Michael Goldstein (00:01.881)
Hey there, it's Mike Goldstein, and we are back with Beyond the 341, the Bankruptcy Practitioners Conversational Podcast. Hey, I'm attorney Michael Goldstein, and today this is really going to be something pretty special. You know, because when attorneys hear artificial intelligence or AI, the conversation often jumps immediately to briefs written by ChatGPT. And that brings up

Hallucinated cases, fabricated citations, confidentiality problems. But some of the most useful applications for AI may be way less dramatic. So, you know, for example, can a firm respond to a prospective client more quickly? You know, can it follow up consistently? Can it reduce missed consultations, which means lost money? And most importantly, can it do those things all without allowing technology to cross the line into legal advice? I know that's something that a lot of you guys are concerned about.

Well, today, my guest is Josh Wheeler from Law Firm Ignite. And Josh has developed AI supported workflows across several industries, most notably the bankruptcy practice. And he has also worked directly with bankruptcy practitioners, including, quite frankly, my practice in the Phillips Law Offices in Greenbelt, Maryland to improve lead response, appointment scheduling, reminders, and follow ups. So I think that this is going to be something that's going to be really helpful to everyone who's really worried about.

With all that said, Josh, welcome to Beyond the 341. And for those people who don't know who you are, who the heck are you? What is it that actually do?

Josh Wheeler (01:35.661)
Yeah, so Mike, thanks so much for having me on to talk about this. Something that I'm really passionate about, because quite frankly, it saves time, energy, money, effort, helps our attorney friends make better business decisions, which, you know, all those business classes that they made you take in school really wasn't something, right? So it's like these are all things that we're really passionate about to help out with our attorney friends and folks out there. So again, happy to have.

Happy to to join you here on today's episode.

Michael Goldstein (02:06.264)
I appreciate that. You know, and before we discuss the technology, I want to kind of begin a little bit with one of the things that everybody really kind of gets hung up on. So lawyers often use AI and automation as though they mean the same thing. What is what really is the difference between AI and just automation workflows?

Josh Wheeler (02:28.47)
Yeah, so a lot of times you need things done in your business that need to be the same way every single time. Right. A lot of times those things, so for example, following up after you send an invoice or making sure that your time is tracked accurately, those types of things.

all those things are can are and can be done using more automated type tools. There's not really any kind of AI that's necessary in order to make those things happen. These are just what we call workflows, right? It could be the the case of okay, when you finish a brief and you need to get this to the client or you're expecting something back from them and they haven't gotten it back to you in a timely fashion yet. Sometimes we want to put some automated steps in place that will actually just trigger off a quick text message or an email that says, Hey.

we're still waiting on this stuff you need to get it back to us. Now listen, if you've got a if you're your luxury of having several staff members and paralegals and a lot of people and payroll, then maybe you don't need that. You know, but a lot of times it's kind of wasted money just to try to stay on top of things like that. So from an automation standpoint, we look at things, we call that deterministic, which means the outcome is already determined. This is what we need it to do. And there's not really a lot of thinking involved. Now

With some of the things over the past few years that have come to pass with Chat GPT or Claude or several things like that, that's going to be where you have something that is setting there and the computer can actually think and take actions on your behalf without necessarily getting the permissions to be able to do it. Now, you can set it to where, hey, we're going to get permissions to do every single step in the process. We call those gates. They get to a certain point, and somebody has to say, stop, let me review it.

And then we're going to go ahead and send that because it is accurate, right? So that's when we talk about AI. We're really talking more about those types of things, and even more so now, looking at it from a gentic AI, which are literally little bots that can do things for you on your behalf in a sequence without you telling it what to do. Now that's the most expensive way to do things.

Josh Wheeler (04:39.968)
Automation workflows is the least expensive. So a lot of times when we're trying to work inside of our four buckets of save money, make money, save time, and make better business decisions, most of the time there's going to be a blend of all those things happening all at one time. And you know, we can talk about this at some point on the episode today, but really thinking through what the business needs and architecting that before you just go buy tool.

One of the biggest problems that we see is just people throwing money at things. we're using this tool. We're using that tool. They get the cart before the horse when they start doing those things.

