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Episode 019 Bankruptcy Meets The AI Revolution · AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Practical, no-nonsense guidance to help attorneys put AI power to work in their practice right now.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while, you meet someone who doesn't fit neatly into any category.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny Doling is one of those people.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: She's a nationally recognized bankruptcy lawyer.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: She's about to become president of NACPA, National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: She's a tax specialist, for God's sakes.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's a systems thinker.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And lately she's become one of the leading AI evangelists in the consumer bankruptcy world.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, she's a unicorn.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to explore where she thinks AI is taking the bankruptcy profession and maybe where we might disagree.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Ron Drescher.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Heather Gardner.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really excited to welcome Jenny Doley.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's always fun with you two.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jenny, you were one of my guests on the mastermind that I had for complete bankruptcy back in February of 2024.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the question: What's changed in the 30 months since you appeared on the mastermind?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: What hasn't changed?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh there's been a lot of crazy things that have been going on the last couple of years.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: We've got economy issues, so bankruptcy filings are up.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: We have AI everywhere in everything that we are doing.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, NACPA is growing.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: I am excited, like you said, to be the president-elect of NAFPA.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's a huge honor.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I love this organization.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: I love what it what it's done for so many of us.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: I joined in 04 when we knew 05 was gonna happen, and that's where I got hooked.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it's so it's a huge, huge honor to me to take the helm in January and hopefully move us into the new era, the next generation of bankruptcy.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's really exciting, and I think I think it's a big step up for the bankruptcy world.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: I what could I tell you?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody listening is gonna know that I'm a fan.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happened over the last year that convinced you that AI isn't a I think there are there are problems with AI.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: We know, you know, we know there are environmental issues with AI, and I think it's incumbent on Congress, and it is incumbent on us as voters to make sure that we are pushing Congress to enact legislation to deal with the environmental problems.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna put the genie back in the bottle, that it's out.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: This is what what we got, and there are great things with AI, but we also need um some responsible legislation.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, kind of take a cue from China.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: They've actually legislated that employers cannot replace employees with AI.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, and if you're thinking about this is how I've told my my staff, if you're thinking that AI is going to replace your paralegals or associate attorneys, then you're thinking about AI the wrong way.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: It it will give you time back, it will allow you to improve your quality, it will allow you to scale up.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I'm embracing it in my firm.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we are mind blown at some of the things that we are doing and the amount of time that it is saving.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: And again, it's helping us clear black backlog.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's helping us to scale up and just in time, right?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because filings are have skyrocketed.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: The the latest numbers NACFA got um from Epic, it was the end of April.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: So from January of 2022 to April 30th of 2026, commercial business bankruptcies were up 189%.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: Individual consumer bankruptcies were up 87.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: We have not seen these numbers in over a decade.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: We all, you know, weathered the storm of you know the downfall in bankruptcy filings, and that was difficult.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: But now they are through the roof.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't have systems in place and you are not using AI, you will not be able to grow with those filings.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm convinced of it, without adding staff.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jenny, you you there's a lot to unpack from that statement.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have this Flintstone Simpsons Jetsons framework that we use.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me, it's helpful because I like the idea of meeting lawyers where they are.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I still believe that a big chunk of bankruptcy lawyers are Flintstones level lawyers.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do you reach those lawyers?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think the easiest thing to do is just come to the NACFA conferences, go to the NACPA webinars because we are embracing AI.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: NACFA is rolling out the AI Advantage, NACFA's AI Advantage.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: We are planning a full-day pre-conference session at our Orlando conference next April, April 8th through the 11th.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: And in Maui, we've got AI, um half day of AI going on at the Maui workshop.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: These are your fellow attorneys that are actually practicing law using AI, where you can learn how you can launch it in your practice.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to be a coder.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: You you just need some tips, you need some tools, you need to understand what a skill is in Claude, you need to understand what artifacts are, what projects are, how you can use co-work.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I've I've gone from Chat GPT to Claude.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's definitely scaled my practice and what I've been able to do.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: I still have my ChatGPT uh subscription, and I think it's useful for some things there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh give you an example.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was building a new skill and Claude was having a hard time making my PDF format correctly.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I took it over to ChatGPT and I said, hey, Claude can't fix this, can you?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: And the two kind of competed.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: And GPT was able to hand it back to me, and it was pretty much fixed.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I took it back in the Cloud and I said, Hey, look what Chat GPT did.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: It fixed what you couldn't.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so then Claude got a little competitive and said, Well, ChatGPT didn't do X, Y, and Z.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna fix that for you and make the formatting even better.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it did.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I've learned to kind of also use that as a tool as well when you get stuck.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of the things that I've taught my staff and we've said at webinars is don't argue with it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's gotta be your number one thing that you remember is don't argue with it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: If you find that it's not understanding what you're wanting, start a new chat.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Start over and you don't have to start everything all over, but take the substance of what it got right, put it in a new chat and start fresh.