actually looked at her numbers. Her sign up rate was the highest on the team. Not close. It wasn't even close.

Tyson Mutrux (06:04) So instead of telling her to speed up, we asked her to train everybody else on what she was doing. And that's that's literally the origin of a whole piece of our onboarding now. It came from one person deciding to care a little more than what the job description technically required.

Tyson Mutrux (06:22) So if you're a solo, if you're a small firm and you're listening to this going, well I don't have the resources for some elaborate client experience program, you don't need one. You need a sticky note. You need a spot in your case management software where you jot down, hey, this client's daughter plays travel soccer, this client just had a baby, this client's going through a a a rough divorce on top of everything else. Just write it down. And then when you talk to them next, bring it up.

Tyson Mutrux (06:50) I promise you, I promise you, that is more powerful than almost anything else you could spend money on this year. More powerful than a rebrand. More powerful than another Google Ads campaign. It's it's free, honestly, other than just the discipline to actually do it.

Tyson Mutrux (07:07) Okay, so here's the other piece of this I want to touch on, because it it kind of ties back to something I've talked about before on here, this idea of small commitments building trust. Because I think there's a there's a version of this that happens over the life of the case too, not just at intake. Like every touchpoint is an opportunity to either build that trust or kind of chip away at it a little bit.

Tyson Mutrux (07:33) So think about like, every time you tell a client, hey I'm gonna call you Friday with an update, and then Friday comes and goes and nobody calls. That's a chip. That's a small little chip in the trust. Doesn't feel like a big deal in the moment, but it adds up. And then on the flip side, every time you say I'm gonna call you Friday, and you actually call, even if the update is nothing new, hey, just wanted to let you know we're still waiting on records, nothing's changed, that's a deposit. That's you putting something back into the account.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03) And I think the firms that really win at this, the ones that get the referrals, the ones that get the five star reviews, the ones that get somebody's dog's name written on a thank you card years later, they're just the ones that are consistently making more deposits than withdrawals. That's that's really the whole game when you boil it all the way down.

Tyson Mutrux (08:24) There's there's another thing that box got me thinking about too, and I I almost didn't bring this up but I think it's worth it. A good chunk of those cards, probably a third of them honestly, weren't even from the actual client. They were from like the client's mom, or their sister, or one time it was a a a client's neighbor who drove them to appointments. And that stopped me for a second too, because it it it reminded me that the person who hires you is is almost never the only person paying attention to how you treat them.

Tyson Mutrux (08:56) Like there's this whole audience around every single client that's watching how this plays out. Their spouse is watching. Their kids are watching. Whoever's driving them to their doctor's appointments because they can't drive themselves, they're watching too. And every one of those people is a potential referral down the road, or a potential one star review down the road, depending on how you handle things.

Tyson Mutrux (09:18) So I think there's this lesson in there of like, don't just think about the client experience for the named client on the file. Think about the experience for the whole orbit around that person. Because that mom who drove her son to three depositions, she's the one who's gonna be at Thanksgiving telling everybody in the family who to call if something happens to them.

Tyson Mutrux (09:40) And this actually connects to something else, a a a case that comes to mind. We had this older gentleman, client of ours from years back, and his son had actually been the one that found us, called us, set up the whole thing, because dad wasn't real comfortable on the phone. And the whole case, we made sure to loop the son in on every update too, even though he wasn't technically the client, just cc'd him, kept him in the loop, answered his questions same as we would the client's.

Tyson Mutrux (10:08) Case wraps up, everybody's happy, and I honestly kind of forgot about it. And then like two years later we get a call, and it's the son, and this time it's not for his dad, it's for himself, he'd gotten hurt at work. And when we asked him, hey, how'd you hear about us, he said, y'all treated my dad's case like it mattered to y'all too, not just my dad. That stuck with me. That's that's a client we got two years later because of how we treated somebody who wasn't even technically our client.

Tyson Mutrux (10:38) Okay, one more thing on this and then I promise I'll get us to the wrap up. I had somebody on our team ask me a really good question after I told them about this box of cards. They asked, well, how do you know if you're doing enough of this stuff, like how do you actually measure it. And honestly, my first answer was kind of a a a cop out, I said, well, you just kind of feel it. But that's that's not a real answer, that's not something you can actually build a system around.

Tyson Mutrux (11:08) So here's what I've landed on since then. Once a quarter, go pull five closed files at random. Doesn't matter which five, just random. And go read the notes on those files like a stranger would read them. Not like the attorney who worked it, read it like you're the client. And ask yourself, does this read like somebody who genuinely cared about me, or does this read like a a a a a checklist that got worked through. That exercise alone will tell you more about your firm's actual client experience than any survey you could send out.

Tyson Mutrux (11:42) Now I I want to address the pushback on this too, because I know it's coming, I get it every time I bring this up at a mastermind or at MaxLawCon. And the pushback is usually some version of, that's fine for you, Tyson, you've got the staff for that, I'm one guy answering my own phone at ten at night. And look, I I hear that, I do. But I don't think the size of your firm changes the principle, it just changes the scale of it.

Tyson Mutrux (12:12) If you're a solo, you don't need Sarah's whole system, you need one habit. Before you hang up the phone with a client, write down one non-legal thing they told you. That's it. One thing. Takes you fifteen seconds. And then next time you talk to them, you open with that. You will be, and I mean this, you will be in like the top five percent of attorneys just by doing that one tiny thing consistently.

Tyson Mutrux (12:40) The other pushback I get is, well, doesn't that feel fake, like doesn't that feel manipulative, writing down stuff so you remember it later. And I I get why people ask that, but I'd push back on it a little. It's it's only manipulative if you don't actually care. If you genuinely care about your clients as people, which I think most of us got into this profession because we do, then writing it down isn't manipulation, it's just... it's just help. It's helping your brain do the thing your heart already wants to do. None of us have the memory to hold forty active clients' personal details in our head. That's what the notes are for.

Tyson Mutrux (13:16) Let's talk about how this shows up in reviews too, because I think this is where it gets real practical for a lot of you thinking about marketing dollars. Go pull up your own Google reviews right now, or do it after this call. Read through your five star reviews and I'd bet you real money that the ones that go on the longest, the ones that read like somebody actually sat down and thought about what to write, are not gonna be about the settlement number. They're gonna use words like, listened, cared, family, remembered. Every time.

Tyson Mutrux (13:50) And here's the thing, those are the reviews that actually convert other potential clients. Nobody reading a review cares that you got somebody three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They don't know if that's good or bad for that type of case, they've got no context for it. But when they read, this firm treated my mom like family, that they understand. That hits regardless of the type of case.

Tyson Mutrux (14:16) So if you're out there running review generation campaigns, and you should be, that should be part of your marketing, I'd actually encourage you to prompt for this specifically. Instead of just, hey would you leave us a review, try something like, hey, what's one thing that surprised you about working with our firm. You'll get so much better material, and it it does double duty because it also becomes a training tool for your team, showing them what actually lands with clients.

Tyson Mutrux (14:46) I want to shift gears just slightly here and talk about hiring for this, because I think this is a piece people miss. You can build all the systems in the world, the sticky notes, the intake questions, the CRM fields, but if you hire people who fundamentally don't care about other humans, none of it's gonna stick. It's gonna feel like a a a checklist to them because to them it is a checklist.

Tyson Mutrux (15:14) So in our interviews now, and I've talked about this a little before but I want to go deeper on it today, we actually ask candidates to tell us about a time they went out of their way for somebody who couldn't do anything for them in return. Doesn't have to be work related. Could be a neighbor, could be a stranger, could be whatever. And you'd be surprised how many people just... blank. They can't think of an example. That tells you something.

Tyson Mutrux (15:44) And on the flip side, the people who light up telling that story, who've got three examples ready to go, those are the ones who turn into your Sarahs. Those are the ones who are gonna write the note at the bottom of the file without being told to. You can't train empathy into somebody in a two week onboarding. You can train the system, the how, but the wanting to, that's gotta already be there.

Tyson Mutrux (16:12) Okay, let me bring this back around to something more tactical, because I know some of y'all want the the the concrete framework, not just the philosophy. So here's what I'd actually suggest building, and we call this internally the three touchpoint rule. Every case, there's three moments where this matters most. The intake call, the first real update call, usually two to three weeks in, and the resolution call, when the case is wrapping up.

Tyson Mutrux (16:42) At intake, that's where you capture the personal detail. That's Sarah's move, ask about the dog, ask about the kids, whatever, and write it down. At the first update call, that's where you bring it back up, even if there's nothing to report on the case itself. You still call, and you still open with the personal thing. And then at resolution, that's where you go the extra step, maybe a handwritten card of your own, maybe just genuinely reflecting back to them what you remember about their situation beyond the legal facts.

Tyson Mutrux (17:16) Three touchpoints. That's not overwhelming. Any firm, any size, can build a checklist around three touchpoints. And I promise if you nail those three, everything in between kind of takes care of itself, because your team's already in the habit of thinking about the client as a person by that point.

Tyson Mutrux (17:38) I got a message from somebody in the association after I posted about this box of cards on our internal forum, actually, and she asked a question I thought was really sharp. She said, how do you keep this from becoming performative once you scale past like ten, fifteen employees, like how do you keep it genuine instead of just another box people check. And that's that's a real tension, I'm not gonna pretend it isn't.

Tyson Mutrux (18:08) What I told her is, you've gotta keep telling the stories. Like literally, in your team meetings, spend five minutes every week having somebody share a moment where this stuff actually mattered, where a client noticed. Because the second this becomes a a a a a a metric on a scorecard with no stories attached to it, yeah, it becomes performative, it becomes a box to check. But if your team is constantly hearing real examples of why it matters, it stays alive. Stories are what keep a value from turning into a policy.

Tyson Mutrux (18:44) That's that's actually a big part of why I even do these live episodes honestly, is to keep telling these stories out loud, both for y'all listening and honestly for myself too, keeps me honest about whether we're still doing this stuff or if we've let it slide.

Tyson Mutrux (19:00) Let me give you one more example, and then I really am gonna wrap up. We had a case a while back that we actually lost. Well, didn't lose exactly, but the result wasn't what the client hoped for, insurance company played hardball, case ended up settling for way less than anybody wanted. Tough outcome, genuinely tough one.

Tyson Mutrux (19:24) And you'd think that client would've been furious, would've left us a bad review, whatever. Instead she wrote us a card. And in the card she said, I know y'all fought for me, I know Tyson personally called me to explain why the number ended up where it did instead of having somebody else do it, and that meant more to me than the number itself. That's a losing outcome, by our own internal standard of what we wanted for her, that turned into a five star relationship because of how it was handled, not what the result was.

Tyson Mutrux (19:58) And I think that's the biggest takeaway out of everything I've said today, honestly. The outcome matters, don't hear me saying it doesn't. But how you handle people, win, lose, or draw, that's the thing that's actually within your control every single day, on every single file, regardless of what a jury or an insurance adjuster decides.

Tyson Mutrux (20:22) All right, I've I've gone really long on this one, I know, I do this, those of you that listen regularly know I do this, today especially. So let me actually wrap it up here for real this time.

Tyson Mutrux (20:36) Go find your own version of that box in the garage. Whether that's old client emails, old reviews, whatever it is. Go back and actually read what people said about working with you. Not the outcome they got, but how it made them feel. I think you'll be surprised at what you find, and I think it'll change how you think about training your team for the rest of the year.

Tyson Mutrux (21:00) And if you take nothing else away from today, just do the one thing. Write down one non-legal detail on your next call. Just one. See what happens over the next ninety days if you actually stick with it.

Tyson Mutrux (21:16) Make sure you check out Becca's List, BeccasList.co, where you can find the best vendors for your firm. And make sure you check out MaxLawCon.com so you can get your tickets to Maximum Lawyer Conference in October in Atlanta, we would love to see you there.

Tyson Mutrux (21:34) And if you're not in the association, if you're listening to this recorded, that means you're probably not in the association. Check us out at MaximumLawyer.com and we would love to have you in the association.

Tyson Mutrux (21:48) Have a great week, everybody. We will see you next week.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Google isn't disappearing, but it's no longer the only place potential clients are looking for lawyers.

In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson Mutrux sits down with Vaidas Cikotas and Steve Williams of Rise Up Media to unpack one of the biggest shifts happening in legal marketing: the rise of AI-powered search. As more consumers turn to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models for recommendations instead of traditional Google searches, law firms need to rethink how they build online authority.

Rather than chasing the latest AI buzzwords, Vaidas and Steve explain what actually matters. They break down the difference between SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), why consistency across every online platform is becoming essential, and how law firms can improve their chances of being recommended by AI tools. The conversation also includes a live experiment comparing results across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, revealing just how differently each platform evaluates the same question.

If your firm is relying on the same marketing strategy it used a few years ago, this episode will help you understand what's changing and what you should do next.

What You'll Learn

• Why AI search is changing how prospective clients find law firms
• The difference between SEO, GEO, and why both matter
• Why consistency across your website, directories, and online profiles is now critical
• How attorney credentials, reviews, and case results influence AI recommendations
• What law firms should update today to improve AI visibility
• Why no marketing agency has completely "figured out" AI search yet
• How to avoid expensive AI marketing gimmicks and focus on what actually works

Highlights

• 00:00 – Why law firms are behind on the shift from Google search to AI search
• 05:15 – What Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) actually is and why content still matters
• 11:20 – The key differences between traditional SEO and optimizing for AI platforms
• 18:55 – The most common mistakes law firms make with their websites and online presence
• 25:30 – Live comparison: ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini recommendations for lawyers
• 37:20 – The seven-point GEO audit checklist every law firm should complete
• 43:35 – How to evaluate AI marketing companies and avoid buying into empty promises

Connect with Vaidas Cikotas and Steve Williams

Vaidas Cell - 704-953-7051

Steve Cell - 412-713-2764

Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
All right, gents, I want to start here because I think that most law firms right now are thinking about marketing like it's still 2020, and it has changed drastically.

What are you seeing that most law firms haven't noticed yet?

Vaidas Cikotas (00:13)
I think the biggest thing we're seeing is that people have heard of it, they're confused by it, they don't know what to do with it, but it's everything related to the LLMs—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and all the AI platforms.

We're getting people calling us saying, "Hey, I asked ChatGPT and either you were there or you weren't there." But they have no idea why.

There's an enormous amount of conversation around, "How do I get into these AI results? What do I need to do so I show up where my competitors are showing up?"

The reality is there isn't one single answer. There isn't one agency that has completely figured this puzzle out because it's a constantly moving target.

There are, however, things you can do to give yourself the best chance of having these AI models find you for what you're actually an expert in.

Tyson Mutrux (01:08)
Are you guys able to tell how often people are using ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity compared to Google nowadays?

Or is it still kind of the Wild West?

Steve Williams (01:19)
Well, every law firm out there has experienced about a 30–35% drop in website traffic.

That makes things interesting because marketing companies start calling and saying, "Oh my gosh, you're falling off the face of the earth. Search is dying."

But here's the reality—it isn't just law firms. Virtually every website on Google has experienced a similar decline because people are using AI platforms like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Gemini.

People aren't just searching anymore.

They're asking for recommendations.

Search isn't going away, but it's no longer the finish line.

The finish line now is answering questions.

Keep things simple. Answer the questions people are asking, and you'll have a much better chance of appearing inside these AI platforms.

Tyson Mutrux (02:13)
I know you both live this every day, but I'm curious.

Is this happening faster than you expected?

Vaidas Cikotas (02:21)
I don't think it's happening faster.

I actually think it isn't happening quite as fast as people on the street are making it sound.

Certain things are changing faster than others.

For example, we track calls and intakes for all of our clients every single day.

We're starting to see some ChatGPT searches leading to calls, clicks, and intakes. We're seeing Gemini referrals too.

But it's not dramatically denting Google's dominance yet.

That's still coming.

I actually think the biggest threat to Google was never Bing or Yahoo or another search engine.

The younger generation simply isn't going to Google anymore.

They're opening ChatGPT or Claude and asking a question.

That completely bypasses Google.

In many cases, it even bypasses your website because someone can go directly from an AI recommendation to making a phone call.

SEO still matters because it's a huge validation signal for Google.

Your website still matters.

But there are now dozens of additional signals—credentials, validation, citations, and information spread across the internet—that increase your chances of appearing in AI-generated recommendations.

It hasn't completely changed the way people contact firms yet, but it's changing every single week.

The hardest part is that it's almost impossible to track.

With SEO, it's easy.

Someone searched Google...

They clicked...

They called...

They hired you.

With AI, you might know you're showing up in recommendations, but there isn't always a direct connection proving that recommendation led to the phone call.

So you almost have to believe that's where the future is headed while you prepare for it.

Tyson Mutrux (04:37)
Here's what I think is funny.

About a year ago I was at the gym wearing a shirt that had "SEO" across the front.

A guy in his thirties asked me, "What's SEO?"

I thought everyone knew that meant Search Engine Optimization.

Now, suddenly everyone's talking about GEO.

People barely knew what SEO meant, and now we're asking them to understand Generative Engine Optimization.

How would you explain GEO to your parents?

Vaidas Cikotas (05:16)
Steve, you want this one?

Steve Williams (05:18)
Sure.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization.

Everyone hears that term and immediately thinks AI is taking over the world.

It isn't taking over the world.

But it has changed how people search.

People aren't looking for links anymore.

They're looking for answers.

We've said for twenty years that content is king.

That hasn't changed.

Content is still king.

People keep asking, "How do I show up in ChatGPT? How do I show up in Gemini?"

The answer is still content.

It's also about keeping things incredibly simple.

Accuracy.

Consistency.

Every piece of information about your law firm needs to match across every platform.

If you moved offices three years ago but Yelp still has your old address, that inconsistency can hurt you.

AI platforms reward consistency.

Office phone number.

Office address.

Firm name.

Practice areas.

Everything needs to match.

People trust ChatGPT because it remembers them.

It learns their habits.

It tailors recommendations to each individual user.

So if you want ChatGPT to trust your law firm, your information has to be trustworthy everywhere it finds it.

Instead of saying something vague like, "Fighting for justice," be specific.

