Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / The Private Equity Playbook PI Firm Owners Aren’t Ready For in 2026

Transcript

The Private Equity Playbook PI Firm Owners Aren’t Ready For in 2026 · The Jon and Marc Podcast

0:00
The greatest feel for growth for us to start was the happiness of
0:05
our team. If we could make the team happy,
0:07
like really happy at work by just removing all the stuff they
0:11
hate, then they would take care of the clients.
0:13
And when they take care of the clients, as my dad always liked
0:15
to say, the money and the success will just follow.
0:17
If you're making a puzzle, you're building a puzzle, what
0:20
do you do? You look at the picture on the
0:21
box. If you have a picture of where
0:22
you want to be and what you want to achieve, it just makes it
0:24
easier to know what pieces should go where.
0:37
Today I am flanked by two Canadians.
0:39
We've got Mark Ryu and Fred Litwinik of Licko Law.
0:43
We're going to talk about LS, OS, Ms. OS.
0:46
We're going to talk about the changing landscape of law firms
0:50
as we enter 2026. Most agencies sell individual
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results, go to rdigitalmedia.com and let's talk.
1:14
Thank you for joining us on John and Mark podcast.
1:16
Fred, thanks for making the track.
1:18
Welcome to the pod. Thank you very much.
1:19
It's absolutely my pleasure to be.
1:21
Here we're in Miami at National Trial Lawyers.
1:23
It is 85° outside. What's the current temperature
1:27
in Calgary? I think it was -4 when I left,
1:29
yeah, I think it's it was around that this morning as well.
1:32
Celsius or Fahrenheit? No, that's Fahrenheit.
1:33
Yeah. No, it was.
1:34
I always got a check. It was more like -20 Celsius.
1:36
So you know, I had to do a quick conversion in my head.
1:39
Thank you for coming making the trek.
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We're going to have an interesting conversation today.
1:42
I've gotten to know how you guys operate pretty well over the
1:46
past six months and the news that has come out about the
1:50
evolution of private equity acquiring not just legal, right,
1:54
law firms, legal agencies, that's part of what we're going
1:57
to be talking about today, but just acquiring companies as a
2:00
whole. Private equity has shifted and
2:03
is now in the legal space aggressively.
2:06
Yes. Would you describe what Litgo
2:10
does as similar to what all of these other private equity firms
2:14
are doing in the legal space? The first thing I want to say is
2:16
that I think a lot of people are still having the debate about
2:19
whether private equity in legal is good or bad.
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It's not really a great idea, I think, to bury our heads in the
2:25
sand about it, right? I think we have to acknowledge
2:27
it as a reality. And just like any other industry
2:29
where the private equity enters, it's not all going to happen
2:31
overnight and not everybody's going to be equally affected by
2:33
it or affected by it at all, right?
2:35
Like think of something like dental.
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There's still, you know, mom and pop dentist.
2:39
We're almost like the buffer between private equity and
2:42
legal, if that makes sense. We do have private equity
2:45
investors in LICO LSO for minority investors and they're,
2:48
they're great Capital Partners for us.
2:50
But in my background is in legal and illegal operations.
2:54
I'm a trial lawyer, trained as a trial lawyer, grew up in the
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business of personal injury law. My dad is a personal injury
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lawyer. And I understand both the, the
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lawyering side of it and the business side of it.
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And I think that's something that no private equity firm at
3:08
this point in time can legitimately say.
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So we're kind of the the buffer between the two.
3:13
I really thought it was important to lay the groundwork
3:15
for the rest of the conversation because I think that when people
3:19
hear about the acquisition of law firms, immediately their
3:22
minds go to, okay, private equity is coming in.
3:25
This is all about money. It's all about value extraction.
3:28
It's all about how fast can we grow and squeeze as much money
3:31
out as quickly as possible or grow it to a point where we can
3:34
just now exit, right? And that's not what Litco's
3:38
doing. Litco was a law firm before
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Litco was an LSO, right? That's right.
3:42
And we continue to be a law firm.
3:44
And just to be clear, right and I think, you know, most of the
3:47
people that are watching or listening to this understand
3:49
that in most cases non lawyers still cannot own law firms.
3:52
Nothing's changed materially in that except for, you know, a
3:55
handful of exceptions, the most notable of which right now is
3:58
got to be Arizona, right? And people are talking about
4:01
Arizona AB s s or alternative business structures as way for
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non lawyers to actually own a law firm.
4:07
And that is happening. But I think, you know, the way
4:09
that we are operating is that all of our law firms and we
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have, you know, four law firms that are part of the LSO now.
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All of them are and continue to be owned by lawyers.
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And so there's no ownership whatsoever.
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There's no investment whatsoever in the law firm.
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It's all in the all in the back office, if you will, or the
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services that the lawyers required to deliver great legal
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work. And so that's that MSO or
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managed services organization structure that is getting a lot
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of coverage right now. When traditional private equity
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comes into a law firm, what are the things that you are seeing
4:41
them do? How are they changing a law firm
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separate from what you guys are doing?
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Let's talk about like kind of the broad stroke and what's
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happening in the space. That's a really good question
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from the standpoint of what does private equity want?
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And I think the first thing we have to remember is the private
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equity is not a monolith. We speak of it as it is, you
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know, like it is some sort of, you know, one thing, you know,
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like a hive mind and everyone's behaving the same way.
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And so not all private equity is, is private equity.
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There's a lot of nuance within that.
5:08
There's a lot of different types of firms.
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There are firms that are strongly looking at legal, There
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are firms that don't think that private equity will ever be
5:15
really even fully participating in legal, right.
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So there's still some differences of opinion in that
5:20
industry and there's all kinds of differences in size and
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scope. And by no means am I, you know,
5:25
the private equity expert, but I have talked to a lot of private
5:28
equity firms that are interested in legal.
5:31
And what I find a lot is that they are much as the lawyers who
5:36
are learning about private equity as we go right now, the
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private equity funds are learning about law firms and in
5:41
particular personal injury law firms because the types of law
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firms that people in private equity are typically exposed to
5:49
are M law. 200 types of law firms you know corporate law
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firms M and A law firms transactional law firms like you
5:56
know not contingent fee. Those could not operate any
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differently than a personal injury law firm.
6:00
Completely. The business model is night and
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day, right and not the least of which is the contingent fee
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aspect of that, right. You don't get paid until we win
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kind of thing. Whereas the lawyers they are
6:10
used to dealing with, they work on a billable hour and if the
6:13
lawyer leaves the firm, they typically walk out the door with
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their, with their files with their clients, right.
6:18
And so there's a lot of learning that has to take place about
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what the consumer side, what we call the consumer facing side of
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legal is compared to sort of the corporate facing side of legal.
6:29
It's very interesting because personal injury is consumer
6:31
service based business that is extremely different than every
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other consumer service based business.
