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AI for Small Business Owners: 20 Hours a Week of Testing w/ Brent Stewart · Real Estate Investing with RealDealCrew

0:00
A trial lawyer with 30 years of experience just told me that if your staff won't
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use AI, they're stealing hours from you.
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That's Brent Stewart. And he's spending 20 hours a week right
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now tearing apart every legal AI system he can find.
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In this episode, you'll learn why he keeps his AI walled off in-house instead
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of letting it touch the open internet.
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the exact contract system he negotiates so no AI vendor can lock him in on price,
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And how renting his own office building back to his law firm turned
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it into an accidental depreciation play against his legal income.
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If you like systems like this,
0:40
head over to realdealcrew dot com.
0:43
Let's get started.
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We have Brent Stewart here with me today,
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and you can find what he does by heading over to StewartlawOffices.net.
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And that's going to be a clickable link in the show notes.
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You can also call 866 Stewart.
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That's that's an awesome phone number,
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easy to remember. But we're going to be talking about AI
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and the legal ramifications of all of this and how people are applying this
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in their in their businesses. But
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This is this is gonna be a great episode in a can of worms that we can go down.
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So I really appreciate your time here today,
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Brett.
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Hey, I'm really glad to be here.
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I did a lot of research and I love your podcast.
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I think a lot of people do. I think everybody should get on there and give
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you some good reviews, give some fives.
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I think it's important in today's world to let people know if you like what you're
1:39
watching so that they know that to give you more of it.
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I I appreciate that call out. in in fact I I would welcome any
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of that because you're right. It is the thing that kinda keeps us
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in front of others. Y you you've been in the law industry for quite some sign.
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I think I saw thirty plus years of trial lawyer fighting insurance companies.
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How how did you
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Yes, we've been we started
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Well go ahead.
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Yeah, go ahead. Give us a little g little background on on all of that.
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Well, I started in nineteen ninety-five on my own,
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and what I had done was did a little bit of a marketing study
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and looked around South Carolina and decided which areas were growing the fastest.
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I was a marketing finance marketing major in undergrad and found three locations
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I liked. I picked Rock Hill outside of Charlotte because it's a
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big growing industry and the banking was coming in and I saw a lot of growth there.
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And one of the reasons why I also started buying real estate and made
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a real estate company that rents to my law firm and started doing that
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as well as the law. And so the areas kinda helped me with the growth of
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the value of the property here.
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That's that's interesting that you took that approach so early on.
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Most people they kind of launch a business because it it just feels right
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or there's kind of a gut instinct.
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You kind of took a different approach and kind of evaluated the market
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and tried to understand where you you best fit fitted in.
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Like w was that intuitive or did you find that training somewhere in particular?
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Well, I'd done I'd worked for a big firm that did a lot of advertising
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and so I'd learned a little bit of that and I had worked for a trial firm that
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did more trials, not as much advertising.
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So I tried to put the two together.
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And what I learned fast was I couldn't afford to market in the big
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f the big industries like Charlotte,
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Charleston. The yellow pages, back then it was yellow pages.
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Cannot believe that is gone, but
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I couldn't afford that. So what I did was I picked the markets,
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like the markets around the big markets that were growing,
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because they were cheaper to get into.
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The real estate was cheaper to get into.
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And so by grabbing those areas
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that nobody else kind of wanted back then.
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It helped me establish myself in those markets quickly and now
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I'm benefiting from the growth of those markets basic basically
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s being swallowed and becoming Charlotte and all the bigger cities together.
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So that's kind of how I put it together.
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Yeah, a bit of a longer term play.
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Yes, a little bit of a longer term play,
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but strangely it's it's coming back.
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Like these markets outside of the cities are now,
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according to like the search engine people that I'm talking to,
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those are the areas to concentrate on because everybody beats themselves over
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the head to get into those bigger markets.
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And people seem to forget the outside markets and those people need legal services,
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they need homes to live in. So a lot of times it's smart to go a little
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bit outside of where you might wanna be and be to the area that actually needs your
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service.
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It's interesting you bring that up because I do a lot of local SEO for s some
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s some businesses as well. And we actually go go about it that that
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way is to determine where you can actually make some inroads.
