Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / What Law Firm Leaders Learned in 2025 | Countdown the Top 10 Jon & Marc Podcast Moments of the Year

Transcript

What Law Firm Leaders Learned in 2025 | Countdown the Top 10 Jon & Marc Podcast Moments of the Year · The Jon and Marc Podcast

• 0:13
  We're here at the Linear Trial Academy.
• 0:15
  We have one speaker, right, Mark Lanier.
• 0:18
  I think we can check that box with this conference that the
• 0:21
  speaker is the penultimate speaker that you want.
• 0:23
  What are some of the other things of value that maybe
• 0:27
  you're not so obvious that someone should be getting out of
• 0:30
  a conference? It's oddly enough, a lot of
• 0:32
  vendors say, man, you know, this guy can, can, can really keep
• 0:35
  the attention of attorneys. They'll, they barely even, they
• 0:37
  hold their pee. They can even go out for a pee
• 0:40
  break. And I, I look at that as as, as
• 0:42
  really a, a + a value deal where, where it's going to
• 0:46
  attract serious attorneys. And I think it's the content and
• 0:50
  then also creating an educational environment.
• 0:54
  Conferences used to be all about professional development leaving
• 0:57
  different than you arrived. And now I hate to say it, man,
• 1:02
  I've I've seen some stuff and I'm just going to you know, I, I
• 1:04
  don't, I don't hide much. I've seen people you know, been
• 1:07
  in healthy relationships lose their relationship because
• 1:11
  they're on this road every other week and and not growing
• 1:15
  anything but their ego and reliving maybe some lost times
• 1:20
  in the past. So maybe the take away here is,
• 1:23
  is get to know the people who attend these conferences,
• 1:25
  vendors, attendees, people who put this up, put on the show,
• 1:29
  and there's so much more value that is already inherently there
• 1:31
  that just needs to be unlocked. I literally sit in my desk, it's
• 1:35
  always like 5:30 or later when the office is empty.
• 1:39
  The lighting is pretty good and I set my phone up once or twice
• 1:43
  a week and try to just off the cuff, give a 15 to 92nd.
• 1:48
  Here's here's some law for you and it's good.
• 1:51
  It's not polished, it's not super clean.
• 1:53
  It's authentic. I think people like that.
• 1:55
  I think whenever you post really high quality stuff on social
• 1:59
  media, sometimes people scroll right past.
• 2:01
  We associate high quality content as an advertisement,
• 2:04
  whereas when it's authentic, there's little you know, umm us,
• 2:09
  you misspeak. It's it's real.
• 2:11
  That's what people are attracted to.
• 2:13
  How does Open AI handle the similar data that would someone
• 2:17
  would upload through Supio versus uploading just through
• 2:19
  standard ChatGPT? 5 for companies like that with
• 2:22
  something like ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude, right, what they're
• 2:27
  trying to do is get that data to continue to reinforce and refine
• 2:30
  their models. That's their business model.
• 2:32
  And then they take that fine model and then they sell it to
• 2:34
  enterprise companies like ours that actually need secure data,
• 2:37
  right? So you probably don't want to be
• 2:39
  uploading your data into these types of portals because they're
• 2:42
  they're in the business of moving their models with your
• 2:44
  client data. I don't know if everybody knows
• 2:47
  that, like I don't think anyone knows that we have a we have a
• 2:50
  policy on our team like you cannot use any AI tool unless it
• 2:54
  has been pre approved and even if it has been pre approved,
• 2:57
  you're never uploading any client data, you're never
• 2:59
  uploading any lead data, you're never uploading any Pai, you're
• 3:02
  never uploading any financial data.
• 3:03
  We had to lay those ground rules because things move so quickly.
• 3:07
  Open AI release their browser today, right.
• 3:09
  Like if people want to start using it and I'm like, no, you
• 3:12
  cannot. Yeah.
• 3:13
  Like we, you have to set what the rules are around these
• 3:16
  things so that the data that's going in them is secure.
• 3:19
  And it's good to know that you guys have these proper
• 3:21
  protections in place because you are dealing with 200 plus
• 3:24
  different law firms and all their client data.
• 3:27
  I'm a big Gemini user. I will caveat that now over
• 3:30
  ChatGPT. And it's interesting because
• 3:32
  they've even made the job now where Prof me goes.
• 3:34
  Do you want your personalized Gemini experience or the regular
• 3:38
  1? So that's doing it's a
• 3:39
  remembering all my chats, building a profile and giving me
• 3:42
  more customized results. This is just based on Gemini.
• 3:45
  But as it pulls in more and more profile data about me, it's just
• 3:49
  going to get better and better because Google has access to all
• 3:51
  that today, all my search history from forever ago to
• 3:55
  really personalize the results moving forward.
• 3:57
  It's going to be a game changer. Once they figure all that out.
• 3:59
  I think they've already figured it out, right?