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Not like a dentist, they're not like a lawn maintenance company,
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they're not like an electrician or a plumber.
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They service all those people. But the revenue model and how
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they operate and how much they spend on marketing is grossly
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different than every other consumer service based business.
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100% And for those of us who have, you know, grown up in this
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business or who work with people in this business and have done
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so for a long time, a lot of the things that we understand
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because of our exposure or, you know, through intuition or even
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just look at a firm and sort of immediately identify, you know,
7:05
what's going on within the firm. If we can really get under the
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hood, private equity folks just don't know that, right?
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And it's not, it's not a knock on them.
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It's just like, this is like like no other business or almost
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like no other business that they have ever looked at, right?
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So they don't have the wraps. A lot of this process is also,
7:19
you know, us in the legal industry wanting to, I take this
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really seriously. I really want to protect our
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thing, if that makes sense, right?
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Like having grown up in this industry, particularly in
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personal injury, I feel very protective of it.
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And I want to make sure that, you know, as private equity
7:35
enters that it's done in the right way.
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And so I think what's really important in that is the
7:39
education piece and teaching, you know, private equity, what
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is special and unique and different about what we.
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Do you have Litco Law? Yes, in Calgary.
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Great. And a great mascot, by the way,
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Larry the Unicorn. Larry the Unicorn, That's right.
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You were able to grow Litco, right?
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When you look at money coming into the legal space, they're
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traditionally you're looking at entities, institutional entities
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that have grown things in other industries, growing businesses
8:09
in other industries, and they're now trying to apply that to
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legal. You've actually done it in
8:13
legal. Can you talk a little bit about
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how you were able to grow liquor law to be the dominant Alberta
8:19
personal injury law firm? Yeah, Happy to thank you for the
8:22
compliment. We love Larry the Unicorn.
8:24
He's named after my dad. That's my dad.
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Yeah, absolutely. So Liquor Law was founded as
8:29
liquid and company by my mom and dad.
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So my dad, an injury lawyer and my mom an accountant, I had the
8:35
benefit. I always say that was the first
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MSO I ever saw because my mother, being the business
8:40
minded accounting person, handled the operations and
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finance and my dad handled the legal.
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And you know, while they made decisions together and they
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complemented each other, that was really how they split the
8:49
business. So I didn't really see another
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way to operate a firm. So when my brother Todd and I
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had the opportunity to make our first ever acquisition, which
8:58
was that firm that we bought from our parents, we already had
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a great, I guess, blueprint for, you know, how, how to make a
9:04
firm efficient. And my mother took her credit,
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you know, was pretty cutting edge on all things technological
9:09
as well. When we bought that firm, it was
9:13
20 people. And we set about scaling it up
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to be, you know, Alberta's largest and we think best.
9:17
We've scaled it up to about 150 people.
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And we did that by simply just applying more of those lessons.
9:23
In other words, just figuring out, OK, what is on the legal
9:25
side and what is on the everything else side because the
9:28
two are very different. I always find, you know, and you
9:30
guys probably find this too because you talk to a lot of
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lawyers, right? A lot of lawyers.
9:34
We go to law school to be lawyers, right?
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Not to do HR or IT or accounting and finance or even marketing.
9:40
Although a lot of us, you know, probably really enjoy the
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marketing side of the business. It is probably the most fun part
9:46
for a lot of the lawyers. We're not trained in those
9:47
things and yet we find ourselves thrust into these roles.
9:50
We took that idea of leave the lawyer into the lawyers and then
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everything else should support the delivery of amazing legal
9:58
services to the clients. Was that the biggest fuel for
10:02
growth is just constantly giving great client service?
10:06
We really focused on that, but I think the greatest feel for
10:10
growth for us to start was the happiness of our team.
10:15
Stole this mantra from a guy named John Di Julius, who's a
10:17
customer service expert. He says your clients will never
10:19
be any happier than your team. And we really took that to
10:22
heart, right? Like, think about it.
10:24
If you, you know, if you got somebody who's coming to see you
10:26
at potentially the worst time in their lives, right?
10:28
I mean, worst case scenario, you've got somebody who is, you
10:31
know, they've lost a loved one. It's.
10:32
Never a positive situation. Never right and they're usually
10:35
going through the worst thing in their lives.
10:37
Maybe there's a traumatic brain injury and somebody they love
10:39
has like a changed personality or is disabled for life.
10:42
These are horrible, horrible situations for people and we
10:45
have to pour a lot of empathy into that.
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All right, that can be really challenging for any human being.
10:50
But I mean, when you're also a a litigator and you've got, you've
10:53
got to focus on fighting and you've got to focus on
10:55
advocating and you've got to focus on strategy and all these
10:58
sort of big items that come into really maximizing claim value
11:01
and, and doing the best job that you possibly can for your
11:03
client. It's really difficult to do that
11:05
day in and day out and maintain that sense of empathy.
11:08
But it's much more difficult if you feel like nobody cares about
11:11
you. So if nobody cares about you and
11:14
like how you feel, how you practice, whether your tools
11:17
work, whether you know the the systems and support and the
11:20
people that support you can be trusted or are delivering what
11:23
you need, it's really hard to do that day in and day out.
11:27
So that's really what we started with was this idea that if we
11:30
could make the team happy, like really happy at work by just
11:34
removing all the stuff they hate as much as that's possible,
11:37
right? There's always stuff you don't
11:38
like to do, but as much as possible, getting the obstacles
11:40
out of their way to prevent great people from being great,
11:43
then they would take care of the clients.
11:45
And when they take care of the clients, as my dad always like
11:47
to say, the money and the success will just fall, right?
11:49
So that that's really the idea you guys.
11:52
Were I think you still are sponsored the Calgary Flames
11:55
Canada, you don't have many options for sports teams to
11:58
sponsor. The Calgary Flames are not only
12:00
just a sports team that happens to be in Calgary, they are
12:04
probably one of the biggest fan base sports franchises in
12:07
Canada. Right.
12:08
Calgary Flames have a huge, huge following.
12:10
Absolutely. 2nd to the Montreal Canadiens.
12:13
I don't know the Toronto Maple Leafs.
12:14
They. Probably.
12:14
Oh yeah. Pretty good, yeah.
12:15
I'm going to sit back and let the Canadians fight over the.
12:18
Hockey team, those Leafs fans. The decision to invest in
12:23
partnering with them, yes, right, Obviously had to have
12:26
been a significant financial investment and needed to be a
12:31
strategic decision. And we get asked all the time
12:33
from our clients. We have some who sponsor NFL
12:36
teams, NBA teams, Major League Baseball teams and NHL teams
12:39
now. So I guess we have it all
12:40
covered, but there's a lot of interest in Co branding with a
12:44
major sports franchise. Can you talk about your decision
12:47
to do that? And if you could rewind back,
12:50
would you do it again? Were there things you would
12:52
change about that? Because that really does change
12:54
sort of the face of any brand once you start aligning with
12:57
another brand. That's an ongoing challenge for
13:00
us, right? And still thinking about that,
13:02
you know, from the standpoint of ROI versus the standpoint of
13:07
brand building. So that's really, you know, the
13:09
challenge for us. And I wouldn't advocate that
13:11
that be the first thing that any firm do.
