In today’s episode, we sit down with Jared Correia, CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, host of the Legal Toolkit podcast, and author of Twitter In One Hour For Lawyers. Red Cave Law Firm Consulting provides subscription-based business management consulting for lawyers and law firms and additionally provides chatbot software for attorneys.
In this episode, we chat with Jared about chatbots, creating high-value content, and what he’s learned from more than a decade of podcasting, as well as…
- Twitter in one hour for lawyers
- Content marketing and social media marketing
- What style of content is best for blogging
- Providing value, and
- The trends he sees in the industry
Listen now…
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Davina Frederick: Hello and welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. Our mission is to provide thought-provoking powerful and practical information to help you in creating your own sustainable wealth-generating law firm without overwork or overwhelmed so you can live your best life. I’m your host, Davina Frederick, and I’m here today with Jared Correia, CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, CEO of Gideon Software, Inc, host of the Legal Toolkit Podcast, and author of Twitter in One Hour For Lawyers.
Red Cave Law Firm Consulting provides subscription-based business management consulting for lawyers and law firms. And Gideon Software provides chatbot software for attorneys. Welcome, Jared, we’re so pleased to have you on the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast.
Jared Correia: Thanks for having me. When you read it, that sounds like a lot.
Davina: Well, and I even left out some stuff. I left out Attorney at Work, I left out the travel podcast. I’m there’s many, many things, right? And we’re going to dig into all of that day because I’m excited to talk with you. You are, you write frequently and in different places about law firm management. And so I know we’re going to have a lot of things to cover. But I want to start out with just giving me a little bit of background, how you came to be here doing these things now.
How Jared Got to Where He Is Today
Jared: Right. So I’ve been consulting for a while now. So I have my own consulting business, obviously, as you mentioned, but I started in this game consulting with the state of Massachusetts. So I was essentially, like the chief consultant for attorneys in Massachusetts. There was a free program there run by the state Supreme Court and that’s who I worked for. But before that, I went to law school not having much of an idea of what I wanted to do in law school when I get there. So I was on the college debate team. And I was like, What do I do with this? I guess I can go to law school.
And so that’s where I went. And I went to a local law school and Boston Public Law School. And I was in law school for about two years. And I was like, legal stuff seems really boring. So I decided that it would be cool to have like a consulting firm for lawyers. So I went to the Career Development Office at my law school, and I was like, Hey, I think I want to build a consulting business for lawyers.
And they were like. that’s really stupid, you should get a real job. However, I did not really listen. I’m not particularly good at that. And so now like all these years later, I’m running my own consulting business. And several years after that conversation, the law school actually hired me as a business management consulting for their lawyers. So that’s the fun part of that story that I like to tell. But I have no ill will toward my law school. They were great. I think, I like to think I was just a little bit ahead of my time.
Davina: Yes, yes, it sounds like it. And you know what, other people have visions in their mind what attorneys should do and not do, or what people in general should do and not do, right? And we all have to live our own, follow our own hearts and live our own dreams. I mean, I remember I’ve been told all kinds of things by other attorneys who were a lot older than I was when I grad Well, I graduated law school, it was a second career for me. But I had people who had visions about the way that I should run my law practice. And they didn’t like it when I went against the grain. So there are always gonna be those people out there, you know?
Jared: That’s a big issue with law firms, like, not to get too far down the rabbit hole here but like, identity issues with lawyers are a big deal. Like lawyers have this idea that they need to be a lawyer, but they need to act in the way that other people think lawyers should act. They can’t be themselves, which is really unfortunate and like, not every profession is like that. So lawyers who do things differently, lawyers who focus on different things who are nontraditional, like, those are really lawyers that I gravitate to. And I think they have the best, most fulfilling practices frankly.
Davina: Right, right. You know, and the thing is, is that you can also, I mean, I had kind of a similar experience. I did open a practice after graduating from law school, but I didn’t love the day to day practice of law. And it just didn’t reel me in the way that I thought it would. You know, you go to law school, and you kind of have a vision in your head of what it means to be a lawyer and, you know, and then you get out and you’re like, oh, and then you start slipping through all that paperwork every day. And it’s like, Okay, wait a minute, going to court getting yelled at by, you know, JAs.
Jared: No, it’s funny. Yeah, my kids are always like, your job seems really boring. I’m like, Look, I got news for you. Every job is really boring. You just need to find some this a little less boring.