Michael Goldstein (05:08.298)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (05:15.641)
No, that makes a ton of sense. And just just kind of to to look at this from more of a systems solution than just a technology and just a tool solution. So before before we I want to get into what the technology does, let's talk a little bit about the problem that it's supposed to solve. You know, so for example, you know, when you first examined our intake process in in my practice.

What problems or missed opportunities did you know were were you able to identify that said, hey, these are things that AI can solve for today?

Josh Wheeler (05:49.763)
Well, the very first thing that we went through is started to developing out this agentic org chart process. Like that's the very first thing that we decided to do was we took your existing org chart. Here's all the people, here's what their jobs are, here's the things that are happening and going on. Then we overlay that with an agentic org chart to say, how can we actually support these people? Right. We're not necessarily installing automation and AI to replace people. Well, there are times where that can happen.

We really want to make them AI enabled. That is the in the new AI economy that is evolving. That is really the thing that's going to set attorneys apart from other firms is whether or not they can get back to people faster. They can again make better business decisions. They can see patterns that come up. Now, listen, there's a whole lot of conspiracy based things that I could tell you as far as again.

Going back and looking at jury selection, right? I know we're talking about bankruptcy and that's not necessarily the case, but there's going to be a lot of AIs that are used to do a lot of things that people specialists used to be used for based on human behavior and and where things are at, right? But as far as what we did together, we had to do that first. That's the first step in the entire process. That's the thing that

People generally make mistakes over because you're thinking, hey, I need to cover my missed calls. And that's a very easy thing to do and it's solutions that can be put in place. But is that the first thing? Like so, really, what we have to do is we have to sit down and say, okay, what is the very first thing that we need to do? And then execute based on that roadmap or plan. Because obviously we're still in the process of installing things and incorporating things based on that roadmap.

But if we don't have that first, so it's not just as simple as okay, we got this one task we want to do. That's cool. You know, that's something that we can always take care of. But you know, there are things that we had to say, what's the biggest priority in the business in order to meet the goals you're looking for? So some people again, you know, in your guys' case, like we wanted to make the intake process an effortless process for people when they're working with us, right? so those are the things that we kind of focused on. So really

Josh Wheeler (08:04.524)
When we look at the tactical pieces of how to get the job done, that's really never the question. It's the business strategy on the top level to say, how are we going to get to the outcomes that you're actually looking for? Again, whether or not that's gaining more margins, which in most cases that's what AI provides, or it allows you to save time as the attorney or you're saving costs inside of your paralegal times, et cetera. Right. yeah, go ahead.

Michael Goldstein (08:29.037)
So no, no, that that that makes a ton of sense. You know, and j just to make this kind of more concrete for bankruptcy attorneys specifically, who've never seen any of these systems operate. Because you know, and I think looking at it from the the intake process, you know, not not not so much, you know, hey, someone calls up, but you know, once you start bringing somebody on your own, boarding them in into the practice, you know, without revealing anything proprietary, obviously, can you kind of walk us through what happens from the moment

respective client contacts a firm until that person schedules a consultation and how the AI actually walks them through the process so that you don't need to pay your $50 an hour paralegal to do it for you.

Josh Wheeler (09:09.004)
Yeah, so we got two different pieces to that that we work together on. first thing is really just going to be more of your AI receptionist, right? Those are gonna be the people that's asking current, you know, specific questions. do you have a foreclosure today or something come up? You know, those real urgent things that are happening. At that moment, it'll stop and it'll say, we need to transfer you right now to somebody. It's not even going to take the time at the moment to try to figure out these particular things. They're just going to transform directly. But if we don't have any urgent

type scenarios that are going on, then it's going to ask a series of questions that it's going to get to the next stage or the next person to say, like, okay, this is what needs to happen. This is the type of meeting that needs to be scheduled, etc. All of those functions that usually happen on the receptionist level, that's layer number one. Right. Now, once that meeting is scheduled and and we need to do

data gathering or more information, we can actually put them in place and say, hey, listen, we're gonna have our AI system give you a call. It's gonna have questions. We're gonna send them an email ahead of time or get them the information to say, you're going to need all of these things in order to move forward with this. Right. Now that's the one thing the AI can't do for them is to gather all of their stuff, right? It that needs to be collected. So before the AI, before we get them on that meeting, we need them to go through and collect all of those things. Now