13:13
Once you're large and, and you're more of the gorilla in
13:16
the market, then it can make sense to align yourself with a
13:19
great community focused brand like the Calgary Flames are in
13:22
our market. A wise man recently said to me
13:24
that attribution is only getting harder.
13:26
And, and I agree with that, right?
13:28
And so there's often a focus, I think in marketing in
13:30
particular, where it's like, we want to see ROI, right?
13:33
And we want to see attribution and we want to understand that
13:36
this dollar spent here generated X dollars over here.
13:39
And I think that of all the things that we do, the Flames
13:42
partnership is probably the least tangible.
13:44
It's probably the hardest 1. You know, there are various
13:46
things that we do to measure that, but it is, it is
13:49
challenging. On the other hand, the Flames
13:51
are really they're it in Calgary, right?
13:54
I mean, they are the organization, the most famous
13:57
people in town, the biggest organization.
13:59
I mean, it really it doesn't get any bigger than that.
14:01
And so from a community involvement standpoint, you
14:03
know, they're, they have the Flames Foundation, which does an
14:05
incredible work in the community.
14:07
And that's, you know, I could go on and on about the things that
14:10
they do for the city of Calgary and for the outlying areas.
14:12
But it's just something where, you know, it is really hard to
14:17
say on a balance sheet or it's really hard to say when you look
14:20
at the financials to say this is generated this kind of return
14:24
for us. But from a brand building
14:26
standpoint, I think that it's just unbeatable for the exposure
14:30
that you get and the alignment that you get.
14:32
How are you making decisions now with the evolving attribution
14:38
that we're dealing with, whether it's digital marketing, losing
14:41
attribution or some of these brand building activities that
14:44
are compounding each other? How do you?
14:46
Very expensive brand building. Activity.
14:49
Very expensive brand building activity.
14:50
How do you go about? Making decisions, well, I would
14:52
say first of all, you know, we make those decisions with a
14:55
team, right? So we're fortunate to be at a
14:57
size now where we do have just a fantastic team of people that
15:00
work to make these decisions together.
15:02
So I get a lot of, you know, great advice and a lot of great
15:05
partners that we work with with that's, you know, really help us
15:07
with those decisions. I think that's that's incredibly
15:10
important. We think about it a lot from the
15:11
standpoint of what our goals are.
15:14
What are our goals for for let Cola in Alberta?
15:16
That really helps drive decisions.
15:17
If you don't know where you're going, right?
15:19
It's like our business coach always says, you know, if you're
15:21
making a puzzle or you're building a puzzle, what do you
15:23
do? You look at the picture on the
15:24
box. If you have a picture of where
15:26
you want to be and what you want to achieve, it just makes it
15:28
easier to know what pieces should go where.
15:30
And we're not always perfect on that.
15:32
Sometimes we put a piece in the wrong place, so we have to pull
15:34
it out and try again. But that really helps us inform
15:37
our decision. So what do we start with?
15:38
We start with our core purpose, which at Litco Law is to balance
15:42
the power right to seek out and eliminate unfairness in the
15:46
world. We start with our core values.
15:48
What do we believe in? What do we care about?
15:50
Those are really important. And then we think about, OK,
15:52
what are our three to five year objectives?
15:54
Where do we want to be in three to five years?
15:56
What things have to be true for this business to be very
15:59
successful? We break that down to a one year
16:01
plan or we say, OK, well this year we've got to achieve this
16:04
with things like our solid leads, you know our sign ups,
16:07
things like that. So sales, marketing and sales
16:09
among other priorities that we set for the business, all the
16:11
firms as part of Lick. Well, so do this coaching and
16:14
planning process so that everybody has a picture that
16:18
they can build towards and that helps make the decisions easier
16:21
on more of a day-to-day level. A lot of it is just test,
16:25
implement, measure, pivot if necessary, go all in if
16:29
necessary. I mean, if it's really just a
16:31
constant process of evaluation, reevaluation, test, verify.
16:35
And that's particularly true the larger we've gotten, right?
16:38
Because when you're starting out, you can kind of go like
16:41
this. But there's a point of
16:42
diminishing returns with any marketing investment.
16:44
And the larger you get, I think it's easier to come up against
16:47
that point. What are some of the decisions
16:49
that you've made or tests you've run that you look back on and
16:52
you want to like rewind the clock and say, like, I wish we
16:55
didn't do X? Or that I wish we hadn't done.
16:58
You say you you run a lot of tests, right?
17:00
You do a lot of different things, you invest in a lot of
17:02
different things. We did a quadrant test in the
17:05
City of Edmonton. So what I mean by that is a lot
17:08
of firms, I really love billboard advertising, right?
17:10
And billboard advertising, it can be a hot button topic
17:12
because some people are really passionately in favor and some
17:14
people are really passionate against it.
17:16
And I don't know that there's a right way.
17:17
And I think it does work for some people, but measuring ROI
17:20
or attribution with billboards can be tough.
17:23
In the City of Edmonton, we basically divided the city up
17:26
into quadrants and we placed billboards on roads that weren't
17:30
likely to be travelled by people who didn't live in the area.
17:33
And then we tracked by postal code or zip code as you guys
17:37
call it, right? We tracked by the the postal
17:39
code attribution to see, you know where it came from.
17:43
I don't know that that exercise really told us anything.
17:47
We did see increases in areas where we had billboards, but I
17:51
don't know that they were incredibly meaningful.
17:54
But the thing about a billboard is, and the thing about our
17:56
business is, and This is why I probably wouldn't do it again,
17:59
is that someone may have seen that billboard 8 months ago, two
18:04
years ago. And that was one of nine
18:05
impressions that they saw that they needed to when they Googled
18:10
us, or they asked ChatGPT or Jam and I or whoever about us, when
18:14
they saw the name, they didn't even realize that they had seen
18:16
that billboard and it had made a difference.
18:18
The reason why I don't think I would do it again is because I
18:20
don't think we've used that data to drive any meaningful
18:22
decisions. I've been thinking about this
18:24
topic a lot. When you look at brand building
18:27
non trackable activities, I think there should be a portion
18:31
of a marketing budget that is a set aside for non trackable
18:34
things. Activities, community
18:36
involvement, billboards, TV, radio, buses, I mean, you name
18:41
it, right. Even like the Flames
18:42
sponsorship, take that. And you then say, how much
18:46
visibility can I get for that? How many eyeballs?