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Like everybody is fighting over the scraps in a in a in a particular region.
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Sometimes you're missing the mark if you're if you make a couple quick direction
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changes, you can actually see some pretty significant lift in your
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in your lead generation.
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You're absolutely right. Absolutely right.
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So we're gonna t talk a little bit about AI and and how you're seeing
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it imp impact the legal industry to begin with,
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but we can't help but notice that there's been a couple cases and and
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a few lawyers that have been making the news cycle just because they've kind
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of just taken Chat GPT's word for it and presented it to the to the judge.
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Like what are your thoughts on some of this?
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Well, so I'm 62, so I'm doing my best to get up with AI.
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So what I've done is the past
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Four months I've dedicated 20 hours a week of going through all
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the different legal AI programs that are out there.
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And I've looked into Claude, and I think Claude is one that is like outside your
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firm. So things that you're not in control of can come in.
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the ones that I like best for legal are the ones that are more in-house,
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where you feed the knowledge into the AI system,
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and so there's less of a chance of stuff that's not accurate coming in.
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But the bottom line is if
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If
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you're using AI entirely to do your job,
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you're gonna get in trouble just as if it you're using a law clerk
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to write the briefs and you don't read them over.
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You have a duty, and if you're gonna earn your money and do the best
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for your client, you have to go over everything you file and double check
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it and check the indexing, checks the facts,
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check the case sites, or else you're gonna end up in trouble.
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That's the bottom line. So I think AI is helping us,
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it helps us do our work quicker.
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in fact, the staff is some of them are fighting and not wanting to use it.
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And I think not learning to use AI creates a situation where you're kind
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of stealing hours from your boss.
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Because if it takes four hours to do a demand letter or write a complaint,
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and you can do it in two plus fifteen minutes of checking over your work,
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but you insist on doing it the old school way,
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you're taking an hour and three-quarters away from your employer.
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So I think
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Everybody owes it to themselves and to their their clients,
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to their employers, to learn AI,
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make sure you check it, but I think it saves time and if you don't
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use it you're taking you're charging your clients too much or you're taking time
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from your business.
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Hmm. That's a good perspective.
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I I guess I I'm sure a lot of people don't think of it that way.
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Is that we i it it sounds like you almost are saying that we have
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an obligation to use some of these new tools as they're becoming available.
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Well, and some of the judges and some of the legal things I've looked at,
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some of the judges are saying to some of the bigger defense firms,
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you know, big defense firms do billing.
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We kind of do a contingency work where we get paid on what we bring in.
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But the judges are expecting
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the big firms to train their people on AI,
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they're not gonna let you keep billing twenty hours when AI cuts that time back.
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They don't believe the firm has to learn to do as effectively and for
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the best for the client. So even the judges I think are expecting bigger firms
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to start using AI and not bill twelve hours on something now they can do in six.
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Yeah. I I think that's another perspective that I th I think is a misnomer too.
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You you're basically you've you've repeatedly cut maybe the processing time in half,
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those are your examples. I think a lot of people just kind of expect
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AI to magically produce these things in minutes instead of hours,
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and you're doing your due diligence just to make sure that everything
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is is absolutely correct.
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So it and everybody's afraid, and I think some of the fight back from staff
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is they're afraid it's gonna take their job.
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And that's not what I think is going to happen.
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I think that
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The people that learn to do it and use it effectively are going to
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be guaranteed a job for a lot off longer.
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I don't think we may have to hire as many new people in the future.
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And I think we're better able to handle growth without having
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to hire somebody quickly. But I don't think it's going to cut back on
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the need for employees if you use it right.
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And I and I think that you almost need a new employer or new employee
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to monitor the whole program and make sure that the material you're putting into
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your AI system.
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Is proper as well. And someone to manage it and make sure there's no glitches.
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So I think we almost need a new employee just to manage our new AI system.
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So you you mentioned, you know,
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having something running locally.
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Are you running like a local model i on a like a Mac Mini or something?
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Is that how it looks or what is the infrastructure there to to keep things local
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Well
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like
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you?
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there are tons of legal based AI systems now that
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now attach to like your case management system.
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So we chose one of the there's probably eight or nine out there
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and there's probably gonna be twenty next week.