Let's say that we get in the middle of that conversation and it's getting capturing all those details that we typically had to have a paralegal do, right? It's gonna collect all those details. If there's no questions at all, it's gonna pop all those things back into a database and it's going to run through a series of workflows at that point because we've got input and it's gonna start putting together documents and the things internally that your practice generally has. Again, those are gonna be those could vary depending on the practice state, you know, those types of things.

but it's going to go ahead and start kicking off some of those form fills and some of those data points that you need on that front. if there are questions or if they're if they don't happen to have something, it'll still collect as much information as what it can. if it's something that's necessary, we'll get everything we can. And then we'll have to circle back to that and say, okay, here's what you need to do. Now, for example, if they have something they need, but they don't know how to get it.

Josh Wheeler (11:21.762)
Then we're going to train some of that AI to say, like, here, this is we're going to direct you. Right. Now again, that can change based on the state and based on the practice itself. So those are things that have to be trained into the AI's logic engine on the back.

Michael Goldstein (11:30.785)
All the reasons.

Yeah. You know, I I I love that you're bringing that up too because one of the things, you know, with our practice, you know, as you know, most some people don't, is we are practicing in Maryland, we're practicing in Massachusetts. So we have very different ways to gather information.

Josh Wheeler (11:50.872)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Goldstein (11:52.724)
we have some, you know, one state that has a registry of deeds that's based on the county level versus somebody else's got lots of tax assessments based on the city. And the way that we have the AI gather that information really it's you know conditional upon the person and the and the AI knows that, which is great because otherwise we'd have to train somebody on on you know a human on both of those areas.

The the other thing that I really love about it is it makes my job so much easier because when I the AI is asked all the preliminary questions that, you know, again, at you know, you know, my attorney hourly rate, you know, is not $15 an hour. I don't think I'm giving away anything here by telling guys that, right? But to so to have somebody like me or even a junior associate sit down for an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half to ask all these preliminary questions just to kind of figure out.

where we're going to lead the conversation is really a lot of lost revenue. It's a lot of my time is better as I could be drafting motions. I could how I can be doing marketing, quite frankly, and bringing in big cases, working on chapter 11. You know, so the point being is that, you know, it it does it it's a great help. But at the same time, my biggest fear, I know my partner's biggest fear was which was way more than mine was, is

Josh Wheeler (12:54.508)
Yeah, most of that yeah. And the

Michael Goldstein (13:08.695)
The AI is not going to give legal advice though, right? And that's the beauty of it, is it's it's only gonna give information that you've trained it for. You know, and if you don't train it to tell people, hey, you're facing a foreclosure, you have a you have a household income of $92,000 a year, and there's only two of you, so you don't qualify for a chapter seven, you need to file a 13. I'm I don't want the AI telling somebody that. I want to tell them that. Just like I wouldn't let my paralegal tell them that. And that and that's the thing, is you know, if you do it right.

The AI is going to be a tool. It's it's not it's not going to be a junior attorney for you.

Josh Wheeler (13:42.211)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, listen, the the reality is we're giving small examples of some of the things that are happening. When these things start to stack up is when the magic really starts to happen. Now, listen, there's plenty of options at this stage, whether it's Eve, whether it's Harvey, whether it's like there there's AI models that are coming out that are are that are going to perfectly fit into certain use cases, right? That will have different permission levels. Like a lot of the things that we have dealt with.

working for it has really been on the front end of the business, right? So it's been the it's been the lead generation, the lead follow-up, as they convert over, some of that little onboarding is what we would call it. You know, through the process, there's things that are are specialized that, you know, this thing is going to continue to grow. So, you know, saying, hey, we're not going to use AI in our office is a it's a quick way to sign off and be like, I'm not interested in being in business for that much longer.

Because at that rate, I want you to think about new attorneys that are coming into the market that are graduating. number one, it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier to start their own businesses, right? To to go ahead and start their own firms. Number one. Number two, when they get to the point that they're they're not trying to go back, you know, 15, 20, 30 years and redesign how they're doing things. This is just gonna how be how they build.

Right. So if their AI systems are giving their customers or their clients a better experience, like that's really some of the things that you need to look at. It's not just about delivering the work, it's also about helping that person and giving them a very, very good experience with your firm. It's already a s it like it already sucks to have to deal with it anyway.