18:49
How many of the right eyeballs, how many impressions, how much
18:51
frequency, as opposed to thinking about like each
18:55
individual thing? Yeah, think about it
18:57
holistically and try and extract as much value out of that
19:02
investment as you can. And then you look at your
19:04
overall picture and you say, OK, it worked or it didn't work, but
19:08
you really can't gauge whether that specific thing that you did
19:12
worked or didn't work. All you can really look back and
19:14
say is would there have been a way for me to get more
19:16
impressions or better impressions or hit the right
19:19
people more times? Because like you said, I can
19:22
place a billboard 8 months ago or two years ago, and that
19:25
billboard could have influence, but it's the big mix of
19:28
everything together. I agree with that 100% and I'll
19:31
add to that that we haven't even started talking about what the
19:34
content of the Billboard was, right?
19:36
So many people forget and you guys probably noticed this
19:38
because you're. Hoping it was Larry the Unicorn.
19:40
Larry, I'm. Hoping too, but like you, you,
19:42
you guys probably noticed this. I know I do because I'm paying
19:45
attention to marketing. But I'll drive down the highway
19:47
sometimes and just look at billboards and I'll be like,
19:49
can't read that. Don't know what that's for,
19:51
judge. Billboards very aggressively
19:52
now. Like that was dumb right?
19:54
Remind me of big things. I hate when people have phone
19:56
numbers on billboards. I'm like, dude, there's no
19:58
chance anyone's calling that unless you have a banding
20:00
number. I'm just like, put something up
20:02
there that's memorable so they might remember you when it comes
20:05
up. 100% because you've only got, what do you think, 2
20:09
seconds? 3 seconds to catch?
20:10
Unless they're stuck in traffic, you've got barely enough time to
20:13
catch anyone's attention with a billboard that they're going to
20:16
be able to read your fine print and what looked great on copy in
20:19
front of you, you know, on a piece of paper just might not
20:22
work on a billboard. So think about that 2 to 3
20:24
second rule that you've got to say maybe 8 seconds at the
20:26
outset that you've got to really catch somebody's attention.
20:29
So you know you can run a test like that, but if your billboard
20:31
sucks then is it really going to move the needle?
20:34
The most effective billboard that I've ever seen that has
20:37
actually made me take action. I remember there was a mattress
20:40
company. It was a black billboard and it
20:42
just had in white, giant white letters.
20:45
It just had a website. It didn't say they sold
20:47
mattresses, said nothing. It was just like 3 letters.
20:50
I don't even remember what itwas.com.
20:52
I'm like, I have to see what this is.
20:54
I don't know if it's like a game that they're playing around the
20:56
city or what. And it wound up being like a
20:58
thing for online mattress. And you never forgot it.
21:01
Well, I did forget. I can't remember what it it was.
21:03
You're right. The creative is extremely
21:05
important, a way to be memorable in as little time as possible.
21:09
And if it's the Unicorn or if it's a vanity phone number or if
21:13
it's someone's face, you know, John Morgan does all these ads
21:16
where he's like dressed up as Santa Claus during Christmas.
21:19
I think it was FA La La la, right?
21:21
Like, and then people take a picture of it and like, they
21:24
joke about it. But like, you're getting free
21:25
impressions from that. Yes, right.
21:28
And figuring out ways where you can leverage the visibility that
21:31
you have to just keep pushing out that brand visibility, I
21:34
think is the way to go. You know, Mark, you always talk
21:36
about that study that Google did years ago.
21:39
Oh yeah. Right, it was. 7/11/14 I believe
21:43
they need interactive brand across 7 different channels, 11
21:48
touch points and like almost 14 hours of content for them to
21:51
like remember your firm, like who you are like like that when
21:57
something comes up it's like you're a brand that lives rent
22:00
free in their brain. Like you have to interact with
22:02
them across multiple mediums, multiple times and lots of
22:05
exposure. The quintessential example of
22:08
this is like Apple. One of those impressions is
22:10
people wearing their Airpods. That is an impression.
22:12
One of those impressions is like you sitting here with your
22:15
iPhone, right? I'm seeing the brand figuring
22:18
out ways to bring a brand into the real world, right?
22:23
You talk about like the hockey sponsorship, right?
22:26
That is a place where people are an interaction.
22:29
It's a real world thing. It's tangible, right?
22:32
And those things are really hard to do.
22:33
I will say I was big on direct response marketing for most of
22:37
my marketing career and was not a brand person.
22:40
Recently I flipped the the story on this and I'm very much like
22:43
into brand marketing. And then when I was already on
22:46
that journey, and one of the things that solidified it for me
22:49
was it was a small, small example.
22:51
But like when we started the podcast in August of last year,
22:54
we started running it. So we don't know who's watching
22:57
anything slowly growing. But unless someone likes or
23:00
comments, you don't know who's watching, right?
23:01
So you see these numbers and like it's reaching people.
23:03
I don't know if it's a bot, if it's a human.
23:05
And then we went to Mass Torch made perfect and I would go to
23:09
the elevator and go like, hey, Mark and I was like, yes, I was
23:12
like, we've we've met before. He's like, you're the podcast
23:15
guys. And I was like, oh, people are
23:17
watching. And then that happened at MTNP
23:19
over and over and over again. I was like, so like, we're
23:23
getting the brain impressions out there.
23:24
People are viewing the content and they're remembering who we
23:27
are at a much smaller scale than any personal injury lawyer is
23:30
doing. But it just solidified that,
23:32
like if you put the content out there that people really want to
23:34
watch and interact with your brand when they want to interact
23:37
with it, if they have the opportunity to interact with you
23:39
back, they will. I couldn't agree with that more.
23:41
It makes me think that a lot of marketing requires empathy.
23:45
I feel like a lot of people when they market, they put what they
23:48
want to put out there as opposed to, you know, understanding what
23:51
their target audience or their target market needs.
23:55
Mark Cuban likes to say selling is helping.
23:58
If you have something that somebody needs that you're not
24:00
even selling it to them. You're just making them aware
24:02
that it exists in a way that's the easiest possible way,
24:04
reducing the friction. And your example of being
24:07
recognized is paralleled by my example of everybody I talk to
24:11
you, not everybody, but a lot of people.
24:12
I talk to you in Calgary especially, I'll say the word
24:15
slick cola and they'll be like the Unicorn, the Unicorn, right?
24:19
And the Unicorn, I love the Unicorn, Larry.
24:21
I put him on everything if I could, right, Because I just
24:24
think I think it's a cool way to represent our brand in a
24:27
character that I I think embodies what we're we're trying
24:30
to say about ourselves. I think it's really tough to do
24:31
with a visual. I think we've done it and I'm
24:33
really, really proud of the Unicorn.