Davina: Right, right. Your job does not sound boring because you certainly keep a lot of irons in the fire. So you like
Jared: Yeah, it’s more exciting than law practice, let me tell you.
Davina: Well, let’s talk about, I want to talk about Red Tape Legal but I want to ask you about Gideon Software because I love that. I found you felt attorneys with, use chatbot and for to help with a client, you know, retaining clients, the client communication and that kind of stuff. And I find it fascinating because I know there are a lot of attorneys who are, speaking of attorneys, going against the grain here.
I know there are a lot of attorneys who are going to hear this they’re going to go No way. I don’t use my social media. I don’t use messenger for getting cooperating clients. I don’t want, that’s my personal. So there’s always this debate that I have with my clients and other women lawyers and say, but you know, are you missing opportunities here, right? And so talk to me about that. And tell me, first of all, for those who may not know, explain what chatbots are.
All About Chatbots
Jared: Oh, sure. So like, everybody’s been probably on websites where there’s like a chat function. Probably the simplest examples like Gmail, Google chats, like, bottom right-hand side of the page there’s a messaging app. What’s interesting is that like, you’re right, I think most people still at this stage, think of those as like, personal use tools, to the extent that like, I use this in my personal life, and I don’t want to mix that with business. But if you look at the data that’s coming on, how about that, something like 90% of people want a message with brands, rather than sending traditional emails, or phone calls.
And there are various reasons for that, like I think people tire of having phone calls because there’s a lot of effort that’s involved in that. I think people don’t like the fact that they’re not getting responses quickly enough because consumer engagement now is often about like, rapid response times. So what we build these chatbots, which essentially have conversations with people, but through a set of scripted conversations, or some level of AI or machine learning.
So the idea is that people can have engagement/conversations with a brand, but not with a human. So law firm consumers, particularly chat is useful for them because they want some level of engagement from the law firm or they’re going to move on to the next law firm. So utilizing a chatbot is a way to get somebody to execute on a call to action. They can schedule an appointment, they can get some feedback, they can request a meeting, they can do everything from a bot, and there’s some level of give and take.
So being able to do that, it increases conversions significantly for law firms. And we’ve seen like two times conversion rate on a particular call to action with the user right now. And the advantage of using a bot rather than, like individual humans, is that this service is a lot cheaper than like a live chat service by magnitudes. So that’s kind of how we focused on this particular software proposition. And we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from lawyers. We’re in beta right now. We’ve got 500 users in the beta. So we’re getting some significant traction which is exciting.
Davina: Wow, that is exciting. I, you know, the thing that I think would hang me up but I think would hang other attorneys up, I know because I thought about chatbots before, is for me, for my business, is number one, the challenge of creating scripts that would make it seem like a natural conversation, right?
And anticipating what the other person is going to say. That’s the first thing. And then the second thing, and I want you to address that, and the second thing is, you know, how do people respond if they know that this is a bot? Like if they catch on that this is what’s going on are they gonna go, you know, Oh, she’s not even talking to me. You know, like, right?
Jared: No, I get it. Yeah. So for number one, right, I think that’s a legitimate concern. And the problem is that for lawyers, especially, like, lawyers talk like lawyers. So we have people who design scripts, and they say something like, were you involved in a tort, yes or no. And a potential law firm client is like, what’s a tort?
I don’t know what that is. So like getting lawyers these natural language is kind of what we go for. And we’ve actually got a lot of templates that are available. So we built out a lot of scripts for various practice areas. So we would say something like, you know, were you injured in a motor vehicle? Or were you injured in a car? Something like that. And using that natural language makes it a lot easier for people to respond. And they’re like, Okay, I get that.
I understand what that is. And I can now converse because it doesn’t sound like I’m talking to a robot, it doesn’t sound like I’m talking to a lawyer. Like, natural language is the way to go. And as I said, we build up scripts for that. So in all instances, I think like as a lawyer, you’re trying to drive business. So you want to be as consumer-friendly as possible. So everything you write, everything you do, should ever consumer focus on it. And that includes designing the scripts for these bots.
The other piece of it is really interesting. So I can see where you’re coming from, like, what if somebody gets turned off by a bot because it’s been concealed from them. And our approach is like, we’re not concealing anything from anybody. Like we want them to know it’s a bot. We indicate that it is before any conversation starts.