"I'm a personal injury lawyer in Tampa, Florida helping people injured in accidents."

That's what AI understands.

Go rewrite your profile everywhere.

Your website.

Super Lawyers.

AVVO.

Every directory you're listed in.

Answer simple client questions.

That's what helps AI understand who you are and recommend you.

Tyson Mutrux (07:49)
Here's something that's always frustrated me.

If my website already ranks really well on Google...

Why doesn't ChatGPT automatically recommend me?

Vaidas Cikotas (08:01)
That's actually a really good question...

Vaidas Cikotas (08:01)
That's a fair question.

Here's an example we were given by some people at our corporate headquarters.

Four people sat in the same office, pulled up ChatGPT, asked the exact same question, and every one of them received a different answer.

That's because ChatGPT learns from your history. It knows what you've searched before, what you've interacted with, and what kinds of answers you're looking for.

SEO is different.

If you write great content, target the right keywords, and build authority, you can generally predict how Google is going to respond.

ChatGPT doesn't work that way.

Claude is different than Gemini.

Gemini is different than Grok.

Every large language model uses different signals and different sources.

So there isn't one thing you can do that guarantees success across all of them.

SEO is still important because that's where Google gathers much of its information. Google's AI Overview is essentially performing a search for you and summarizing the results before you ever click a website.

Generative AI takes that a step further.

Instead of simply summarizing information, it begins recommending attorneys based on credibility and expertise.

SEO tells AI what you do.

Your credentials tell AI why it should recommend you.

Instead of saying you've recovered millions of dollars, be specific.

Talk about recovering $2.3 million in a trucking accident.

Talk about trial experience.

Talk about certifications.

Talk about everything that demonstrates expertise.

The more specific and credible you are, the better chance AI has of recognizing you as an authority.

We've even had clients search for "best personal injury lawyer in Orlando," not find themselves, and ask ChatGPT why.

Sometimes the response is fascinating.

ChatGPT will explain that it intentionally recommended firms that exclusively practice personal injury because your firm also handles criminal defense and bankruptcy.

Your credentials were good enough.

Your positioning wasn't specific enough.

So the way someone asks the question dramatically changes who gets recommended.

That's why there isn't one magic button you can press.

It's constantly evolving.

Tyson Mutrux (11:00)
So if I'm hearing you correctly...

If I only focus on SEO, that doesn't guarantee success inside the AI platforms.

But what if I focus only on AI?

Will that naturally help my SEO?

Or are these completely different strategies?

Vaidas Cikotas (11:18)
They're connected, but they're absolutely different.

Think of your website as the foundation.

If your SEO is terrible, you're probably not going to perform well in AI either because your website still provides the primary source of information about your firm.

But when you start talking about GEO or AI optimization, you're looking beyond your website.

Now you're talking about attorney profiles.

Directories like Super Lawyers.

AVVO.

Publications.

Awards.

Speaking engagements.

Everything that validates you as an expert.

Your website explains what you do.

Those other platforms prove that you're actually good at it.

They're all connected.

But they're definitely different strategies.

Steve Williams (12:23)
I explain it like this.

SEO is like walking into a library.

You ask the librarian where to find information on a topic.

The librarian points you toward the right shelf.

You still have to find the book.

Read it.

And discover the answer yourself.

AI is the teacher.

Instead of pointing you toward the bookshelf, the teacher already knows where the answer is.

They've read the book.

They tell you exactly what you need to know.

That's a completely different experience.

People shouldn't panic because even if ChatGPT recommends an attorney, people are still going to visit that attorney's website.

They're still going to validate the recommendation.

That isn't changing.

But what is changing is how AI determines who deserves to be recommended.

Consistency.

Clarity.

Those matter more than ever.

Another big piece is reviews.

Google mainly cares about Google reviews.

AI doesn't.

AI looks at reviews everywhere.

AVVO.

Super Lawyers.

Justia.

Wherever people are talking about you.

Every review becomes another signal telling AI whether it should trust you.

Tyson Mutrux (13:44)
When you said attorneys now have to collect reviews on platforms besides Google...

I guarantee every lawyer listening just groaned.

Google reviews are already hard enough.

Now you're telling them they have to manage reviews somewhere else too.

Vaidas Cikotas (13:54)
Exactly.

Google reviews still matter.

They're important for Local Services Ads.

They're important for Google Maps.

They're important for local rankings.

But now people are leaving Google altogether.

ChatGPT, for example, frequently references Yelp.

Claude often relies heavily on AVVO, Super Lawyers, and attorney directories.

We'll actually open ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at the same time, ask them all the exact same question, and compare the answers.

Sometimes they're similar.

Sometimes they're completely different.

What's really interesting is seeing where each AI platform pulls its information from.

We had one workers' compensation attorney ask why he wasn't showing up inside ChatGPT.

When we dug into it, we discovered ChatGPT was referencing an article from Expertise.com that listed the top workers' compensation attorneys in his market.

He wasn't included on that list.

That became one of the reasons AI recommended someone else.

So suddenly another website becomes incredibly important—even if you never intentionally focused on it.

Five years ago, hardly anyone cared about Expertise.com.

Now it's influencing AI recommendations.

That's how quickly things are changing.

Tyson Mutrux (17:42)
I remember getting emails saying, "Congratulations, you're ranked number one."

I ignored them because I thought they were nonsense.

But here's the problem.

Regular people don't know they're nonsense.

They see "Top Rated Attorney."

They assume it's legitimate.

Vaidas Cikotas (17:56)
Exactly.

Consumers don't know how those rankings are created.

They simply see an authority saying you're one of the best.

That's why it's so important to make sure your information is accurate everywhere.

If one of those directories lists practice areas you don't even handle anymore...

That's on you to fix.

Because AI isn't calling you to verify it.

It's simply reading what's available and making recommendations based on the information

Tyson Mutrux (18:32)
Let's say you were looking at one hundred law firm websites that weren't managed by Rise Up Media.

What are the same mistakes you see over and over again?

I'm talking about the big picture—not just SEO, but everything.

Vaidas Cikotas (19:10)
The first thing we usually notice is poor content.

Either there isn't enough of it...

It's outdated...

Or it simply isn't very good.

We'll open a firm's blog and see that the last article was published two years ago.

Think about the signal that sends.

Not just to Google, but to potential clients.

If you haven't updated your website in years, it looks like you aren't paying attention.

Google has actually changed its algorithms to reward fresh content.

Older articles should be updated every few months to keep them relevant.

You can't just publish something four years ago and expect it to continue performing forever.

We also see websites that look nice visually but aren't doing anything proactive.

Maybe they publish one blog every now and then.

Maybe social media links don't even work anymore.

Facebook icons that go nowhere.

LinkedIn profiles that haven't been updated.

Broken links.

Outdated attorney bios.

All of those little issues start adding up.

We run every website through an analysis process to identify those gaps.

Today there are even tools beginning to measure how visible your website is inside AI search.

For example, SEMrush now tracks things like AI visibility, mentions, and cited pages across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Mode.

If those numbers are close to zero, it's usually a sign that your content isn't giving AI enough reason to reference you.

Steve Williams (22:15)
The first number we look at is something called an Authority Score.

That's Google's way of measuring how much trust your website has earned.

People assume it's a scale from one to one hundred.

In legal, that's not really how it works.

The highest authority score we've ever seen on a law firm website is around forty.

Anything over twenty-five is exceptional.

The higher that score becomes, the more traffic you're generally going to receive.

So how do you increase it?

Content.

I've been saying it all day...

Content is still king.

Google isn't really a technology company.

Neither is ChatGPT.

They're content companies.

They organize and evaluate information.

The second thing that increases authority is backlinks.

Anywhere you're allowed to place a link back to your website, do it.

Your state bar.

Professional organizations.

Directories.

Associations like Maximum Lawyer.

Every legitimate backlink increases your authority.

And that authority doesn't just help traditional SEO anymore.

It also helps your AI visibility.

Now, I have to laugh because marketing companies are already selling "$1,500 AI packages" promising you'll dominate ChatGPT.

Nobody can promise that.

The technology changes every week.

Three people can ask ChatGPT the exact same question and receive three different answers.

There simply isn't a guaranteed formula yet.

Tyson Mutrux (24:45)
Exactly.

Steve Williams (24:46)
The interesting thing is that most people completely trust ChatGPT.

If ChatGPT gives them an answer...

They believe it.

Even though those of us who use it every day know it can absolutely be wrong.

If you challenge it, it'll often admit it made a mistake.

But most consumers don't do that.

That's why trust has become such a big factor.

Tyson Mutrux (25:15)
Let's have a little fun.

Can all three of you pull up ChatGPT?

I think it'd be interesting if we all asked the exact same question and compared the answers.

People could actually see how different the recommendations are.

Vaidas Cikotas (25:38)
Sure.

Let's make it legal-related.

Steve Williams (25:49)
How about...

"Who is the best DUI lawyer in Dallas, Texas?"

Tyson Mutrux (25:53)
Perfect.

Let's all ask that.

Vaidas Cikotas (26:00)
All right.

I'm sharing my screen now.

Tyson Mutrux (26:03)
Most people probably wouldn't type "best DUI lawyer."

They'd naturally ask...

"Who is the best DUI lawyer in Dallas, Texas?"

Steve Williams (26:09)
Exactly.

Vaidas Cikotas (26:17)
Let's see what happens.

Tyson Mutrux (26:27)
Mine's still thinking.

Maybe I picked the wrong model.

I'm going to force it to answer.

Steve Williams (27:11)
I've got mine.

It's already different.

The first couple recommendations match...

Everything after that changes.

Tyson Mutrux (27:20)
I'll pull mine up too.

Vaidas Cikotas (27:22)
Before you do...

Notice something interesting.

One recommendation references AVVO.

Another references Expertise.com.

If I click this result...

Here it is.

"22 Best DUI Lawyers in Texas."

Published just a few days ago.

ChatGPT is using that article as one of its sources.

Those attorneys are showing up because another website validated them.

That's exactly what we've been talking about.

Steve Williams (27:49)
Mine even pulled a Forbes article.

Tyson Mutrux (28:02)
Here's what's fascinating.

One attorney is ranked first...

But only has a 3.4-star Yelp rating.

Meanwhile, there are attorneys with five-star ratings showing up underneath them.

So clearly the AI isn't just looking at star ratings.

It's weighing multiple signals together.

That's really interesting.

n it finds.

Steve Williams (28:32)
Go back to that Yelp result for a second.

I want to see something.

She only has five reviews and a 3.4 rating on Yelp, but she's still being featured.

Tyson Mutrux (28:38)
Exactly.

Then you've got these other firms with much better ratings.

That's what surprises me.

Vaidas Cikotas (29:04)
And that's because ChatGPT isn't looking at one single signal.

It's pulling information from multiple places.

Steve Williams (29:09)
Click over to that icon on the right.

Is that Wikipedia?

Tyson Mutrux (29:16)
It is.

That's interesting.

We've got Yelp, Wikipedia, and multiple attorney directories all influencing the results.

Vaidas Cikotas (29:36)
Let me show everyone something.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, ChatGPT actually tells you where it's pulling its information from.

Here you can see AVVO.

You can see Expertise.com.

You can even see Reddit showing up as one of the sources.

So the recommendations aren't random.

They're being built from information that's scattered all across the internet.

Now let's switch models.

Let's ask Claude the exact same question.

Tyson Mutrux (30:28)
Good idea.

Vaidas Cikotas (30:31)
We'll use the exact same prompt.

"Who is the best DUI lawyer in Dallas, Texas?"

Let's see what changes.

Tyson Mutrux (30:52)
Make sure you show us your password while you're logging in.

Steve Williams (30:54)
(Laughs.)

Vaidas Cikotas (31:06)
All right...

Here we go.

Tyson Mutrux (31:26)
I actually got a really interesting result on mine.

I'm curious to compare.

Vaidas Cikotas (31:36)
Here's Claude.

Immediately you can see it's different.

We're getting maps.

Different attorneys.

Different rankings.

It looks like reviews are playing a larger role here.

The important point isn't necessarily who shows up.

The important point is that the results changed.

Tyson Mutrux (32:34)
Let me show mine.

Mine starts by saying there really isn't an objective way to name one single "best" lawyer.

Then it lists Warren Abrams...

Randall Eisenberg...

Buck Johnson...

Benson Varghese...

Tim Clancy...

Robert Gregg.

What's interesting is where it's getting those answers.

Mine is pulling heavily from Justia.

Then it's pulling directly from attorneys' own websites.

That's a completely different set of sources than what ChatGPT was using.

Vaidas Cikotas (33:35)
Now let's look at Gemini.

Tyson Mutrux (33:41)
Let's do it.

Vaidas Cikotas (33:43)
Give me just a second while I get it shared.

Steve Williams (34:16)
I've already got mine up if you need it.

Vaidas Cikotas (34:28)
I've got it.

Here we go.

Vaidas Cikotas (34:44)
This is Gemini.

Again...

Different attorneys.

Different ordering.

Different map results.

But what's really interesting is that Gemini is showing the sources at the bottom.

Most of them are actually coming directly from the attorneys' own websites.

That reinforces something we've been saying this entire conversation.

Your website still matters.

A lot.

Steve Williams (35:07)
Content is king.

Vaidas Cikotas (35:10)
Exactly.

Your website remains the foundation.

But depending on which AI model someone is using, there are dozens of other sources that can influence whether you appear.

One model references attorney directories.

Another references Expertise.com.

Another pulls directly from firm websites.

Another may include Reddit discussions.

You don't know what the next source is going to be.

That's why this is such a moving target.

There are firms benefiting from these recommendations today that probably don't even realize they're being cited.

Tyson Mutrux (36:05)
That's fascinating.

When I look at Gemini, I'm seeing many of the same attorneys...

But not all of them.

Some overlap.

Some completely different.

Again, there isn't one consistent answer.

Vaidas Cikotas (36:34)
Exactly.

Google is naturally going to rely more heavily on Google's own ecosystem.

ChatGPT has its own ecosystem.

Claude has another.

That's why trying to optimize for only one platform doesn't really make sense.

You have to build authority everywhere.

Tyson Mutrux (37:02)
All right.

Let's shift gears.

Let's talk about something practical.

If someone wants to make sure they're prepared for AI search...

What should they actually do?

Walk us through your GEO audit checklist.

Let's give everyone something they can implement.

Vaidas Cikotas (37:23)
Absolutely.

There are several things every law firm should look at...

Vaidas Cikotas (37:23)
There are a few things every law firm should look at, and honestly, some of them are really simple.

The first one is your homepage.

Can AI immediately understand what you do just by reading it?

Too many law firms have taglines like, "Fighting for Justice" or "Battling for What's Right."

Those sound nice, but they don't actually tell AI anything.

Instead, your homepage should clearly state exactly what you do and where you do it.

For example:

"Personal Injury Attorney Serving Dallas, Texas."

Be specific.

Think of your homepage like the cover of a book. It should immediately tell people—and AI—what the book is about.

The second thing is identity consistency.

Tyson, you joked earlier about how much of a pain this is, but it's incredibly important.

Your address...

Your phone number...

Your office suite...

Every listing needs to match.

If one directory says "Suite 200" and another says "#200," or one spells out "Avenue" while another abbreviates it to "Ave.," those tiny inconsistencies can create trust issues for AI.

Years ago we called this NAP consistency—Name, Address, Phone Number.

That still matters.

Your Google Business Profile.

The Better Business Bureau.

Attorney directories.

Everywhere your business appears online.

Vaidas Cikotas (38:55)
The next piece is your attorney profiles.

Too many law firm websites have nothing more than a headshot and a short paragraph about hobbies.

"John enjoys fishing and spending time with his family."

That's nice...

But it doesn't help AI understand why someone should hire John.

Instead, highlight credentials.

Speaking engagements.

Publications.

Awards.

Professional memberships.

Super Lawyers.

AVVO ratings.

Everything that reinforces expertise.

Then prove your experience.

Don't simply say you've recovered millions.

Be specific.

Talk about actual case types.

Trial experience.

Years practicing.

Verdicts.

Settlements.

Specificity matters.

The more detail you provide, the easier it is for AI to understand what you're actually known for.

Then comes reputation.

Reviews matter.

Not just Google reviews.

Reviews everywhere.

If you only have one Yelp review...

Go get five.

If you have no reviews on Justia or AVVO...

Start asking for them.

Those platforms are becoming validation signals.

AI wants proof that other people trust you.

Your website alone isn't enough anymore.

The AI models are looking across the internet asking,

"Can anyone else verify what this attorney claims?"

That's what separates recommendations today.

Tyson Mutrux (41:02)
And I'm better looking.

Does that count as a ranking factor?

Steve Williams (41:05)
I think everyone already knows that's true.

Vaidas Cikotas (41:06)
I'm sure there's some scale for that somewhere.

Steve Williams (41:09)
Let me add one thing.

Traditional SEO asks,

"Who has the best content?"

AI asks,

"Who can I trust?"

That's the biggest shift.

Trust comes from simplicity.

Consistency.

Clarity.

If I were running a law firm today, one of the first things I'd create is an FAQ section.

Take the ten questions clients ask you most often...

Answer every one of them.

Put those answers on your website.

People using Google are searching for information.

People using ChatGPT are asking questions.

Those are different behaviors.

I've spent enough time using ChatGPT that it knows a tremendous amount about me.

It knows what I care about.

It knows my interests.

When I ask for a recommendation...

I'm inclined to trust it.

That's exactly how your potential clients are beginning to behave.

Vaidas Cikotas (42:54)
And remember...

Those recommendations are still being built from your credentials, your website, and everything else we've been discussing.

You can spend more money than your competitors.

You can write more content.

You can outrank them in traditional search.

But you can't fake credibility.

You either have the experience...

Or you don't.

How many trials have you won?

How many verdicts?

How many years have you practiced?

Those are the things AI is beginning to value because they're difficult to manufacture.

That's why you can't simply buy your way to the top of AI recommendations.

Tyson Mutrux (43:36)
I love that.

Before we wrap up, how can people get in touch with you if they're interested in working with Rise Up Media?

Vaidas Cikotas (43:45)
We offer a completely free consultation.