24:34
To some people, it's polarizing, right?
24:36
I know even some lawyers will look at that and go that's,
24:39
that's unprofessional or that's not, you know, that's not right
24:42
or it's, it's silly or whatever. The point is that people
24:45
recognize it and people talk about it.
24:47
I've even had people come to me and they'll say, oh, that horse
24:49
that you got is really cool. And they're like.
24:51
It's actually a Unicorn. And then we have a whole
24:53
conversation. The white one with the horn,
24:55
Yeah. You know, the one with the horn,
24:57
it's like, I was like, do we need to talk to my marketing
25:00
department? Do we make that horn bigger?
25:02
But the whole point of that is that if it's something that
25:05
people will talk about and they will remember, that's a good
25:08
thing, I think. Unless it's, you know, something
25:09
really negative. But we send Larry out to
25:12
community events. He goes to, we have a street
25:15
festival in Calgary called the Lilac Festival.
25:17
He goes out there and he interacts and kids take pictures
25:19
with them. You know, we'll send them to,
25:21
you know, different events. If we could send them to the
25:23
Children's Hospital, we'll send them there.
25:24
If we can send them to a Flames game and he can hang out with
25:27
Harvey the Hound. I got a question for you before
25:29
you continue down this path. Yeah.
25:31
Is the Unicorn two people or one person in the costume?
25:34
What costume? Is it on 2 legs?
25:38
My sister is going to kill me if I don't just say what costume.
25:41
What are you talking about? He's real.
25:43
He's the Unicorn is real, John. I really need to know if you if
25:46
you put two people in and make one of them be the blood of the
25:48
Unicorn. He's standing up.
25:49
He's a standing up. He's a standing up beautiful.
25:51
He wears a suit sometimes he'll wear, he can wear a Flames
25:54
jersey, you know, he can wear some various different outfits,
25:56
but he's a standing up, you know, he's an upright.
25:58
Like a mascot like you would see at a A. 100%.
26:01
A sports game? That's awesome.
26:03
Yeah, he's great. I love that we have fun toy
26:06
unicorns that we hand out to kids when they come to the
26:09
office and we've got stickers and and and all that sort of
26:12
stuff because it's fun. And like, even though we do a
26:15
serious job, we do a very, very serious job.
26:18
We don't have to be serious to the point of unapproachability
26:23
with our clients. We would love to intimidate our
26:25
opponents. That's the point, right?
26:27
And we'd love to for them to fear us in a way, or to at least
26:29
respect us and say those are formidable trial lawyers.
26:32
And we know that if we don't pay full value, they're going to
26:35
take us to the mat and it's going to be serious.
26:37
And we don't need to project that to people who have just
26:41
gone through one of the worst things of their lives and just
26:44
need a little bit of softness and kindness in their lives.
26:46
Let's parlay that into a conversation about the firm's
26:50
that have joined Litco LSO, the unique personalities that exist
26:53
within those firms. If a firm has their own version
26:57
of Larry the Unicorn right, and Litco now partners with them,
27:00
how do you maintain that unique personality while also now
27:05
scaling and operationalizing that local firm?
27:08
So all the firms that join the LSO, they keep their brands.
27:12
Here's the thing about our organization is that we approach
27:15
this from a place of humility because I know the Calgary
27:20
market really well. I know the Edmonton market
27:22
reasonably well. I know Alberta fairly well.
27:25
I've grown up there, born and raised my whole life even.
27:27
So, you know I understand the Calgary market best of all those
27:30
because I'm local to that market.
27:32
I grew up there and I continue to live there.
27:34
I don't know what the market is like in, you know, places like
27:38
Halifax, NS where we have a firm, or Atlanta, GA where we
27:42
have a firm, or Oklahoma City, OK where we have a firm
27:45
headquartered that does business at 20 locations across the
27:49
United States with licensure in 46 states, right?
27:52
I don't have that local knowledge.
27:54
I don't have the jurisdictional knowledge, the legal knowledge,
27:56
the community knowledge. I don't know the teams well.
27:59
I don't understand all of those things.
28:00
What I understand, well, I think, is how to remove
28:04
obstacles from the path of great attorneys who want to achieve
28:10
great things. And that's the point of the MSO
28:13
is keep your brand, keep doing what you're doing, do more of
28:17
it, do it better. Let us help you get where you
28:19
would get anyway. But instead of it taking 10
28:21
years, maybe it can take 2 because we've got resources,
28:24
we've got money, we've got team members, and we can also just
28:27
share openly with each other. Oh, you're doing that at that
28:30
firm. Oh, that's cool.
28:32
Let's try that over here. No, that wouldn't work here
28:34
because of this or that. The other thing.
28:35
Let's pilot something here. We'll try somewhere else.
28:38
So I think that's the benefit. I think it's a really beneficial
28:41
model that people aren't aware of law firm owners cuz a lot of
28:44
times they say, hey, I wanna grow, I wanna be aggressive.
28:46
And they see the only option is potentially taking on a ton of
28:49
debt. That's right.
28:50
And then they're taking on a ton of debt and they're responsible
28:52
for building out the firm, usually spend a ton of money on
28:55
marketing. And then they're not sleeping
28:57
well at night because they see that big payment they've had to
28:59
start making with interest on that payment and they see as the
29:02
only option to grow. Or this is a potentially
29:04
different option, like, hey, you get to keep your firm, You're
29:06
not selling out. You have people that are
29:08
investing in the firm, people are helping you grow, but you're
29:11
not also exiting at the same time.
29:12
And you potentially have that same financial payday at the end
29:16
of the rainbow. Your listeners, your viewers
29:18
know this because they've done it.
29:20
Yeah, my brother Todd and I and I watched my parents do this
29:22
year after year after year, pushing it all back in, right?
29:25
You make you make all this money, but you push it back in
29:27
to invest in your growth. And you're always betting on
29:29
yourself, which I think is a wonderful thing.
29:31
And at some point, it's nice to receive some of that value for
29:34
you and your family to realize the value of the business you've
29:37
built. That's just the practice that
29:38
you've built, you know, take some risk off the table, right?
29:41
I mean, no business is perfect. And we always face risk and
29:44
there's always ups and downs in that entrepreneur or business
29:47
person's life. And so, you know, with with the
29:50
LSO, we really again approached it with the viewpoint of we
29:54
thought there would be a point where private equity was going
29:56
to enter our industry. What are the bad things that can
30:00
happen? What are the good things that
30:01
can happen? What would we want as trial
30:04
lawyers? What would be a great solution
30:06
for us in this new world? We built that.
30:10
That's what we built was this idea of, OK, how can a smaller
30:13
firm get the resources and the ability to get access to capital
30:16
and other things that they need to compete with giants in this
30:19
new world of consolidation without losing their soul?