Like hey, the chatbot and interestingly enough in California, for example, they have a law that says you have to indicate that it’s not a human that’s talking to them. There has to be some kind of indication of that. So we try to make it very clear that’s it’s a bot. And what we found is that people like it because they have some inkling that they’re not going to get immediate access to a lawyer. But if they can do something to move the process forward. And so for example, we built in like an automatic scheduling tool into the bot. So people can get through like four or five questions and they can schedule an appointment with an attorney.
Like they feel very good about that. And they can do it quickly, which is, I think, the other piece of it. So I think, if you were like 85 years old, and you were on a chatbot, you’d be like, what the hell is this? But it’s like you’re like a 40, 50, 30-year-old consumer, like it’s a very obvious way to interact with a business in 2020. And it’s clear what’s happening. People are not offended in any way. And like I said, we get really good rates in terms of like people who complete conversations, people will actually access a call to action like booking a meeting.
And they’re very comfortable that. On this topic, like one of the things we’re building out is this hybrid live chat tool, which is, if it’s a client who’s interested, and we have a whole hierarchy of like, whether or not somebody is a good client for a law firm. We have tags and labels that you can aggregate together to build out like an information so that they will say, this is an A client, this is a B client, this is a C client.
Like, you can get pinged that you’ve got a notification for like an A or B client, as a user, you can then come in and live chat with them and the bot essentially switches over from a bot to a live person, but you’re not paying for live chat service. You have somebody from your office come in, and it’s not a tire kicker, it’s somebody who’s an actual viable client for the firm. So those are great questions. And like I think the tools that are available now really answer for those pretty effectively.
Davina: Yeah, it’s a wonderful screening tool. I love it. And you know what’s interesting, what is so interesting to me is that, you know, my clients now are other lawyers. And I am on social media a lot. And I find that that is how most all of I’d say 95%, more than that probably, of my clients reach out to me, they do it through messenger. They do it through a messenger app of some kind. And they’re, so attorneys are using it to get services. So why would they cut themselves off from the opportunity to get clients the same way, you know? And,
Jared: You know, it’s funny that you mentioned that because I think attorneys are ahead of this a lot in terms of like, their professional interactions. But interestingly enough, when you talk to them about doing this with consumers, they’re like, hold on a second. But they do it like every day with other lawyers.
Davina: Exactly, exactly. I mean, that’s, we’re communicating through texts and apps and all kinds of things now because nobody wants to talk on the phone anymore. And when you’re, what I love about, you know, these cut any way we can automate things, right? That’s going to help us because we’re busy. We’re busy, our team’s busy. We’re producing the work, we’re doing the things.
And so anything that you can do, you can automate and sort of answer some of those standard questions that are going to come up and also gather the information you need to determine whether or not this is an ideal client for you. I mean, hey, why wouldn’t you do that if it’s effective and it’s working, you know?
Jared: Oh, totally. Like this notion of like omnichannel marketing, even across different messaging systems. This idea that, like, there’s so many tools out there that automate the practice, like, it’s frankly a great time to be running a small law office.
Davina: Oh, I know. I know. I talk about that all the time. Like even me, even with me, I started mine back in 2007 and I say Facebook was just an infant and Instagram hadn’t been born yet. And to me it doesn’t seem like that long ago, right? But it, from a technological standpoint, man, leaps and bounds, leaps and bounds.
Jared: Totally.
Davina: So that, so I’m excited you told us about that. And because I think a lot of people will want to check that out. And you guys are, you’re taking on like beta clients now, or is it something you’re still waiting to roll out?
Take Advantage of This Beta Software!
Jared: Yeah, maybe by the time. Yeah, by the time this podcast releases we may be out of beta, but if not, if anybody’s listening definitely take advantage of the beta because it’s going to be free until we come out of beta. We want to build out a couple more features more fully before we release from beta. And so we want to have the best possible product when we come out. And then anytime like having this many people in beta, it allows us to test a lot of things and get attorneys’ impressions of what we’re doing and like improve the product as it goes along. So
Davina: Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. I love it. Alright, so shifting gears a little bit then let’s talk about your podcast because I’m a fan. I follow Legal Tool Kit. I listen.
Jared: Oh, thank you. Very kind of you to say. You and my mom I think listen to the show.
Davina: I wish that I could fit in all the podcasts that I love to listen to. So I listened to a few episodes of different ones and then they haven’t go back and listen to all of these, right? And then, of course, you know, who’s got that kind of time? Between that and all the other information, we’re trying to cram in our head and then all the course fun podcasts.