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But we chose one system. So that system hooks up to our case management system,
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it connects to our emails and it connects to our
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system that does the scheduling and it goes through all different places,
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but it doesn't go out into the market in general.
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It doesn't pull case law off of the general internet.
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So other than what it comes with,
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which is based on
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It was created for personal injury lawyers.
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So we have what it comes with it set up with,
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but everything else we feed into it.
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We feed the South Carolina workers' comp rules,
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we put the case law in it that we want,
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we put our forms, our briefs, everything in it.
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So it doesn't go outside of our system and it but it goes through all
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the records we put into it, but it doesn't go out into the general AI environment.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, I I think it kinda does.
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You you also mentioned that then it it also connects to your email and
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a few other things. Is it doing any any like proactive effort to prepare
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for your day or or how does that how does that process look?
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We're on the fourth week of this new system,
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so it's getting better every week.
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But what I found amazing is like I can say
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Ours is called Supio. Supio, please go through my Outlook box and pull
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any emails pertaining to this client.
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Or can you go? One of the more amazing thing is I can say,
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pull up my most productive three staff members,
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pull up my least productive three staff members,
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and it'll come back and just put bang,
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bang, bang, bang, bang, why, what they're doing,
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which cases have been sitting.
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It's making management a whole lot quicker.
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And the end making it more effective and giving me a lot less heart attacks
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on the cases getting worked.
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Yeah, i not it it eases your heart attacks but probably giving your staff members
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some themselves.
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Well, i but if they use it the way I'm using it,
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they should feel better too, because they can go in and say,
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which cases do we need these medical records in or what have we missed?
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Do we miss have we missed any bills?
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Are there any liens from medical providers that we're not seeing?
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And before they would have to go through the file page by page by page.
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The accounting w I would make the accounting take the physical file
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and go through it page by page to make sure we didn't miss any liens from medical
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providers or did the client promise money to somebody.
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So now all that is scanned in the file and we can just go through it quickly.
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We're not missing any liens. which kind of how I justified
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the price of the AI is not cheap.
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It's expensive. But if we miss if we make up by by mi by fixing mistakes that would
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have cost us money, I think it's gonna pay for itself and then some just
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by making us that much more effective and and not so likely to make mistakes.
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sure. Well that that's a that's a good approach too.
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I mean it it it's an investment just like anything else,
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right? Like you're you can probably tie things right back to any kind
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of dollar amounts. Some of those in especially in the legal world,
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if you make a mistake, though those mistakes can be extremely costly.
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Yeah, yes, and the thing in the we're we have ethics committees that come after us.
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So if we make a mistake, your smartest thing to do is just say,
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Hey, it's a mistake and take take take care of it.
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So there's no hiding it. So if it's there,
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we take it, we pay it, and we deal with it.
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And the AI is making it so it's less likely to miss that kind of mistake for sure.
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It and and for the building
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As it ~
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No, go ahead.
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And for the management
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of the buildings, it's a big it's helping us as well too.
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Because you know with commercial buildings,
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you have to the fire extinguishers have to be extinguishers have to
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be checked every year. The roofs,
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you want to make sure the gutters.
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We can program this all into our AI system.
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And so then we get exactly what we need to do monthly for the maintenance
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of all of our buildings without having to have it
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We go in every year and c we used to calendar everything,
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like the fire extinguisher for Ebenezer Road,
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that needs checked in July. The Beauford office needs checked in August.
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So we would make sure and not miss anything.
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And now all this stuff, we just put it into the AI,
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and it just moved once it takes care of it,
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it lets us know it's done and moves on to the next year,
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and we don't have to do anything with it.
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You ever concerned about being a little over reliant on these tools?
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Like what if what if something crashes and and something is missed along the way?
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So I am more concerned about it than my younger attorneys.
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I still carry that black calendar around and write down everything
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on my hard calendar. And I beg all the younger lawyers to do it,
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and they won't do it. But like every Friday,
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the first thing I do when I get home is I make myself a drink and I
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sit down with the calendar and physically look at next week,
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and it's not on my calendar, look at the computer and look at the calendar.
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And I've never missed a date, never missed anything in I think I've
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been out I've graduated law school in 89,
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so all those years. And I really think it's because it's great
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to have something that makes it easier,
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but it really only takes about 20 minutes to go through three months
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and make sure everything's on your calendar that you need to know.