30:22
Real quick for the people watching listening, can you
30:24
explain when LSO and MSO is? LSO is just what we call an MSO.
30:28
We decided to give it its own name.
30:29
We call it a legal support organization as opposed to a
30:32
managed services organization, but really we mean the same
30:36
thing. So an MSO managed services
30:38
organization in this context is just really think of it like
30:41
you've got the law firm here, which in our case, the way we
30:44
think about it is lawyers and clients and everything that goes
30:47
into supporting those lawyers or those attorneys to do what they
30:51
do at the highest level, right? And there's already a version of
30:54
this going on in most firms anyway, right?
30:56
You've got your paralegals and you've got your administrative
30:58
people in your accounting or finance people or maybe someone
31:00
who does lien resolution or settlements.
31:03
Paralegals. Where are they falling in the
31:05
organization? The paralegals, they are in the
31:07
management company, in our organization or in the managed
31:09
services organization because they provide a service to the
31:12
attorneys, right? What's regulated is the practice
31:14
of law. And what we have to always,
31:16
always, always make sure of is that lawyers are free and
31:19
unfettered to practice and use their own professional
31:22
discretion without somebody standing over them and trying to
31:26
force them to do something with a case for the wrong reasons.
31:30
Is that what you do? You don't call them up.
31:31
Say I want you to do this. That's the opposite of you make.
31:34
Seth, do that. Yeah, that's right.
31:37
Do that. It's a conference.
31:40
Recently, I was talking to some of the great ethics lawyers.
31:43
The conversation drifted to all the PE people who are getting
31:47
interested in this. They're calling these ethics
31:48
lawyers up there like, how can I, how can I get involved?
31:51
How can I do this? In every case where an industry
31:53
opens up like this and there is opportunity, there are
31:55
opportunists. So there are people who are
31:58
flocking to us now for the absolute wrong reasons, right?
32:01
Make a quick buck, don't care about the clients, just care
32:04
about money, right? The opportunist.
32:06
And we're all seeing them and you've met a few of them, I'm
32:08
sure already they're coming out of the woodwork and they just
32:10
want to make a ton of money. And so some of these PE firms,
32:13
they go to these ethics lawyers and they're like, right, how do
32:16
I control the lawyers? Right, Conversation over.
32:20
Right, conversation over. It's my money, they should do
32:24
what I say. That's right.
32:25
And that is, that's illegal, it's against the rules, it's
32:29
unethical, and it's completely the wrong approach.
32:32
The right approach in my view, and you know, I think that bar
32:36
associations would agree with me, is to let the lawyers be the
32:39
lawyers, let the attorneys do what they do best, right, which
32:42
is try cases or get value for clients or take care of their
32:46
clients. And just use the MSO structure,
32:50
right? The managed services
32:51
organization structure to provide a layer of
32:53
professionalization on all of the support services.
32:57
Just help the support services get better.
32:59
You know, private equity coming in and say, OK, right, how do I
33:01
control the surgeon? Do you want a private equity
33:03
person in the operating room with your surgeon deciding
33:06
whether or not they should take out, you know, that kidney or
33:09
they should remove that, you know, malignant growth or that's
33:12
ridiculous? It's preposterous, but it's the
33:14
same thing applies to any licensed professional, and
33:16
lawyers are no different. Leave the lawyers alone.
33:19
If any private equity people are watching this, don't approach it
33:21
from that way. It's the wrong way.
33:22
So what are the functions? Let's run through.
33:25
What are the functions that you guys take into the MSO?
33:28
Very first thing for us is always finance and accounting.
33:31
It's always a challenge for firms and it's something that we
33:34
need to have complete visibility on.
33:36
And usually firms are like please.
33:38
I don't know any firm that loves that.
33:40
Part of the operation. I don't know any business that
33:42
loves that part of the operation I.
33:43
Hate it, it's not fun, right? Especially for people who aren't
33:46
minded that way. So we have team members who are
33:48
fantastic and who are, you know, who love that stuff.
33:50
So for every job that you and I might hate, there's somebody out
33:53
there who just loves to do it. And some of the firms, honestly,
33:56
they've, they've already outsourced it to, to somebody
33:58
else anyway, right? So we can either continue with
34:00
that outsource provider as we often do, or if it makes sense,
34:03
we can, we can do that for them. The other ones that we typically
34:06
look at immediately would be IT. That's another one where I've
34:09
never heard a firm owner be like, you know what, I would
34:11
love to join but can I just please hold on to help desk
34:14
functions? Most of them that also outsource
34:16
that anyway. They also often outsource that
34:18
anyway. So it's accounting, finance,
34:21
it's the IT. And then it's of course, they
34:22
what people call HR, what we call people and culture, they
34:25
love to hire great people, but it's the finding the great
34:28
people and the going through all of the recruiting and, you know,
34:32
sifting through the I want you. To think about that.
34:34
Onboarding training, you know, what system do you manage that
34:37
in? You know, how do you make sure
34:38
that the onboarding and offboarding experience is
34:41
consistent and high quality? Those are things that people, I
34:44
mean, what busy attorney has time as a managing partner of a
34:47
law firm to really turn their minds to excellence in HR,
34:51
right? It's not in their wheelhouse and
34:52
they don't love it so HR it right.
34:54
Behind accounting, HR is probably my least favorite task.
34:57
For a lot of people. Recruiting, interviewing and
34:59
hiring is a humongous task that people do not realize.
35:02
Yeah, and training. I've worked at like some of the
35:05
largest companies in the world with the best like humongous
35:08
training teams, and they still suck at training.
35:10
It's hard. It's hard.
35:11
It's hard to be good at, right. It is really hard to be good at.
35:14
And then marketing right is a big one for us.
35:16
We have to take a look at marketing and the goal is not to
35:20
change what people are doing, but rather to augment and
35:21
support it. Because usually a great a firm
35:24
that wants to join us is going to have pretty good marketing,
35:26
right? It's going to be pretty good and
35:28
pretty. Successful.
35:28
They'll have cases coming in at that point.
35:31
And they just want to do more. They want to say, OK, well, how
35:33
do I get to the next level with marketing?
35:35
You know, I'm doing these things, I'd like to explore
35:37
these other things. And we can support with that,
35:40
not only with, you know, experts and people that we have that
35:43
advise us and that we work with, but also with capital.
35:46
And that's really important because in our corner of the
35:49
world, right? It's a, it's a niche business.
35:51
Pi is a niche business that traditional bankers don't
35:55
typically understand and won't take the time to understand.
35:58
It's access to capital has been somewhat limited.
36:01
We're at a high price, right? And I feel like access to
36:06
capital for most lawyers meaning, well, I'm going to take
36:08
a smaller distribution this year and push all my chips back in.
36:12
And we just want to turn that on its head and say let's get
36:15
capital from somewhere else and let's grow this thing together
36:18
and help you get where you want to go faster.