No obligation.

We'll look under the hood of your website.

We'll show you what's working...

What's not...

What your competitors are doing...

And where you have opportunities to improve.

The easiest way to reach us is simply to call or text.

Steve Williams (44:20)
You can reach me directly at 412-713-2764.

Vaidas Cikotas (44:25)
Or you can call me at 704-953-7051.

We'll schedule a time, walk through everything together, and point you in the right direction.

Tyson Mutrux (44:39)
One thing I really appreciate about you guys is that everything is month-to-month.

That's a huge differentiator.

We've had so many members of the Maximum Lawyer community work with you, and they absolutely love what you do.

The reason I wanted to have this conversation is because it's exactly the kind of discussion we're going to be having at MaxLawCon.

Marketing is changing.

AI is changing.

Business operations are changing.

Everything is evolving incredibly fast.

Vaidas Cikotas (45:22)
Honestly, Tyson...

It's probably going to change again by next month.

Steve Williams (45:25)
Maybe tomorrow.

Tyson Mutrux (45:27)
You're probably right.

If you want to spend time with people like Steve and Vaidas—and really some of the smartest people in legal marketing, AI, operations, and law firm growth—make sure you check out MaxLawCon.

I really appreciate both of you taking the time to do this today.

There was a tremendous amount of value here.

Thank you both.

Vaidas Cikotas (45:52)
Let me leave everyone with one final thought.

If someone is pitching you an AI package...

Or promising guaranteed AI rankings...

Get a second opinion.

There are a lot of people selling AI services right now simply because AI is the buzzword.

Many of those packages don't have much substance behind them.

We're always happy to take a look and tell you whether something actually makes sense before you spend money on it.

I'd be extremely cautious about signing long-term contracts with anyone claiming they can guarantee you'll dominate the AI search results.

Nobody has that figured out.

It's changing constantly.

There are definitely things you can do to improve your visibility, and we've talked about many of them today.

But nobody can honestly promise guaranteed placement.

Tyson Mutrux (46:58)
That's great advice.

And just to confirm...

You still offer free website evaluations?

Vaidas Cikotas (47:12)
Absolutely.

We're always happy to help.

Tyson Mutrux (47:17)
Perfect.

Steve, Vaidas, thank you both again.

Really appreciate you coming on.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Ten years. More than a thousand conversations. Countless law firm owners. In this special 10-year anniversary episode of Maximum Lawyer, Tyson Mutrux reflects on the seven biggest lessons he's learned from a decade of building a law firm, hosting the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, and getting a behind-the-scenes look at what actually makes firms succeed.

Rather than looking back at the podcast's history, Tyson shares the principles that have stood the test of time, from why comparison quietly destroys happiness to the reality that there is no universal blueprint for building a successful law firm. He discusses the importance of surrounding yourself with good people, embracing the hard work that success requires, learning from unexpected detours, and protecting the one asset that makes everything else possible: your health.

Whether you're just starting your firm or scaling toward your next chapter, this episode is a reminder that sustainable success isn't about chasing someone else's path, it's about building the business and life that's right for you.

What You'll Learn

• Why comparison is one of the fastest ways to lose joy as a law firm owner
• How surrounding yourself with good, successful people accelerates your own growth
• Why running a law firm is supposed to be hard—and why that's actually a good thing
• The truth about "gurus," snake oil salespeople, and why there is no one-size-fits-all strategy
• Why hard work still matters, even in the age of AI and automation
• How setbacks, failed partnerships, and unexpected challenges often become your greatest teachers
• Why prioritizing your health may be the highest ROI investment you'll ever make

Highlights 

• 00:00 – Celebrating 10 years of Maximum Lawyer and introducing the "Lucky Seven" lessons
• 01:30 – Why comparison is the thief of joy and the danger of measuring your success against other firms
• 05:00 – The importance of surrounding yourself with good, successful people and protecting your environment
• 08:30 – Why running a law firm is hard—and why there is no universal formula for success
• 12:30 – Avoiding "one-size-fits-all" business advice and building a firm that fits your goals
• 16:00 – Why hard work still matters, even with AI making business ownership easier
• 19:00 – Embracing setbacks, failed plans, and unexpected detours as part of the journey
• 21:30 – Why your health is your greatest asset and the lesson Tyson wishes he'd learned earlier

🎟️ Get your MaxLawCon tickets: maxlawcon.com

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Maximum Lawyer helps law firm owners build businesses, not jobs.

Resources:

• Join the Guild Membership
• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
• Follow us on Instagram
• Join the Facebook Group
• Follow the Facebook Page
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:00) Here we go — welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. This is a special episode. If you're watching this on the association side, it's not quite the 10-year anniversary yet, but if you're listening to the podcast, this is actually the 10-year anniversary week. So we'll call this the 10-year anniversary episode.

Tyson Mutrux (00:37) Instead of walking through the whole history of Maximum Lawyer — which most of you who've been listening for a while already know — I want to make this episode something you can actually learn from. We're closing in on a thousand episodes, maybe already past it, and it's been such a cool journey. So rather than reminisce, I want to share what I'm calling my "lucky seven" — the biggest lessons I've learned during my time with Maximum Lawyer.

Tyson Mutrux (01:33) It's been an incredible experience meeting so many people from every side of this industry — not just law firm owners, but vendors, sponsors, and companies that have come and gone to support the legal space. I've written these seven lessons down on index cards, the way I always take notes. Let's get into it.

Tyson Mutrux (02:15) Number one: comparison is the thief of joy. This one cuts both ways. I've seen law firm owners doing really, really well, but they look at some other firm on TV, Facebook, X, or Instagram and think, "Man, they're doing so much better." Here's the thing — because of Maximum Lawyer, I've gotten to see behind the curtain of a lot of firms, and in plenty of cases, the emperor has no clothes. You might be comparing yourself to a firm that looks great from the outside but is a mess on the inside.

Tyson Mutrux (03:19) So stick to your mission. Stay on your own path. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing — stop comparing yourself to others. Comparison will steal the joy right out of running your firm. And here's a bonus lesson for the people putting on a good show while secretly struggling: open up a little, be a bit more vulnerable. Pull the curtain back, and it won't feel so heavy next time.

Tyson Mutrux (04:21) Number two: surround yourself with good and successful people, and you will succeed. I added the word "good" to that phrase for a reason. Just like anywhere else, you'll run into people who genuinely want to help you and people who just want to take. Surround yourself with the ones who give as much as they receive — and also make sure they're successful. Both matter.

Tyson Mutrux (05:12) There's a study I recall — and I might get the exact numbers wrong — but if you sit within 20 or 25 feet of a low-performing coworker, your own output can drop by something like 30%, even if you're an A-player. They found something similar with students: sit a struggling student next to a strong one, and the strong student's performance dips too. It applies everywhere in life. Surround yourself with good, successful people, and I promise you'll succeed.

Tyson Mutrux (06:19) A lot of my own success comes from being lucky enough to build Maximum Lawyer around good people. And this isn't just about who you meet professionally — it applies to family, friends, coworkers, everyone you hire. Spend your free time with good, successful people. It matters that much.

Tyson Mutrux (07:09) One add-on to this: don't worry about what people think of you. If you need to cut ties with someone because they're not good for you, that's okay. It's okay to not be liked by everyone. I won't name him, but a good friend of mine in the association told me last year that he didn't like me at all when we first met. Something shifted, and now we're close — we refer cases to each other, talk regularly, genuinely care about each other's families.

Tyson Mutrux (08:08) I never would have known he disliked me if he hadn't told me, and honestly, it's better that way. If I'd known and let it get to me, it probably would have held me back. You can't let either side of that affect you — not the people who dislike you, and not the people constantly patting you on the back either. Stay level-headed. Stay on your mission. Don't let your head get too big, and don't let negativity from others get you down. Just live your life.

Tyson Mutrux (09:07) Number three, one of my favorites: running a business is hard. There's long been this perception in our industry that you can just do a couple of things and it's easy — partly because a few people make it look effortless, and everyone assumes there's a secret formula. There isn't. There's no one-size-fits-all formula. Some things work really well for most people, but every firm is a custom fit. Not everybody's situation is the same, and that's just how it works.

Tyson Mutrux (10:06) You can't just throw up a shingle and assume everything will be smooth. Employees quit. Great employees get sick — that's happened to us, where we supported an amazing employee through a year-long illness. You might get sick yourself. I had shoulder surgery in 2024 and assumed I'd be back on my laptop the next day — I was basically useless for a month. Life gets mixed in with the business side, and that's just reality.

Tyson Mutrux (11:05) It won't always be smooth roads. It can be hard, and it can be lonely at times — but it's also incredibly rewarding. I'd be a terrible employee at this point because of how much freedom I have now. I wouldn't trade it for the world. That's the trade-off: it's hard, but it's hard for a reason, and the difficulty is almost a built-in litmus test — you want it to be hard so the success means something.

Tyson Mutrux (12:04) Number four: no one has all the answers. Back when Jim and I started this podcast in 2016, there were a lot of self-proclaimed experts — people selling "the way," the one fail-proof system. People paid for it, and eventually those sellers got a bad reputation and faded away. Over the last several years, I think we've collectively learned there's no single right way to do this — there are many successful paths, and honestly, it'd be sad if there were only one.

Tyson Mutrux (13:12) The toolbox for lawyers is massive. You can build a referral-based model like John Fisher does, run pure SEO, go all-in on Google ads, host events, network, or build a whole brand on YouTube the way Jeff Hampton talks about. Ryan and Tiffany Weber generate cases through webinars, YouTube, and SEO combined. There's no single right way — choose what works for your firm.

Tyson Mutrux (14:02) Just be careful who you take advice from. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail — someone who only knows one method will tell you it's the only way, simply because it's what worked for them. The best advisors are like carpenters: they help you find the right tool for your specific situation. My personal rule is simple — if someone tries to convince me they know it all, I stop trusting them.

Tyson Mutrux (15:01) Number five: you still need to work hard. This is related to "running a business is hard," but different. You can avoid working hard and running a law firm will still be difficult — but working hard is still the path to success. There's no sugarcoating it, and it genuinely irritates me when people sell the idea that you don't have to work hard to make money.

Tyson Mutrux (16:00) Now, one caveat — if your version of success has nothing to do with money and is just about freedom to do what you want, that's valid too. Success means something different to everyone. But for most people using money as a metric, hard work is still part of the equation. For me, success starts with revenue and profit goals, but after that, it's about freedom — I leave the office at four now, something that never would have happened five or six years ago, and I feel zero guilt about it.

Tyson Mutrux (16:59) That said, leaving at four doesn't mean I'm done working for the day — I still put in the hours, just differently. AI has made things easier, genuinely, but you still have to build the systems, put in the work, and do the reps. However you want to phrase it — work hard, put in the work — it's still required.

Tyson Mutrux (17:49) Number six: things don't always go as planned, and that's okay. My plans for the firm shifted more than once — at one point I wanted to build a mega firm, which in hindsight I'm not sure was the right call. I also had a partnership that lasted 18 months, went really well, and then we split and both ended up better off for it — a "successful failed partnership," which is a strange thing to call it, but that's what it was.

Tyson Mutrux (18:40) Most of you won't have a story like Paul Yokabitis, who nailed it from day one on our show. Most people are going to stumble, and that's completely fine — the important part is learning from it along the way.

Tyson Mutrux (19:22) Number seven, the last one — and this list was originally six, but I added this at the last minute because it might be the most important: health. Health is everything. If you're struggling with your health right now, take one small step to improve it, then another, then another. It's all connected, especially as you get older — you might have a surgery you never expected, or just notice your energy isn't what it used to be.

Tyson Mutrux (20:21) Go to your doctor, get regular checkups, work out consistently, get your sleep. If I have any regret, it's the 3 a.m. nights early in my career — I remember working until seven in the morning more than once. I'm glad those days are behind me, even though I learned some valuable lessons from them. Neglecting my health early on probably did cost me some of my success, even if I don't dwell on it as a regret.

Tyson Mutrux (21:28) Here's the other piece of it: most of us become something of a public personality in our community just by being an attorney who owns a firm — there aren't that many law firm owners compared to attorneys generally. And when you're a personality, people are, in some way, judging you — deciding whether to hire you. I'll admit it myself: if I'm looking for health advice, I want it from someone who looks healthy. If someone doesn't look the part, I'm not going to take their advice seriously, whether that's fair or not.

Tyson Mutrux (22:27) The same goes the other way — if I want someone to trust my legal advice, I want to convey that I take care of myself, that I'm disciplined. I think that matters more than a lot of us initially realize. It's something I've come to accept and adopt more over time.

Tyson Mutrux (23:09) That's my lucky seven for success — I hope you got something out of it. I know I've learned a lot over the last ten years, and I want to thank everyone who's listened along the way. Jimmy, love you, buddy — miss you. We still text and talk regularly, and I want to thank him too, even though he hasn't been part of the show the last couple of years. It's been an incredible ten years.

Tyson Mutrux (24:00) Thank you all for listening — I really appreciate it, and I appreciate everyone in the association and everyone I've met along the way. Make sure you check out Becca's List dot co to find the best vendors for your firm, and if you're interested in the association, head to MaximumLawyer.com. Get your tickets to MaxLawCon in October at MaxLawCon.com. We'll see you all there. Bye!

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

You don’t know where you’ll be next Tuesday and that’s exactly the point. In this episode of Maximum Lawyer, Tyson Mutrux sits down with trademark attorney and educator Sonia Lakhany, who has turned her entire life into a delegation and systems experiment by putting everything she owns in storage and becoming a “fancy homeless” digital nomad. Sonia shares how she runs two thriving companies while living out of a single bag and cycling through hotels around the world, using extreme efficiency, SOPs, and intentional lifestyle design to strip away errands, household chores, and decision fatigue so she can focus on deep work, creativity, and enjoying the freedom she built.

From departure checklists and dopamine menus to virtual mailboxes and hotel‑based “done‑for‑you” living, Sonia walks Tyson through the operational choices that make her nomad life possible and the business lessons law firm owners can steal even if they never leave their hometown. She talks candidly about solo travel, loneliness, and choosing not to have kids, how ADHD and a craving for “whimsy” drove her away from traditional employment, and why she now sees trademarks as the ultimate lifestyle practice area for lawyers who want flexibility, global reach, and lean, high‑margin firms. They also dig into her 4L Education platform and flagship “Two Weeks to Trademarks” course, including why hundreds of alumni keep coming back for live reteaches, how she leverages AI to systematize her own law firm, and what it really looks like to build a business that funds your bucket‑list life instead of competing with it.

What You’ll Learn

• How Sonia designed a “digital nomad” life that eliminates errands, chores, and home maintenance through radical delegation
• Why running two companies from hotel rooms forced her to systematize everything from travel checklists to client work
• How solo travel, white space, and pattern interrupts supercharge her creativity and strategic thinking
• Why she believes permanency (houses, kids, routines) isn’t for everyone and how that shapes her business choices
• What makes trademark law a lifestyle‑friendly, globally scalable practice area for lawyers
• How her 4L Education and “Two Weeks to Trademarks” course help attorneys escape burnout and build flexible practices
• Why alumni keep re‑attending her live reteaches and how AI is changing the way she teaches and practices trademarks

Highlights 

• 00:00 – Why Sonia doesn’t know where she’ll be next Tuesday and her “fancy homeless” origin story
• 05:00 – Delegating life: hotels, virtual mailboxes, and stripping away errands and chores
• 10:00 – Departure checklists, extreme efficiency, and SOPs for travel and business
• 20:00 – Solo travel, loneliness, and designing a life without partners, pets, or kids
• 30:00 – ADHD, whimsy, and why Sonia was never built to be a traditional employee
• 40:00 – Building lean teams, avoiding management bloat, and redefining success beyond headcount
• 50:00 – Inside 4L Education and “Two Weeks to Trademarks,” lifestyle lawyering, and global trademark opportunities
• 55:00 – Live reteaches, CLE, unreasonable hospitality, and using AI to future‑proof your practice

Connect with Sonia:

Instagram

YouTube

Linkedin

🎟️ Get your MaxLawCon tickets: maxlawcon.com

🔍 Vet your vendors: beccaslist.co

Maximum Lawyer helps law firm owners build businesses, not jobs.

Resources:

• Join the Guild Membership
• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
• Follow us on Instagram
• Join the Facebook Group
• Follow the Facebook Page
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:08)
Right, Sonia. My question’s gonna be this: you don’t know where you’re gonna be next Tuesday, and that’s really interesting to me. Tell me why. You just dropped a bomb on me before we started, and I’m fascinated by this. Why do you not know where you’re gonna be next Tuesday?

Sonia Lakhany (00:25)
Well, the short answer is because a few months ago, I put all my stuff in storage. I’m officially—I think the kids are calling it a digital nomad—that’s what I am. But yeah, I’m untethered is what I like. My friends call me their fancy homeless friend, which fits too. I put all my stuff in storage and now I just go wherever, stay however long, and keep it moving with one bag.

Tyson Mutrux (00:53)
Where were you before this trip?

Sonia Lakhany (00:54)
Ibiza, for a week.

Tyson Mutrux (00:57)
Which is insane. You flew in from Ibiza for a week, correct?

Sonia Lakhany (01:01)
Before Ibiza, I was in London. Before London I was in Scottsdale. It’s been a lot of U.S. mostly. I was in Mexico for a couple of weeks, in New York once or twice. U.S.-wise, that’s pretty much it.

Tyson Mutrux (01:23)
I think I texted you when you were in Scottsdale ’cause I said that’s my favorite place. I love Scottsdale. Now are you doing mostly hotels or Airbnbs—mix of both? How are you doing that?

Sonia Lakhany (01:26)
I lean heavily toward hotels—about ninety percent. I like the “done‑for‑you” factor. It’s delegation. I have some business lessons in this I didn’t start out with, but it’s delegating in its highest form. I’ve stripped my life of housekeeping, chores, groceries—if I get groceries, they’re delivered. Laundry—towel service, housekeeping.