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So if the computer screen goes away,
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I still have everything written down
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in that little black bible that I've created and and th and right
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and it's funny that you say that because tomorrow is where it says it's time
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for you to buy your new calendar for next year.
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And so I'm gonna
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Mm-hmm.
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email everybody again and say,
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who wants this hard calendar? And nobody's gonna reply Except for me and
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I will be writing everything down again.
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Can't you can't beat the old analog redundancy.
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I mean that's it it's probably gonna gonna prove itself out one of these days.
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So eventually I think that with the well,
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I guess if the internet goes down,
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not, but so we have our case management system that calendars it,
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and we have the the AI now that calendars everything.
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And so I guess the thought process for the younger guys are we have these
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two systems, but if the electric's down and everything's down and you can't pull
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up either, then they have nothing to go by.
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I do make a girl at the front desk keep a hard calendar as well,
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but I'm not sure she's as diligent as
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What I put on mine.
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Sure. Well, just to remind everybody if you l like what we're chatting about so far,
16:12
do us a favor, head over to his website.
16:14
It is Stuartlawoffices.net. That's going to be a clickable link in the show notes.
16:19
If you found some value in what we're chatting about so far,
16:21
do us a favor, share this with one of your friends.
16:24
If you're watching us on YouTube,
16:25
give us a like and subscribe. You you've mentioned your your real estate investing
16:32
and and you kind of have a unique situation where you you took some coaching and
16:38
Found the strategy of acquiring a property and renting it back to yourself
16:42
and I think your wife has part ownership and like what what caused
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Yes.
16:46
you to s to go down that rabbit hole or and has it been fruitful for you?
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Well, I started years ago buying the office buildings that I liked
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and renting them to my law firm.
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So I set up a separate corporation specialty properties that rents
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to Stuart Law Offices. And then during COVID,
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I kept getting these emails from this guy that said,
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there's t pay ten thousand dollars and we're gonna do a seminar on how
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you make your real estate active and how that changes the tax benefits of that.
17:15
Of doing that change. And so it was COVID and I didn't have much to do,
17:19
so I signed up and I was like,
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if I get screwed and I don't learn anything,
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well then that's the case. But when we went through it,
17:27
it I saw how it could apply to us because we were managing
17:30
the property ourselves anyway.
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My wife and I were spending hours and hours and hours making sure that
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We we're renting to our cells,
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but you still have to make sure that everything's maintained,
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that it's cleaned, and so we were putting hours and hours into running the building.
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We weren't paying anyone to do it.
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so my wife was unemployed, home with the kids.
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The kids were at the age where we could make her the active manager.
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So we then contacted some lawyers,
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we get got her changed to a ten percent ownership role of the company.
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She manages the everyday operations of
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The roof needs fixed. There's a leak here.
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Who's gonna cut the grass? And she does all that management.
18:07
And that's allowed us to then take our profits and losses is off of
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my actual income from my law firm rather than depreciating
18:16
the remodeling and everything else slowly over the time period.
18:19
So it's kind of accelerated depreciation and helped us out tax wise when
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we remodel a building. You know,
18:25
every ten years you have to remodel an office building or it just starts
18:28
to fall apart. So it's greatly helped us with the tax burden.
18:32
Yeah, that's interesting. And and what's what's something to call out there
18:36
is that once it once it made sense to you,
18:38
you kind of ran with it and actually implemented these things.
18:41
I I can't tell you how many times people they get bored,
18:46
they sign up for for some sort of training and then they do nothing with it.
18:51
I I think it we we chatted about it before we hit record is
18:55
the whole analysis paralysis.
18:58
It's like it's best to implement some of this stuff and actually see the value.
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I I like to try every year to spend two or three months of doing
19:08
as many webinars and free trials of a bunch of different things.
19:14
And this year I almost got caught by the analysis by paralysis because I think
19:18
I way overdid the AI stuff and it almost became too overwhelming.
19:23
I didn't know how to grab the one item.
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And at a certain point, the quicker you grab it,
19:29
Realize it's a mistake and then jump and go to the next one,
19:32
you're gonna learn something from the mistake.