Jared: There’s too much good content out there.
Davina: Yeah, I know. But Legal Toolkit, how long have you been doing that?
Jared: So believe it or not, I have had that podcast for 12 years.
Davina: Wow. 12 years?
Jared: That sounds crazy. Yeah, well, I was one of the first people
Davina: That is crazy.
Jared: That’s ancient. I think I was one of the first people to do a legal podcast. I got lucky frankly. Like many things that have happened in my life is getting lucky. There was a podcast network, and they had a guy who was a host and they were like, the host can’t show up today, for whatever reason. And so they were like, would you like to sub in for this guy? And I said, Sure. I don’t even really know what a podcast is but I’ll try it. Like, why not? And then the other host never came back. And I just took over the show. And now we’re, like, 12 years, almost 200 episodes in.
And it’s kind of crazy that it’s still ongoing. And then like, in the interim, in the space of time between starting that podcast, and now like, podcasting has totally exploded. Like, I used to have to explain to people like what a podcast was. They’re like, What are you talking about? What is this thing that you do? And now the conversation is totally shifted, where people like, Oh, you have a podcast. That’s really awesome. So it’s been funny to watch that develop over time frankly,
Davina: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, what’s amazing too is 12 years have been doing this and you haven’t run out of topics or guests or things to talk about regarding law firm growth and management, you know, because it’s just an ever-changing landscape.
Jared: It’s kind of like what you were talking about before, which is like, it’s a totally different world now than it was five years ago. There’s always like, there’s always new technology. There’s always new people entering the scene. So it’s like, it’s actually very easy to keep it up, believe it or not.
Davina: My issue is that there’s not enough, like, I’m not at a point where I can do it daily. And there’s always topics I want to talk about, you know? Yeah.
Jared: I can’t totally do a daily podcast. I hear you.
Davina: Well, you can’t totally do a daily podcast because you have a, what are two other podcasts that you’re doing as well?
Jared: Oh, just one.
Davina: Just one. Just one other one. Okay. Okay.
Jared: So this is mostly my wife is a part-time travel agent. And she booked a lot of trips for people. And like, we were looking around online and we saw that there weren’t lik,e a lot of podcasts about traveling with kids. And we’re very militant about like, taking our kids places with us because I want them to be like, well rounded. And so like my son is eight. He’s been to 45 states or something crazy like that. He’s been to Hawaii, like three times. We live in Massachusetts. So I want them to get that experience.
And so we look for ways to travel with a family without like, breaking the bank and also making it enjoyable for them. And so, basically, we decided to talk about how we do that in the podcast and also like specific trips we’ve taken. And so we’ve released something like 20, 25 episodes or something like that. And we took a bit of a hiatus because we had a little bit of travel on both ends of late, but we’re going to start doing new episodes in the near term.
But yeah, we knocked out a bunch of different things, a lot of diversity. And we just talk about how to travel with kids because again, like, I couldn’t find anything online that really addressed that. And it’s a really fun podcast to do when and you know what this is like. You’re always talking about one thing, right? I’m always talking about legal and law practice management and business management for lawyers. So to change gears and to talk about something else is like a fun release.
Davina: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And how old are your, you have your son who’s eight, and how old are your other children?
Jared: I have a son who’s eight and I have a daughter who’s just turned five. And like I said, we try to travel everywhere with them. And we call the podcast The Lobby List because my kids are the obnoxious kids who will like go into a hotel lobby and rate it. So we get to the lobby and they’re like, this is an eight or this is a 6.5. Or this is a 4.5 I’m disappointed. And so that’s why we call the podcast the lobby list because like, my kids have a running list of lobbies that we’ve been to that they rate.
Davina: It’s so hilarious. That is hilarious. Yeah, they’re, like so sophisticated and like travel snobs at a very young age because they’ve just experienced everything.
Jared: Sometimes I feel like I’m creating a monster.
Davina: I have one question. Will you adopt me? Because I would really love to travel. To go to Hawaii three times.
Jared: Yeah, we’ll take you places. You just let me know. I’ll let you know when the next trip is coming up. We’ll get you booked.
Davina: You guys are living that good life. Your kids are, I mean.
Jared: My kids definitely are. But it’s something we put a priority on. Like, I want my kids to get real-world knowledge. I want them to be well rounded. I want them to know there are communities outside of the one that they live in every day. So we’re going, next month we’ll be in Europe for 10 days.