Right. As a as somebody that's coming from the outside. So how can we make this as easy and as pleasant as possible, as much as what it can be? You know what I mean? It's like it's never gonna be pleasant, but you get what I'm saying.

Michael Goldstein (15:39.201)
Yeah.

No, that that makes a ton sense. And you know, and I mean we're talking a lot also about the processes and and how you're able to use AI to increase efficiency maybe of somebody smaller. And and you certainly can do this at the enterprise level just as easily, you know, it's it's just a matter of scalability. But you know, and there's a lot of operational benefits and it it's I think it's pretty easy to understand from from my perspective.

But the harder question, I think, is where does that convenience begin to create risk? Because that, you know, as attorneys, that what our first thought is always going to, what's my liability? So let me ask you this Josh, what when a law firm is evaluating AI supported intake systems, or it's evaluating document collection systems, or anything to that extent, or or more importantly, you know, where it's it's evaluating maybe discovery documents, production documents, interrogatory answers, things like that.

Josh Wheeler (16:24.002)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Goldstein (16:31.673)
What should it understand about the information being collected and where the or I should say what should people understand about the information being collected and where that information is being stored, how it's being used, and all of that?

Josh Wheeler (16:44.236)
Yeah. So there's a there's an entire and this is going to be an entire industry people that deal with just these things. If you want to use AI in the business, most of the time we have to start with a data layer. if you don't have anywhere that that data is being stored other than, we're putting this over in Google Drive and we're given access to Chat GPT or Claude or whatever it is that you decide to use, probably not the best thing to do in terms of sensitive data.

these are things that you're going to want to build a data warehouse is what I'm going to refer to it as, but basically a system that's internal or that is that has lockdown permissions. again, these could be database companies, and there's plenty of them, like on that part of it. So if you look at Google Firebase, again, you can set the permission levels on all of these types of things for sale. plenty of other data warehouses that we can collect, but the data warehouse or the data system has to be in place, and then it has to be, you know, proper permission.

Michael Goldstein (17:33.219)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Wheeler (17:40.623)
Permissions putting on that. Me personally, I would much rather have something internal or in-house. So that could be a server that's at your, you know, location, or it could be something that you've bought server space or something like that from you know a data center or something along those lines that where they're taking care of that and maintaining it. But if you have those things, then we can also potentially work in what I would call local.

LLM, so your local chat GPT, it's not gonna be chat GPT, but your local things to where it's like it stays all self-contained so it doesn't send it out to another company. And I think that those there's going to be AI governance things that pop up over the course of the next year to two years that's going to kind of restrict that. And like right now it's Wild Wild West, right? So you got you got guys like me who who kind of understand where this thing is going and we're gonna go ahead and put those things in place and structures and for you so you're not gonna have to

Look at this later on and say, like, we got to redesign all of this stuff because they put new restrictions in place. when you start at that at the very beginning, it makes this whole process a lot easier. But in order to do that, I think that everybody should, every firm needs to have their own local data warehouse that everything is stored in, that is protected and that's locked down. and local means that.

It's not necessarily available to anywhere online or the internet because that's when people will try to hack you. That's when people will try to do the ransomware, like all those fun things. If it's not connected to the internet, then you don't have to worry about it. So I think that there are some things there with certain information. Is it that way for everything? No.

I don't think that it is. Like they're the initial conversation that you're having with with somebody that's calling in. Like I don't like until they become a client, everything that is prior to that I think is probably fine. You really don't have to worry about, but then once it gets into the client side of things, probably need to be a little bit more structured on the way that you do that and a little bit more particular.

Michael Goldstein (19:41.305)
No, that makes a lot of sense, you know, because obviously the information that's gathering, it's using then to to generate better responses and all of that. So let's take that kind of to another level here, Josh. One of the things that I really love about AI is that.

Josh Wheeler (19:48.909)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (19:55.017)
It's not just the information you give it three years ago and that's all it has. Is it learns as it's used. And the you know, for example, an answering system, the more it has a con the more conversation it has, the smarter it becomes because you you can see well what happened in this conversation, and we need to tell it next time do this, do that. But you know, could the

Could could the LLM being used or the provider being used, can it take conversations to train, you know, to train other systems with within it? And more importantly, is there ever a chance that the information that it's gathering from one conversation would inadvertently be shared with somebody in another conversation that's not related to the first case?