Sonia Lakhany (01:52)
You don’t have errands when you don’t have an apartment or a house. You magically don’t have errands, which is amazing. If I do, I find a way to do them in the neighborhood I’m going to. If I have to go to the bank or something, it’s rare. My Amazon deliveries have cut way back because I don’t need anything anymore. I have everything I need. I was never a huge shopper, if we’re being honest. Traveling and experiences have always been my bigger thing.

Tyson Mutrux (02:17)
So your shopping’s gone down.

Sonia Lakhany (02:28)
An astronomical amount. I’m much more likely to spend on an omakase or a chef’s special choice dinner than on a fancy pair of shoes. I have a couple of nice things, but that’s really it.

Tyson Mutrux (02:40)
Okay, I hadn’t thought about the food part of this. The laundry makes sense. What about your personal laundry though?

Sonia Lakhany (02:47)
I’ll either send out for it or—again, it’s efficiency at its highest—because none of my clothes are very expensive or fancy. It’s mostly Amazon or H&M, Zara. I have what I have and when it gets to that ending point, I’ll just leave things in the hotel room and order more on Amazon or go shopping at Zara, Target. In between, pajamas and normal stuff, I’ll send out. Every hotel has had laundry service. If I really need to, I’ll do a laundromat, but that’s rare. Once in a while I’ll do an Airbnb with a washer‑dryer. I have one singular bag at the moment.

Tyson Mutrux (03:24)
How much luggage do you have? No way. How big’s the bag?

Sonia Lakhany (03:32)
This one’s a little larger because I was in Europe. Typically it’s just a carry‑on and a fairly large personal‑item‑looking thing. I can go for a while.

Tyson Mutrux (03:43)
So you’re running two companies while traveling the world. This is very interesting.

Sonia Lakhany (03:49)
When you say it like that, I’m like, dang—I guess I am. I don’t think about it that way in my mind, but when we say it out loud it’s like, whoa, that is kind of crazy.

Tyson Mutrux (03:57)
It’s extremely impressive. I’m just thinking logistically—how do you deal with mail?

Sonia Lakhany (04:04)
I have a virtual mailbox. It’s iPostal. They bring in everything; you get a notice when something comes in, they send a picture of it, and you can discard it if it’s junk, open and scan it, or open, scan, and shred it if it’s sensitive.

Tyson Mutrux (04:06)
Like Earth Class Mail, something like that. So very similar. Do you journal about all this? Are you documenting it?

Sonia Lakhany (04:29)
I should be. I am documenting it. I don’t know what I’ll do with all the footage yet. There are so many options and ideas. I’m three months into it at the time we’re recording. I think I have another three to five months in me in terms of how long I want to do it. For the first couple months I was just living my life. It seemed efficient. I’m barely home anyway, might as well commit.

Sonia Lakhany (04:58)
I dreaded having to go home and get back into groceries and errands. I thought, what if we stripped our life of the mundane and just dreamed big? I didn’t think it was that crazy. Now as I tell more people, they’re like, you gotta capture this somehow. So I’m thinking I’ll vlog it or do some sort of recap—maybe monthly. Weekly is too much. Monthly might be not enough—I’m still figuring it out.

Tyson Mutrux (05:26)
Weekly’s not enough. I really am—when you dropped this on me, I had zero plans to talk to you about it, but it’s fascinating. There are a lot of business lessons in this. You must have systemized everything—marketing running itself, the companies running themselves. I want to get into creativity in a second, too.

Sonia Lakhany (05:50)
Lots—tons.

Tyson Mutrux (05:55)
It shows you’ve optimized everything, which is fascinating. How personal can I go with these questions?

Sonia Lakhany (06:04)
Ask me literally anything. I get excited to share this side because it’s so recent that I realized people would even find it interesting. I’ve been connecting all the business lessons, and it came to fruition because I had such a business mindset. Here’s a small micro example: for years I’ve had departure checklists. When I pack for a trip, I have SOP’d the living daylights out of even my personal life.

Tyson Mutrux (06:30)
You’re kidding me.

Sonia Lakhany (06:34)
Yeah—even my personal life.

Tyson Mutrux (06:36)
You should give this away for free and capture people’s emails—“get my departure checklist.”

Sonia Lakhany (06:43)
Yeah. Anytime I take a trip, there’s a standard departure checklist. It’s everything from one to two sets of pajamas to this, to that, standard stuff you’d need on any trip, plus stuff that stays packed—like a second toiletry bag with doubles of everything that always lives in my carry‑on. So there’s a default pile of things: toiletry bag always up to date. When I come home from a trip, I refill it before I put it away—Q‑tips, toothpaste, floss, whatever—so it’s a complete kit at all times. People think it’s a lot; it’s not. It’s extreme efficiency.

Sonia Lakhany (07:31)
So toiletry bag lives in there, we always have doubles of chargers, everything. When we pull out the carry‑on, that part’s already done. Then we standardize pack—one to two pairs of pajamas, normal stuff. Then it gets good: we toggle based on the nature of the trip. Beach? We open the dropdown: sunscreen, hat, flip‑flops, waterproof phone case, all the beach things. Work trip? Business cards, business heels, dresses, a nicer purse. Snow trip? Beanie, underlayers, etc.

Sonia Lakhany (08:16)
Whenever I’m on a trip and the list wasn’t accurate, I update it so that doesn’t happen again. It’s truly SOP’d. It’s on my phone.

Tyson Mutrux (08:37)
Is this on your phone? I don’t know if I should ask because of the name I’m about to use. Have you heard of the Jeffrey Epstein home manual? Have you seen this?

Sonia Lakhany (08:43)
Ask anything you want.

Tyson Mutrux (09:04)
Someone gave me a Word doc of his home manual. It doesn’t show anything about what he’s accused of doing. It’s just detailed—“this is how you’ll refer to Mr. Epstein,” “here’s what you put on their pillow,” “here’s how you make the bed.” Are you that detailed?

Sonia Lakhany (09:24)
Not really. I think that’s an extra layer. I look at necessity: does this serve a function, or is it OCD or anxiety? Mine is function‑related. It’s to not forget anything, because I really dislike being in a situation where you’re uncomfortable—you’re cold without the right layers, hot without sunscreen, things like that.

Sonia Lakhany (09:53)
I also look at whether I’m going to another U.S. city versus internationally. I get more stressed about international trips—adapters and you can’t DoorDash everything easily. DoorDash and Uber Eats now cover retail, so you can order from Target, CVS, Best Buy—I’ve ordered chargers, tripods, whatever I need in the moment. In the U.S. I’m less concerned. Internationally, you’re relying on the little shop at the resort or in town, so that dictates a lot of it.

Sonia Lakhany (10:23)
It’s really just to not forget anything. I also have a mini departure checklist for when I leave a space—hotel room or Airbnb. It’s not as long but covers things I don’t want to forget: I always leave cash for housekeeping, so “draw cash” is on the checklist. We leave it under the remote controller. We charge all flight electronics the night before. I have a lot of help but they’re not traveling with me—I’m not at that level yet.

Tyson Mutrux (11:06)
Who’s “we”? Do you have an assistant helping?

Sonia Lakhany (11:17)
That’s next—we’re working toward that. I have a full‑time executive assistant and a part‑time personal assistant in California, though I use her less right now. I’m involved in most of it because there are certain things I don’t follow the rules on. When we talk about delegating, I’m still holding onto some things that are technically too administrative, like booking travel. But I have all the hotel and airline apps on my phone, I’m a member of all the major chains, all my cards are saved. I don’t really have a process; I just book it myself because it’s so easy.

Sonia Lakhany (11:45)
Other than that, I’ve delegated quite a lot. I’ve never been more productive in my life, which was part of my hypothesis. I’m someone who constantly wanted to leave the house to get things done. I could never get anything done at home. COVID was my nightmare because I was stuck at home—it was awful. Same scenery every day, I couldn’t refresh creativity, couldn’t think.

Tyson Mutrux (12:45)
You said you think you’re more creative now—talk about that part.

Sonia Lakhany (12:49)
The juices flow. I think it’s an expansion on the concept “if you’re stuck, go for a walk” or why you get your best ideas in the shower or driving when you can’t capture them. This is that on steroids—you’ve left your entire setup indefinitely. Each day, or every few days, you’re in a new environment. My minimum stay now is four to five days somewhere. I’m not changing locations every other day; checking in and out is tiring. There’s a fine line between fun/adventurous and exhausting.

Tyson Mutrux (13:24)
Can you get better rates if you stay longer? What do you mean by that?

Sonia Lakhany (13:27)
I found out the fun way. At one Westin, I was ready to pay like three‑something because that’s what I booked it at. The front desk person said, “You’re staying for a while?” I said yeah, I have this and this. He said, “Every day past six or seven nights is $189.” I was like, “Really?” He applied it to my whole stay. So now I talk to hotels—if I’m almost at the threshold, I’ll extend a day to get the lower rate for the entire stay.

Sonia Lakhany (13:58)
A lot of people have commented, “If you’re not paying rent or utilities…” I famously don’t believe in homeownership for myself—it’s personal. It’s delegation and efficiency: I go to the app, they fix it, no contractors, no projects, no pipes bursting in the middle of the night. It’s extreme delegation. Since I’m not paying rent or utilities, they assume this must be a money‑saving venture. It’s not. It does turn around—those thousands a month can go toward hotels—but living in hotels is far more expensive than any rent. I was paying a lot to live by the beach in California.

Tyson Mutrux (14:50)
It’s gotta be really…

Sonia Lakhany (14:54)
I’m happy to share numbers because that’s part of it.

Tyson Mutrux (14:58)
Tell me what it costs to live by the beach renting versus staying in hotels wherever you want.

Sonia Lakhany (15:03)
They’re not in the same financial bracket. In full transparency, I was paying about four grand a month for my one‑bedroom on the beach. Depending on where you’re tuning in from, that might be shocking. But it was a high‑end, luxurious beach community right on the water. Where you’re sitting—directly behind you that plant is the water—and I could see it from the unit. Amenities were top‑notch: beautiful gym, hot tub, huge pool, cabanas, coworking space, all the things. Great people, great environment, beach town with lots to do.

Tyson Mutrux (15:53)
Do you ever pinch yourself? I hope you soak it in, like “I’m living the dream I wanted to live.”

Sonia Lakhany (16:03)
It is surreal sometimes. I’ve had to sit and pause and say: you realize you’ve already knocked out your whole life’s bucket list? So now what do you call it? I’ve done so many cool travel things that were bucket list. The act of traveling as a lifestyle is bucket list. Owning your own law firm is a bucket list accomplishment. Doing it again, hitting similar revenue numbers in a second business proved I’m not a one‑time “got lucky” story. All that combined is like, whoa. Day to day, I don’t think that way—I think I’m just carving my own path. I just realized this is interesting to some people, which is part of why I’m not more active on social. I was like, does anybody find this interesting? But now people keep asking, so maybe I should.

Tyson Mutrux (17:07)
Have you seen those people from Europe—because the World Cup’s in the U.S.—documenting their journeys around the country and saying, “My gosh, the United States is amazing”? You could do something similar around the world.

Sonia Lakhany (17:23)
Yeah, and it’s hard to decide where you want to go. When you have this much white space, where do you want to go, what do you want to do? When you can do anything—literally anywhere and pretty much anything—it’s overwhelming sometimes. It’s a lot of white space.

Tyson Mutrux (17:42)
This might be a weird question, but how do you get human interaction? Is it lonely?

Sonia Lakhany (17:48)
It can be. I don’t want it to appear as a bed of roses all the time. By definition, to be able to do something like this, you have to be truly alone in life. You can’t have a partner for this window. I can’t imagine anybody I’ve dated or would date being okay with this, and I wouldn’t want to leave them.

Sonia Lakhany (18:14)
By reverse, if you’re in a thriving relationship, you don’t want to leave either. You might do it together if their career and life path allowed and they were into it. But by definition, you have to not have a partner, no pets—it’s tough. Some places are pet‑friendly, but dragging pets through time zones is difficult. On the heels of that, kids. I’ve seen people do it and heard of people doing it, but for me it’s not something I’m looking to do. So that’s off. To do this at this level—truly free, not thinking about anyone or anything—you have to be alone. Then you’re alone. That’s the funny part.

Sonia Lakhany (18:44)
A lot of logistical day‑to‑day is alone. But where I’m going usually has something or someone tied to it: I meet friends or attend conferences. I flew into Chicago for a week—so what else can I do? See friends, see clients, book dinners. Because I’m doing this, I get invited to more friend things—“We know you’re wherever, so drop in on Cartagena,” etc. That creates structure and social interaction. But you’re not boarding flights with someone most of the time; it’s you, checking in and out by yourself.

Tyson Mutrux (19:52)
I’ve thought about when you go to a city—if you let friends know where you are, you can hang out. But when you’re in another country, I assume you don’t have a bunch of friends there, right?

Sonia Lakhany (19:58)
I do, actually. I have a lot of friends in different places. Recently the international stuff has been more friends‑planned. They’ll ask where I’m looking to go and if they can jump in. It’s an excuse for them to leave their routine and join me on this crazy thing. Ibiza was my idea— I’m a big EDM/house fan, which you wouldn’t think, but I really enjoy festivals. I don’t do drugs, just to be clear. I enjoy the out‑of‑brain, no‑words experience of the music.

Sonia Lakhany (21:00)
All summer, most major EDM DJs have residencies, just like Vegas. I found a week where every DJ I admired had a residency. If we go these days, Friday we see this person, Saturday that person. I told some friends and they said, “Can we go?” I said, “Yes, the more the merrier. I was going anyway.” So that’s how Ibiza came to be. We saw huge DJs—David Guetta, Calvin Harris, some you don’t get to see often. It turned into an epic trip that could have been boring, but friends jumped in. Now the next few trips, people are planning with me: “Where haven’t you been? What’s new for you too?” That’s been fun.

Tyson Mutrux (21:59)
Let’s say you’re in a place where you don’t know many people. What do you do at night—sit in the hotel, go out, walk around?

Sonia Lakhany (22:07)
I really enjoy my own company. It’s not that I don’t need anyone or friends—I do get lonely, and I don’t want this to seem like a bed of roses. But by default, I enjoy my own company. I don’t think I’m that bad. Me, myself, and I—we’re good. I’ll go to dinner, sit at the bar, or get a table. I never used to be like that; it took time to get there. Solo travel is an MBA in life—figuring stuff out, entertaining yourself. And you get to do whatever you want. That’s the coolest part, because with anyone else you have input, personalities, moods, routines, morning vs. night person, etc. When you can just do whatever you want, it’s awesome—the best part.

Tyson Mutrux (23:10)
You said “finding stuff out.” Are you on a search for something?

Sonia Lakhany (23:17)
I’ve been asked if I’m running from something. Very candidly: no.

Tyson Mutrux (23:23)
Those are two different questions. I was going to joke that you’re running from something—I don’t think you are, but maybe. I wonder: are you in search of something?

Sonia Lakhany (23:36)
Good question with no clear answer. I think I wanted to see what it would be like—just to try it. That’s how I’ve lived a lot of my life. That’s how the law firm started, how 4L Education started, how Two Weeks to Trademarks was born. I see my life as going through a fun house opening doors. I’ll pull back a curtain and say “No, I’m okay,” or open a door and say, “Let’s see what’s behind this.” The things that come to life are the doors I walked through. Some are curtains I’ve decided not to.

Sonia Lakhany (24:08)
Having children was a door I didn’t open. I got a glimpse of it through family, friends. I have many nieces and nephews, not all blood‑related, and I’m a really good auntie. I got enough of that sense to say, “That’s not the right fit for me—the way my lifestyle is structured and what I want out of this lifetime.” That door I wasn’t willing to open, mostly because it’s permanent. Almost everything I do isn’t permanent—you can change it.

Tyson Mutrux (24:40)
Do you struggle with permanency?

Sonia Lakhany (24:45)
Permanency is not my favorite.

Tyson Mutrux (24:47)
You don’t want a house, don’t want to own a house, don’t want kids, which is fine. I find it interesting that couples are far less likely to have kids these days.

Sonia Lakhany (25:05)
It is fascinating. I feel like I ended up in that decision where a window was there, then it faded and closed. I was like, “Okay, I don’t have to worry about this anymore.” There wasn’t dread and there wasn’t a pull. It’s not like I wanted kids and didn’t get to; I never felt a huge urge. We’re in a time where a lot of people are strongly deciding. For me it was a slow fade. Many people I meet say, “I’ve known for years, since day one.” I’m like, “Wow, what must that be like?” Because I didn’t have that conviction. I assumed I would have kids and then realized I didn’t want them.

Tyson Mutrux (25:53)
I’m very similar—whenever I meet someone with a strong conviction, it’s fascinating, because very few things in life are black‑and‑white yes/no. Is there anything like that for you? Sounds like no.

Sonia Lakhany (26:09)
Same. I think you lose nuance when you’re that convicted. I like to leave room for someone to teach me: “Have you thought about this?” I’ll say, “That’s a good point, thank you,” and consider a different perspective. I call it sponge mode—I hear and absorb. My worldviews and opinions have evolved that way. I’m very open. Most things you can change your mind about—that’s okay. Kids, in my mind, are the one thing. Even marriage you can change—though you don’t want to, I got divorced a long time ago.

Tyson Mutrux (26:53)
Wait, really?

Sonia Lakhany (26:55)
It was a blip on the radar. I married my law school boyfriend right out of law school. We were married for about a year and change. He’s a great guy; we’re still friends. It just wasn’t it. At the time, we said, “This is probably not it.” It was mutual and amicable.

Tyson Mutrux (27:12)
The guest before you—Janice—was talking about living life so someone could make a movie out of it. I totally think people could make a movie out of your life. The divorce thing threw me off.

Sonia Lakhany (27:26)
It’s easy to forget about—it’s just like over and done.

Tyson Mutrux (27:37)
Did you have the business at the time—any of the businesses?

Sonia Lakhany (27:44)
The opposite. We had no pets, no mortgage, hardly any shared assets—nothing. It was the most straightforward—like breaking up with someone you’re dating. This was well before Two Weeks to Trademarks and 4L, and well before the law firm. I was in my first one to two years of practice, trying to find a job, pass the bar, get it together.