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: And you'll get a fresh set of eyes on it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's that's a huge point.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the things that I've been doing is asking my staff, where are your pain points?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: What do you do repetitively, repetitively?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you think it's something that a computer can't fix, I want to know what it is because I don't do their job.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I think they appreciate that I started out as a paralegal before I went to law school.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I understand, you know, I'm neurotic about my pleadings and formatting.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: I want them all to look very pretty.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, I can't stand ugly formatting.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: They appreciate that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't, I haven't done that in, you know, 30 years.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I need to know from their perspective, what can I do to help you, to make you more efficient, to make our firm more effective, to give the results to our clients.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: So we are, I'm collecting all of that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: We have an open list, and my staff adds things to the list.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: And as I think I can incorporate those, I do.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: But I also prioritize, and I think that's really important as well.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: What is something that I implement today that can save them an hour?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I've been tackling it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Heather, I I want to ask you something to follow up on what Jenny's talking about, because she's talking about her interactions with staff and their pain points.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my question for you, because I mean you're deeply involved in in bankruptcy staff issues.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think law firms can optimize getting buy-in from their teams for new incentives like AI systems?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a good, that's a good question.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was even my first question to Jenny was going to be have you been able to measure or quantify the time that it's saving you and your staff and your firm with it implementing the AI use and the different tools.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I'd put it back.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: I would say you have a law firm doing it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm dealing with multiple, many, many, many law firms.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have anyone that I'm aware of in my client base that is doing anything remotely close to what Jane Dellin is doing.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Not that I would expect very many attorneys to be that Jetson's level.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, it is it's time saving for staff, for support staff, for attorneys, for everyone touching the case.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And Ron and I have an ongoing debate about how much time AI saves, you know, as you use the tools.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: I believe it saves more time.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: He believes it's a lot less.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I would say here we have an attorney who's building her firm in, you know, into an AI firm, which is outstanding.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're using it to the best of its ability.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I would love to know if you've gotten any idea so far about what sort of time you're saving on a daily or weekly basis or your support staff is saving.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I hope.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, by the way, Heather, I I'm hoping our listeners will notice that you skirted my question and redirected it into the debate that we have ongoing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it is a time question.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's a time question.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a time question.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that, you know, a the the time question for AI is one of the that's that's the reason we know it's a multiplier, but we talk about can it save time?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: I happen to know that this attorney that we're talking to today has saved tons of time for her firm.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so perfect example of an actual attorney running a firm who can tell us this.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny, give us a could you give us a s an example or two about systems you've implemented with AI that have helped your team save all that time?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 100%.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: So right off the bat, we did a pay stub analyzer.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: So we take the pay stubs, zip them into a file, and load it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I use Cloud Team, so it's closed.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: This information doesn't leave.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I should back up and say this you before you turn this loose with your staff, even the built-in co-pilot or you know, the the free version of Chat GPT, you need to nix that immediately.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: You need to have an office AI policy implemented.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: You need to make sure that your AI memory and instructions include, you know, the biggest lockdown on PII information.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: You need to have a PII, you know, I have a handout that's part of our AI training.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: Those systems have to be tested first in your firm so that you make sure that you are maintaining client confidentiality.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, with that said, we've done that and and we have quality controls based on everything that we do.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, our first thing was this pay stub analyzer.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we did the Excel spreadsheet before, that's what we used, um, and we like how it looks.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we've been using the same one and it's got its little built-in formulas and all of that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody's got to go input that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Not anymore.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: We took that spreadsheet, I loaded it into Claude, and I built a school a skill for pay stub analyzing.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: All the pay stubs are put in there, and then I asked it, I want to know if there was a raise, if there was a decrease in pay.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know if there's an anomaly, like a bonus or a cash out of vacation pay.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know that you can fill in the blanks if I'm missing a pay stub.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it will highlight where it has where there's been a missed pay pay step, but it's done the calculations from the pay stubs before to the pay stebs after.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we we're not worried about that pay step.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know if their withholdings have gone up, if the withholdings are where they should be.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know if it looks like their income trends do is it lower in a certain time of year and higher in another time of year, because that could affect the date we file, right?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: You want to file when the income's the lowest.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: I want all of that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we keep thinking of new things to put in there.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it spits out the spreadsheet, you know, our normal six-month pay stubs of, you know, six months' worth of income, like normal, but then it has an entire analysis of all those things.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, it looks like your client's income went up about 22%.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: It looks like it was because of overtime.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: It tells us all of this data.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: It, you know, it is extracted out of these pay stubs that I can't do.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: That would take forever for us to do that.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: So that's one thing.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: The next thing we did is, you know, the the clients send you all their documents.