Josh Wheeler (20:39.074)
Yep. Yep. And those are all great questions. the answer is always ca like it's tech and sometimes the tech does what tech things do. I don't like you can put protections in place for that, but can you a hundred percent guarantee that it would never be the case? I don't think so.

it would be like saying, we've got our security systems locked down, but nobody has ever hacked our system and put a ransomware out. Like I know many of the people that might be watching this have have one hundred percent been targeted over things like that because ransomware is such a thing. So it's like, is it possible? Yes. I there's I I don't think that there can be any definitely in terms of those kind of things. However,

You can go through and you can put all the protections in place. And it's very, very, very, very, very unlikely to ever occur. But it's like it's hard to do it's like, you know, absolutes are a dangerous spot, especially whenever you're dealing with, you know, anything like this. And heck, you can you guarantee me that a person in your office will never say the wrong thing or never do the same thing, right? It's like you can't really guarantee it. Could it is unlikely to happen? Yep. but can you guarantee it'll never happen? Nope.

Right. So it's the same thing. And what you should probably look at most of these systems, look at them as an employee. Right. If you look at them as an employee versus a robot or or some kind of technology, that's probably a better way to frame this because that's the kind of the unpredictability of where you run into on those things. So treat it like an employee. Right. When you start putting permissions in place and and protocols and things.

It can literally I I would say it's going to screw up a whole lot less than anything an employee that you would ever have. But you know, there's still going to be some of those things that happen. But there are protections in place that you can that you can usually lock that stuff down. And like it's very, very unlikely to happen in cross-contamination or sharing, you know, outside of your organization.

Michael Goldstein (22:33.848)
Well, I it makes sense. I mean a law firm can't outsource their professional responsibility to the software provider. You know, even if someone else designs the system, the law firm still remains ultimately responsible for deciding how it's used and what it's done. So one thing I I mean I would ask is like, is there anything that, you know, presuming you know you're using you you're having something custom built for your firm, what should you do to test it? Like what should you not not to let the developer test it, but what should the law firm itself do to so that they feel comfortable?

What?

Josh Wheeler (23:03.884)
Yeah, so anytime if you're having anything custom built, you've got to put it in practice. You gotta put it in use. So it's like testing wise, you you make sure that it functionally, that it works, that you're that there's no issues that are happening as far as where the data's going, how it's interacting. But outside of that, especially if you have the AI side, not as much with automation. Automation is gonna be pretty cut and dry. It's like you start here and this is supposed to do this, and did you get that outcome? Right. So there's not as much testing.

concerns on that part of it. But whenever you're dealing with AI or a gensec systems, okay, you've got this in a sandbox. It's working the way that it's supposed to be working. You just got to kind of use it. So most of the time when we're doing stuff for people, we'll go through and we'll get the things built out. And whenever it's at the end of that, we will go ahead and extend that by another 30 to 45 days because we know there's going to be things that pop up there's like, that did not do what we expected it to do.

And it's just plug it into use cases. So I don't think that there's any way from a testing protocol on that side. You just want to make sure that whenever people are coming in to design things for you, that there's a there's a clear picture of what the system does. Like so if they map it out ahead of time for us, we usually take that strategy piece on the very front end, map everything out. And you know, there's very little that can go wrong once it's mapped out and says this needs to go here. And then you like listen, it may be a big sheet of just

blocks that just has arrows going places, right? But the reality is is that that's how you make sure that things work the way that they need to without having to do any kind of heavy testing. Now we call these red teams. Like so you'll hear this on on AI or software development or things all the time. It's like, listen, we put agents on it with in in express purpose of trying to break it, to trying to see where it's going to fail. you know, once we get through those particular processes and setups, then, you know, it's it's

pretty much all downhill from there. We just gotta put it in practice. But it's heavily vetted. You do you do wanna make sure that it's vetted out as much as possible on that front end. And you know.

Michael Goldstein (25:06.978)
That makes that that makes sense. You know, and we're talking a lot about kind of abstract ideas, but let's kind of dial it back into, you know, again, two l you know, we're dealing with a small bankruptcy firm, maybe there's two partners and a paralegal. you got hopefully your processes that the paralegal and the attorneys are doing are are done right. first thing is never automate a broken process and think that the AI is gonna solve something that humans haven't fixed already.

but let presuming that everything is already smooth, what do you think is the first workflow that you would improve or or what would what would you leave alone really during the initial implementation to you know if you're just starting to to get to become an AI first law firm?

