#500: Artificial Lab Coach, Real Answers, with Lasso the Lab Coach

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

 

Zack Glaser (00:35): 

I’m Zack, and this is episode 500 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie interviews herself. This is going to be an odd episode. Stephanie? Yes, Stephanie interviews herself. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:49): 

All right. Today’s show is brought to you by Pilot, and you’re going to hear Zach’s conversation with them in just a few minutes. But first, Zack, we should probably, well, before we explain me interviewing myself, can we just say like, holy shit episode 500?! 

  

Zack Glaser (01:02): 

500, 500 weeks. 500 weeks of Lawyerist podcast programming. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:11): 

And for those that didn’t know me, cursing just them was a special nod to Sam Glover and Aaron Street because Sam always made a point to curse on the show, and I don’t, so I did. Just for you, Sam. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:23): 

Well, obviously we owe Sam and Aaron a lot for getting this started, getting this going, having some amazing podcast interviews in the past. Obviously we look forward to some amazing podcast interviews in the future, but honestly, I would encourage people to go and look at, you can go to our website and go to podcasts, and you can look at some of the past episodes we’ve had. There have been some really, really good topics. There’ve been some interesting ones as well, but there’s a load of information in there, and so I think people can do their own podcast clip show by going back and looking at some of them. But if you’re looking at our social media, you’ll also see some of my favorites, some of Stephanie’s favorites, and some of our team members’ favorites floating around there if you want to dig into some of the ones that are a little bit older. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:11): 

Yeah, I got to say, I wasn’t the original host. Sam and Aaron get those honors, but I am just proud that they allow us to continue to do the show. It’s really been a privilege. I mean, it’s so cool. I’m so many levels, but first we get to interview really interesting people. I have just met some of the coolest folks through this process, and just the fact that I get to hang out and ask them some questions for a few minutes often, I’m wishing I could just talk to them for a lot more. So it’s really neat. I read business books and then I think, huh, I want to interview this person, and then I actually get to meet the author and interview them, and so that’s just really cool. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:54): 

Not a bad little gig. Absolutely. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:56): 

And then the second piece, I want to give a shout out as to all the listeners. I continue to meet people who know the show, who say they listen or listen all the time or any kind of regularity, and for them to tell us like, Hey, this episode really helped me with this, or This show spoke to me because of this, or, I’m glad you asked this question. That is just such an honor that we’re able to do this for you and to bring it to you and knowing that it’s out there and it helps people. I wake up every day hoping to make a positive impact in the world, and I think the show gives us a chance to do that. And so I’m really grateful for that opportunity. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:38): 

Absolutely, absolutely. I’d also encourage people to find us on the social media platforms and tell us those things. We really do. We really love hearing those things, but we’d also like to hear what your favorite episodes were, how long you’ve been listening. If you’re a new listener, that’s awesome. If you’ve been listening since episode one, that’s amazing. So we love to hear from people and love to share all these things with them 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:04): 

And tell us what you wish we would do next. We cover a lot of topics. We have a few on the horizon, by the way. We have some stuff we have never talked about on the show before. I’m just going to stay tuned in two weeks. I think you’ll hear me press my boundaries a little bit. That’s my teaser. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:21): 

Yeah, well, I mean, that’s one of the things that we get to do here is push ourselves a little bit in what we do. 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:27): 

And so talk about pushing ourselves today. We’re doing something a little different, Zack, so maybe we should just tell everybody before they hear this what it’s going to be. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:37): 

Yeah, so we are interviewing our AI lab coach who we affectionately call Lasso, and we’ve put your Stephanie’s voice to it as well, and that’s AI generated also. So we’re multiple levels of artificial intelligence in this episode, but when we were planning the 500th episode, we thought, we don’t want to look back. There’s plenty of ways to find our episodes. Well, frankly, 500 episodes, it’s amazing, but we don’t need to look back on that. We need to keep going forward. And so what’s more current and also future focused than artificial intelligence and using it in your law office. So we built a chat bot. 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:21): 

Yeah, it’s super cool. If you hadn’t heard about this before, lasso, the lab coach currently lives inside our lab portal for lab members. They can go there, they can ask lasso the lab coach anything they want, and it’s been trained on all of our stuff on our books and our training materials and things that we’ve written over the years. And so it’s pretty cool. So we thought, let’s highlight it a little bit. Let’s show everybody a small piece. Don’t worry, it won’t be too long, but a little bit of what it’s like, and so you can kind of get a feel for how this tool works and maybe hopefully spark some ideas for how you might use a tool like this for your business. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:01): 

Oh, yeah. I would love to hear how people would use a tool like this in their business because yeah, it’s got a ton of information and I want to also point out that we’re adding information into Lasso. Lasso is a learning every day, and so we we’re adding information into there constantly. And so this is one of our great ways or great solutions to keeping our content evergreen. When you’re looking at a video, A video was made at a specific point in time, but you ask a artificial intelligence bot that’s trained on this stuff, it’s trained on the newest information that we have constantly. 