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: We we use SharePoint was one drive, and we moved to SharePoint for their client portal.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: You are lucky if they name them anything close to what the document actually is.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's awful.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: So we have our standard naming convention, and it would take, you know, our high school intern, you know, all day long to rename their documents so that they're all, you know, recognizable and easily, you know, you can easily grab one.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: So we created a document renamer and it renames every document into our document naming convention.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then it separates the bills from the pay stubs, from the tax returns, you know, the declaration page of the auto insurance and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: So now we've got the bills, right?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I have a bill analyzer.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: What the bill analyzer does is go through all the bills and it sorts them per schedule.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got schedule D, schedule E, schedule F debt, um, totals all of that debt, um, asks you to take a look at, you know, hey, this appears to be the law firm that represents Chase, um, lets you know that there they also need to receive notice.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it does it in this per schedules, and then it gives my staff the uh name and address in a separate document.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: So they've got the name and address of the creditor with the balance and the last four digits of the account number so that that can be easily fed into what you know, whatever software you're using.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm still using best case desktop.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't know when I will change that.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: I have not been happy with some of the other choices, and this is fast for my staff.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I don't know how you can maintain the different offices you do and use best case desktop.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Not even cloud, you don't even have to do that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you do that.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't because the and this is where I listen to my staff, they are much faster and much happier on desktop.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I I've had them doing best case, has been doing a four-part series on their cloud version.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: They do the webinars.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: We've tried Jubilee, we've tried next chapter, and I, you know, those are great programs, but my staff works better on the desktop.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: So if you guys are faster and that's what you prefer, I'm not going to interfere with that.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then the other analyzer I built was By the way, by the way, that's an amazing concept that plays out differently in law firms all over the world.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, you know, from the very top, you have an initiative to upgrade your systems, and the team just has to go along with it.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: You made a different decision.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: But have you always made the decision to follow the team's vibe?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes do you just say, listen, we we have to move into the new century and I'm gonna lay down the law?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it's a blend, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: You want to make sure that you are moving everybody forward.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I have been doing with my staff.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: But on something that they are in all day long and they feel the most comfortable and the most efficient at, I'm not gonna mess with that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, once we finish implementing the rest of our tools and kind of developing my own software on that, that may be where where where we are really headed.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: But uh these tools are giving them time back.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that when you get time back, you reduce the stress level of everybody.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: You reduce your stuff.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Having everybody feel under the gun all the time.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, we've got a sale date, we've got a you know, a lawsuit and a garnishment, and everybody's stressed out, and the IRS is coming after them.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: These are all things that are pain points that create unnecessary stress in the office.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: And if we can help minimize that, that's that's the goal.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Another analyzer that we built was a tax return analyzer.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think, I think newbies ignore tax returns.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think seasoned attorneys ignore tax returns all too often.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you're handing over a tax return to the trustee that you've never opened, never read, you you're looking for a malpractice case and it will find you because that's a treasure trove of information.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I built an analyzer to look at the tax returns to spot um capital gains and you know, give a full report of things like that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Were there any assets sold?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Were there businesses that were listed?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: Were there businesses listed that were not in there, not in our intake, you know, things like that, properties.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, were they claiming, you know, a mortgage tax deduction and you don't have a property uh on your Schedule A?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: So those tax returns are a treasure trove of information, and we've got the analyzer that does that as well.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got a lot going on.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny, who in your office is using the tax analyzer?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is this is it an attorney?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is it basically for your benefit?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Does anybody else does anybody else in your team use it?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: The staff runs it and I get the reports and I evaluate them.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's you know, I'm the one with the law degree, it's my name on the bottom of the paper.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: I want to make sure that I'm looking at what it's fitting out.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: And we have a quality control built into each one of these skills.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if there's something that Claude recognizes that a human should look at, it will flag that for us.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, one of the ideas that we've talked about on this podcast is the idea that Jetson's lawyers should have Jetson's clients, and Simpson's lawyers should have Simpson's clients, and Flintstone's lawyers should have Flintstone's clients.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: What's your take on that idea?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: I will take all the clients.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think Jets attorneys, Jetson's attorneys can take any clients.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think the only, I think the limitation would be a a Flintstones attorney might struggle with a Jetsons client.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: A Jetson's attorney should be able to work with any level client.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it depends.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jenny, you talked about your SharePoint client portal.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have to imagine there are clients that just want to come to the office and dump documents on your desk.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm hearing that you're you're set up for that.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we are, it is so rare that clients come to the office, but if they feel the need to, and it's usually somebody elderly, you know, somebody is not tech savvy, and we're sensitive to that.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: I have a really, we have a very caring staff.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: I feel very caring towards my clients.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: I want them to feel better.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're in one of the only areas of law where people are happy when you're done with them.