Davina: Wow, that is so enriching and for their lives, you know, that’s going to set them up as citizens of the world for their lives, you know? How awesome is that?
Jared: I hope so. Yeah.
Davina: Yeah. So and then they’ll probably have their own podcast, you know, within a couple of years anyway. And
Jared: Right, right. And then I said, you know, when you guys are older, you can take me on trips. I don’t know if they’re bought into that yet, but I’m working on it.
Davina: You’re working on it. Yeah, you’re laying the groundwork. There won’t be any place left to go.
Jared: Right. Right. Right.
Davina: So tell me, so you’ve got two podcasts and you also are a pretty prolific writer. I know you work for, you’ve written the book. And I want to talk about your book, and but you also write for Attorney at Work. You are one of their writers or contributors there and am I missing something?
Jared’s Deluge of Quality Content
Jared: I put stuff out all over the place. I’ve always been a big believer in content marketing, kind of jumped on that a little bit early too. I think content marketing, social media marketing, like, that’s really effective for small businesses, even law firms. And a lot of folks don’t focus on that. But it’s a great way to drive authority online. I’ve always been really consistent about writing. So I have a column with Attorney at Work, which I really enjoy.
I’ve been doing that on a monthly basis for Gosh, probably a decade at this point. I’ve had columns with other places as well, but some of those are like shorter-term projects. So I did a 10 article series for Above the Law a little while back on like legal tech startups. I had an advice column with Lawyerists for a little while. I was writing with American Lawyer Media for a little bit, but then I do a lot of one-off projects, blogging, white papers, webinars.
I do a lot of webinars as well. You know, once you’ve kind of established yourself in a marketplace, people tend to reach out to you and then you have the opportunity to do some of this influencing marketing, which is great in terms of like, expanding your profile and also in terms of getting those backlinks for search rankings. So all of it has worked out for me. And I, you know, I tend to write fast. I just have the ability to do that. And I talked to some people and I’m like, Yeah, I wrote this like 1500 word article. I knocked it out last night and a lot of lawyers are perfectionists, so they’re like oh would take me like three weeks to do that.
Davina: Right. What, they gotta site everything and all this. So you’re like you’re writing a blog, not a, you know, scholarly article or paper or something. That’s where people, that’s where they get themselves hung up, you know?
Jared: Oh, yeah, that’s such a great way to put it because lawyers but they’re right. They’re like, I got a site to this or like, I have to have authority for this. And like, man, it’s just a blog. Take it easy. Just put it out there. Yeah, like writing For the consumer writing like you speak, like that makes it so much easier. And lawyers just like they have a hard time getting to that point.
Davina: Right. And, you know, the thing about it is though, is that even we attorneys who have all this education, and we have high reading comprehension skills and stuff like that, when we’re scrolling social media or looking through emails, we don’t want to read heavy stuff like that. We want to read something that’s short and quick and gives us, you know, what information we need to improve our lives and our businesses and we want to scroll on, you know? So that’s the way you have to think about it when you’re putting out content, right?
Jared: I tell people all the time, it’s not that consumers are dumb. It’s just that there’s like information overload. And you’re right, sounds like you do the same thing. I do the same thing. I’m scrolling. And if something is like interesting to me, I’ll scan it. But yeah, I don’t want to read like 2500 words on a topic. I’ll read like 500, 250. Like, that’s enough for me.
Davina: Yeah, get those subtitles and say, Okay, here are the number one secret that I need.
Jared: Exactly, yeah, draw people in, get him to read a little bit. And it’s about like, repetition, creating authority. And like, that’s the end goal, not writing something that like a judge would be like, this is great. That’s not what you want.
Davina: Well, you know what I find interesting, and I’m sure you’ve heard the same kind of thing in clients who are reluctant to put things out there is they make it too hard by overthinking it and saying, oh, I’ve got to write this comprehensive. Well, that’s going to lead me to have to explain this, explain this, and they don’t, and they also like, what’s going to be the most powerful, important topic I could do?
And like, you’ve got more knowledge in your little finger, about your, you know, area of law or your worldview or whatever, then laypeople do, right? So you can pick something that to us seems like such a simple, obvious thing and write about it off the top. You should be picking things that you could write about off the top of your head, right? You’ve already got the knowledge there.