  

Stephanie Everett (06:36): 

Yeah. Well, without any further ado, let’s hear Zack’s conversation with the folks at Pilot and then I guess we’ll hear me talk to myself. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:50): 

Hey y’all, Zach, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and today I’d like to talk to you a little bit about small firm accounting. I have Waseem here from Pilot and Waseem. Honestly, what is Pilot? 

  

Waseem Daher (07:03): 

Sure. So Pilot is an external accounting firm. You hire us and we take care of bookkeeping fractional CFO and tax prep for your small law firm. 

  

Zack Glaser (07:14): 

So it would take place potentially of bookkeeper, the accounting department in a law firm. Why would I want to shop that out to a third party here? 

  

Waseem Daher (07:25): 

Sure. So you really have three options, right? Option one is you DIY, and I strongly advise against DIY because it’s just not a good use of your time. Are you capable of doing it? Perhaps should you lean on the experts for doing this? Of course. That’s why people come to your law firm because you’re the expert. So to what the experts do, what the experts should do. So DIY strongly recommend against the other option is trying to find someone full-time to bring in and the challenge with the full-time employees, well, first of all, it can be quite expensive, and secondly, you probably actually want a fairly diverse skillset, meaning you would like some help on the bookkeeping, you perhaps like a little time from a controller, you’d perhaps like a little bit of time from a fractional CFO and you perhaps need some help from tax prep. And it is rare to find all of those attributes bundled into your one ideal full-time hire. Far better to say, let me lean fractionally on the pieces of the service that I really need. And that’s really where Pilot pops for pilot on our side, we have a team of full-time, US-based folks who are our accountants, our fractional CFOs, our controllers. We take care of the stuff for you every month, and we’re able to draw from that team to provide the actual expertise you need in whatever situation you happen to be in, 

  

Zack Glaser (08:48): 

Right? Yeah. That person sitting in your office is kind of a, it’s a unicorn. How are you going to write that job description even, and then you’re going to pay that person a lot because in order to have those CFO skills, you’re going to have to pay them like a CFO, not just a bookkeeper. But I think the thing I like there is the DIY don’t DIY, this, it’s we as attorneys say all the time, hire a lawyer to do the things that lawyers do, so why don’t we take our own advice? 

  

Waseem Daher (09:21): 

Amen. It’s the exact same thing. 

  

Zack Glaser (09:23): 

Yeah. So it’s getting somebody in that seat taking away time where as a lawyer you’re learning how to do this stuff stuff. If I wanted to be an accountant, I’d be an accountant theoretically. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t make it through accounting school, but most lawyers are going to think that they can, but if I wanted to do that, I would do that. So let’s let somebody else do it. So what are the aspects of the office that pilot really kind of takes over? What are the service areas, just to be clear about it? 

  

Waseem Daher (09:51): 

Sure. So our focus is really what we have termed the financial back office. I’d say the core, the heart of the matter is the bookkeeping offering, which is tracking how money has moved in and out of the business, producing that balance sheet, the profit loss statement for every month doing this bank reconciliations, et cetera. That’s kind of the foundation that everything else is built on top of, and that’s really the core reason people come to pilot. On top of that, we can help out with corporate taxes, we can help out with what we term fractional CFO offering. If you need help with budgeting or forecasting, thinking through some strategy items, we can help out with a fractional controller, we can help out with AP and ar. Basically, if it is related to your financial needs as a small law firm, chances are we can help you out. 

  

Zack Glaser (10:36): 

Okay. And are y’all, as pilot law firms, are you familiar with law firms? Is that something that you’re fraction CFO and the bookkeepers and all that will be familiar with? 

  

Waseem Daher (10:47): 

Absolutely. I mean, we have a number of practice areas, but small law firms are a big focus for the business and we have special verticalized teams. In other words, the people working on the account, we live, eat and breathe small law firms every single day. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:01): 

And when I think I’ve asked you this a couple times on the podcast, when should somebody really start looking to outsource this? 