19:34
As long as you don't lock yourself in too long on some kind of a contract,
19:38
you're in good shape. But if you just keep saying,
19:43
I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to,
19:44
I'm going to, and nothing ever happens,
19:46
then you're not gonna go anywhere.
19:47
So I think people really need to trust some of their gut feeling,
19:51
realize that they're gonna learn from the mistake,
19:54
as long as you don't do something that's unethical or just stupid.
19:58
A mistake is gonna lead you faster down the road once you make the path straight.
20:03
Like I I'd actually hired another AI company that I loved.
20:07
I mean, I I really liked what they did.
20:09
They taught me an awful lot, but we couldn't get it to integrate into my firm.
20:12
And so we had hours and
20:16
thousands of dollars into this one direction.
20:18
It wouldn't integrate the way we needed it to integrate.
20:21
But if I hadn't pulled that plug on that one,
20:23
I wouldn't be where I'm at now with this one.
20:26
We've negotiated this one for one year and after that year we decide if
20:30
we want to keep it. And then if we keep it we're gonna we're we're locked
20:33
in for the price for the next two years.
20:35
Because my concern with AI is you get
20:38
addicted to that one kind and then they raise it so high that you can't keep them.
20:43
But you also don't want to have a four year contract with AI changing as fast
20:47
as it is changing. So what I'd recommend with A AI people,
20:51
if somebody wants to jump on AI,
20:52
get a contract that locks it in the price for three years,
20:56
but get you an out in a year in case changes come about that you don't want
21:01
to be locked in for so long.
21:02
Sure. Well y that was something that I wanted to chat about a little bit too,
21:06
is that you mentioned early on that you put in or you are putting
21:11
in twenty hours per week on AI and all of these tools.
21:15
That's an investment that most people aren't making right now.
21:18
What made you con convince that you needed to do that?
21:22
Well, I'm old so I do more Facebook than anything else.
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And I I think I got on the what's the word I'm looking for?
21:29
On the a agorism that
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Wanted to scare the hell out of people my age.
21:33
And I kept getting these things saying,
21:35
if you don't learn AI, you'll be out of business in four years.
21:38
I'm 61 with a kid in college wanting to go to law school,
21:43
another one in high school. And I I've got to work more than four years
21:46
to get these kids through these schools.
21:47
And so I think it was the panic that made me also every everything that they sent
21:53
me saying, free trial or a webinar on AI or a day to learn Claude,
21:59
I would just put it aside to
22:01
learn and I just thought that that was the most important thing I could
22:05
do now to make my business streamlined into the future and to keep
22:08
it cutting edge per se was to spend this time there and in the end it would
22:14
I'd make up for it next year and I didn't want to fall too behind
22:18
all the younger guys that are probably a little bit more versed in it.
22:21
So it was it was a fear,
22:22
Well with ever
22:23
general fear.
22:25
With everything that you know now and especially with the landscape that that
22:30
we find find ourselves in, if you had to start all over again,
22:34
how how would that well how would that change things for ya?
22:38
You mean if I had to start my firm from scratch or w or what we specifically?
22:41
Yeah, especially now with
22:42
AI in the play.
22:43
Well, I think if I had to start over from scratch,
22:46
I would have a bunch of different new systems.
22:50
I think part of the problem with what my firm is now,
22:52
and I think we'll fix it over the next couple of years,
22:54
is I think that a a lot of firms,
22:57
not just mine, are kind of Frankenstein'.
22:58
You know what I mean? Like so we have a case management system.
23:03
on the bottom, which keeps track of the clients coming in,
23:06
and that's where we run our conflict checks.
23:08
It's where we store all the medical records and data.
23:12
And then attached to that, we have our intake machine.
23:16
And that's Zapier connects it to that.
23:18
And then over that all we have Supio,
23:21
our AI, and everything's kind of pieced together.
23:24
If I had to start over
23:26
entirely I would try to get something that's more cohesive and less vendors
23:32
Because the problem I'm finding are the vendors want to now become
23:35
one in everything. They want all your money.
23:37
So your case management system doesn't want to tie into which was
23:41
the problem with the first AI.