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when they're done with their case, they can breathe again, they can sleep again, you know, they're losing weight because they're, you know, they were overeating or they were undereating, and now, you know, they're getting back in shape because they're you've alleviated some stress in their life and and money problems.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's that's the number one stressor for most people.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things, I'm sorry, Heather, go on.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to say the tools that you've built.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: So so as having been a bankruptcy paralegal for many years and entering those things day after day, year after year, the time she's saving those paralegals with those tools is so substantial.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: It is got it's got to be like you said, you're giving them back time.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: But you've really created those tools for them to use that saving.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: It has to be massive amounts of time.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, when I my paralegal asked, can I work on Friday?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because I had mentioned to you guys where for the summer, we've tried out this new 410 schedule and you get Friday, Saturday, Sunday off.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: And it's working really great.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I could do it in the winter when it's all dark, but it's still light outside.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it's totally fine during the summer.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: But she asked if she could work on Friday because she had a lot, a lot of cases.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: That she really wanted to get caught up on.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like, sure.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, send me everything.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: So we're we're launching all of this to the staff officially on Friday.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, send me everything.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've been doing quality con checks on it, quality control checks on everything before really letting it loose.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, send me all zip drive all your files and send them to me, and I'm going to run all of our analyzers.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: And and I should back up.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: When you do a when you create this, these skills, you can loop them all together then into one skill.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't have to keep and running these individually.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you have a case where you do need to run it individually, you can, but we've linked them all.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: So this is like all in one shot.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I did that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I I wasn't, so the next day when she came in, she sent me a Teams message.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: We use Teams for instant messaging, and she said, My God, you have saved me hours, hours on these cases.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: This is on the pay stubs alone.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was spending an hour, you know, on the the tax returns and you know, filling out our little form that, you know, our check form that they fill out and the the bills and organizing that and renaming.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: She feels hours.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, I was just actually able to work on petitions today and not all that.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna make my arguments about the time saving because obviously using AI saves time.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, that's not its primary benefit.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Primary benefit is that it elevates your work product, it enables you to do things you couldn't do, no matter how many hours you had.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that looks like you're saving a lot of time.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like some of the things you were talking about, Jenny, and your pay stub analyzer.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you're looking at or or a bank statement analyzer, I have to imagine you're either working on maybe that's in your uh in your pipeline.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's already been used.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you would have a bank statement analyzer and you look over the last year of transfers, and there were things you just you just would never have the time to look at.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: But and so it wouldn't happen.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: But now there are things that are happening, and we like to think this is saving us so much time, because of course it's saving you time because you're able to do things you weren't even able to do before.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's really my argument.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you're saving time, but it's the elevation of your work product that is so mind-blowing about AI.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: It really is.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, on the bank statement analyzer that we have, and you you nailed correctly, we have it pulling out um dining out.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we have it pulling out streaming, we have it pulling out, you know, as a as a flag for us to look at, you know, what's being spent on these, what percentage of the income is being spent on these things.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: Gambling is a huge one with all the online gaming.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: And Claude knows what those providers are.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even have to put it in and it flags them.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got the gambling, we've got the dining out, we've got the online shopping, and those are some things that we go over with the clients and we say, hey, I don't know if you realize, but this is how much you're spending each month on these things.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so going forward, after the bankruptcy is done, if you adjust these things and you start directing that money into an IRE, into an emergency savings, you're going to start building your life and living your life in a much healthier financial way.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is value to the clients.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: They've not resisted us on that.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: They've been like, this was eye-opening.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: We weren't because it's so easy just to swipe a card, you know, just to you if your card number is now saved in your browser.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's so easy to just hit buy um without thinking about what am I not funding by buying this thing or by gambling.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think we're doing a much better service for our clients and analyzing what's happening.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're basically doing credit, you're basically doing credit counseling as an added part of the consult in the service and showing them things like you said, they they didn't probably didn't realize.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: You don't this kind of brings me into something I wanted to talk to you about because I I did to prepare for the the show, I looked at your website, which is great, but I noticed the words AI don't appear in your website.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: You don't you don't talk about how you've implemented all these different AI solutions for the benefits of client.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: My first question is is that an intentional omission?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: No, I don't think it's intentional because I do have a couple new blogs that we're posting up.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: I do my blogs on Fridays, so they get posted on Fridays.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: But those are more warnings for people, letting them know if you are going in and you are typing in ChatGPT and a f in a free account that's going up there, all of that is discoverable.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, that can be very scary.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: How do I hide my assets?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: Do I transfer my house to my mom?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm about to file secrets.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I and I really think that's where discovery is going to go, where it's already going, I should say.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is already happening.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, going, going, gone already.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, giving giving the clients the opportunity to, hey, hold back what you're putting in your browsers and your AI programs and talk to counsel first.