Josh Wheeler (25:49.763)
Hmm. It's kind of a lo that's really kind of a loaded question because it really depends on the firm. It's like I I can't really give I can't really give a firm answer that this is what you should do first. I will tell you that when we are working with firms, most of the time it falls on the lead generation side or if it falls on the the follow-up side, pre-click, because that's typically where they have the most problem. We're working with smaller firms, there's people that are getting phone calls in or they're running ads and they're

Michael Goldstein (25:54.168)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (26:00.364)
Okay.

Josh Wheeler (26:19.404)
you know, people responding and not getting back with people very quickly. So a lot of times we'll solve those problems first. you know, because they're they're the ones that are the most you know, they already have clients they're working with. These people are paying. These people over here are not paying. So what's my priority going to be? Well it's going to be for the for clients.

Michael Goldstein (26:31.24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (26:37.816)
You know, and it when we and we started working together, Josh, one of the first things you had me do is let's say let's map out all the existing processes before selecting any technology. Let's kind of find w what is repeatable? What what is something that you know you you could do in your sleep, and you do quite frankly in your sleep every day that you don't want to do. And I think that that was definitely helpful to me to figure out well where where can we what do we want to automate? What should we automate?

Josh Wheeler (27:04.172)
Well, and and the the protocol that you can usually use on that or kind of a structure if you wanted to see what that looks like. Again, it starts with building out an agentic org chart. Like you take your existing org chart, you kind of take a look at what people are doing, what jobs they're doing. We like to have individual people. So everybody on your org chart, we like to for them to take a look, make a list of all the things that they do, how often they do it. Do they do this weekly? Do they do this daily? And then how much time it actually takes them.

And then the last question, which I think is the literally the most important question you can ask when you're trying to determine what you can automate or what you can bring to the table AI-wise, is this how would you feel we got rid of that for you? Now, some people would be disappointed because they love doing that part. And some people, you know, and some tasks they hate and they would love for you to take it. So you automate the things that make that you do on a daily basis that people hate to do. This is how you get it. So

Michael Goldstein (28:01.62)
It's

Josh Wheeler (28:03.746)
Just as a side note, Sam Altman with OpenAI, with the trillions of dollars that companies have spent on integrating AI into their company, literally 70 to 80 percent of that fails. Why is that? Me personally, they won't say this, but I think it's because that there's a bit of internal sabotage going on. It's like I'm not gonna replace myself. So when you have those types of things that are happening.

We need to get people to buy in because otherwise I could tell people, hey, we're doing this, we're not going to replace you. They won't believe me unless I start taking away tasks that they hated and then they love me for taking away those tasks from them. Right. So I think that even from there has to be an economic value. That's the number one thing that we want to drive for. But then for how do we prioritize based on the economic value that we see? What do people enjoy doing? What don't they enjoy doing?

Michael Goldstein (28:51.157)
Yeah.

Josh Wheeler (29:00.322)
When they start taking those tasks off and they don't have to do them anymore, that's when they're going to say, look, he's for real. They are trying to help us out be able to spend more time on doing things that actually matter and mean something.

Michael Goldstein (29:01.376)
Fortunately.

Michael Goldstein (29:12.664)
Yeah. You know, I someone that you and I both know very well. there's there's a digital marketing guru out there by the name of Josh Nelson. And Josh loves to to say find the things that you like doing and do those and find the things that you that you don't want to do, and that's what you outsource. So it's not necessarily you may not want to automate something, but you just love doing it. So don't don't automate it.

But the other thing, and and Josh, you've said this to me a number of times, is don't come at it from the perspective of what do you want, what does your firm want, but come at it from the perspective of what is the end client expecting from you. Because if there if there maybe there's a reason why you hate doing something, maybe it's because nobody responds to it. And if you think taking the human out of something that pushes people away is you know is gonna help, all that's gonna do is that's just gonna create even more friction. So that's

Josh Wheeler (30:05.74)
Yeah. That's a foul, you know, though that conversation is a foundational piece to a lot of the things that we do. That okay, if we go back 50 years, the business climate and the way people bought things and what they expected were completely different than what it would be today. Right now, if you don't call me back, Mike, if I'm interested or I need to talk to somebody, if you don't call me back.

you're I just had to come down and click on another one and then make another phone call or whatever that might be, right? I've got choices. I'm not scared that I'm not gonna find somebody, right? I'm not scared that I'm not I'm going to miss out on anything. So when we look at this, we have to design a lot of our business systems. And that's really what AI and automation, when you really get to the root of it is, is looking at your business operations and your business systems. How are we designing the experience for our for our potential clients?