Jared: Yeah, well, you know, it’s funny, like I had a, I have a consulting client of mine, and we just started working together. And he sent me like this letter he wrote to his clients, he’s like, do you think this is useful in any way? He wrote like this four-page letter to his clients with like, 10 questions. 10 common questions about like a particular practice area of his. I’m like, dude this is like 20 blog posts.
Put it online, and you’re good to go. But it seems attorneys think that way they do. Like I’ll send a letter to my clients about this topic, or these topics. And then they don’t think of it again, they’re like what application outside of like, an old school written letter would this have? And you’re right, attorneys are sitting on like these content gold mines that they’re just not converting on. So everything’s in place. It’s just a matter of having the courage and the consistency to put it out online.
Davina: I think also the fear is that, you know, if I give away all this information, then people aren’t going to want to hire me, because I’ve already told them what to do, you know? And what do you say to that when you hear that one? I know what I’d say but I wanna know what you’d say.
Sharing Knowledge Is Never a Bad Thing
Jared: Okay. I’ll say what I say. Maybe we can trade. I’ll say what I say it and you say what you say, Well, I think part of it is like that fear because they’ve always heard from other attorneys that like, Don’t give away the farm, right? You need to leave people wanting more, so they’ll hire you. But then there’s this issue of ethics as well. I think attorneys like, oh I can’t about that because I’m giving them legal advice.
But on that score, that’s not really a case because you’re not addressing like a client’s hypothetical. You’re talking about the legal process and how it works generally. And then you’re also able to attach disclaimers to that and non-engagement letters if you decide not to hire somebody. So you’re pretty square as far as that’s concerned as well. But like this whole notion of like somebody’s going to take your legal process advice and use it is so crazy. Like, and studies show consistently that that’s what clients want.
They want information about attorneys’ niche expertise, and they want information about the legal process. So it’s not like a client is going to say, hey, that’s great. I’m going to go to law school, get a legal degree, prosecute this case on my own, and I’ll let you know how it goes in like five years. It’s like when I hire a plumber to snake my toilet I’m not gonna listen as he tells me how to do it and then be like, Okay, thanks. I’m gonna go do this myself. It just doesn’t happen. So
Davina: And even if you could, people are too lazy anyway. You’re like, No, I’d rather do something else, you know, they have other interests, other things they’d rather do.
Jared: All that fear is overblown. And then the other piece of it too is that like lawyers are particularly well situated to offer that advice. And legal consumers are looking for a guide. But they don’t want to do it themselves. if somebody is contacting a lawyer, studies have consistently shown that they’re very into hiring that lawyer. They’re not going to go in and do it on their own. So if they don’t use you, they’re going to go use somebody else. And that’s potentially somebody else who’s willing to explain the legal process to them.
Davina: Right, right. And the thing about it is you could put it all out there and people are going to go out and search for information. We go to Google and, The Google and esurfing or whatever you’re using, and you’re searching for information, okay? And when you’re searching for the information, somebody’s gonna put something out there. So there are people putting, why wouldn’t you want your name to be the one that is associated with this great information instead of your competitor’s name being associated with this great information?
Because who do you think then they are going to think knows their stuff. And they’re going to appreciate the value that they’ve provided. without charging them anything. Here’s this value they provided that I got for free. Now I’m going to feel more inclined to say okay, they really know what they’re talking about.
Jared: Totally. Great point. My opinion is always better to control the narrative than not. You’re spot on there.
Davina: So tell me about Red Cave Legal. And you have this subscription service that you, where you provide consulting for attorneys to help them grow their businesses or to help them manage their businesses.
Jared: Yep. So as I mentioned previously, I worked for the state of Massachusetts for several years as their consultant. And I had two kids in daycare and I was like, Man, this is really expensive. I said, I need to get like a real job that pays real money. So I was working for a nonprofit, essentially. And so I said, like, Look, I get all this interest from people around the globe, frankly, who you want to work with me on consulting in terms of like the law practices. And like, I’m not actualizing any of that.
So I left there around 2016. So it’s been about five years since I’ve had my own company. It’s a little bit different than what I was doing. With the states. I found that like, a lot of the people I talked to, I talked to them once and then I talked to them later, like five years down the line. And I’d be like, how’s everything going? And they were like, well, it’s still the same. Man, I would get nowhere with people. So I decided I wanted to do this on a subscription basis. So the way it works is essentially that people get an hour month with me to talk and run their businesses, like strategy session.