36:20
Yeah, the outside capital, it's going to be a safer investment
36:23
going through you guys, they know the whole background
36:25
operation, the numbers have been looked over.
36:27
Then just going investing in a single firm and giving a loan
36:30
out to a single firm that they have, it's a brand new
36:32
relationship. First, someone who's invented
36:34
through the LSO. That's completely correct.
36:37
I mean, I've heard one person describe the PE process where
36:41
one goes through, you know, this whole process, PE, to decide
36:44
whether or not they're going to, you know, make an investment in
36:46
your company. I've heard it, like into a
36:48
colonoscopy. Yeah.
36:49
So, you know, if it's a colonoscopy, it's probably not
36:51
that much fun. But it also means that they kind
36:53
of turn you inside and out. I always say they turn you
36:55
inside and out like a glove. So they've done that to us.
36:58
And so now when firms join us, we have to do our diligence,
37:02
obviously. And it's a lot that we look at
37:03
and think about. And there's just not that
37:06
barrier to access the capital that there is for firms that
37:09
want to just for example, there's probably somebody
37:11
listening to this podcast, it's like, well, I don't want to go
37:13
through liquor, so I would like to go and do get my own PE
37:17
investment and do it. You can absolutely do that.
37:19
It is an order of magnitude more challenging to access that
37:22
capital that way than it is to join somebody who already has
37:24
it. One department we skipped over
37:26
is intake. That's what I've been itching to
37:28
ask that question. Yeah.
37:30
So intake we don't do as a consolidation at this point in
37:35
time like we don't have consolidated intake at this
37:37
time. It is something that we are
37:38
looking at for the. Future I would love someone from
37:40
Atlanta calling in to get someone from Calgary on the
37:42
phone and that's. And that's the issue.
37:45
What can you consolidate without losing the local feel?
37:48
And part of this is understanding what your brand
37:50
promises. Just to give you an exact
37:52
example of that, years ago we used to use an outsourced intake
37:55
provider for after hours and they were out of a southern
37:58
state at Litco. And people will call in from
38:02
Calgary and the person on the other end of the line, through
38:06
no fault of their own, right, they're just from a different
38:08
place, did not even pronounce Calgary the way that a Calgarian
38:12
does. It's a Calgary or something like
38:14
that, right? And they wouldn't know the names
38:15
of the. Calgary.
38:17
Etcetera, it's just love that it depends, I think somewhat what
38:20
your brand promises are. But if for example, you
38:22
advertise that you are local and that you're part of the
38:25
community and you're part of the fabric of the community and you
38:27
have somebody answering the phone who's not of and from the
38:29
community, that can just be that can be a clash with your brand
38:32
promises, right. So I think it's important to
38:35
think about that. That doesn't mean that we can't
38:36
consolidate things like intake analytics or software or data,
38:41
things like that where, you know, data visualization and
38:44
understand those things. AI in terms of where are people
38:47
answering the phones, I think it's really important to
38:49
understand who's calling and what they expect.
38:52
That's the empathy piece of it. That's a great point.
38:55
Like when I'm thinking about consolidating intake, I was not
38:58
thinking about that part of it. I was thinking about like
39:00
operationalizing the component of a legal practice that every
39:06
single day is affecting the entire operation because you've
39:10
got leads coming in that if they're not getting converted
39:12
and signed, you're not getting new cases in the door.
39:15
And then the whole system, which is a very cash flow sensitive
39:17
business, just winds up shutting down.
39:20
That's the biggest pain point for lawyers.
39:21
We talk to them all the time. Yes, marketing, right?
39:24
We don't really get too much into the operations.
39:27
Like when you talk about finance, like we just know it's
39:28
a pain point, but intake, every attorney that you speak to here
39:32
at this conference will tell you intake is one of their, if not
39:35
the biggest pain point for them. And we'd love to help with
39:38
intake. It's simply that we do it as a
39:39
matter of on the individual firm basis as opposed to.
39:42
Recommendations where they can make some improvements and stuff
39:45
like that. Absolutely.
39:46
And in certain cases, if it makes sense, we have time zone
39:49
coverage now, right. So we can do some time shifting
39:51
and things like that as well. But a lot of it is the training
39:53
and how to how to make intake work really well.
39:56
I think we do a really great job of that because we have
39:58
fantastic team members who really know.
40:00
How to do that? So much of this is just putting
40:02
yourself in the shoes of the people you want to help.
40:04
So we want to help lawyers be great.
40:06
So we put ourselves in the shoes of the lawyers, the people in
40:09
intake. They want to help the people who
40:11
are calling. So we have to put ourselves in
40:13
the shoes of the people who are calling.
40:14
So if I call you up, John, and I'm like, yeah, you know what?
40:16
I got into an accident the other day, corner of Glenmore and
40:19
McLeod, and you know how that there's that weird interchange
40:22
where they kind of come from both ways with the guy kind of
40:24
cut over into my lane and he like clipped me head on.
40:26
You have no idea what I'm talking about.
40:28
If there are any Calgarians who are listening to this, they're
40:30
like, I know exactly where that is.
40:32
Oh, yeah, that's by Shinnick Center.
40:33
I know how the lanes kind of go and they crossover.
40:36
Yeah, they completely get it in their mind immediately, and
40:38
that's just. That's a very good point.
40:40
It's just something to think about.
40:42
I was. Literally when you telling a
40:43
story thinking about like in Atlanta, if someone called in
40:45
being like, hey, I got hit merging from the you know that
40:47
part of 400, would you merging from the left side?
40:50
Someone be like merging on the highway from the left side.
40:52
That's illegal. Be like, yeah, it's in Atlanta.
40:54
So everyone hits each other. And it's an Atlanta thing.
40:57
Yeah, you could know. You're like, Oh yeah, right
40:59
there. So if you're serving someone
41:00
from Atlanta, it might pay you to know something about Atlanta.
41:03
Like it might be a good idea to know the community and be part
41:07
of the community. If we talked to all the firms
41:09
that have joined the LSO, what would they say?
41:11
Unanimously has been the biggest value add working with a Co
41:15
also. Oh, I wonder if they would all
41:16
say the same thing. I think the biggest value add
41:20
has got to be just the ability to bring problems to someone
41:24
else. That's a good one.
41:27
Todd and I, we know what this this is like.
41:29
We watched our parents do it for years, right?
41:30
They were the problems. I always say the firm ran us
41:33
when I was a kid, the firm ran our family.
41:35
It didn't, we didn't run it, it ran us.
41:37
We made vacation decisions around the firm.
41:40
We made spending decisions around the firm, etcetera,
41:42
etcetera, etcetera. Every dinner conversation was
41:45
about the office in the firm because our parents worked
41:47
together and they worked in it and we were, you know, always
41:49
part of it. And so, you know, would you like
41:52
to run your firm instead of having it run you?