Tyson Mutrux (28:09)
No.

Sonia Lakhany (28:10)
No. Truly, that person wouldn’t recognize me. I feel bad for where she was at.

Tyson Mutrux (28:19)
So for clarification: do you have three companies technically or still two?

Sonia Lakhany (28:27)
It’s two.

Tyson Mutrux (28:27)
What’s different about that Sonia compared to you now? What changed? It might illuminate things for people in the same situation as old Sonia.

Sonia Lakhany (28:27)
I don’t know if anything “changed”; I think the real one just got to come out. I’d always dreamed of entrepreneurship, being a business owner. I thought I’d do something like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx—come up with a product, be a founder in the traditional Shark Tank sense. I always had the urge. I went through a few associate positions and wasn’t finding a fit. Owning my own law firm wasn’t the goal—it was “let’s start there because we don’t want to work at a firm anymore.” Most firms I worked at were wonderful, except a couple of bad bosses early on. The last firm I left, I have nothing but great things to say. It was just the structure of going to work every day that was awful.

Tyson Mutrux (29:51)
You’re a wild stallion—you wouldn’t be a good employee. You’re probably fantastic on your own doing your own thing.

Sonia Lakhany (30:04)
There’s an argument about whether I’m any good now. My work process would make people’s heads hurt. My creative process, how I think—my notes app might say “research Antarctica penguins, buy toothpaste, add this to my…” all in one note. It’s chaotic; my brain is like that.

Sonia Lakhany (30:33)
I think people over‑ or under‑diagnose themselves with ADHD and neurodivergence. It took me a long time to admit I very much fall into that. Anyone listening with expertise probably figured it out in two minutes. I’ve learned to roll with it. My process is super confusing and chaotic to others, and it fits poorly with being an employee. The same thing every day is the mundane. If I need to think and perform and be creative, I can’t do it when every day looks the same—I lose motivation. Before this, I traveled a lot. On days I was home, I still had to add some whimsy.

Tyson Mutrux (31:06)
ADHD is like…

Sonia Lakhany (31:29)
There’s a fine line between two valid views. One is “Do you struggle with permanency?”—which is valid; there’s probably something to that. The other equally valid view is “You have to add whimsy and fun to your mundane.” You have to, or life gets boring for anybody.

Tyson Mutrux (31:43)
Strong check mark. Maybe the first time “whimsy” has ever been used on the show.

Sonia Lakhany (32:02)
Really? It’s a tenant of mine: we add whimsy.

Tyson Mutrux (32:07)
Do you have a list of tenants?

Sonia Lakhany (32:10)
I have something called a dopamine menu, but I’m not very good about following it. It was an exercise in a mastermind.

Tyson Mutrux (32:16)
Finish what you were saying, then I want to hear about the dopamine menu.

Sonia Lakhany (32:19)
It involves no drugs, by the way, and no alcohol. I’m minimal on drinking now—recently, because I’ve enjoyed being healthier and focusing on wellness. Everyday whimsy might be “Let me try a new coffee shop.” I was on an almond‑croissant kick for a while—I made a list of the best ones in the area and tried each one. It takes you to a new side of town, different turns.

Tyson Mutrux (32:54)
Pattern interrupts. You’ve created a bunch, which I firmly believe in. If you feel stuck in a rut, you’re clearly never going to be in a rut because you never take the same path twice. That’s incredible. Do the pattern interrupts ever get exhausting?

Sonia Lakhany (33:14)
Sure. Then you pause—that’s the beauty of it. For example, I’m here in Chicago; logically it could’ve been a one‑in, one‑out trip, two days max. I’m here for a week because I’m coming off eleven days in Europe, twelve something—time changes, packing, all that. I just wanted to park it somewhere. I’m parking it in Chicago because I don’t want to pack up again.

Tyson Mutrux (33:18)
You were full of energy when you came here—I asked if you’re exhausted, jet‑lagged, and you’re not. Will it hit you and you’ll crash?

Sonia Lakhany (33:48)
Probably after this. There’s some adrenaline—you’re looking forward to the thing, you’re here for a reason, you have an occasion. I’ve been looking forward to this since we booked it; I love challenges. Also I genuinely am doing everything I ever dreamed of all in one shot. It’s hard to be unhappy—it’s not that it never happens, but net‑out, it’s difficult.

Sonia Lakhany (34:15)
I do get unhappy like anyone; it gets lonely; it gets tiring. But overall? No. Even when there’s a flight delay or something goes wrong, there’s a scale: is it really that big of a deal? I zoom out: everything else is going so well. Even inside the big dream, if something goes wrong like a flight delay, I’m still living in hotels and traveling the world. Is that so bad?

Tyson Mutrux (34:55)
Do you have to remind yourself of that or is it instant?

Sonia Lakhany (34:57)
It’s instant now. It’s ingrained. I’ve really zenned out; my patience level is super high. Younger Sonia was reactive, had a hot temper, very anxious. Over the last couple years—especially this last year—ever since this came to fruition and I realized I could do it, and then the preparation, I’ve been in a great state.

Tyson Mutrux (35:06)
Have you always been that way? That’s interesting.

Sonia Lakhany (35:27)
It’s the idea of “in furtherance of,” right? I’ve been in a great state because like buying a house: you start looking on Saturdays, that’s exciting. You put in an offer, then you pack your current place—you’re in furtherance of something, a project, a mission. Or having a baby: checkups, “She’s the size of a blueberry,” nursery shopping—all in furtherance of something. I feel lucky to live in a time where there’s more on that menu than just the traditional things.

Sonia Lakhany (35:57)
Ever since this became a possibility, the “in furtherance of” was so exciting: pick a storage unit, figure out the space you need, pull out the stuff you’ll need regularly versus back‑of‑storage kitchen stuff. Everybody needs a project they’re excited about—not just what they’re working on, but what they’re excited about.

Tyson Mutrux (36:39)
You should write a book.

Sonia Lakhany (36:41)
I wrote a book about trademarking a long time ago with another attorney friend, but that’s it.

Tyson Mutrux (36:48)
I’ve got the book title: “In Furtherance Of.” Just call it that and start writing tomorrow.

Sonia Lakhany (36:53)
I love that. I truly could—it’s all here. Especially because the start of all this would baffle people. My childhood, not in a positive way, would be like “whoa, you came from that and now this is your worldview?” If I look back on early‑years Sonia versus now, it’s like, “Wow, you really went for everything, didn’t you?” I left no stone unturned.

Sonia Lakhany (37:26)
I joke that when you’re traveling, your surface area is wider—meaning more room for things to go wrong. If something did, I’d say I had a good run. I’ve already had a really amazing run. Every day now is bonus. It gets better.

Tyson Mutrux (37:52)
How long ago did you start your first company?

Sonia Lakhany (37:54)
This year is year eleven of the law firm. Next year will be year ten of Two Weeks to Trademarks.

Tyson Mutrux (37:56)
Okay, so when you think about your first company and where you thought you’d go, and compare it to where you are now, have you exceeded that? Below? Right where you thought?

Sonia Lakhany (38:17)
It depends on the metric. Revenue‑wise: beyond. I thought I’d be like, “Okay, this will be fine,” more like “being an employee isn’t working, so we need something else.”

Tyson Mutrux (38:24)
What metric do you want to use? Happiness level?

Sonia Lakhany (38:41)
I thought I’d have a bigger team than I do, and that was some unlearning. We’re taught we need a big team, but I have a small but mighty, lean team. It works great. Why don’t I have fifty‑two employees? Would we be bigger if we did? I have to ask whether what we’re taught applies or whether I can unlearn it.

Tyson Mutrux (39:18)
Because you don’t need them. Something I’ll guarantee you: Sonia wouldn’t be going around the country and world for six months if she had fifty‑two employees. There’s zero chance.

Sonia Lakhany (39:41)
Management is its own beast.

Tyson Mutrux (39:43)
It’s like having your own kids—you just have fifty‑two, and they’re adults who talk back.

Sonia Lakhany (39:50)
With opinions and personalities. I’ve learned leadership is something I’m very good at. Management, which is different, is not my favorite—and maybe that’s why it’s leaned out. Revenue‑wise, more than I imagined. Before this six‑month stint I realized: I don’t need a lot. I’m not a big shopper. I drive a used 4Runner and love it—I bought it used. I’m not extravagant. Some stereotypes fit—like, yes, I like nice hotels. I don’t like hostels. But revenue is one of those things I exceeded.

Sonia Lakhany (40:47)
The question mark is: what’s the goal with 4L and the courses? With the law firm, the goal starts with revenue and freeing up your time—neck and neck. The real success metric in our community is: money’s fun, but how free are you? How much free time do you have? That’s the real marker. There isn’t really an end goal to an education business the way there is to a products business.

Sonia Lakhany (41:17)
Many of my trademark clients are naming something—that’s trademark law. Products have goals like getting into Whole Foods or Target. One of my clients—A Dozen Cousins, shelf‑stable seasoned lentils and beans—did that. When I go to Whole Foods I see their product and remember those consults. I’m still trying to figure out how you measure a successful education business outside of revenue. I’m learning there are new metrics, which is a pleasant surprise.

Sonia Lakhany (41:56)
I get a lot of messages from attorneys who take my courses. The range is insane. “I paid cash for my kids’ college tuition because of your course.” “I left a practice area I hated and now I’m not suicidal.” “I left a really bad marriage because I’m financially independent thanks to the practice area you taught.” I’m making room for that metric because it’s a big deal. I never imagined that. I always assumed the course had to be good—there’s no luxury of failing. So when people like the course, that’s baseline, not bonus. The impacts I didn’t imagine.

Tyson Mutrux (43:48)
That’s incredible.

Sonia Lakhany (43:49)
Those kinds of things where people get really personal—I never imagined that.

Tyson Mutrux (43:54)
Since you’ve been traveling, have you been reflecting on these stories?

Sonia Lakhany (43:58)
Yeah, a lot more. I’m the opposite of most people. People say, “Travel was hectic; now that I’m home, I can think straight.” For me, I think far more clearly when I’m traveling. At home I get into the grind of laundry, cooking, meal prep. There’s a side of me that enjoys that—I love hosting, cooking, throwing girls’ nights—but thinking straight and reflecting felt impossible at home.

Sonia Lakhany (44:37)
It’s the same reason you’d leave home to work at a cafe. When I’m lying in bed trying to journal or meditate, I can’t turn my brain off because there’s laundry to switch, another load to run, a dishwasher to start, a closet to reorganize. I felt like I had to keep optimizing my home. It was beautifully decorated, maybe with some perfectionism. When I’m stripped of that—like in this hotel room—I can do the job stuff on my phone or computer, but outside of that, there’s white space.

Sonia Lakhany (45:25)
When you’re sitting in an airport with nothing to do and your flight’s delayed—I’m typically early to the airport—there’s more time. “I don’t want to work, I don’t need to do anything right now.” Free white space. Journaling, meditating—it all becomes crystal clear. That’s been a big reflection process over the last few months.

Tyson Mutrux (46:05)
I’m very interested in the idea that it’s freeing to not have the dishwasher and the laundry. It makes sense—you’re freed from all that. You’re doing it in other ways, but you’re not doing it—you’re giving it to someone else. If you apply that to all aspects of your life, that’s really interesting. I want to get to the dopamine list, hear about that, and then other things. What’s the dopamine menu?

Sonia Lakhany (46:44)
It’s not an original concept—I didn’t coin it. It was an exercise in a mastermind I enjoyed. It’s basically a matrix of time versus expense—small, medium, high, extra‑large, extra‑small—things that add whimsy if you want to get out of a rut. If you don’t have much time and maybe money’s tight, go look up a coffee shop and get a sweet treat—ice cream, pastry.

Tyson Mutrux (47:44)
So you’re creating a list of things that increase your dopamine—that’s the menu?

Sonia Lakhany (47:49)
Essentially, yes. On the higher scale, if you have more time and money, book a trip. In the middle, book a massage for later this week or make plans with a friend at a restaurant you’ve been wanting to try so you have something to look forward to. How fast do you need it? It’s having options to shake things up so you don’t feel like you’re just working.

Tyson Mutrux (48:10)
Don’t you think people get too much dopamine these days?

Sonia Lakhany (48:13)
From scrolling, yes. When you’re fed just one source, it maxes out. Scrolling is bad on many levels. I’ve been working on not being on my phone as much. The tricky thing is you need your phone for everything—you can’t even check into a hotel without it. So now I do exercises like: “For the duration of this Uber ride, we don’t look at our phone,” just to…

Tyson Mutrux (48:27)
How good of a job are you doing at that?

Sonia Lakhany (48:42)
Well, I have to look at it to see how far we are and text my friend I’m on the way—like I did with you. They’ve made it so necessary to use your phone for everything. You can’t order a pizza without downloading the app. Everything requires cookies, passwords, logins. It’s a lot. I’m trading some conveniences in favor of not being on the phone.

Tyson Mutrux (49:12)
Do you watch movies in the hotel room?

Sonia Lakhany (49:15)
I’m really bad at TV and movies. I haven’t seen hardly anything. Rarely will I watch a show. For a season of life I watched Love Is Blind and some really stupid reality shows, and I’d host viewing parties. But overall I’m not interested. I don’t get anything out of TV and movies. They don’t spark anything.

Tyson Mutrux (49:51)
So I watched a movie on the plane yesterday and finished it last night. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” with Sam Rockwell. The premise is everyone’s stuck to their phones and AI is taking over—it’s interesting. I like to do this thing: years ago in Scottsdale, we were coming down Scottsdale Mountain and a guy said “Good to see ya.” We didn’t know him. For the next hour we talked: do we know that guy? He was in our life for a second and gone.

Tyson Mutrux (50:23)
We played a game where we walked around and tried to tell people “Good to see ya.” But when you do it, it’s hard to get people—they’re looking down at their phones. When we leave here, I want you to try this: if it’s not raining, try to say “Good to see ya” to someone. You have to get them when they’re walking by so they can’t ask “How do we know each other?” You catch them and then they spend an hour wondering. It’s more challenging because people are on their phones. I’m glad you’re trying to do better about that. I’ve got to do better at it too.

Sonia Lakhany (51:27)
It is not easy, especially when you own businesses. Checking on things working—it’s not even that either of us is a workaholic; it’s a need. You have to get back to people. I was joking with another law firm owner friend—only we get it. If you’re not in that role, you don’t. We joked: either you’re the one doing the work, which most of us aren’t anymore because we’ve learned delegation, or you’re answering the questions of the people who are. You can’t be that bottleneck where, because you want a day off, sixteen things get held up. Would you rather just knock out those questions and then go about your day? Staying truly unplugged is tough.

Sonia Lakhany (52:23)
But you can have longer periods. I’ll sit down, answer a bunch of people, then put the phone away or walk away from it. I do a lot more handwriting and notepad stuff now, in furtherance of not trying to be on the phone, which is tricky, but then I’ll take a picture and have AI transcribe it. Again, it’s a different avenue of creative flow. I get great ideas with just me and a piece of paper.

Sonia Lakhany (52:53)
You have to be trim with what you pack—no luxury of lots of pens and notebooks. Every hotel room has a pen and notepad or they’ll give you one. So my camera roll is a lot of Marriott notepad ideas, Hilton notepad ideas. It’s a direct reflection.

Tyson Mutrux (53:23)
I’d love to see a picture of your camera roll—not just to go through and say, “What the hell were you thinking there?” Could you imagine giving your phone to somebody and saying, “Why did you screenshot that?”

Sonia Lakhany (53:34)
That’s like a “please throw it in the ocean” moment.

Tyson Mutrux (53:37)
At some point you will die. If someone has access to your phone, they’ll probably just go through and say, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Sonia Lakhany (53:43)
What was her thought process? But in that sense I think of myself as a crazy writer/author whose process is very… I’ve come up with the coolest ideas, and they’re not even huge new‑course ideas. People think creative flow means big new course creation. I’ve come up with changing three words in a tagline or in a message—how I handle something, how I answer a certain question—little tweaks that make huge differences in messaging.

Sonia Lakhany (54:18)
For example, one thing I like about your podcast and interviewing style is that you don’t do the typical “What’s your name, introduce yourself, bio.” It comes out as we talk. Like, “What’s 4L?” and “something about trademarking.” So this is a good time for a quick background: I have the law firm, where I practice trademark law, and 4L Education, which is a nudge to the three years of law school where we didn’t learn how to practice. 4L is my answer. We have many courses, but the leading course is Two Weeks to Trademarks, for attorneys who want to get better at practicing trademarks or learn it as a new practice area. It’s a lifestyle‑friendly practice area.

Sonia Lakhany (55:18)
You only have to take one bar—any bar—and you can practice nationwide. It’s truly a unicorn that way: you can be anywhere physically with one bar, while your clients are nationwide or global. Every company, U.S. or not, can file for a trademark. You need to be a U.S.‑licensed attorney to file; foreign companies need you.

Tyson Mutrux (55:40)
So you can have foreign clients—I didn’t know that. You have a global market.

Sonia Lakhany (55:48)
Literally global. And again, it doesn’t mean you have to live like me on the extreme end. I’m walking that walk—anywhere in the world filing trademarks. On the other end, if you’re a parent of a young child and need flexibility, you can cluster work into 30‑minute, 45‑minute windows around nap times and soccer games. You don’t have to work an eight‑ or ten‑hour structured day, five days a week. I have attorneys who work one or two days a week, structuring and clustering. You can practice law on your own terms, and it’s insanely lucrative. Every business needs a name, probably a logo, probably a tagline. The reach is insane, especially when clients can be everywhere.

Sonia Lakhany (56:41)
That’s the setup. One thing that came through for me in messaging: I do a live reteach every other summer—that’s my pattern. The course is nine and a half years old; next year we turn ten, which is crazy. I’m thinking about throwing a trademark party for it.

Tyson Mutrux (57:00)
Great idea. Congratulations.

Sonia Lakhany (57:15)
Would you come?

Tyson Mutrux (57:18)
If you invite me, I’ll come. You’re making me want to start a trademark law firm—your sell is really good.