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I don't think people understand that that part of it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I in my fee agreements, I've had an AI disclosure in those from day one.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um the second we launched it, I put it in there so that they know what we're what we're using and why we're using it and how it may how it helps us keep fees down for them.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have you had any pushback from clients to say, I don't really want my confidential information going through AI?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've seen that.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: I have not, I had one client ask that we not use the AI, and I don't use Zoom's AI.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: I not use an AI transcriber.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's fine.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Turn it off.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: So so you're not you're not team record all conversations.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: See, I am.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I that's my hot take.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why why not record a conversation?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't do it using Zoom because they cannot ensure that it doesn't stay on their server.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: They they specifically tell you that yeah, it goes up to our server.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it can be grass and not scary team.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what if you were to use a private recording?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Private device coming.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: I and I do.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you do?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you are team recording.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're just not team Zoom recording.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to be careful.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm con I mean, I'm California and our state bar is insane.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we have the most lawyers in the entire country.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: So our state bar rules and all of that are very powerful.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to make sure we're always in compliance on that.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: And confidentiality is our number one, you know, rule.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: So are you familiar with the product Field D?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know Field D.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: I know Whisper and Granola we use.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: I use Whisper.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: Field.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Field D is a wearable, and you wear it around your neck, and it is always ready to record.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: I have that one, but you know what?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's not convenient.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: You can get the AI app on your watch now, on your Apple Watch.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's a far easier.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have that one.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've actually never used it, but I I do use Whisper and Granola.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: What are Whisper and Granola?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Same AI transcriber.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Similar, yeah.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And Whisper's really great.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: I just started using that one a few months ago, and it's outstanding.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: I even added that to my phone because it's so much better than even the iPhone Pixel.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: 100% better.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: And you know who told me that recommended those two is Teriselinas.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: She's a phenomenal AI person.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, she's got a coding background.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So Oh, you should you should recommend her to us.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to see that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: She did the AI webinar with Matt McCune, who we had on the show about a month ago.
• 30:18
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: She's doing the AI panel with you as well.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she was doing the webinar, the two-part webinar that Matt was talking about when he was here a couple of months back, a month or two.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they did a great job.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: They they were fantastic.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, so I'm I've talked about how I've used all these tools for my staff, but I haven't told you how I'm using them for me and my work.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I think this is where I'm having the most fun.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, our our chapter 13 trustees file an objection in every single case, even if it's just a placeholder objection.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't timely respond, then you know, what do you tell your client?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: So what I've done is I took 10 of the chapter 13 trustees' objections, you know, from simple to placeholder one to, you know, more complex, and I loaded those.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I loaded 10 of our oppositions to the objections.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then I took callers, because I have callers through Lexus, and I took their chapter, you know, the 1325 chapter, and you know, all the various ones that I thought would be, you know, really helpful and loaded that for memory.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if that's copyright infringement, but it's for my use, so I don't think so.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's fair use.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then what my skill does is I load the the new objection for my real client.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: I load that, I load a docket report.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that gives the procedural history, and it I provided it already my pleading, and it spits out my opposition in my voice using my information.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I forgot to mention also in the reference library, I load loaded the 10, you know, most popular chapter 13 cases for confirmation.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: You've got in Ray Gobe in California and our Ninth Circuit, you know, Hamilton v.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Lanning or Lanning v.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Hamilton.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: I always say it the wrong way.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: All of those key cases, and, you know, the good faith factors and all of that kind of stuff.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it spits out my opposition with the procedural history.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then I go in and, you know, touch it all up the way I need to.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: But that has been a huge time saver.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it saves my clients' money too, right?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not spending two hours on this.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm probably spending 45 minutes.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So this you're a perfect example of a super Jetsons lawyer who's always been a super Jetsons lawyer.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Nowadays, different than old Jetsons.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, I yeah, I I I don't know that I agree with that.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a new that's another debate for us to begin now.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: We'll start a new one.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: We need a new one.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: We do need a new one.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've we've worked the old one to death.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: So which future wins, Jenny?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: The future where every lawyer becomes increasingly sophisticated with AI and understands how to make clawed skills and and agents, or a future where specialized AI products emerge that hide that complexity and allow lawyers to just be lawyers.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oof.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: I I've had similar debates with myself on this because I don't want, you know, nobody wants AI to eliminate their field.