23:42
They didn't want to integrate in with that system because now they're offering
23:48
AI too. So my case management system doesn't want me they don't want my money
23:52
to go away, even though they're not as good as that other AI system,
23:55
they don't want to let it come in.
23:57
So I would try to find something that was more cohesive
24:00
and less Frankenstein together.
24:02
Yeah, I think we're gonna see more and more of that as as we we progress here.
24:06
you know, th they wanna keep you locked in.
24:08
That's one of the reasons like AI itself,
24:11
the more you use ChatGPT or Claude,
24:14
the harder it is to jump from from model to model because you know,
24:18
you just don't wanna start over again because that that particular model already
24:23
has your history, some background knowledge,
24:25
and
24:26
And when you make the jump, even though they they claim there's a migration process,
24:31
it does lose some of that context.
24:33
So it it actually makes makes these AIs pretty sticky.
24:37
I end up running multiple now because it they all have their strengths
24:42
and and it's it's easier in the end.
24:45
The the the first one I did, I thought it was funny like it was named after a lady,
24:52
she had a nice voice, and she was so complimentary to everything I did,
24:56
and it made me crazy as a lawyer.
24:58
I felt like
24:59
I felt like everything I said she agreed with.
25:01
And I've noticed that with a bunch of AI things,
25:03
they're very agreeable. And so I I usually tell my AI thing,
25:06
like, don't agree with me. The last thing I need is anybody to agree with
25:10
me when I'm already down the wrong path.
25:12
I'm like, AI, fight with me, play the devil's advocate.
25:16
I learn more by hearing that I'm wrong.
25:19
But if you notice some of these AI things are like,
25:22
that was very wise of you. You point and it's very complimentary,
25:26
and and while you love that, I think it's kind of scary that that's
25:28
Mm-hmm.
25:29
Yeah, th that that's very true.
25:31
And I think it's you know, our generation.
25:34
You know, I'm gonna I'm in this I'm in the same age group as you and it
25:39
and it's you know, Gen Xers we really want to we don't need the compliments,
25:45
we just want to get to it.
25:47
The the the first one they so they had this group that we'd all
25:50
get together and talk about our experiences with this female AI bot that
25:57
we had bought. And it was funny,
25:58
like she was very complimentary,
26:00
and a lot of the smaller firms that were working with it,
26:02
it almost they almost seemed to like it become their friend.
26:07
Like because they were smaller firms and they relied on it.
26:10
And I started to feel like these people
26:12
If they could, they'd go to dinner with her.
26:14
Like I mean, it was the strangest kind of environment.
26:16
And I don't want the I don't want the I don't want to be that comfortable with AI.
26:19
And I think that it's not my generation to be,
26:22
but it was really strange how these people just seemed to be falling
26:25
in love with this AI bot. And that just wasn't what I wanted.
26:31
So I was always saying, treat me a little bit harsher.
26:34
I think I need a little bit worse treatment.
26:36
Yeah. I I I think I I'm the same thing too.
26:38
That's and that's probably why I kinda gravitate for my daily work with Claude
26:45
because it didn't seem to be as sycophantic as as Chat GPT had been.
26:50
So well there there are points that if after a rough day of fighting with
26:53
my kids that I tell the AI thing to be nice to me,
26:56
because then I'm I'm ready for a little bit of nice treatment.
26:59
But for the most, for legal, I think the best lawyers are the ones that that
27:05
go the other direction on the case.
27:07
Don't keep don't point out all your best things.
27:09
Your worst items, when you learn how to overcome those,
27:13
your good things are still there.
27:14
And so that's what I kind of want the AI to do for me as well.
27:17
You know, a as you've been working through these now cases as as a lawyer,
27:21
have you have you been able to predict or see some gaps from from
27:27
the competition that when you're when you're in front of of a judge
27:32
or what have you, you kind of can f foresee some some issues because they maybe
27:38
are a little reliant too reliant on AI or
27:41
you've been able to take advantage of of certain situations because they might
27:46
not be aware of I'm not even sure if I'm formulating this question properly,
27:51
but sometimes I think that
27:52
I get
27:53
there might be some gaps there that you you might be able to detect ahead of time.
27:57
I think that I can tell now which of my competitors or which of
28:01
the people I'm against are using AI.