Sonia Lakhany (57:32)
It’s so lucrative. I just can’t believe how much stacks in favor of this practice area. I wish I could take credit for that. One thing I can take credit for is being a loudmouth about it. I think people have now heard about it many times—they’re like, “We get it.” And I’m like, “I will convert all of you—there’s plenty of work to go around.”

Tyson Mutrux (57:52)
Is there plenty of work? That’s my question.

Sonia Lakhany (57:53)
The USPTO processes just short of one‑point‑something million applications a year or quarter—I don’t remember exactly—and that’s just filings. They register another eight hundred‑plus thousand a year. I just checked their publicly available dashboard.

Tyson Mutrux (58:02)
What do you mean “just short”?

Sonia Lakhany (58:21)
If you Google “Trademark Dashboard USPTO,” they show year‑to‑date and quarter‑to‑date compared to last year’s filings. They’re going up and up because entrepreneurship is at an all‑time high. Side hustles, weekend projects, food trucks, consulting businesses—everything needs a name. It’s so process‑friendly and system‑friendly.

Tyson Mutrux (58:43)
And you can fully automate it, right?

Sonia Lakhany (58:49)
AI is huge now. This is a reteach year, and you just stumbled onto my breakthrough. Because I have a law practice doing what I teach, I’m boots‑on‑the‑ground. That’s why I won’t close it. I still do consults, file marks, handle office actions—at lower volume—but enough to stay current. AI has been a great test. Even for my own practice I’m optimizing, learning, developing skills and projects, setting up the law‑firm brain, creating agents and little “minion” processes. This needs to be a huge part of the reteach. So this summer we’re doing a live version again, and AI is all over it.

Tyson Mutrux (1:00:00)
Is it in person or remote?

Sonia Lakhany (1:00:01)
It’s on Zoom. I teach it live. It’s an opportunity for people who have been looking at the course to say, “Why wouldn’t I want to learn live instead of self‑study?” Once we record, we upload each module that night. There’s a schedule—it goes on three and a half to four weeks. We joke it became One Month to Trademarks. It’s 17 modules; you could watch them in two weeks if you double up some days. But putting attorneys brand‑new to the material through that quickly is rigorous. They have law practices or jobs they’re untangling themselves from. So we take our time and stretch it out. Once we finish each session, that night it’s uploaded; then it’s self‑study in the years between.

Tyson Mutrux (1:00:41)
Take a two‑week vacation.

Sonia Lakhany (1:00:57)
We always make a big thing out of it. People enroll; it’s an excuse to learn live. Here’s something I’m proud of—and I’ve never seen this in any course or webinar as loudly, maybe it’s just not talked about: we have a little over a thousand attorneys who’ve gone through the program—maybe around eleven hundred. Weirdly, I’m not dialed into the exact number.

Sonia Lakhany (1:01:53)
Every time we do a reteach, there are that many more people who’ve taken it. Last reteach was summer 2024; our numbers were different. In that timeframe, more people enrolled and watched. The number of alumni—former students—who email me leading up to reteach season is half my inbox. “I don’t want to miss the reteach dates. Did I miss it? Can I please join?” Because I have a lifetime promise: you get lifetime access to every refresh, every reteach, and…

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:25)
I was going to ask if you charge again for the reteach.

Sonia Lakhany (1:02:28)
It’s completely free. Another thing I’m proud of—though I don’t want to overshadow this—is we have a partnership with the American Bar Association to provide CLE credit in most states: about forty‑one and a half hours of CLE.

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:40)
Very nice. That would almost pay for itself. That’s incredible.

Sonia Lakhany (1:02:50)
If you think about how much it would cost to take those CLEs—yes. But we’re not a CLE provider; that’s just a sprinkle of “you’re welcome.” I want to make it so good that it hits all the marks—plus you get CLE and free refreshes. I think of myself in terms of unreasonable hospitality—like, “Wow, that’s so unreasonably generous”—but why not? We have the means to do it. Many alumni have been rocking with me since 2017, when I was literally a girl with a webinar. Of course I’ll make sure they get everything. Everybody gets free access to reteaches.

Sonia Lakhany (1:03:32)
My students know that every other year we’re doing it and they get free access. It’s remarkable: they already know the stuff; they’ve watched the modules; some have taken two or three iterations. Every alumnus I talk to says, “I can’t wait; I know there’ll be something new—some sprinkle, nugget, something you’re going to add.” It’s not exactly scripted—I teach the way I talk. I’ll say, “I just got this new tool; it’s a game‑changer; you should do this.” I’m so proud of that because: why would busy attorneys, who now have thriving trademark practices thanks to the course, be so excited to take time out to watch something where 85 percent they’ve already heard—maybe 10–15 percent is new?

Sonia Lakhany (1:04:32)
I’m weirdly proud because it means it’s that good—people want to keep watching the same movie over and over. You know exactly how it ends; you know the story; you can probably say the words—you can cite the DuPont factors of trademark law with me—but you still want to watch again. That means they’re finding huge value. We took some time to announce dates this time because I had logistical things to figure out—like where in the world I’ll be and making sure I have good internet. So we were a little delayed announcing it; it starts later this summer.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:02)
Important. When is it so people know? We can put the dates in the show notes.

Sonia Lakhany (1:05:13)
Perfect—I’ll give them to you. You can put a link and everything. People were messaging: “I haven’t heard—did I miss it? I’ll be so mad if I miss it.” I’m like, “You didn’t miss it; it’s coming.” Facebook messages, Instagram DMs, emails all day, every day: “When is it happening? I need to mark my calendar.”

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:33)
You should do another live, in‑person training for the ten‑year anniversary. That’d be cool.

Sonia Lakhany (1:05:40)
Really good idea. I like that.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:42)
Maybe not a full training, but a two‑day or something. Something new.

Sonia Lakhany (1:05:47)
I love teaching in person; I never get the chance much anymore.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:52)
It’s much better in person. I think people have Zoom fatigue.

Sonia Lakhany (1:05:57)
You learn differently when you’re away from your laundry, dishes, bills, and if you have kids and family obligations. I think about how fatigued I got and burned out from the monotony—and that’s describing a one‑person household. I can’t imagine more.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:17)
Still a lot to that—life gets in the way even for one person.

Sonia Lakhany (1:06:26)
It’s easier to think and absorb information when you’re away. You have different energy and creativity.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:32)
And in person there’s the way you move—the nonverbals. Watching how someone talks, reacts, maybe moves their foot when a topic comes up—maybe it’s something we should talk about. When you’re training, maybe you teach something and someone’s light bulb goes off: “Do you have a question? Let’s talk about that.” You can add more to the content. It’s a lot better.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:57)
We’ve got a few minutes left before they kick us out. Are there things, when it comes to travel, that you didn’t think about before you went on this journey—obstacles you didn’t anticipate?

Sonia Lakhany (1:07:23)
Yeah. As much as I tried to pre‑optimize, things pop up where I’m like, “I didn’t think about that being a thing.” Nothing has been unsolvable yet. I’ve decided that as long as you have a passport, a visa, and some cash—I always have at least a couple hundred dollars in cash just in case; I hardly use it, nobody accepts it anymore, but just in case—you can solve most problems.

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:52)
Even if you had to bribe somebody, you know.

Sonia Lakhany (1:07:53)
Or just ask nicely. I’m trying to think of something that’s really caught me off‑guard; nothing yet. I’m sure it’ll come—next time we talk I’ll probably have crazy stories. The hardest thing has been time zones. It’s not hard to move between Eastern and Pacific for a week. But when you’re projecting calls two or three weeks out and don’t know where you’ll be, that’s hard. I revolve around Eastern and Central time because that’s where most of the work anchors.

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:24)
So…

Sonia Lakhany (1:08:26)
I anchor around that. Going backwards—like Hawaii—has been a destination I’ve wanted to go to for a while, because it’s beautiful and the culture is relaxing and laid‑back, which I align with. But being that many hours behind the rest of the world—I’d personally find it hard to relax, because you wake up and the world’s already going.

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:46)
Maui’s so beautiful. So different.

Sonia Lakhany (1:09:05)
I struggled with that in California—trying to have a slow, easy morning, grab a venti iced coffee and then open the laptop. I’d think, “Let’s see what fresh hell is waiting when I open this,” because no matter how early I wake up, I’m three hours behind. And I’m not a morning person. I don’t like to wake up early. I don’t know if you’ll find this fascinating or lazy, but I don’t set an alarm. I wake up when I’m ready—when I’m done.

Tyson Mutrux (1:09:31)
I don’t know how people do that. I have to go to the gym in the morning—I’ve got a trainer, so I need to be there at a certain time. I would oversleep everything—that’s crazy.

Sonia Lakhany (1:09:41)
Nothing on my calendar is before eleven a.m.

Tyson Mutrux (1:09:44)
Difference between litigation and transactional work. All right, promote Two Weeks to Trademarks, 4L, and the firm. How do people get in touch with you?

Sonia Lakhany (1:09:55)
Thank you—I appreciate it. 4LEducation.com or TwoWeeksToTrademarks.com is our website. @atrademarklawyerlady is my Instagram—that’s my favorite way to connect. We have a Facebook group for attorneys already in or interested in trademarks; even if you’ve never heard of the practice area, you’re welcome to join. 4LEducation.com. The live dates start in August. CLE credit in most states. We have a non‑CLE version that’s a bit cheaper because CLE costs an administrative fee. You can also get CLE credit even if you watch on your own; you don’t have to attend live. If you’re seeing this after the fact or it’s too late to block sessions, there’s a window of time to get CLE by watching independently.

Tyson Mutrux (1:10:38)
Do it as well.

Sonia Lakhany (1:10:54)
Awesome.

Tyson Mutrux (1:10:56)
Sonia, thank you so much for doing this. You flew in—you were in another freaking country. Really appreciate it.

Sonia Lakhany (1:11:04)
Thank you for having me. It really is an honor. You capture so many of our stories and show listeners how many ways it can look to lawyer—and lawyer happily—which I think is a gift. You have a way of bringing out our stories. I’ve enjoyed your podcast for years—it’s an honor to be asked. I really appreciate it. The platform you give us to get the word out is amazing, so thank you.

Tyson Mutrux (1:11:32)
Well, the honor’s all mine. Thank you.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Tired of feeling like every decision in your firm has to run through you, and that “delegating tasks” never actually gets real weight off your plate? In this episode of Maximum Lawyer Live, Tyson Mutrux breaks down why your firm will stay fragile and founder‑dependent until you stop hoarding authority and start intentionally pushing it down through your team. Drawing on research from a 1974 Sioux City grocery store experiment and U.S. Army “mission command” doctrine in the 1970s, he shows that the most effective leaders are not the ones doing the most work, but the ones who decide who gets to decide, and who build systems that let others act decisively without waiting for permission.

Tyson then introduces his “three bands” model for law firm owners, explaining how to design layers of protection around yourself so that front‑line team members own fully delegated decisions, mid‑level leaders handle issues with clear guardrails, and only truly strategic, irreversible calls ever make it to your desk. Using real examples from his own firm’s negotiation process, he walks through what gets decided at the pod level, when issues escalate to attorneys, and the rare scenarios that reach him personally, while hammering home why you must get comfortable letting your people make small and medium mistakes if you want to scale, protect your time, and ultimately build a founder‑optional firm.

What You’ll Learn

• Why research in grocery stores and the U.S. Army shows that pushing authority down beats “hero” leadership
• The key difference between delegating tasks and truly transferring decision‑making power
• How Tyson’s “three bands” model creates layers of protection around the owner
• What fully delegated decisions look like at the outer band, with zero escalation
• When and how issues should escalate to a mid‑band leader under clear guardrails
• Which rare, high‑stakes decisions should actually reach the law firm owner
• How Tyson’s team handles settlement negotiations and bad‑faith issues without everything landing on his desk
• Why allowing small and medium mistakes is essential to growth and owner freedom

Highlights

• 00:00 – Why every decision keeps landing on the owner
• 01:40 – World Cup, leadership, and a new way to think about authority
• 03:10 – Sioux City grocery store experiment and effective managers
• 04:30 – U.S. Army “mission command” and distributed decision‑making
• 06:00 – Waiting for permission vs. acting with intent
• 07:30 – Rumsfeld’s “snowflakes” and the limits of delegation
• 09:00 – Handing marketing to “Tommy” and real authority
• 10:30 – Tyson’s three bands model for law firm decisions
• 11:45 – Outer band: fully delegated, no escalation
• 13:00 – Middle band: guardrails and clear escalation triggers
• 14:15 – Inner band: rare, strategic owner‑level decisions
• 15:30 – How negotiation authority and bad‑faith calls work in Tyson’s firm
• 17:10 – Letting your team make mistakes to gain owner freedom

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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
Welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. I’m Tyson Mutrux. I’ve got a fun show for us today. It’s been an incredible week. Aside from the United States losing in the World Cup, I couldn’t have been prouder of that team—they’ve really improved.

Tyson Mutrux (00:30)
I’ve never been much of a soccer fan and didn’t grow up with it, but my kids play now and my son is in club soccer. Over the last couple of years I’ve caught the fever. Watching him play in places I would have dreamed of as a kid has been really cool. Getting to see Messi play in the World Cup in person a couple of weeks ago was an amazing experience.

Tyson Mutrux (01:00)
That’s not what today’s show is about, though. It’s just been a great week overall—I started reading a new book, and we had some exciting developments with AI at the firm. Lots of cool things going on. I couldn’t be more excited.

Tyson Mutrux (01:30)
Today I want to talk about a couple of stories from my book, Founder Optional. If you didn’t hear last week’s episode, I shared what I called a “throwaway” story from the book. My editor gave me feedback that I had too many non‑legal stories and suggested using more law‑firm‑owner examples instead. We’ve sent a manuscript to members of the Association and even printed a near‑final version. My final edits are due July 19th.

Tyson Mutrux (02:00)
I don’t want to waste the non‑legal stories because they’re really good. So today I’m going to use two of them that relate to the same topic: how authority is distributed in your firm. I’ll tell you the stories, and then we’ll connect them directly to how you run your law practice.

Tyson Mutrux (02:30)
The first story is an experiment from the spring of 1974 in a small grocery store in Sioux City, Iowa. Shout out to Sioux City. A psychologist named Kurt Lewin had been studying why certain managers thrived while others didn’t.

Tyson Mutrux (03:00)
His discovery was counterintuitive. The most effective leaders weren’t the ones who did the most. The assumption then was that the best managers were constantly in motion—checking shelves, fixing problems, making sure everything was stocked and organized. But Lewin found that the strongest leaders were the ones who decided who got to decide. They dispersed authority to other people.

Tyson Mutrux (03:30)
The second story comes from the early 1970s, when researchers were studying the U.S. Army. They discovered something that made a lot of top brass uncomfortable: units with the most decorated commanders did not always perform best in sustained operations.

Tyson Mutrux (04:00)
What mattered more was whether decision‑making authority was distributed downward. The key question was whether junior officers could act decisively without waiting for permission. When you look at major missions and battles throughout history, a lot of failures happened because people were waiting on permission to act.

Tyson Mutrux (04:30)
In high‑performing units, captains and unit leaders didn’t have to check in on every consequential move. Their people were trained and empowered to act with intent and carry the weight of decisions. The Army called this “mission command.” The idea is simple but uncomfortable for leaders who don’t like letting go of control: if your system depends on one brilliant commander, it’s fragile. You need a system that depends on multiple leaders.

Tyson Mutrux (05:00)
So with those two stories in mind, the point is about taking authority and dispersing it to your people. And we’re not just talking about delegation. I’ve talked with Jeremy Danielson in the Association about this exact distinction.

Tyson Mutrux (05:30)
Delegation is saying, “I’m going to give you this task, and you go do it.” Many lawyers are great at delegation. You hand out to‑do lists: “You do these ten things, you do those ten things.” That’s delegation.

Tyson Mutrux (06:00)
Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense, was famous for delegation. I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating. He would stand at a lectern and have a line of people from his office come up. He’d write specific instructions on a Post‑it note for each person, and they’d walk away with their sticky notes. They called them “snowflakes.” That’s classic delegation—handing out tasks.

Tyson Mutrux (06:30)
But delegation is not authority. You’ve given people things to do, but you haven’t given them the right to own the decisions, change direction, or take responsibility for the outcome.

Tyson Mutrux (07:00)
Let’s take a more practical example. Say you brought your marketing in‑house. Most owners will delegate a list of marketing tasks. The team executes, then reports back, and the owner gives more instructions. Step, report, instruction, repeat.

Tyson Mutrux (07:30)
Instead, I’m saying: “Listen, Tommy—you’re now in charge of marketing. You own SEO, ads, all of it. You make the final decisions. You create the plan and execute it. Marketing is off my plate and on yours.”

Tyson Mutrux (08:00)
That’s authority. If Tommy does it right, he gets rewarded. If he does it wrong, he takes the blame. He’s taking the gravity off the owner and onto himself. That’s the whole theme of the book—moving gravity off the owner and onto other people in the firm.

Tyson Mutrux (08:30)
This is what I mean by redistributing authority, not just delegating tasks. Delegation is fine for some aspects, but you have to take that extra step of pushing decision‑making power down the chain. In the book, I break this into three bands.

Tyson Mutrux (09:00)
Picture yourself in the middle. All the gravity is on you because every significant decision flows through you. We want to push that out into three bands—three layers of protection. You’re the dot in the center, and the goal is to push as much weight as possible out into those circles.

Tyson Mutrux (09:30)
The outer band is where things are fully delegated. Front‑line people make decisions without escalating to you or to anyone between you and them. Using a military analogy: in that outer ring, specialists, privates, and lower‑level NCOs make real‑time decisions on the front lines. Someone engages them, they engage back. They don’t stop and ask permission.

Tyson Mutrux (10:00)
The middle band is delegation with guardrails. You’ve given authority but attached rules and thresholds. You only escalate if something crosses a predefined line. If the enemy breaks the front lines in that analogy, they’ve crossed a threshold. Then you escalate to local commanders for direction.

Tyson Mutrux (10:30)
The inner band is where decisions are strategic, directional, and irreversible, and those are the ones that legitimately need to reach you.