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think that that's gonna happen.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I think if you're not embracing it, you're going to be left behind.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think by embracing it, it allows you to be more creative because you have got time back, you have got your arguments, your favorite things in there that you might forget, you know, sometimes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like with our opposition builder, the ability for it to pull out what would have taken me longer to go and get that case and go and find that language that I wanted to include in this case.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've already done this and now I can work on more creative arguments based on the facts of that case.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it frees that time up and I think it makes me better at my job.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: I that's the part I love about my job is the strategy and being creative.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's not about, you know, oh, let's, you know, shuffle them in and shuffle them out and you know, make a few bucks.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like that.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like the whole reason I went into law was because I had this idea of being able to think through problems and solve them creatively.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think if you're embracing things like this, it's enhancing your ability to be a creative lawyer.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna push back a little bit on something because it has to do with a little bit of what we've talked about and some of what we talked about before we click record, which is that you're you're spending your Fridays building out your your product and your system.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And with the idea that at some point that will become available for other lawyers to use and implement in their own systems.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: But in a way then, aren't aren't you kind of recognizing that there's always going to be a lot of lawyers that just don't want to sit down in front of a computer and build skills and they just want to have it done for them?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I and what's wrong with that?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we used to have to type the bankruptcy petitions and blue back them.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and you know, computers came along and made this a whole lot easier.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: And people said back then, like, oh my gosh, you're not gonna need a paralegal anymore.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: All that is nonsense.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you're always going to have people are like, that's not my thing.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to build this.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to do this.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: I want to go over here and be the good lawyer and you know, be working on my legal arguments or an appellate brief, you know, things like that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's important to recognize.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like nobody's not everybody's gonna want to do this, and that's perfectly fine.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: Let them get in sync with uh somebody who is that they you know meshes well with them and their process.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we talked about GLAD, uh, which would be a solution for bankruptcy lawyers, and you mentioned that you liked the direction that GLAD is going.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a fan of GLAD.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: What does I'm a fan of GLADE too?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think GLADE needs to exist.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think GLAD needs to do to really kind of win over the bankruptcy world?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I think there's two things that I would see.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: One of it is get a system in place for run-of-the-mill kind of cases so that that you're you're embracing the people who don't want to do the AI work, right?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: But then you're gonna have to develop something that's a little more sophisticated to get everybody involved and behind your product.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a fan of Glade.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think they are the future.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I I have I was so impressed when I was working with them, their responsiveness, their ability to pivot, you know, when we said, hey, this isn't working for us.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: Could we do something like this?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let it let's make sure we understand what you're asked is, and then they would come back and solve that problem.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't get that kind of service with regular software.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I've asked Clio for something.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: I've asked Cleo in the calendar, can you please let me attach my client questionnaire to the client's appointment and and any docs they wanted me to see so that I'm not looking everywhere for it?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's a great idea.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: Or or can you uh can you let me pick in communications that I want it to default to emails and not text?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, stupid things like that, they don't care about you.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're just a number.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: And yet here I still have Cleo sitting up on my desk.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: They're the only one in that game.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: Where where Glade is setting themselves apart is they are responsive to the member or the user's needs.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's pretty rare in the software world.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see, do you see now that AI is really here and it's really on the scene for the masses?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think the other big three will just have their own AI systems at some point?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm surprised they don't already.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: I know that they are implementing some things, but what what I don't understand is that is that and and I have had the development teams for those other companies come back and solve problems and help, you know, and do things.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: I work with all of them, of course.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very different, you know, system for me.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: But but I do think that in bankruptcy software, they are much more amenable to adding things and solving problems.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we're a smaller niche, right?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you can do a little bit a little bit more with a smaller uh base, but you have to remember that base is growing.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: Filings are through the roof, people are adding bankruptcies, um, bankruptcy to their practice who've never done bankruptcy before.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: So there's this huge opportunity to embrace that.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I I also think that lawyers have to diversify in the bankruptcy world as well.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you put all your eggs in one basket and filings go down, then you stop getting the education you need in the area.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: You stop seeking out, um, you know, going to the conferences where you network and stop bringing your pay legals to the conferences, which that's mind-blowing to me too.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think more attorneys need to bring their paralegals.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm when I've always brought mine.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: You're not going to be able to do that.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: You're one of like four, you're one of what, four or five out of hundreds that do that.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, you know what?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: It came's for itself ten times over because when a paralegal needs a California attorney, they're calling my paralegal that they met at the conference.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it it pays for it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I that I think that's one thing that bankruptcy attorneys lack is forward thinking and and and penny pinching every every penny, but you're not investing in your firm, so you're never going to grow, so that you're not counting pennies, you're counting dollars.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, I've been to NACPA s several times, and I've been to our local Maryland uh bankruptcy bar association weekend dozens of times.