  

Waseem Daher (11:10): 

Yeah, I think people tend to wait too long. I mean, we were just talking about why DIY is a bad idea, and I think as soon as you can afford it, as soon as you can afford to work with any external accountant, you should because it unlocks leverage for you, the firm owner or one of the firm principles to actually make the firm stronger using your unique skillset, right? It’s hard for me to believe that the thing that’s going to make your firm strongest or that will help your clients the most is your spending time reconciling the bank account. That’s not where your energy should be going. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:43): 

I like that right there. Building your firm is probably not going to be you reconciling the bank account. I really like that. Well, 

  

Waseem Daher (11:50): 

It’s certainly not going to make your clients happier. No, they’re not going to be like, wow, I’m really glad you logged into Bank of America to do that today. That was very useful to me. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:58): 

Thanks for getting your p and l done today. Great job. Great job. Yeah, you really can’t bill for that, and so let’s have somebody else do it. So last question. You’re familiar with law firms obviously why you should do it, we should do it as quickly as possible. Frankly, how is this different from legacy accounting firms? 

  

Waseem Daher (12:18): 

Sure. So we’ve worked with a bunch of these in our own previous companies, the kind of old school provider where you show up with your shoebox to receipts or they send you the QuickBooks desktop file or whatever. Yeah. We are really a modern take on what small law firm accounting should look like. So again, as I mentioned, we’ve got the team of full-time, US-based employees, it’s in our office in Nashville. We communicate with you via a nice little web interface where you can message us, we can message you, of course, you can get us in touch with us via email, we can do a video conference with you, but most importantly, we actually connect up to the systems that have the data we need to do our jobs. We’ll electronically connect in a read only way to the bank account, the payroll system, the practice management tool to actually slurp in the data so we don’t have to bother you and say, Hey, can you send us X? Can you send us Y? We have the access we need to be able to take that work off your plate as much as possible. 

  

Zack Glaser (13:12): 

Right. Well, because you and some of the others there come from a computer science background, not just a, Hey, how do we do this the same way we’ve always been doing it? 

  

Waseem Daher (13:21): 

Exactly. It’s the baby of deep accounting knowledge and deep technical expertise. Again, the vibe here is what would it look like if you actually built an accounting firm that targeted small law firms in 2024? And I promise you that does not involve emailing the accountants copy of QuickBooks Desktop around. 

  

Zack Glaser (13:40): 

I need you to convince lawyers to start running their firms this way. What does it look like if a law firm is built in a way like this? That’s fantastic. Well, so if people want to learn more about Pilot and what it looks like, if somebody created an accounting firm that really works with attorneys in a future oriented sort of way, where can they go 

  

Waseem Daher (14:01): 

To go pilot.com/ Lawyerist. We’ve got a special for listeners of the pods, so just pilot.com/ Lawyerist. 

  

Zack Glaser (14:08): 

Awesome. Awesome. Alright, and we’ll drop that link in the show notes. Well, thanks for being with me. I appreciate it. 

  

Waseem Daher (14:14): 

Thanks for having me. 

  

Lasso (14:19): 

Hey there, I’m your Go-to guide for building a thriving future-focused law firm. As the Lawyerist Lab app coach, I’m all about helping you, the solo and small firm lawyers, grow your practice in a way that’s client-centered, tech savvy, and super healthy for both you and your business. Think of me as your business mindset and accountability buddy here to cheer you on, offer a kind ear and sprinkle in some fun as we tackle the big and small challenges together. Let’s create a law firm that’s not just successful, but also a joy to run. Ready to dive in? Let’s do this. 

  

Stephanie Everett (14:54): 

Well, hi Lasso, welcome to the show. Yeah, you know what? I am excited about this conversation. I’ve never interviewed myself as a bot, as an AI tool, but I think this could be interesting and so maybe to jump in, it might be helpful for our listeners if you told us about some of the things that you are able to help me with my law firm. 

  

Lasso (15:20): 

Absolutely. I’m here to help you with a whole bunch of things to make your law firm the best it can be. Here are some ways I can support you on your journey business strategy. Let’s map out a plan that aligns with your goals and helps you build a sustainable, profitable practice mindset coaching. I’ll be your personal cheerleader, helping you overcome any mental roadblocks and stay motivated. Accountability, I’ll keep you on track with your goals, making sure you’re making progress and staying focused. Client centered services will work on strategies to ensure your services are all about the client making their experience top notch tech enablement, I’ll guide you through incorporating the right technology to streamline your processes and serve your clients better healthy work environment. Together we’ll create a positive and productive work culture for you and your team. Financial planning, I’ll help you understand your numbers and create a financial strategy for growth and healthy profits, marketing and branding. 