So we talked about like, okay, here are the 20 things we’re working on, here are the two or three things we’re going to focus on this month. And we try to get after like practical solutions on how to do that. Most of its related to technology, marketing, financial management, growth, standard stuff for law firms. But at this point, I probably consulted with like 5000 law firms or so over the last 10 years. And like, I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of things, there are not a lot of things that I haven’t seen.
So addressing this with lawyers is kind of old hat at this point and it’s just a matter of drilling down to that specific law firm and what they need. That subscription service has been ongoing for a while now. Got a decent chunk of clients doing that with me across the globe at this point, and that’s been going really well. And then I also work with some Bar Association. I actually do outsource consulting for Bar Association. So I actually took what I was doing in Massachusetts and I, like outsource it as a consultant to Bar Associations that don’t want to hire somebody full-time to do that kind of work.
Davina: Oh, great, terrific, terrific. In doing this work, you know, you were talking about, you’ve probably heard everything now. And what I always find so fascinating when talking with law firm owners, and is that is the pushback of well we can’t do that in my practice area. Or we can’t do that in my, you know, my geographic location, or this won’t work. You know, the famous This won’t work. You know, but you find after doing this work for a long time, you know, what have you found?
Jared: Well, it’s funny, people like how do you work with an attorney in California, and then the attorney in Alabama and the attorney and Uganda. And I’m like the principles are generally the same. It’s just a matter of applying it to that jurisdiction or that particular practice area. And it’s not all that different. But I think the thing which you probably found as well as there are more commonalities than there are differences.
And I would even stress beyond that, like, a lot of it is not like they’re just commonalities to running law firms, there are commonalities to running small businesses like full stop, including law firms. And lawyers are often not looking at like other industries or other business types to draw inspiration. But I’m always interested to see what other types of companies are doing because there are applications for legal. And frankly, there are also applications for those other companies within legal as well.
But as we talked about before, like there’s a lot of isolation, especially with solo and small firm attorneys and those people are mostly head down on the work they’re doing, and they’re not spending time managing their business. But if they did, they would see that like, a lot of this stuff is like applicable regardless of where your law firm is located, what your practice area is, especially in terms of like marketing and technology.
Davina: Right, right. You know, it’s funny, one of the things that I’m in all these, you know, groups on social media and stuff like that, and lawyers will go on and express they’re upset about this client and this client doesn’t want to pay or this client, you know, did this thing that upset me or whatever, and the lawyers or other lawyers are chiming in, you know, about this or that. And it’s always so funny to me, because I’ve owned different businesses and I’ve had a law practice.
I have this business I’ve had, you know, I owned a high-performance fitness training studio, I’ve owned some other businesses and it’s so funny to me because I read it and I think, you know, attorneys tend to think that this only happens to them. You know, but you ask any other business owner out there and those attorneys who were saying this only happens to lawyers, I’m the only one that they, that people don’t want to pay. And you’re like, Are you kidding? You’ve obviously never owned another small business.
Jared: Payment processing, e payments. Does that work for businesses? Do people outside of law use that? I’m like, Yes. In fact, they do. Microsoft Office, same thing.
Davina: Now there are management tools of all kinds out there and chatbots and all kinds of things. Yeah.
Jared: And that’s the problem. Like, lawyers, a lot of what lawyers think is like, because they’ve got tunnel vision they think like, okay, like, do other law firms use this or is this something that’s been done elsewhere? And by and large, the answer is yes. There is always a use case in place somewhere.
Davina: Yeah. But and we’re not being singled out because we’re attorneys, you know? For people, you know, who try to get things for free or take advantage or whatever, because if you’ve owned another business, you know that they’re always giving you out there like that, you know, who just want to try to get our best deal they can or get the most free information they can or whatever, you know? You wrote a book Twitter in One Hour For Lawyers. Tell me what, of all, because you’ve had many, many topics through the year and through your podcast, like so why Twitter in One Hour for Lawyers?
Jared: I’m kind of an early adopter, traditionally, of technology and new ideas. And so around the time I started getting active on Twitter, like, I was also getting active with the ABA. So when I was a lawyer, I wasn’t particularly active with the American Bar Association, but I was like, a consultant for whatever reason.
So right around that time was like a confluence of events. I was getting active on Twitter, people were noticing me and ABA was producing this series of books like this in one-hour series. And the idea was like, the author is going to teach you how to do one thing within an hour. And so they just reach out to me and they said, Do you think you could put a book together where you could tell people how to use Twitter and an hour? I’m like, Sure, why not?