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing that always strikes me is that the lawyers who really need to be there aren't there.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just the way it is.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what, Jenny?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: We could talk, I could talk with you for hours and hours and hours about what you're doing with Claude Skills.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we're gonna have to save some of that for another episode.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to kind of transition now to our practice signal segment.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a segment we do every episode where we check out what lawyers in the wild are doing and consider how using AI may help them with their problems.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Almost all of our examples, you know, I was going to use you answered uh a pay stuff question on Facebook, and I was going to use that as a practice signal.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've already gone through it all.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've got I've got something different from Reddit.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them come from Reddit because people are anonymous, so they're not afraid to tell their their truth.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: A solo personal injury lawyer has built a successful lifestyle practice.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're going outside the bankruptcy milieu.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll get some different ideas.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: He works, he's got a great setup, very enviable.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: He works nine to five, he's got two part-time virtual assistants, he outsources his marketing and his intake.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he earns between$450,000 and$600,000 a year.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nice work if you can get it.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is his case volume is shrinking.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: The phone's not ringing as much, the email's not banging as much, he's not getting pinged.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's considering four options.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Keep doing what you're doing and hope it turns around, spend more on marketing and hire staff, expand into more litigation by hiring an associate, partner with a litigator and grow together.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to know.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: What would you do?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny, you have any ideas from ideas either with or without using AI tools.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: I would say I would probably add another area of law that is complementary.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: I I would pick an area of law that you can farm from your existing cases.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of people miss that because it doesn't require a lot of extra marketing if you're farming from your own cases.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, for example, in bankruptcy, you can farm FairDot Collection Practice Act violations, you can farm Thikra violations, you can do discharge and you know auto-stay violations from the from the same pool of clients.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: You could add on a debt settlement side of your practice.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: If you, you know, if you like that area, and maybe you have a client who does not want to file bankruptcy for whatever reason, you can do debt settlement.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: In my area, I lived into tax.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: We used the same means test numbers in bankruptcy as you do for the IRS offer and compromise.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I started getting very good at it, really getting good settlements and that sort of thing, and getting referred larger cases or more complex cases.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I had two doctors totaled different cases, each owing over a million dollars.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I turned them away.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: I referred them out because I did not feel I had the experience to handle that.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, like a crazy person, I went back to law school and got my LLM in taxation.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: And now I'm getting those cases nationwide, and it is a great complimentary practice.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I can do Their bankruptcy, discharge what we can, and then I can also do the tax problems for them as well.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: So Heather, what do you what do you think about our practice signal?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: What would you do for our PI lawyer who's really made a ton of money doing next to nothing?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's doing pretty good.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think I I like Jenny's suggestion adding and enhancing, you know, an accenting practice area.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you can, of course, like she said, pull from your own client base, maybe doing some marketing might be good.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think he should ask AI what to do for sure and get some good ideas.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: That was something I wanted to when I was gonna say something earlier before the pushback is everything Jenny's saying supports my argument that AI makes us think better.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I talked about this with ChatGPT.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you did what I'm suggesting.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: I always, well, I always ask ChatGPT.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And ChatGPT says I'd upload the firm's financials, marketing reports, case data, referral sources, settlement history, and ask AI to become my business consultant.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'd have it model each option, projecting revenue, risk, staffing needs, and profitability over the next five years.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the goal is not for AI to make the decision, it's to give the lawyer the best information possible so he can make the decision.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's where AI can become an incredibly powerful strategic advisor.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: This lawyer has really hit a home run in their in, I don't know if it's a male or a female, I don't in their practice because they are making a ton of money doing almost nothing.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the hard thing for this lawyer, based upon the options that are being considered, is that he's gonna have to start doing a little bit more heavy lifting.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that may not be really agreeable to him, but I do think this is a case where AI can help save time and elevate his practice.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe, and maybe that'll work out.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's gonna work out because this sounds like a really enterprising, enterprising attorney.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: The answer chat GPT gave you is exactly my point that AI makes us think better.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: I said you should go and talk to AI and ask it, but that is such an amazing answer.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I it reminds me of I show up to my CFO meetings so much more prepared now because I upload all of my company financials into my closed AI and then I can show up knowing what I'm talking about for the first time.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and if you attended our NASA webinar on this, I shared I had built a revenue dashboard from my firm through Claude.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: And if I want, you know, I just hold a number.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: If I wanted to have revenue of 100 grand a month, how how can I do that?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what would that breakdown be?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I had, I have, I've always looked at it this way, but I did it manually.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: How much hourly work do I need in the pipeline for that month?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: So how many hours do I need to be able to bill that month?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: How many flat fee cases that are paid in full do I need each month to reach that goal?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: And how many cases do I need on payment plans to reach that goal?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I built that in so I can adjust it and I see how the numbers, you know, are how the numbers work on my revenue dashboard.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I shared that.