41:55
Would you like to share the burden a little bit?
41:57
Isn't it nice to like turn to somebody else and say, how would
41:59
you solve this problem? Would you help me solve this
42:01
problem? Can you solve this problem for
42:03
me as an entrepreneur who's had to wear all of that weight?
42:07
Deep gratitude that I had family members, you know, my brother to
42:10
share that with. My sister works at Lake Cola as
42:12
well. I also have my parents to share
42:14
it with over the years. I know a lot of attorneys that
42:17
own their own firms. I know they're shouldering that
42:19
alone. And it's, it's the weight of
42:20
pressure. So being a lawyer on its own
42:25
already comes with massive pressure.
42:27
You have the pressure of deadlines and courts and judges
42:31
and the law and your ethical obligation.
42:33
And if you don't win, yes, your clients get nothing and neither.
42:36
Do you? Yeah, right.
42:38
There's a massive weight of pressure.
42:39
Then Add all of the traditional pressures that a business owner
42:43
faces on top of that, and you don't have anyone to share that
42:46
with. It's really, really hard, and
42:48
it's really hard could grow past those inflection points where
42:51
you get to 20 people or you get to 50 or you get to 100 like
42:54
those inflection points. We have these conversations all
42:57
the time as entrepreneurs who own our own business.
43:02
You know, we've had to go through those milestones and we
43:04
felt it, right? Like at 4045 people, we're like,
43:09
we need some. I don't think we need a full
43:10
time HR person. We need someone paying attention
43:13
to all this stuff. You got employees in like 15
43:15
different states who've got all this compliance to deal with.
43:18
Now we're dealing with finance. It's just having someone to
43:21
share that with, you know, thank God, I've got, you know, Mark by
43:23
my side. It's really, really important
43:25
because praise rolls downhill, shit rolls uphill.
43:30
And to have someone who's higher up on the hill than you are
43:33
where that shit could roll just a little bit higher, you could,
43:36
you know, share it a little bit is that's just something that is
43:40
it's invaluable. And until you're in that
43:41
position as a business owner, as a law firm owner.
43:44
It's nice to go to have someone who can help you with the
43:46
problems that is perfectly aligned with your goals, because
43:50
sometimes you can call someone who's a peer, maybe another
43:53
lawyer, they'll help you out. But they're, they want you to do
43:56
well, but they're not like financially invested and you're
43:59
doing well as a favor, right? But like you're asking someone
44:02
to help you who is 100% online and the same goal as you to be
44:05
successful and will tell you as it is and make sure they're
44:08
doing all the things for the best of the firm.
44:10
You put that really well. I'm going to start using that
44:12
because that's that's it, right, Perfect alignment.
44:14
We all win together. And I think I often say to
44:18
founders, it's a bit like building an All Star team,
44:20
right? You're already great at what you
44:22
do in your market. Come and join this team and all
44:24
of a sudden you're playing with all the other pros.
44:26
And if we win this all together, you know, it's like winning the
44:28
Olympic battle together or winning the All Star game or
44:31
whatever, however you want to put it.
44:32
It's a challenge, I think to be part of something larger when
44:35
you've been at the head of your own thing, right?
44:37
And to have to sort of put aside ego and put aside that sort of
44:41
king of the castle or queen of the castle as it may be sort of
44:44
ethos to join and be part of something larger.
44:47
But as long as everybody believes in it enough, I think
44:49
it's it's completely doable. Quick question for you, who is
44:52
the LSO not for? I wish I had the document in
44:55
front of me. I have a document that lists who
44:57
it's not for, and at the top of that is the people who want a
44:59
bag of money and just want to go away.
45:01
So we're looking for partners. They're not selling and
45:03
retiring, they're still working. We want people who are going to
45:05
stay with us. Usually we ask them to stick
45:07
around for at least three years. But my preference is, you know,
45:09
forever if you can. Not forever, but until it, you
45:12
know, suits you because you enjoy it so much and you get to
45:14
do more what you love and less of what you don't.
45:16
If we're delivering on what we say we can do, that's the
45:19
experience they should have. It's also not for people who
45:22
can't be part of a team. If you can't be part of
45:24
something, and we can't understand that, one of our core
45:26
values is Lombardi, not Heisman, right?
45:29
Which says it all. We're A-Team.
45:31
It's not about the individual trophy.
45:32
We're not looking for, you know, somebody who wants to be the
45:34
highest scorer on the worst team.
45:36
We need somebody who can understand that the interests of
45:39
the team, the platform, the organization have to come ahead
45:42
of their own personal interest from time to time.
45:44
You know, not for somebody who doesn't I think believe in the
45:49
future that we think is going to come to pass in the legal
45:53
industry, which is one of greater involvement by private
45:56
equity, greater consolidation. And I know that's scary to a lot
46:00
of people. There will be good things that
46:02
come from that and they'll be bad things that come from that.
46:05
Like I said off the top, I don't think burying one sad in the
46:08
sand at every one of these conferences.
46:10
Yeah, I think we could have said last year is coming, it's here.
46:12
It's here. Yeah, Yeah.
46:14
It's here. One of our predictions for 2026
46:16
was further consolidation in the legal industry.
46:19
I think that's happening. You guys are at the forefront of
46:21
it. For any law firm managing
46:23
partner owners who are at that point where they're even
46:25
considering something like this, I recommend talk to Fred and his
46:29
team. At least explore and understand
46:31
what the future is looking like. We'll put your contact
46:34
information in the description of all of our posts so they can
46:36
reach out to you. But if they want to reach out to
46:37
you and learn more, what's the best way for their audience to
46:40
get hold of you? I would say visit litcolso.com.
46:43
That would be the best place. That's LITCO lso.com.
46:47
That's my radio voice for you. Check out litcolaw.com and see
46:50
how Larry the Unicorn is throughout the website and part
46:54
of the Litco brand. You guys do do some great
46:56
things, so thank you very much, Fred for joining us on the
46:59
podcast. May I add one more thing?
47:01
Sure. I would like to say well beyond
47:04
thanking you guys for having me on the podcast.
47:06
This is great to be here and I've had a lot of fun and I'm
47:08
really passionate about this stuff.
47:09
I could probably talk about it for hours.
47:10
But I also want to say even for people who aren't looking to do
47:13
something with a coil, so if you want to reach out and you just
47:16
want to learn more or if I can help with something, I'd love to
47:19
do that. Now, I'm going to sometimes be
47:21
slow in responding to these messages and I do work to get
47:25
around to, to everybody who wants to understand a little bit
47:28
more about this world because I just have an interest again in
47:31
protecting our industry from the opportunists.
47:34
So if I can do that in any way, I would love to.
47:36
So thank you again for having me on.
47:38
It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.