In a way that makes them say, hey, you guys are the best choice and the obvious choice for us to go to. So can you want to charge premium rates or get as much money as what you can? Well, then we've got to be the premium across the board for everything. Not only do we need a premium reputation that we get things done and that we can help people out, we also need to make it effortless for them to be able to do what they need to do, right? So if we're thinking about through those things, and again, you guys on in your firms, you do whatever it is that you want to do.

But if we're not thinking about this from the customer side first, like I know you want to do what you want to do, but they can just call somebody else and they can go pay somebody else. If they're going pay somebody, I'm gonna find the easiest person to work with is what I can.

Michael Goldstein (31:48.247)
make that makes a ton of sense and you know and the the other part of it is certainly that ai isn't always about marketing about client communication oftentimes you know it it's about how you know the little things that you know just how can we make ourselves more efficient how can you know and again I I keep coming back to I didn't go to law school to make $15 an hour. I don't want to do $15 an hour work. But if I can

Josh Wheeler (32:13.464)
You know the most annoying thing, I'll tell you, you know the most annoying thing that that I think that I've found as I've been working with people, we've got a guy here locally, Gin General Firm, right? So he's not anything specific on

On the practice level, they'll take basic little bit of everybody. Now they've got three partners in the firm and they you know, they do a little bit, everybody does a little bit of everything, right? On that front. but the biggest thing is that they did a couple years ago is they they popped in Cleo, right? So a lot of you guys will use Clio. the problem is at the time, and of course I know Clio's come a long way, but we've been able to help them

Michael Goldstein (32:43.158)
Yeah. Sure.

Josh Wheeler (32:49.954)
Go through and they they were just finding out that okay, they were making more money when they installed Clio because they got their billing under control, their times. But people still weren't paying the bills. So when we started putting in this other piece of of completely reactivating, there's two things happening. keep them up to date with that part of it and not having to do the the money chasing themselves. They had a substantial increase in the amount of money.

Michael Goldstein (32:58.456)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (33:12.576)
Yeah, well.

Josh Wheeler (33:18.058)
In the amount of money they were able to collect, you know, obviously their receivables came down substantially. The second thing though that we did was install a referral system. Like, listen, it's one of those things where in, you know, if when you're in bankruptcy, it's hard to get referrals sometimes because it's like people don't really want it. I I think it's less and less, it's getting less and less so as people understand it's a financial tool.

Michael Goldstein (33:32.525)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (33:36.408)
Bankruptcy is being seen more and more as a tool and less a like w when I started doing this, you know, in two thousand five, people were you know, they come in and I'll let me tell you why I need to file. I i I I'm not a bad per we don't have I really don't get anymore. I'm not a bad person.

Josh Wheeler (33:51.853)
Yeah, it's like it's there the the the moral side, like the people at one point was taking taking this a moral issue, it's not a moral issue. So as that's being said, it's less and less. But, you know, at the end of the day, it is harder still to get reviews and testimonials and those kind of things. but with this office, we were able to put a we were able to put a set thing in place to where it would just, you know, send out automated requests for reviews. It would send out an automated request for referrals.

Michael Goldstein (33:56.023)
Yeah.

Josh Wheeler (34:19.724)
Right on that side of things, trying to solicit some of those things. Now, listen, I'm not gonna say who they are because I'm gonna bet, if I if I had to guess, that there's a very gray area that they are using inside of like that referral basis to reward referrals. But it's like, listen, I like listen, that's not on me. I I don't care. That's what they wanted. Right. But the fact is, is that when we when we go through those processes, there's things that you can grow your business that like those are the things that I think when we get into AI and automation work.

Michael Goldstein (34:19.927)
Yeah.

Michael Goldstein (34:34.872)
Yeah.