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's a tool that's in the NAFTA webinar that, you know, whoever orders that webinar, you can go buy them in the NAFTA store.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: We'll we'll get that revenue dashboard as well.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I think to your point, Ron, using Chat GPT or Cloud or whatever AI platform that you're comfortable with to help enhance your view of your business and how you can grow your business and analyze your financials.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: I how can you not want that data?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's critical.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: You cannot just say, Well, I might add this area of practice and I don't know what it's gonna cost me, and I don't know what my potential is, and I don't know, you know, do I need extra people?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know any of that, and I don't know if I can afford to do that because I don't know what my real financials are.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: I know that my CPA files my tax returns and it says I made this.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's how a lot of bankruptcy attorneys operate.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: They don't know what their budget is.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: Attorneys across the board, yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because they just don't want to do the work that's involved in knowing your numbers.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, all right, I think these are gonna work out for that attorney from Reddit, armed with our expert advice.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we can we can close with our Flintstones Simpsons Jetsons segment.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're in season two, so we're not gonna be offering tips anymore on how they can up-level their practices.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're doing something a little different in season two.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of just talking about AI, we're actually building something together over the course of the season.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the goal isn't simply to learn the new tools, the goal is to build the foundation that will eventually allow AI to understand your law firm.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: And Jenny, that's what you were talking about with your chapter 13 uh objection workflow, uh, which sounds really cool.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the last week's build step was just to identify your assets.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a Flintstones lawyer, we said identify your 10 best forms.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not every document, but your 10 best.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a Simpsons lawyer, we talked about listing the 10 questions your clients ask over and over again.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're a Jetsons lawyer, your task was to identify your firm's 10 most important systems: intake, onboarding, document collection, discovery, et cetera.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: That was last week.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: This week, we're going to start organizing those assets.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we're still not using AI, and that's intentional because before you can teach AI, your law firm need to be able to find your own knowledge.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this week, what we're suggesting for the Flintstones lawyers create a folder called best forms.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Put those 10 best forms in one place.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you did that last week as part of it.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, like most of our listeners, you just listened and you didn't do anything.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that's okay too.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this week, you're gonna create a folder, you're gonna put your best forms in it.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's all.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's all we're asking for you for this week.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: For Simpsons lawyers, start a document called client questions and give each question its own heading.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've already written an email that answers one of those questions, just copy it underneath.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're beginning to capture your firm's knowledge in one organized place.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: And for Jetson's lawyers, create a simple list of your systems.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: One page for each system, under each heading, write a few sentences describing what that system actually accomplishes.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not every detail, just enough that someone else could understand what the system is supposed to do.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Next week, we're gonna take a different step.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna start cleaning those assets so that what eventually goes into AI reflects the very best of your firm knowledge.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have to tell you something.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on a big project and and uh hopefully it'll be ready within a year.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully it'll be ready by next April when uh when I'm in Orlando.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I have Team Accelerator, I have a whole course on how to become a bankruptcy lawyer.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and every it's all in transcripts, it's all together.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: I dumped all of this into Chat GPT.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: ChatGPT said, this is awesome.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is really going to help making your product easier.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said, This is great.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not so fast.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm coding every day, and I am cleaning those transcripts and really making it into something usable.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it and the cleaning parts, really hard part.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have that experience when you were building out your skills, Jenny?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't think that you're going to build a skill and it's going to be operable right then and there.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this isn't work in progress.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: Just like your forums, if you think your form is final, then you're not doing a good job.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: There's going to be a new case that comes out.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_03: There's going to be a new question being asked by the trustees.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: You need to make sure that you are incorporating that new information into your forms.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: I always tell myself when we used to print everything, do not print more than five of that, you know, five intakes.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Don't print more than, you know, five, three forty-one, you know, documents or whatever.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm constantly changing them.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_03: Constantly.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's got to be evolving this document.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think about our our uh Flintstone Simpsons Jetsons segment this week?
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious if the Jetsons attorneys are already jumping ahead.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: I would think everybody's jumping ahead, but that's okay because you know, they're gonna reach a point.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, if you're a Jetsons lawyer, you're all you're already skating along like years ahead.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you're in the in the Jenny Doling wake, the wake of Jenny Doling's world.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're you know, so you know, this was a great episode.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny, as always, whenever I'm anywhere in your orbit, I learn a lot.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I really appreciate your coming along, and and I look forward to talking to you about your uh the skills you're building and what you're gonna offer to the attorneys in the world.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jenny.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you guys.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're doing great service for uh our bankruptcy attorneys.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jenny.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is Ron Drescher.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Heather Gardner.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this has been AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers, and we'll see you next time.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.