Member Benefits Providers Offer Services to Irma Victims

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Florida Bar Podcast

Member Benefits Providers Offer Services to Irma Victims

09/28/2017

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Intro: Welcome to The Florida Bar Podcast, where we highlight the latest trends in law office and law practice management to help you run your law firm, brought to you by The Florida Bar’s Practice Resource Institute. You are listening to Legal Talk Network.

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John Stewart: Hello and welcome to The Florida Bar Podcast brought to you by The Practice Resource Institute on the Legal Talk Network. We’re so glad you’re joining us. This is John Stewart, currently a member of the Florida Bar Board of Governors and I’m the host for today’s show, which is being recorded from the Clio Cloud Conference Nine in New Orleans, Louisiana. If you haven’t been before you need to make sure you make the next one.

So today we’re here to talk about the hurricane Irma in Florida and what we’ve called our hurricane relief toolkit. Florida Bar has a very robust, Florida Bar Member Benefits Program for our lawyers and we have five member benefit vendors here today who went above and beyond in assisting Florida lawyers who are displaced by hurricane Irma.

And we’re going to hear about those offers, so that they can get out to the lawyers as well as generally what they provide is member benefits. So I appreciate everyone being here today. We’re going to go around the table, let you talk about your company and then the special hurricane relief benefit you provided to the lawyers of Florida.

Trent Carlyle: Alright, I am Trent Carlyle and I am with ServeManager. ServeManager we like to internally describe it as the Clio for process server. So Cloud based platform where they can manage their business and more importantly they can collaborate with law firms, law firms have the ability to assign jobs, collaborate, work directly with the process servers track status of their serves and in addition if they need a process server in a particular area we also have a directory where they can type in the address, the servers’ address and they can find a list of subscribed process servers using ServeManager.

With the hurricane relief offering, we are giving them six months free. In addition we are also providing a concierge service where we’ll help them find a process server or a legal support vendor to help them in a particular area.

John Stewart: That great. We really appreciate what you’re doing for the lawyers of Florida and we move on to Ed Walters CEO of Fastcase who’s been a long time Florida Bar member benefit.

Ed Walters: Yeah. So members of the Florida Bar get the Florida libraries from Fastcase for free, Florida cases, statutes, regs, court rules, constitution and stuff like that. So while everyone is digging out, while we’re in recovery mode we’ve opened the doors to make sure that everybody has access to the full National Law Library.

When your books are underwater and when you are working from some other place like not in your office, when your server is like destroyed, all of your passwords to kind of all of your research systems whatever it is you just can’t get to having access to the full National Law Library can help.

So we’ve said that for the clean period for three months everyone is going to have access to the full Fastcase library, the full nationwide unlimited, unmetered, full reference support just to help people and their clients to get back on their feet and we don’t have any illusions that, when your offices under water when it’s destroyed, when you got friends and family who are trying to get back into their homes that legal researcher is going to be like the end-all be-all, right?

It’s not the first thing you think of, but certainly maybe in that second week or that third week you’re going to get back to work. You’ve got bills to pay, you got to start to making court appearances and so I just hope that, having that fast case access will be one of those tools that helps people and their clients get back to work, get back on their feet after this terrible disaster.

John Stewart: Thanks very much and you’re right. Not only do the lawyers have to get back to work, but the lawyers are also performing services for the consumers and public of Florida who need their help. So they need to be able to get back and it’s better if the lawyers in their region that have been hit can help them because they’re more comfortable and familiar and so we appreciate what you’re doing.

And we also have Clio’s also been a fantastic member benefit for Florida and offering some special relief for our hurricane toolkit, so if you can tell us about that that be fantastic.

Andrew Gay: Yeah, absolutely. So thanks John and thanks to the Florida Bar again for having us. We had the pleasure of working with Florida Bar for a long time now, I’m really excited. My name is Andrew. I work with Clio’s partnerships team and so we’re actually expanding part of our hurricane relief programs that we start with hurricane Harvey and with one of our other partners State Bar of Texas. And so starting on September 1 we’re offering free three months access to Clio as part of our disaster relief program.

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Echoing what Ed said earlier, we totally appreciate that life has bigger priorities when disaster like a hurricane strikes, but our priority is helping legal professionals across the State of Florida to get back up on their feet, make sure that they have access to the tools they need to practice and return to work. And we really want to do everything we can.

John Stewart: Great. We appreciate it. And we have also with us Ruby Receptionists who is certainly a valuable tool for attorneys at the time when they are displaced from their normal places of business, which happens to be more attorneys than they would like to be at the moment.

Austin Lindsey: Yeah, hi, my name is Austin Lindsey, and I’m here representing Ruby Receptionists. Ruby is a remote receptionist service dedicated to not only answering these calls that are coming in, but providing friendly person to be helpful and create meaningful connections and set great first impression on your behalf.

So yeah, like you said, when they are displaced, and they are not able to get to the phone, we are really there to offer that friendly voice to make sure that people’s voices are heard and their needs are met.

And so, when it comes to what’s happening with the hurricane, our hearts go out to those that are affected, and so through the end of September we are offering $269 off our service to Florida Bar members. That’s the price of our Impressed Plan.

In addition to that, we are also offering unlimited outbound calling, so we will make calls on behalf of these attorneys as many as they need for free through the end of October as well, and then obviously the Florida Bar members get an 8% discount with Ruby Service as well.