Tyson Mutrux (11:00)
Let’s make this more realistic for law firm owners. In our firm, we have pods—teams. On the outer band, the teams have full authority to negotiate their files. They decide whether to accept offers, what counters to make, and they follow our negotiation process and rules. Within that structure, those decisions are theirs.

Tyson Mutrux (11:30)
We also have a Case Resolution Coordinator who helps finalize cases in the negotiation phase. She’s not an attorney, but with attorney supervision she has authority to negotiate within defined limits.

Tyson Mutrux (12:00)
If something comes through that looks like bad faith from the other side, that’s when we escalate. That moves from outer band to middle band—the attorney has to look at it and make a call. Simple back‑and‑forth bargaining stays at the team level. Bad faith questions move up.

Tyson Mutrux (12:30)
To get to me, we’ve already pushed a lot of authority down. It has to be pretty serious. Sometimes it’s because we may have screwed something up. Other times it’s a strategic decision that falls outside our usual rules—like whether to push a bad‑faith angle or settle in a way that deviates from our normal negotiation framework because of what’s best for the client.

Tyson Mutrux (13:00)
Attorneys come to me when they know the process but think, “This doesn’t make sense for this client,” and they want guidance. That’s inner‑band territory—rare, directional decisions that should reach the owner.

Tyson Mutrux (13:30)
You should set up similar bands around yourself for every major part of your firm. Issues shouldn’t come to you until they’ve passed through those layers. You don’t need more than three bands. Three is usually enough. If you’re under 50 people, you don’t need a bunch of extra layers anyway.

Tyson Mutrux (14:00)
The whole idea is to take authority and push it down as far as possible. Tasks matter, but the real leverage is in authority—giving people the power to act.

Tyson Mutrux (14:30)
We often phrase it as “allowing them the authority to make a mistake.” You have to be okay with people making mistakes if you want to scale, grow, and take things off your plate.

Tyson Mutrux (15:00)
Of course you protect against the big mistakes—missing a statute of limitations, for example. You build procedures and safeguards to prevent those. But you have to let people make small to medium mistakes. If you don’t, the gravity stays on your shoulders, and you never get free.

Tyson Mutrux (16:00)
All right, that’s all we have today. Hopefully you got something from this. Check out Beckerslist.co—it’ll help you find the best vendors for your firm.

Tyson Mutrux (17:00)
Remember to get your tickets to MaxLawCon.com in October. It’s going to be amazing in Atlanta, so make sure you join us there. And if you’re interested in the Association, go to MaximumLawyer.com.

Tyson Mutrux (18:00)
Have a great week, everybody. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

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

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

What You’ll Learn

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

Highlights

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

Access Agentic Browser Redlines Demo Here

Connect with Mathew Kebris

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

🎟️ Get your MaxLawCon tickets: maxlawcon.com

🔍 Vet your vendors: beccaslist.co

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Resources:

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• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:06)

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

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)

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

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)

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

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)

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

Mathew Kerbis (00:30)

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

Tyson Mutrux (02:04)

Yeah. So your your grandma, ⁓ I think it's funny how you said your father's mother, ⁓ your grandma. ⁓ yeah. What I guess

Mathew Kerbis (02:13)

Because on both sides, right? Yeah. Each side had a entrepreneur.

Tyson Mutrux (02:17)

Well, I'm wondering like, is that who you looked up to the most? Like that your grandma or was it

Mathew Kerbis (02:21)

She's

Mathew Kerbis (02:21)

still living today. She's ninety three years old and she's down the street. She's in the what y was formerly known as the John Hancock Building. Holy

Tyson Mutrux (02:27)

Hell, like she can good good jeans, man. That's fantastic.

Mathew Kerbis (02:30)

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

Tyson Mutrux (02:41)

Yeah. Yeah. Well with AI, which we'll get to in a bit, you y we then you may live forever. Like you you might with your

Mathew Kerbis (02:47)

Longevity escape velocity, baby. I've got good mitochondrial DNA, that's for sure.

Tyson Mutrux (02:52)

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

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)

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

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)

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

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)

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

Mathew Kerbis (03:04)

differently in my own way.

Tyson Mutrux (04:33)

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

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)

I mean it all comes back to the incentives of the business of law. And so one of the reasons I I attack the billable hour is because if you stop

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)

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

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)

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

Mathew Kerbis (04:44)

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

Tyson Mutrux (06:10)

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

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)

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

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)

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

Mathew Kerbis (06:28)

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

Tyson Mutrux (07:35)

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

Mathew Kerbis (07:53)

Right, right. So lawyers tend to fall into the visionary camp instead of the integrators. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (07:58)

I I would say I think that's probably true. What do you think? Yeah

Mathew Kerbis (08:00)

Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (08:00)

yeah. I I mean we could you play both roles though.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)

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

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)

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

Tyson Mutrux (08:03)

And so I c how is that possible?

Mathew Kerbis (09:01)

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

Tyson Mutrux (09:09)

Absolutely. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux (09:09)

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

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)

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

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)

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

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)

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

Mathew Kerbis (09:18)

At a younger age, girls are definitely smarter than than boys. We and we mature far slower than they do. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (10:53)

I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of science backing that up. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (10:56)

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

Tyson Mutrux (11:26)

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

Tyson Mutrux (11:26)

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

Mathew Kerbis (12:10)

⁓ man. That is so like I can't pick one, right? It's like I need my holy I need my holy character.

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)

Isn't that tough then?

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)

Pick

Tyson Mutrux (12:12)

one. You gotta pick one.

Mathew Kerbis (12:19)

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

Tyson Mutrux (12:22)

Complexity is the greatest.

Tyson Mutrux (12:22)

I've heard a lot of people talking Whisper Flow. I still have not used WhisperFlow.

Mathew Kerbis (12:33)

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

Mathew Kerbis (12:33)

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

Tyson Mutrux (13:27)

Really? For legal

Tyson Mutrux (13:27)

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

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)

Hey,

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)

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

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)

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

Mathew Kerbis (13:36)

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

Tyson Mutrux (14:43)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (15:01)

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

Mathew Kerbis (15:01)

Right as a transactional attorney, which is what I am now. I I last month I was in the top nine percent of Whisperflow users.

Tyson Mutrux (15:36)

wow. So there's they gamify then. They they

Mathew Kerbis (15:39)

gamify test

Mathew Kerbis (15:39)

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

Tyson Mutrux (15:50)

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

Mathew Kerbis (16:09)

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

Mathew Kerbis (16:09)

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

Tyson Mutrux (16:45)

The

Tyson Mutrux (16:45)

Enterprise version is only four hundred dollars for

Mathew Kerbis (16:47)

Really?

Mathew Kerbis (16:47)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (16:51)

'Cause I've got the I've got perplexity max. So way more.

Mathew Kerbis (16:55)

⁓ Are you using comp

Mathew Kerbis (16:55)

are you using like the computer features? You're overpaying.

Tyson Mutrux (17:00)

Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (17:00)

I am overpaying for it. You're overpaying. Yeah. 'Cause the pr I I find I kinda find computer junk. Like it it's ⁓ interest. interesting. Okay. So

Mathew Kerbis (17:05)

I disagree. How

Mathew Kerbis (17:05)

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

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)

Bowser two.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (17:13)

The very nice.

Mathew Kerbis (17:28)

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

Mathew Kerbis (17:28)

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

Tyson Mutrux (18:08)

Interesting.

Tyson Mutrux (18:08)

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

Mathew Kerbis (18:33)

And it's so inefficient. I think the AI should just be able to just like, you know

Tyson Mutrux (18:34)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (18:34)

Connect and like just get it right. Right. No, you're right. Right. Very inefficient.

Mathew Kerbis (18:42)

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

Tyson Mutrux (18:56)

Jenny's ice cream is amazing. It's the strawberry is the best. I

Mathew Kerbis (18:59)

I

Mathew Kerbis (18:59)

like salt ⁓ salty caramel, which I know is a little bit of like, well, everybody likes that, right?

Tyson Mutrux (19:04)

I don't know. I don't I'm not a huge like salty in my ice cream fan, but whatever. Well here's here

Mathew Kerbis (19:09)

Here's

Mathew Kerbis (19:09)

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

Tyson Mutrux (19:12)

It's so good.

Tyson Mutrux (19:12)

Agree. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (19:38)

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

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)

No.

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)

Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (19:53)

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

Mathew Kerbis (20:07)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (20:27)

Is it WhisperFlow is that?

Mathew Kerbis (20:29)

Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (20:29)

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

Tyson Mutrux (20:39)

I'm so shocked that you just accidentally.

Mathew Kerbis (20:58)

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

Tyson Mutrux (21:11)

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

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)

I'm

Mathew Kerbis (21:19)

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

Tyson Mutrux (22:05)

a challenge to that. Okay, okay. you I do, but ⁓ we'll keep going. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (22:10)

think it's also replacing higher level stuff. ⁓ we don't disagree.

Mathew Kerbis (22:10)

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

Tyson Mutrux (22:16)

Gotcha.

Tyson Mutrux (22:16)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (22:38)

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

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)

Get

Tyson Mutrux (22:45)

out of it? Yeah. Way undercharging. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (23:05)

So

Mathew Kerbis (23:05)

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

Tyson Mutrux (23:14)

Codecs using Codecs at all?

Tyson Mutrux (23:14)

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

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)

I'm a one medical subscriber.

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)

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

Mathew Kerbis (23:39)

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

Tyson Mutrux (24:12)

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

Tyson Mutrux (24:12)

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

Mathew Kerbis (24:53)

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

Tyson Mutrux (25:14)

You didn't hold him up high enough, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (25:15)

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

Mathew Kerbis (25:15)

you know, within twenty four hours because then it's not like they're gonna get the medication delivered within twenty four hours.

Tyson Mutrux (25:51)

No, it was to be picked up. It was pick to pick up at the local pharmacy. well.

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)

within like a few hours? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)

Hey,

Mathew Kerbis (25:56)

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

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)

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

Tyson Mutrux (26:12)

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

Mathew Kerbis (26:47)

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

Tyson Mutrux (27:00)

We'll play some of that at the end, that way you have to stick around to the end of the episode. yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (27:04)

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

Tyson Mutrux (27:18)

YouTube accelerator, yeah. How

Tyson Mutrux (27:18)

do you I like it. We should just call it how do YouTube. Yes.

Mathew Kerbis (27:24)

Yes. yeah, the YouTube accelerator and like ⁓ and so you should come out to the next one. If you're watching this it's too late.

Tyson Mutrux (27:30)

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

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)

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

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)

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

Mathew Kerbis (27:43)

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

Tyson Mutrux (29:01)

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

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)

Absolutely.

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)

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

Mathew Kerbis (29:19)

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

Tyson Mutrux (30:11)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (30:17)

⁓ and it will say it will give me all the things that's wrong with this document, including formatting.

Tyson Mutrux (30:21)

giving it rules or are you just g generally asking?

Mathew Kerbis (30:24)

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

Tyson Mutrux (30:51)

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

Mathew Kerbis (31:00)

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

Tyson Mutrux (31:03)

You never

Tyson Mutrux (31:03)

I can't believe you don't use a case management system. Like how do you organize notes and files and all that?

Mathew Kerbis (31:30)

Perplexity computer or personal computer now organizes all that stuff for me. And it does cost computer

Tyson Mutrux (31:36)

Here if if you want to go look at a matter, like how

Mathew Kerbis (31:38)

It doesn't

Mathew Kerbis (31:38)

matter 'cause you just tell it what you need and it will orchestrate it all for you.

Tyson Mutrux (31:41)

Well, okay, let's say that you need to ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (31:45)

And I'm a transactional attorney too, so it's a little bit of a different ball game than a litigator.

Tyson Mutrux (31:48)

'Cause like like sometimes I need to go like through the the actual case notes on a file to like s just to get it up to speed on things. So

Mathew Kerbis (31:54)

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

Tyson Mutrux (31:58)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (32:22)

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

Tyson Mutrux (32:26)

Which is a yeah. Right.

Mathew Kerbis (32:50)

⁓ you know, is this living in Google Drive or email or where is this? Google Cloud Search just searches everything for for stuff like that.

Tyson Mutrux (32:57)

So are you b with what you do, do you ever I'm assuming you have like draft things based off of template, right?

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)

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

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)

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

Mathew Kerbis (33:03)

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

Tyson Mutrux (34:09)

Had I.

Tyson Mutrux (34:09)

Gotcha.

Mathew Kerbis (34:23)

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

Tyson Mutrux (34:35)

Did use like Clio or anything like that back in the day?

Mathew Kerbis (34:37)

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

Tyson Mutrux (34:45)

Yeah. Well have you ever used like a doc gen function on anything? Well I used

Mathew Kerbis (34:49)

Gavel for a while. Even back when it was Documate?

Tyson Mutrux (34:51)

Yet

Tyson Mutrux (34:51)

they code it, like code the documents and everything.

Mathew Kerbis (34:54)

Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (34:54)

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

Tyson Mutrux (35:06)

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

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)

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

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)

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

Mathew Kerbis (35:33)

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

Tyson Mutrux (36:47)

Absolutely, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (36:58)

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

Tyson Mutrux (37:10)

Do usually I mean, I wonder like the other side do they fight that that much? No. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (37:14)

Whoa, this is amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (37:14)

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

Tyson Mutrux (37:23)

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

Mathew Kerbis (37:31)

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

Tyson Mutrux (37:39)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (37:39)

How long how long did it take for the litigation side to wear off of you?

Mathew Kerbis (37:44)

I never really was that like like I so I I I I should say I only litigated for eight years. Yeah. Right. Like I never became this antagonist

Tyson Mutrux (37:51)

Eight

Tyson Mutrux (37:51)

years, man, it br that like that that's that's a l I mean, it aged you, I guarantee it aged you. Well yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (37:57)

Well well sure, and the billing hours didn't help.

Tyson Mutrux (37:59)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (37:59)

For that I've never had a bill, which is a blessing. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (38:03)

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

Tyson Mutrux (38:18)

Like I hear I hear them talking about all the time. Like they're complaining to me about having to argue with their client about billing time, which I think is interesting.

Mathew Kerbis (38:25)

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

Tyson Mutrux (38:44)

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

Mathew Kerbis (38:48)

Organic food. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (38:48)

Are you into like ⁓ like the moonshots and A sixteen Z podcast at all? No like Peter Diamandis and Andreessen.

Tyson Mutrux (39:19)

I

Tyson Mutrux (39:19)

I know I I I I like Andreas and and then Peter Demondis, I I know who it is and I I I like Peter Demondis. I don't know the podcast.

Mathew Kerbis (39:26)

Okay. So like these

Mathew Kerbis (39:26)

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

Tyson Mutrux (39:45)

I one thousand percent agree with that. Okay. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)

Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)

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

Mathew Kerbis (39:48)

And so I think the VCs are gonna be fine, Tyson. I think they're gonna be just fine. There's gonna be some winners, there's gonna be some losers. That's capitalism, baby.

Tyson Mutrux (40:25)

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

Mathew Kerbis (40:37)

I'll I'll talk about these these companies. So, I mean, Jack Newton and what he's doing with Clio with the V Lux acquisition is freaking genius.

Tyson Mutrux (40:45)

I th I thought that was a brilliant acquisition. Yeah. I do agree with that.

Mathew Kerbis (40:49)

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

Tyson Mutrux (41:09)

Yep.

Mathew Kerbis (41:18)

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

Tyson Mutrux (41:21)

Toll is.

Mathew Kerbis (41:46)

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

Tyson Mutrux (42:13)

Right. You have a

Mathew Kerbis (42:17)

From all these law firms and it's they're getting new data that's proprietary all the time.

Tyson Mutrux (42:21)

can this th this concerns me though. Okay, so you have like a company like Even Up Law. You ever heard of E have you heard of them? Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (42:28)

Talk to

Mathew Kerbis (42:28)

them back when they were like only like five employees. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (42:30)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (42:30)

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

Mathew Kerbis (42:51)

So

Mathew Kerbis (42:51)

they might be able to ⁓ check your terms of service and probably what what will I check because they probably can anonymize data and use it in other ways. ⁓

Tyson Mutrux (42:54)

I don't have it. I don't use it.

Tyson Mutrux (42:54)

I would have to ask them. I I I've got a a pretty cl close contact over there that I can actually ask that. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (43:05)

I want them to.

Mathew Kerbis (43:05)

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

Tyson Mutrux (43:21)

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

Mathew Kerbis (43:29)

Just announced

Mathew Kerbis (43:29)

private equity coming into Morgan and Morgan. Have you seen this?

Tyson Mutrux (43:32)

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

Tyson Mutrux (43:32)

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

Mathew Kerbis (44:24)

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

Tyson Mutrux (44:44)

Like I w I wanna hear this.

Mathew Kerbis (44:49)

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

Tyson Mutrux (45:11)

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

Mathew Kerbis (45:15)

Bring up the

Mathew Kerbis (45:15)

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

Tyson Mutrux (45:53)

Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (46:08)

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

Mathew Kerbis (46:08)

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

Tyson Mutrux (46:53)

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

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)

We will lose

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)

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

Mathew Kerbis (47:03)

some of the ethical concerns of maintaining that power.

Tyson Mutrux (47:34)

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

Mathew Kerbis (47:42)

Law for management or office management.

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)

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

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)

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

Tyson Mutrux (48:05)

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

Mathew Kerbis (49:08)

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

Mathew Kerbis (49:08)

Right.

Tyson Mutrux (49:39)

So

Tyson Mutrux (49:39)

so you're saying that the Bill of Bower is more limiting on the on law the law for Mona?

Mathew Kerbis (49:42)

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

Mathew Kerbis (49:42)

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

Tyson Mutrux (50:31)

Cracky dot AI. Yeah. Check it out.

Mathew Kerbis (50:37)

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

Tyson Mutrux (50:53)

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

Tyson Mutrux (50:53)

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

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)

And get recurring revenue. Which is predictable.

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)

I forget which one, but yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (51:28)

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

Tyson Mutrux (52:03)

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

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)

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

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)

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

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)

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

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)

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

Mathew Kerbis (52:13)

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

Tyson Mutrux (54:30)

How long didn't it take? I like that. Right.