Josh Wheeler (34:49.4)
There's the workload that can be reduced and let your people give the clients a better experience. And then there is the generation of revenue. Right. And that those are the parts where we probably work in the two areas is revenue generation and workflow to do those things. And once you get past that, then there's always fringe things. Like you will find things. It's funny.

You will find things that once you get started with, you're like, hey, I wonder if we can do that. Hey, I wonder if we can do that. Hey, you know, one of the one of the my more favorite things that we do is being able to go through we're looking for clients or where if you have somebody that you're trying to get a hold of that to be a referral partner or something along those lines.

Michael Goldstein (35:26.893)
Yeah.

Josh Wheeler (35:35.219)
is that now you can just have the AIs go do the big research on them, find out what they're into, plug it into a gifting program that they sends them something to say, like, hey, I'd love to I'd love to sit down and talk, have dinner, do whatever, right? On that front, on that front. we still find that injury attorneys are are big usually on that side of things. I know we talk bankruptcy right now. but you know, they they they had to get referrals as much as what they can from medical providers and you know, even adjusters sometimes and stuff like that.

Michael Goldstein (36:02.05)
And and let me just just first I just want to start with you guys. Josh is not a licensed attorney. He doesn't know anything about the ABA model rules. He's not suggesting for one second that anyone is fee splitting. I I just want to put that out.

Josh Wheeler (36:10.838)
No. That's what I'm saying. It's like, no, no. Listen, I know enough to know that there's gray areas. And so I'm not saying that that's what you do. I'm just saying that every like none of you play in the gray. Right. So listen, it's one of those things like some I I would say this some some people are are less risk averse than others.

Michael Goldstein (36:23.66)
Not at all.

Michael Goldstein (36:34.04)
We're we're gonna try and stay above board here and and follow the model legally rules here. So but with with that said, Josh, I mean I think some of the stuff you've been talking about today, you know, really is you've gotta find what it is that is bogging you down, what it is that's keeping your firm from either growing or keeping your firm from ha freeing up the time it needs to either bring on more work or to wind down even. You know, there there's plenty of people who are, you know, they're they're getting ready to sell.

Josh Wheeler (36:36.845)
Ha ha ha.

Michael Goldstein (37:00.316)
and all of all of these things can help you just achieve a little bit more efficiency in in your practice and probably a little more satisfaction in your lives because you're not doing the things that you hate, that you're letting somebody somebody else or something else do the thing that you hate and you're doing the thing that you love. so with that said, and we're we're kind of coming to the end here. for those who want to get a little bit more information about me, you know, maybe talk to you about, hey, I'd love to see what I can implement in my my practice.

What's the best way they can get a hold of you?

Josh Wheeler (37:31.948)
Yeah, so you can hop over to lawfurbignite.com, fill out a form. We actually have things we'll meet with you for for a short amount of time just to kind of get a feel for where you're wanting to to go from that. generally speaking, the process usually works. We'll have a short conversation if it's something that we feel like that we can help with or that we can take to the next step. Most of the time we like to do some sort of a AI map, right? To say, like, okay, now because

Me personally, I think that every firm should have this done for them in place anyway, because at that point you can't really build the roadmap of say what do we do first without knowing what your options are. Right. So we kind of give you the menu and how to build a roadmap of what you should do first, second, and third based on your goals. and then from there, if people want us to help them out, apply that, then you know, we step in for that part. If not, usually that plan is pretty like if you're if you're a go-getter and you like to do a lot of do-it-yourself.

you know, approach. you'll have enough information to know exactly what you need to do at that point of it. But that's generally speaking how the process typically works if you want if you want to work with us. You know, we'd love to have you guys on. Love working with our attorney friends. you know, we've worked with a lot of different industries in the past, and my favorite people are my attorney buddies because they they most people

will say that, well, they just think they're the smartest guys in the room. And generally speaking, they usually are the smartest guys in the room. And and it's nice to have somebody to go back and forth with on that side. So I love our attorney friends.

Michael Goldstein (39:06.371)
Much. Well, Josh, it was a pleasure having you on the on the podcast Beyond the 341. You know, we are we are growing every week on Tune In Fridays at 5 p.m. We're gonna drop a brand new episode. but for Josh Wheeler, this is attorney Mike Goldstein Beyond the 341. Hope you enjoy this, hope you got something out of it, and we will see you next time. So long.