• 4:01
  It's This is why, I mean, we talked about this this morning,
• 4:05
  Mark. This is why Google's going to
• 4:06
  win, right? ChatGPT may have been first, but
• 4:09
  Google is going to win. Hot tank.
• 4:11
  We're putting a stake in the ground.
• 4:12
  Google's going to win when the largest corporations in the
• 4:14
  world is going to be ChatGPT. In this world where it's going
• 4:19
  with AII think consumers are going to start filtering out
• 4:23
  anything that's not personal, like personalized.
• 4:27
  So I. Personalized isn't like putting
• 4:30
  Trudy in the front filling in an e-mail with an auto fill.
• 4:34
  No, no, exactly. No.
• 4:35
  I I just think they're going to. Anything that feels generic is
• 4:38
  just going to start getting filtered out.
• 4:39
  So touches like that are going to become even more important.
• 4:43
  The 1st place my brain goes is like, you need to build a team.
• 4:46
  Like you need a team to do stuff, stuff like that.
• 4:48
  You're right. You can't just have a that
• 4:50
  automated necessarily if especially a handwritten note.
• 4:53
  So you need a team so you have the space to do that or they
• 4:56
  have the space to do that. But that's how I would scale
• 4:59
  something like that, which seems the old fashioned way at this
• 5:01
  point. I know everything's about AI and
• 5:03
  automation, but human touch things are human touch things
• 5:07
  and you need humans. One of the birth injury cases,
• 5:10
  it settled the night before closing argument, but my partner
• 5:13
  was going to do the damages part of it.
• 5:16
  And for a long time, I think I'm not alone in this.
• 5:19
  But plaintiffs lawyers can struggle a little bit when
• 5:22
  trying to convey that the intangibles, the things like
• 5:26
  pain and suffering, are actually more valuable than the economic
• 5:32
  damages in a case like the medical bills.
• 5:35
  The medical bills and those types of economics, a lot of
• 5:38
  times we think are easier for the jury to hold on to because
• 5:41
  it's concrete. We could put a number on it.
• 5:43
  It's backed up, you know, to there's a bill.
• 5:45
  Here, Yeah. But I truly believe that it's
• 5:49
  the non economics that are more valuable.
• 5:51
  So I put this concept into this birth injury case and I'll give
• 5:56
  you one example what it came up with.
• 5:58
  Literally, I got goosebumps because it said it more
• 6:00
  succinctly than I've ever thought about it in my life.
• 6:04
  It was something like reimbursing the plaintiff or
• 6:07
  providing for medical expenses may provide a wheelchair or the
• 6:11
  necessary physical therapy, but it'll never replace the feeling
• 6:15
  that the child would have had of dancing on her own 2 feet.
• 6:19
  And it did this with every single injury to the point where
• 6:24
  I I was just blown away. I was almost upset we settled
• 6:27
  the case because I wanted to hear and see the jury's reaction
• 6:32
  to this. It was unreal.
• 6:34
  There's only two ways the law firms make more money.
• 6:37
  One is they hire you, right? And you increase the number of
• 6:41
  cases that come into the law firm, so you increase your
• 6:44
  percentage of market share. Other than that, the only way to
• 6:47
  increase the revenue is increase the value of each case.
• 6:52
  So I don't care what other companies say if at the end of
• 6:57
  the case you draft my demand letter.
• 6:59
  So we didn't do medical management.
• 7:00
  We didn't figure out what's going on with the client.
• 7:02
  We didn't maximize their treatment.
• 7:04
  I just give you the records. Whether I write it or you write
• 7:07
  it, Are you really telling me that you're going to get me more
• 7:09
  for my case because you wrote a better demand?
• 7:12
  That's ridiculous. Like, what do you think the
• 7:14
  insurance companies are stupid, right?
• 7:16
  So they don't care what you write in the demand.
• 7:17
  They're going to look at the ICD codes, They're going to look at
• 7:20
  the records, They're going to look at the bills.
• 7:21
  They're going to to see what matches and their computer,
• 7:24
  right? Colossus 20 years ago existed,
• 7:27
  is going to run the numbers and figure out what the case is
• 7:29
  worth. We're not talking about
• 7:30
  catastrophic cases, right? So just the everyday case.
• 7:33
  So what we're connecting or what my goal, what I envision the
• 7:37
  future is, right, is bilateral communication between the case
• 7:41
  management system and AI. When those national firms come
• 7:47
  in and start flooding a market, they don't have any presence
• 7:50
  prior to that. What is the the visceral
• 7:52
  reaction that you have when you see that happening?
• 7:55
  Ironically, Friday, so a few days ago, my account manager at
• 8:00
  Adams Outdoor, my billboard guy called me like in a panic, left
• 8:03
  me a voicemail. So you got to call me back.
• 8:06
  I'm like, I called him back. I was like, hey, what's going
• 8:09
  on? Did the Billboard blow up?
• 8:11
  He's like, I just got off the phone with a national competitor
• 8:16
  that's about to buy up everything.