Mathew Kerbis (54:37)

come up with and strateg and think about what are the things that this person needs that this employee needs to get done. AI will help with that.

Tyson Mutrux (54:45)

Yeah, I I completely agree. And like w how much are you I guess you're you are I mean you're still true solo. Is that how is that how you are?

Mathew Kerbis (54:52)

For

Mathew Kerbis (54:52)

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

Tyson Mutrux (55:08)

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

Mathew Kerbis (55:20)

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

Tyson Mutrux (55:32)

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

Mathew Kerbis (55:47)

No, I'm working way more.

Mathew Kerbis (55:47)

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

Tyson Mutrux (56:12)

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

Mathew Kerbis (56:29)

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

Tyson Mutrux (56:31)

Hours of every day.

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)

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

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)

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

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)

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

Mathew Kerbis (56:59)

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

Tyson Mutrux (58:44)

Really? Interesting.

Mathew Kerbis (58:46)

Because

Mathew Kerbis (58:46)

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

Tyson Mutrux (58:51)

They're great.

Tyson Mutrux (58:51)

The how do you two?

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)

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

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)

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

Mathew Kerbis (59:15)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:00:23)

Will you will you go a little more detail about what practic is? 'Cause I don't think we've really explained what it does. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)

Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:00:28)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:01:26)

That's true.

Mathew Kerbis (1:01:27)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:01:37)

an off topic question okay about that. Do you ever with the subscription model, do you ever have like fraudulent charges like people use other people's credit cards?

Mathew Kerbis (1:01:44)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:01)

For Maxim Lawyer. Same thing.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:12)

try to leverage Shopify for his firm. Fractional G C for car dealers in I wanna say ⁓ Georgia. I think so.

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:21)

Was it Steven Lefkoff? Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux (1:02:21)

Lef it had a business. It has with what you just said, he's in Atlanta. He does he he represents dealers, so it's gotta be Lefkoff. Yes, it really

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)

Yeah, it's good to have a niche, right? It is.

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:02:29)

So at a hundred dollars a month, you better be making more than that every single month through practi before we start charging.

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:37)

So that's pretty interesting. So the twenty dollars a month only kicks in after they gotten their second client?

Mathew Kerbis (1:03:42)

Yeah,

Mathew Kerbis (1:03:42)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:46)

You're thinking about your customer.

Tyson Mutrux (1:03:46)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:10)

'Cause you've I I listened to

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:10)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:04:36)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:04:51)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:04)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:25)

You need

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:25)

a product person. Yes. You need a dedicated product person that we're no, but you need a product person if you're vibe coding because you have to make the product better and make sure it works.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:28)

You're not selling us so I don't need a prog person. You do.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:28)

Yep. I get what you mean there. ⁓

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:38)

Not not necessarily like like if the CEO is also the product person of the firm, if the managing partner has to also be in the product, figuring it out how how to make it better, how to fix bugs, how to do

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:49)

Yeah, yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:52)

You have

Mathew Kerbis (1:05:52)

to have somebody focused on that vibe coding product or on all the vibe coding projects going on in the firm or in the business.

Tyson Mutrux (1:05:58)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:12)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:16)

Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (1:06:16)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)

CMOs or SOs?

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)

Cheap marketing offices.

Mathew Kerbis (1:06:46)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:18)

Which is interesting

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:18)

that and that was decades ago.

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:22)

Yeah, and this is why I'm a one medical subscriber now, 'cause my ex my experience with my doctor became

Tyson Mutrux (1:07:27)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:39)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:07:39)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:31)

Centralized.

Mathew Kerbis (1:08:32)

For like

Mathew Kerbis (1:08:32)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)

Have

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:08:47)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:00)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:00)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:10:52)

I'm I'm paying him 'cause I don't wanna do it. That's what

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)

Do

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:10:55)

It just changes the game and solos and smalls are better suited to do that than anyone else.

Tyson Mutrux (1:11:29)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:11:54)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:12:00)

Like this answer. I want a better answer.

Mathew Kerbis (1:12:21)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:12:45)

But if you're using Calendly, do what Matthew's talking about because don't give them your generic link. That's the biggest mistake you could ever do.

Mathew Kerbis (1:12:53)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:13:00)

I bet they try. Bet they try.

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:21)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:13:36)

Awesome. It's so cool. That's pretty cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:13:49)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:14:59)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:15:14)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:15:14)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:15:49)

It's like the rocks. The rocks in the bucket.

Tyson Mutrux (1:15:49)

What are the flowers? Is that is that is that the outcome that are the the output

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:15)

It's

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:15)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:16:33)

Yep.

Mathew Kerbis (1:16:43)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:01)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)

Kind of cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)

Okay. But you

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:06)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)

Dude, fantastic, right here. That's great.

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)

Typing this yourself. No, I'm typing

Tyson Mutrux (1:17:15)

but like it's coming from your brain.

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

That's

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:17:40)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:19:55)

That's a massive move.

Mathew Kerbis (1:19:58)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:20:23)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:20:36)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:20:44)

cool about any of the using any of the agents is you can just set these ten things and just go do something else, which is really cool.

Mathew Kerbis (1:20:51)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:21:18)

yes, there's the the case law coming out about that too. And like defendants or playing party in a in a lawsuit, like using Chad GPT, all that's discoverable too.

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:26)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:21:36)

Completely agree. Yeah. And you also need to be advising your your clients to not use Chad's G P T for

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:41)

Or

Mathew Kerbis (1:21:41)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:04)

Great idea. That's fantastic. Are you on X or or Twitter?

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:05)

Subscription baby.

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:05)

⁓ I'm pretty much just on LinkedIn. Okay.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:10)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:35)

like twenty or thirty X handles. Yeah. I just don't go on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:39)

Like I I don't I can't go on LinkedIn 'cause of the spam. The spam is so bad. How do you I don't know

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:45)

The

Mathew Kerbis (1:22:45)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:22:57)

I keep saying I need to spend more time on it, but I just

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:00)

Well it's how you engage. Right. So like all of the posts that I will comment on 'cause I do way more of that reply guy strategy than I do of posting. Like

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:06)

When

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:06)

we went live one on your on your podcast, like you Yeah, you went live in LinkedIn. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I forgot about that.

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:11)

That that that is the my only posts these days are because I did some kind of collaboration or I'm posting about I'm going live on Link.

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:19)

Do you are all of your episodes live on LinkedIn?

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:22)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:23:38)

Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (1:23:51)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:13)

Nice.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:13)

Yeah, it's fine.

Mathew Kerbis (1:24:21)

Like I am produced through the end of October for my podcast for a weekly pod. And I always have special episodes in between anyway.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:27)

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

Mathew Kerbis (1:24:54)

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

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:57)

All right.

Tyson Mutrux (1:24:57)

Very nice. Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (1:25:24)

Follow me on LinkedIn. You ask your favorite AI tool to tell you about the subscription attorney.

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

In this solo Maximum Lawyer Live episode, Tyson pulls a powerful story he cut from his upcoming book, Founder Optional, to explain why “gravitational debt”, all the unseen weight concentrated on the owner, eventually breaks even the best‑intentioned firms.

Using the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge failure as a metaphor, Tyson walks through how subtle ripples in your practice become waves, then fractures, and finally burnout or firm‑level collapse. He breaks down why being the most competent person in the room traps you in every role, how invisible stress compounds over time, and why real scaling requires dispersing gravity away from the founder instead of just “working harder.”

You’ll hear how health scares, missed family milestones, key team departures, and economic downturns expose the load owners are secretly carrying, plus why quiet, systems‑driven firms pull ahead while “heroic” founders burn out. If you’re tired of feeling like the bridge that everything runs across, and worried about when it finally gives way, this episode gives you a visual, memorable framework for rebuilding your firm so it can grow without you carrying all the weight.

What you’ll learn
– Why Tyson uses the Tacoma Narrows Bridge story to explain how small, “manageable” issues in your firm turn into catastrophic failures over time.
– How the competence trap keeps the most capable person in the firm doing everything and quietly concentrates all gravity on the founder.
– What “gravitational debt” is, why it never shows up on a balance sheet, and how it builds through tiny over‑extensions like one extra call or a missed T‑ball game.
– How external shocks, health scares, key employee exits, or economic downturns, reveal just how much unseen load law firm owners are carrying.
– Why growth amplifies existing fractures in your systems and leadership, turning early cracks into chasms as you try to scale.
– Practical mindset shifts to move from being the indispensable stabilizer to building a firm where gravity is intentionally dispersed across people and systems.

Highlights
00:01 – Tyson’s return to Facebook Live, why he shelved one massive book, and how Founder Optional came out of that process.
02:00 – Introducing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge story and why “Galloping Gertie” is the perfect metaphor for law firm gravity.
04:30 – How subtle ripples in a system become waves, fractures, and finally collapse when all the weight sits on one structure.
07:00 – The competence trap: why the most capable person in the firm slowly becomes the bottleneck for every decision and problem.
09:30 – Gravitational debt explained: the unseen build‑up of tasks, stress, missed moments, and responsibility on the founder.
12:00 – External shocks—health scares, missed family milestones, key team departures, and economic downturns—that expose how overloaded owners really are.
14:30 – How growth amplifies tiny cracks into chasms and why dispersing gravity is the only way to scale without collapse.
16:00 – Tyson’s closing challenge and invitations to plug into community, MaxLawCon, and The Association so you don’t build your firm alone.

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Full Transcript: 

Tyson Mutrux (00:01)
All right, we are back live on Facebook after—I don’t know—a six‑month hiatus, whatever it is. What do you really call it? A hiatus? We had switched to something else, and now we are back. I want to do something special today to commemorate us returning to Facebook.

Tyson Mutrux (00:30)
For those of you that haven’t been listening lately, I’ve got a book coming out at the end of July or early August. Becca’s going to kill me for not knowing the exact date, but I’m pretty sure it’s August 1st. It’s called Founder Optional. And today I want to talk about some of the things I removed from that book.

Tyson Mutrux (01:00)
The fun thing about this project is that it actually started as another book. I’m not going to mention the name of that book because it’s still in progress. I’ve set it aside until Founder Optional is fully done. There are some final edits I’ve got to get through, and then this one will be completely finished.

Tyson Mutrux (01:30)
That original book had gotten gigantic. There was so much in it. I realized I couldn’t release it as‑is. Technology is changing so fast, and as I was building that book, I got the idea for Founder Optional. I started to play with this idea of gravity—how, especially when you’re a newer lawyer, all the gravity sits on you, and how real growth comes from dispersing that gravity.

Tyson Mutrux (02:00)
That’s the core concept of the book. I talk about some ways to do that, and I like to tell stories to make the concepts stick. I use real examples. One of the pieces of feedback from our editor, Connie, was that I should pull more stories from real lawyers and fewer non‑legal stories. So I begrudgingly took her advice and cut some of those other stories.

Tyson Mutrux (02:30)
Today, I want to talk about one of those stories that I removed. If we have time, I might get into others, but this one in particular stuck with me. I’ve still got the chapter in front of me. I’m not going to read it line‑by‑line, but I want to walk through the parts I think are interesting and useful for you as a law firm owner.

Tyson Mutrux (03:00)
Let me read you the first sentence of that chapter, because it lays the land for you: “In November of 1940, a crowd gathered along the Puget Sound to celebrate a triumph of modern engineering, the opening of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.” This was a very normal bridge—pretty conventional—sleek in its design, economical, pretty slender in its size.

Tyson Mutrux (03:30)
The architects and engineers had done all the math. They calculated the wind loads, the tensile strength, all the different forces the bridge would face. When they first built it, the bridge behaved exactly as predicted. Everything was fine.

Tyson Mutrux (04:00)
Then, shortly after, it began to move a little bit. Nothing dramatic, nothing that felt truly alarming. It just rippled. When people drove across it, they noticed the roadway would ripple as they went, which is... unsettling. You’re thinking, “What is going on here?”

Tyson Mutrux (04:30)
But the movement was gentle. Some people described it as if the roadway was breathing. Over time, people got used to it. It became part of the bridge’s character. They even gave it a nickname: “Galloping Gertie.” It was almost affectionate. You don’t usually nickname something that terrifies you.

Tyson Mutrux (05:00)
They viewed it as harmless. And then, four months later, the bridge collapsed. Completely collapsed. All the work they’d done—gone. It didn’t fail because of some single violent gust of wind or a massive storm.

Tyson Mutrux (05:30)
It failed because of the repetition of small, subtle nudges and movements—these little oscillations that were just small enough to ignore. When they repeat often enough, they begin to amplify over time. On that day, the wind struck the deck at just the right frequency, just the right number of times.

Tyson Mutrux (06:00)
The bridge responded. The pattern intensified. More wind, more movement, more resonance. It built up until the structure couldn’t handle it, and then the collapse happened. People described it as very cinematic. But the real story isn’t just in those final minutes. It’s in the months before, when everything seemed manageable.

Tyson Mutrux (06:30)
The reason I included this story in the original book is because, as law firm founders, we live on bridges like this. In the early stages of a firm, having all that gravity in one place—on you—feels efficient. You’re doing everything.

Tyson Mutrux (07:00)
If a decision needs to be made, you make it. If a client needs reassurance, you provide it. If your bookkeeper needs numbers interpreted, you do that. You’re the law firm owner, you’re the founder. In most cases, you’re the most competent person in the firm.

Tyson Mutrux (07:30)
Even in more established firms, the shortest path between a problem and a solution often runs directly through you. And it works at first. Just like the bridge worked at first, routing everything through you works in the early days.

Tyson Mutrux (08:00)
Psychologists call this the competence trap: the better you are at solving something, the more the system sends it back to you. You’ve probably done this with employees. You’ve got a really competent person, so everything gets unloaded onto them.

Tyson Mutrux (08:30)
You wear that employee out. Their strength attracts more of the same demand, over and over again. Each decision feels productive. Every time you review something or fix something, it reinforces your indispensability—or theirs.

Tyson Mutrux (09:00)
You start to believe that every time a conflict comes to you, you’re the stabilizing force. And slowly, just like those little ripples in the bridge, without any big storm or major announcement, the mass starts to concentrate. Gravity builds on one person.

Tyson Mutrux (09:30)
In that chapter, I called it “gravitational debt.” I’m not fully adopting that term anymore, but the idea still matters. It’s a gravitational buildup. It doesn’t appear on a balance sheet. You can’t see it in your P&L. It’s invisible.

Tyson Mutrux (10:00)
A lot of times you don’t even realize it’s there. But it is. It’s building and building. We tend to think of burnout as this big, loud event that shows up overnight, but burnout is usually the collapse, not the buildup.

Tyson Mutrux (10:30)
The buildup is those tiny things: one extra call you take a day, three extra emails you review on the weekend, the one T‑ball game you miss, the one dinner you skip. It’s the accumulation of small sacrifices and extra load.

Tyson Mutrux (11:00)
Then burnout hits, and that’s the bridge collapse. That’s the moment the structure gives way. It’s a really big problem, and for a lot of founders, it feels like it comes out of nowhere—even though it’s been building for years.

Tyson Mutrux (11:30)
That’s why I wanted this story in the book, and that’s why I’m talking about it today. I’ll probably do a few more episodes like this with chapters that didn’t make the final cut, because these examples you can visualize are powerful. They help people really feel what’s happening in their firms.

Tyson Mutrux (12:00)
I also love that we’ve taken real stories from real attorneys and put them into the book. Many of them are people we’ve had on the show—Tiffany Weber, Mark Carlin, Jordan Ostroff, and others. Some have shared their stories on stage at MaxLawCon.

Tyson Mutrux (12:30)
I’d much rather have people come on and tell their own stories. But these metaphor‑driven messages are powerful too, because you can see them in your mind. Roughly eighty percent of people are visual learners, and stories like this bridge make complex concepts tangible.

Tyson Mutrux (13:00)
Let’s get back to the chapter for a couple more highlights. This kind of gravitational buildup often takes an external shock to expose it. That’s the unfortunate part. It’s hidden until something forces it into view.

Tyson Mutrux (13:30)
In the revised book, I talk about this in a different way, but the pattern is the same. It’s usually a health scare, a major missed personal milestone, a key leader leaving the firm unexpectedly, or a significant economic downturn. Those events hit the firm hard.

Tyson Mutrux (14:00)
In those moments, founders often say, “I didn’t see it coming,” or “I didn’t realize how much I was really carrying.” It wasn’t just a couple extra tasks. They were carrying everything—the massive load plus all the stress layered on top.

Tyson Mutrux (14:30)
It all concentrates on one person, and then it becomes too much. That one extra thing is the straw that breaks the back. Growth amplifies this. As you begin to grow, those small ripples become waves.

Tyson Mutrux (15:00)
You get fractures in the bridge as you scale. Those fractures often start early in the firm’s development. They’re never addressed, and as volume increases, those small cracks turn into massive chasms. Eventually, the bridge collapses in a monumental way.

Tyson Mutrux (15:30)
In the revised version of the book, I use some examples of big firms that experienced monumental failures. I’m not going to give away everything here, but the common denominator is mass concentrated on one person. No one else is set up to absorb the load.

Tyson Mutrux (16:00)
When there’s no one else to carry some of that gravity, any shock can be catastrophic. That’s the danger of founder‑centric firms. On paper, they look impressive. In reality, they’re one bad gust away from collapse.

Tyson Mutrux (16:20)
All right, I think that’s all I’m going to cover from this chapter today. It’s actually fairly long, and we don’t have time to go through every story that was cut. I’ll address some of the other ones on another show as we get closer to the book launch.

Tyson Mutrux (16:40)
In the meantime, make sure you get your tickets to MaxLawCon at maxlawcon.com. We’ve got our conference coming up in October, and it’s one of the best places to be if you’re serious about building a firm that doesn’t collapse under your weight.

Tyson Mutrux (16:55)
Check out Becca’s list at backislist.co to find the best vendors for your firm. And if you’re interested in The Association, join us at maximumlawyer.com. Get plugged into a community so you’re not building alone on that bridge.

Tyson Mutrux (17:10)
All right, everybody. Good seeing you. I’m happy to be back on Facebook, and we’ll talk to you later. See you, everybody.