28:03
And a lot of it is with the speed with with which they can respond
28:08
to different kinds of work. still really in tune with starting in nineteen ninety
28:13
We used fax machines and letters.
28:15
So and originally it was the fax the fax machine was back where they
28:18
had those wax wheels. So if you filed a motion,
28:21
they'd get it in ten days something would come back.
28:24
Now if we file the discovery motion and I get something back in 36 hours when they
28:30
have 30 days to do it, I'm fairly aware of the fact that they're using some type
28:34
of AI to go through the that much material and get it back to me.
28:38
So that puts me a little bit
28:41
It it lets me know that we're gonna the well,
28:43
A, that I'm glad that we're using AI too,
28:45
because you I don't think you can compete time wise if you choose not to use AI.
28:50
I think it's gonna do a big damage to your business.
28:53
As seeing it in court, I don't think it's
28:57
I don't think it's mainstream in court yet.
28:59
I think people are still really cautious to go there with it.
29:02
But I see it more now in discovery practice.
29:04
And when I get something in, it's easy for me to stick it into my computer and say,
29:08
where are the inconsistencies?
29:11
What what are they what are they saying,
29:13
but not really pointing out directly?
29:15
And I think it helps me narrow things down.
29:18
Do I still have to read everything?
29:19
Yes. But it kind of focuses me in the directions I need to be and
29:23
can point out things that maybe are a little bit.
29:26
not screaming out loud that I need to notice,
29:28
but it kinda takes me to him quicker.
29:30
It's interesting. It it do you find that like the judges and
29:36
the bureaucracy of it, are they leveraging these tools at all or is that they still
29:41
really behind?
29:42
I'm going through all the judges in my mind.
29:43
I think the judges are very aware of the AI.
29:46
And I think that some of the older ones are more skeptical about us using it.
29:51
And some of them have actually,
29:52
if you're gonna use AI and what your emotions,
29:54
pleadings, or whatever, you have to sign something saying that you're using it.
29:57
They want to know that you're using it,
29:59
so you have to come clean with the fact that you are using it.
30:01
I think the younger judges are smartly learning how to do it.
30:06
And I think right now we're up in that.
30:09
I'd say it's it's it's darker now than a gray area.
30:12
Like I think everyone knows it's here to stay.
30:14
I think that the people that are fighting it are gonna it's not gonna happen.
30:18
I think it's gonna come way quicker.
30:20
I think if you ask me this question in a year,
30:22
it's gonna have a totally different answer.
30:24
But I think it's taking hold and it's taking hold quicker than anybody thought
30:28
it was going to.
30:29
Yeah, I've been saying for a while that this is probably the biggest leveling
30:32
of the playing field we've ever seen since maybe the internet
30:36
was was created itself. Like would you say that's the case here when it comes
30:41
to the legal landscape?
30:44
I I think I mean absolutely like they can they can send bo before they would send
30:48
boxes of discovery and you would have to hire people and trust them to read like
30:54
say 20,000 pages of documents.
30:57
Somebody had to read every one of it.
30:59
And you couldn't have just one person do it.
31:01
So you'd have to hire twenty people to do each do one box.
31:04
Then they'd have to get together and put it together.
31:06
Now
31:09
a one person firm can have somebody scan all that stuff in,
31:12
have AI do the summary, and I'm not sure you're getting any less than when
31:17
you had the ten people doing it over here.
31:19
You may be getting even more. So I think it takes away the power of being
31:23
a large firm the David and Goliath thing of law may be becoming less.
31:29
Yeah. This is this is really interesting.
31:32
Because it's it's one of those things.
31:33
I've I've I've talked about the fact that in the real estate world it it's
31:39
it is one of those oddballs where I think we're kind of slow to adopt
31:43
any kind of new technology. And I I'm I constantly am picking
31:48
on realtors and brokers especially.
31:50
They just seem to be slow to to adopt.
31:52
I would just imagine that there's a lot of apprehension,
31:55
especially in the legal world,
31:56
regarding some of these tools too,
31:58
but it
31:59
It sounds like you're on the forefront of this and trying to trying to find where
32:02
it fits.
32:04
There's a guy named Sean Calgary who has developed an AI being.
32:10
And i i I think he calls it Watson.
32:12
Like short like what is it? Sherwood Holmes and Watson.