• 8:19
  What do you want to do? And this is just what we're
• 8:21
  dealing with now. It's a private equity firms and
• 8:24
  just the, I don't know how capitalism, whatever you want to
• 8:27
  put it on. This is a reality that we are
• 8:29
  facing now emotionally. When I see it, when I see
• 8:32
  somebody out of area in my market, I'm offended because
• 8:36
  it's like you guys watch me and girlfriend, you don't even go
• 8:39
  here. But I have to to come back to
• 8:44
  reality because I firmly believe that the years of work that we
• 8:48
  put in prior to their their billboards going up, prior to
• 8:51
  their commercials, prior to their PPC, they're buying up my
• 8:55
  name. I have to believe that the work
• 8:57
  that we put in in our region in Hampton Roads will.
• 9:02
  Show. Right.
• 9:03
  They don't know them. They don't know those big
• 9:06
  competitors. They don't know that one lawyer
• 9:08
  all the way up in Northern Virginia.
• 9:10
  They don't know them, right? And so all they have to go off
• 9:13
  for their reputation is a billboard.
• 9:15
  Nobody's going to refer them locally.
• 9:18
  I think the message that sums it all up, it's just a few words
• 9:20
  that lawyers like to talk and lawyers like to have egos.
• 9:23
  People like, I mean, yeah, we started an ad.
• 9:28
  There can't be. It's not about us, it's all
• 9:30
  about you. And that's the kind of been my
• 9:32
  philosophy. We judge our success by your
• 9:36
  success. This thing about it's all about
• 9:38
  you. Those are three words.
• 9:40
  It is I was out about us. So we let me tell you where that
• 9:42
  came from. You want to know where that
• 9:43
  came? Sure.
• 9:44
  There's a Rolling Stones album that came out in in 198081.
• 9:51
  It's called Emotional Rescue. There's a song, OK You you've
• 9:54
  heard that song on Emotional Rescue on the backside of the
• 9:58
  album, B side. The B side of the album,
• 10:01
  probably the last. Song no one listened to.
• 10:03
  Is probably the last song on the list.
• 10:07
  Is a song. That Keith.
• 10:09
  Richards sings. It's called All About You.
• 10:12
  And but the theme of it wasn't like about clients and stuff,
• 10:16
  but we kind of listened to that was about a love affair, you
• 10:19
  know, between his girlfriend and him or whatever the song was.
• 10:23
  But then it we kind of listen to that.
• 10:24
  But, you know, it is all about. And Eddie kind of picked up on
• 10:27
  that. And he came home one night and
• 10:29
  said or one day to the office and he started this whole
• 10:31
  campaign on It's All about You. And that's really, yeah.
• 10:36
  But can you talk a little bit about how that shift has
• 10:38
  occurred from heavy pharmaceutical into now opening
• 10:43
  the world of mass for litigation to non pharmaceutical?
• 10:47
  I think the firms have looked at what's impacting society the
• 10:50
  most. And if you have kids, you know
• 10:53
  that your kids never leave their screens.
• 10:57
  We got involved in the video game addiction.
• 10:59
  I researched it. But I walked in on my son one
• 11:03
  night over summer. It's like 2:00 in the morning,
• 11:06
  and he was playing Call of Duty. I said, who are you playing
• 11:09
  with? He said my new friend in London
• 11:13
  and I said you don't have a friend in London.
• 11:16
  The red flag. It's a total red flag.
• 11:19
  So, and I spoke to him about I said you can't do that.
• 11:23
  Why? He's a nice guy.
• 11:24
  I said, you don't know anything about him.
• 11:26
  So you have, you know, the, the, the addiction go to stay up
• 11:30
  late, play the games, ignore social norms, get violent if
• 11:35
  they take away the games. And it just it spoke to me that
• 11:39
  this is going to be a problem in our society.
• 11:44
  So we got involved in the video game litigation and one of our
• 11:49
  experts came in to give us a tutorial and he showed a picture
• 11:52
  of a little video of a baby who was playing with a phone, 6 or 8
• 11:58
  month old baby. He took the phone away and the
• 12:00
  baby went got hysterical, crying, throwing a fit.
• 12:05
  They handed him the phone back. Stop crying so that you start,
• 12:10
  you know, you start with your kids very young.
• 12:12
  You want to keep them busy at a restaurant, you give them a
• 12:13
  screen. Keep them busy in the car, you
• 12:15
  give them a screen. But what the manufacturers,
• 12:19
  developers have learned is that you can addict these kids with
• 12:23
  the in app purchases. It's the dopamine rush.
• 12:26
  It's a drug like anything else. It's a drug and I didn't realize
• 12:30
  it. And my son's the prime example.
• 12:32
  When we were moving and we had to unplug his computer, he was
• 12:36
  freaking out that he was going to lose the progress in his
• 12:40
  games and literally was almost in tears.
• 12:44
  I can't lose my progress. So that spoke to me like there's
• 12:47
  something going on here other than enjoying the games.
• 12:50
  They've addicted our youth.