John Stewart: That’s great, well, and I get to speak on behalf of NetDocuments, It’s fun that everybody was actually here at Clio Conference, but NetDocuments is another Florida Bar member benefit provider, that’s providing their document management system free for displaced lawyers as a result of hurricane Irma for three months.

All of this information can be found very easily on the Florida Bar’s webpage at HYPERLINK “http://www.floridabar.org/”www.floridabar.org. We have a 2017 hurricane information page that has all of the resources not only that we are providing to lawyers but also that we are providing to the consumers of Florida, FEMA hotline and et cetera.

The Florida Bar Practice Resource Institute is a great home for this, and I encourage you to go look at the website.

Before we close I would like for each of our member benefits to know from me, from the Florida Bar, from the Board of Governors how much we appreciate these offerings. We know that you all are in business and this is something that will help Florida lawyers as they not only learn about the technologies if they are not using them already, they will learn little bit about the technologies, but also help them continue not only to keep their businesses going but to assist Florida consumers who need assistance after hurricane.

So we very, very much appreciate all of your generosity, and may we will take reverse order and start with Ruby Receptionist again. I know you might have mentioned it, but to extent you didn’t, please elaborate for us briefly on the traditional Florida Bar member benefit that always exists even if there’s no disaster.

Austin Lindsey: Yeah. So that’s 8% off of your bill every single month, when you’re signed up with Ruby and you are a Florida Bar member.

Andrew Gay: So, as part of our partnership, longtime standing partnership with the Florida Bar, Florida Bar members get 10% lifetime discount to Clio on any of the plans.

Ed Walters: So Fastcase member benefit with the Florida Bar is free access to the legal research services for all members of Florida Bar be it Florida cases in the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, the Florida Codes, court rules, constitutions, regs. It’s a fully-featured Fastcase library for Florida. And then you could subscribe to the full National Plan for $195 per year, which is kind of an insane flat rate normally Fastcase is $995 a year or $95 a month.

So getting the whole thing for $195 per year if you are a member of the Florida Bar is kind of a big deal.

John, if I can just add, I think we all really feel like the Florida Bar did a good — like a really good job in response to Hurricane Irma, in the lead up to it, we knew it’s going to be bad. And like people who work at the Florida Bar have houses and families and office places to take care of, and in the middle of all that, there were relief pages way ahead of time telling people what to expect, telling them how to get out, telling them how to get their practices ready for this natural disaster. It was really incredible, very inspiring.

And from the Fastcase team, we were very proud to work with you guys in the lead up to it, and to mirror some of the Florida Bar’s resources on the Fastcase Page. You can still get some of those resources at HYPERLINK “http://www.fastcase.com/irma”fastcase.com/irma .

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But we are really mirroring the good work of the Florida Bar. I think we are all really proud to work with you in support of your members after a crisis like this. In Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and Irma in Florida, Maria in Puerto Rico and other places, we are really seeing bar associations and lawyers step up as first responders and I think we are all really proud to be a part of that.

Austin Lindsey: No, I appreciate that Ed and we have a fantastic communications team and luckily, we have been drug, kicking and screaming into the technology world and so, we are all over social media and that’s seems to be an easy way to reach our members in a lot of ways that we communicated this information. So I appreciate your kind words.

Trent Carlyle: Yeah I definitely want to echo what Ed was just saying, within days of the recovery efforts, we heard from folks from the Florida Bar, asking us if we want to participate and absolutely, as everyone said, there is a lot more going on then just business but if this helps just a little bit, we want to be a part of it.

As far as what we typically offer, it’s usually 25% off lifetime, with ServeManager, we are adding the concierge service on top of it during the relief efforts as well. If anyone wants to participate, they can just go to servemanager.com, shoot us an e-mail or e-mail  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] and we will do what we can to help out.

John Stewart: Well, it looks like we have reached the end of our program. I want to thank our guests for joining us. If our listeners have questions or want to follow-up, how can they reach each of you or your company and what’s the best way to track you down?

Austin Lindsey: They can check out our website at callruby.com or give us a call at 866-611-7829, that’s 866-611-Ruby.

Andrew Gay: Yeah so anyone interested in the standard 10% lifetime discount for Florida Bar members, I would recommend that they either e-mail  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] or  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected]. I also want to echo that if you are interested at all in the Disaster Relief Program, please e-mail  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected], that’s the best way to get in touch with our offer.

And I just want to give a little bit of a shout out to Clio Con 2018, which I can’t say where it’s going to be and in truth, I don’t ever know but we will have a 20% promotion for Florida Bar members and we really encourage everybody to come out.

Ed Walters: You can get Fastcase at fastcase.com. To login to your free member benefit, go to the Florida Bar’s website, floridabar.org and click the Fastcase link there. You can also find us on Twitter @Fastcase.

Trent Carlyle: Again, you can go to servemanager.com, shoot us an e-mail  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected], will come to us. Our toll free is 800-280-4400. On Twitter, on all the socials, so it’s hard not to find us.

John Stewart: That’s great. If you want to reach your host, the juror sitting in just for today, I love Twitter, you can find me @V_johnstewart. Apparently, my name was taken by someone before I could reach it so that is my handle. If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple podcast and join us next time for another episode of the Florida Bar Podcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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