32:15
And he's developed one that just reads contracts,
32:18
real estate contracts, contracts in general.
32:20
It is probably the best.
32:22
thing I've seen out there for people for more of the real estate direction.
32:25
Like I've kind of concentrated more for PI.
32:27
But there's other that read contracts and the one that he had is just amazing.
32:33
And I d I dunno like I'm almost tempted
32:37
to get it and use it just for my everyday life.
32:39
Because you always get the time Warner contracts.
32:42
You get so many contracts throughout your life.
32:45
Nobody reads them. We all accept them.
32:47
We don't know what they say. And then when everything blows up,
32:50
we're like, my God, what do we do?
32:52
This
32:54
being that can interpret all the contracts and from the very beginning say,
32:57
where can they screw screw with me?
32:58
Where is this gonna cost me money?
33:01
What are the problems so I've got this warranty,
33:03
what does it mean? I think anybody could justify several thousand dollars
33:07
a year to have something like that because I think it would save you a
33:10
ton of money in your everyday life.
33:12
Well, this was just fantastic,
33:13
Brett Brent. I I really appreciate your time.
33:16
Again, you can find more at Stuartlaw Offices dot net.
33:20
Before we jump into the rapid fire and start closing this episode out,
33:24
is there anything else we should have tried to hit on?
33:26
No, I've had I just to I've had a good time talking about this.
33:29
The AI I find myself wanting to talk more and more about it,
33:32
and I was really afraid of it.
33:34
And I just would encourage anybody out there to get on and at least play with chat,
33:39
you know, with one of the chatbots or it's amazing how intuitive it is.
33:45
It's almost like an Apple phone.
33:46
Once you start using it, it becomes easy.
33:49
At first it's scary, but get out there and give it a try.
33:51
And I think
33:52
It's fun, you'll learn a lot, and it opens up a whole world
33:56
of information that you'd have to spend a lot of time researching to get to.
34:01
Yeah, and that's actually something that y you know,
34:03
you just reminded me of. I'm running iOS twenty seven beta right now on
34:08
my on my phone. And Siri
34:09
Right.
34:11
is advancing finally very quickly.
34:14
So I think you're gonna if you haven't played with that yet,
34:18
you're gonna be surprised.
34:20
I will have to do that.
34:21
Well, it was great to chat with you,
34:22
Brent. we'll jump into the rapid fire and close out this episode.
34:26
All right, let's do it.
34:28
What lie do real estate investors often tell themselves?
34:32
A lot of real estate investors tell us.
34:33
That it's gonna be easy to get the work done and flip the flip the building.
34:37
If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice,
34:40
what would it be?
34:41
To spend more t for new builds,
34:43
to spend more time going over the initial contract,
34:46
because I always thought that the contract was the contract and there
34:48
was nothing I could do about it.
34:50
And I should have spent more time looking at when the project gets delayed,
34:55
what I'm entitled to or what I need,
34:58
because that's what keeps the builders on track and I just failed to do that.
35:02
Yeah, I want you to go back in time and look at what was your very first hire when
35:07
you were trying to scale your operations and would you make a different choice?
35:12
No, I absolutely would not. And my my f first hire was still a good friend
35:16
of mine and I still beg her to come back to me all the time.
35:20
She went to work for her husband's business.
35:22
And so nope, I would have I my first five hires I would take back
35:28
a hundred times over and I'd I'd if they had kids,
35:30
I'd hire their kids. So no, I love my first hires.
35:33
And then finally, what single tool or process have you implemented that
35:36
has had the biggest time saving impact?
35:38
It would have to be this new Supio P I I AI system.
35:41
It's I'm getting emails from the staff saying I love it,
35:45
I love it, and we're still like in the process of we can get rid of
35:48
it and try another one. And it seems to be loved by eighty five percent
35:52
of the staff. And if you can get anything over fifty percent,
35:55
it's a win.
35:57
Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that.
35:58
Well, Brent, this was fantastic.
36:01
One more time you can learn more at Stuartlawfices dot net or you
36:06
can call them directly eight six six Stuart.
36:09
I really appreciate your time,
36:11
Brent. This was great. I hope you'll consider coming back again sometime.
36:14
I would love it any time.