Put the book together, I’m like, I wrote this book, probably like, the month before my son was born. So, my wife really hated me during this period of time, but I got through it, got it published. And it’s funny like, I still have people talk to me about the book, the book when I was 10 years old at this point but I do talk to attorneys who are like, Hey, I read that book, and I utilized it. And I’m actually drawing business from Twitter, getting those
Davina: Oh, it’s still relevant.
Jared: Personal development connections. Yeah, I mean, like, the ideas are the same, regardless of the fact that the platform is changed slightly. And most of what I talked about in that book is also true for other social media sites as well. So I am it was a really interesting experience. And I know for a fact that people have used that book too good end so I was very happy to have done it. I’ll tell you that I write more, you know, white papers, webinars, just because those are easier than writing a book.
And part of the drawback with a book is like, especially a paper book like that, like it ages relatively quickly. So now I do more like evergreen type of content. But it was a really good experience in that people have used it, continue to use it. So I was glad to be able to do it.
Davina: Yeah. And Twitter, now, you know, we have, the president Twitter’s, and that’s his main platform. And he’s very effective and getting his message out there so
Jared: It’s so crazy to think of. Like 10 years ago, could you imagine a president doing that? No way.
Davina: No, there’s a lot of things I can’t imagine the president doing. We won’t go down that path. But it’s funny because I like, I have a Twitter account. But I tend to ask, everybody sort of tends to find platforms that they like that they tend to gravitate to more than other than we can make some predictions about which ones you know, you should be using. If your ideal client is x, you know, then you’re more likely to find them here, then you are there, and stuff like that.
Jared: Well, that’s the analysis. I think. I think you’re spot on when it comes to that. Like, it’s not necessarily about the channel that you enjoy using, it’s about like the channel that your clients are using.
Davina: Right, right. So I do have before we wrap up, I do have a last question here and this is what are your thoughts about Mike Judge and Idiocracy.
Jared: Great movie. I have to say though, like, my favorite Mike Judge movie is Office Space.
Davina: I picked that up on one of your podcasts.
Jared: Yeah, I’m a Mike Judge fan. Like, Idiocracy is a movie that people don’t know about. You got Luke Wilson in there you get Dax Shepard before he was famous and basically like Luke Wilson goes into the future and everyone’s really stupid. Like, he’s a file clerk in present day any becomes like the Secretary of State and saves the world. It’s a crazy movie, but like Mike Judge had produced some like, wild movies. And it’s not even his best movie, like Office Space, I think is better than Idiocracy. But that’s one that people don’t know. It’s really good.
Davina: I love that. I love, though I’m a big Mike Judge fan too. I’m a King of the Hill fan.
Jared: King of the Hill is great. I love that show.
Davina: Yeah, yeah. My husband’s always calling me Peggy Hill. And it’s amazing how many I do you know how many things I do that are very Peggy Hill like, trust me. It is amazing how many things he does in a very Hank Hill like.
Jared: Could be worse, right?
Davina: Yeah, yeah, no, it’s absolutely hilarious. And I love both Office Space and Idiocracy. They crack me up. So I heard you mention that,
Jared: Go watch those everybody.
Davina: I heard you mentioned that on the podcast and I thought, Oh, this is gonna be great. It’s gonna be a great interview.
Jared: And it has been. I’ve really enjoyed this. I appreciate you having me on.
Davina: Thank you so much. And so tell us how everybody can find out more information about you and find you if they want to reach out to you.
Jared: Oh, sure. Yeah. Happy to talk to people and have them reach out to me. Probably the two best places to go are my consulting website, which is redcavelegal.com, RED CAVE LEGAL dot com. And for the software stuff for folks interested in the chatbots, you can get a demo at gideon.legal. So that’s GIDEON dot legal.
Davina: Awesome, awesome. And you also pass the spelling portion of our podcast today.
Jared: I thought I would throw that in there.
Davina: Yeah, yeah. It’s helpful. It’s helpful. Listen, I have a name like Divina Frederick so I’m always spelling I say, and I spell. So I appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I’m sure our listeners will too. And Jared, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you today. I really enjoyed it. And I’m sure you and I could probably talk for another hour, but we’ll wrap this up for those people that like, get listen to two or three-hour podcasts.
Jared: Right. Thank you. This has been a blast.