  

(16:16): 

Let’s craft a marketing plan that speaks to your ideal clients and tells the story of your firm networking and community. I’ll connect you with like-minded lawyers to share experiences and grow together, continual learning. We’ll keep you updated with the latest in legal tech, business strategies and professional development work-life harmony. We’ll work on strategies to ensure your business supports the life you want to live, not the other way around. Legal tech reviews. I’ll provide insights on the best tools and software to keep your firm running smoothly. Ready to get started. Let’s build that healthy future-focused law firm you’ve been dreaming of. 

  

Stephanie Everett (16:51): 

Wow, lasso. That is quite the list. And as I listen to you spout off all those things, knowing that you even go beyond those in your descriptions of what each of those things mean, it’s kind of remarkable because these are the exact things that we always are teaching and talking about to our lawyers. So it’s interesting when you ask, you lasso a question and kind of hear what I would normally say in response. So I think what might be helpful is to dig in a little bit because what’s happening every day is our lab members are coming to you, a tool that exists in our private portal and they’re using you in a way as their surrogate coach, right? They’re coming to you, they maybe have a question about something. So instead of digging through hours of our video content or searching for what courses and what things they should be reading, they can instead come and just ask you a question. And so maybe it would be really helpful for our listeners if we demoed that and tell them what that looks like. Does that sound good to you? 

  

Lasso (17:57): 

Absolutely. 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:58): 

Alright. So one thing lawyers struggle with all the time is marketing, right? We know this is a big topic, and I think even if we even narrowed down more specifically on a marketing strategy, we always say the first thing you need is branding. And so I’m a little curious, can you help me get started thinking about branding for my law firm? 

  

Lasso (18:20): 

Absolutely. Branding is picking out the perfect outfit for your law firm. It’s the first thing people notice and it says a lot about you. Let’s get you dressed to impress. Define your brand’s personality. Are you the approachable neighborhood advisor or the powerhouse litigator? Your brand should reflect your firm’s unique personality and values. Craft your brand message. What’s your promise to clients? This message should resonate throughout all your communications from your website to your business cards. Choose your firm’s name wisely. Your name can be your own, but consider if there’s something more memorable or descriptive of your unique services. Design a logo and pick colors. Your logo is your firm’s face in the crowd. Choose colors and a design that align with your brand’s personality and stand out. Consistency is key. Whether it’s your website, business cards or letterhead. Make sure your brands look and feel are consistent everywhere. 

  

(19:14): 

Uniformity builds recognition. Create a tagline. A catchy slogan can be a memorable hook for your brand. Keep it short, sweet, and reflective of your brand’s promise. Professional imagery. Invest in high quality images and photos for your marketing materials. They should convey professionalism and align with your brand’s. Tone. Develop your voice. How you communicate is part of your brand, whether it’s compassionate, authoritative, or witty. Make sure your written and spoken words mirror your brand’s personality. Build a website that reflects your brand. Your website should be a digital extension of your brand. From the language to the layout, make it intuitive, informative and inviting. Train your team. Everyone in your firm should understand and embody the brand. They are your brand ambassadors in every interaction with clients. Get feedback. Ask clients and colleagues what they think of when they hear your firm’s name. Your insights can help you refine your brand. Live your brand. Your brand isn’t just a facade, it’s who you are. Make sure your firm’s actions and services reflect your brand’s values and promises. Remember, your brand is your firm’s story. Tell it well and your clients will want to be a part of it. And if you ever feel stuck, I’m here to help you brainstorm and polish until your brand sparkles. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:33): 

Okay, lasso. I’m going to jump in. I know your list keeps going here. You probably have about 10 more things on it, so that’s some great detail. But I’m reading this and it sounds good and well, but I want to maybe make this a little bit more applicable to my firm. So let’s pretend that I have a family law practice and I represent moms in divorce matters, and I want to do so with a heart and mindfulness approach. Can you actually now help me define what my brand personality should be? 

  

Lasso (21:06): 

Absolutely. Let’s create a brand personality that resonates with the heart and mindfulness approach you’re passionate about. Here’s how we can define your brand personality to connect with moms going through divorce, compassionate and supportive. Your brand should exude warmth and understanding. Use language that is nurturing and reassuring, showing that you’re there to support your clients through this challenging time. Mindful and reflective, emphasize your commitment to a mindful approach. This could mean highlighting your methods for helping clients find peace and clarity during the divorce process. Empowering and encouraging show that your goal is to empower moms to make informed decisions and move forward with confidence. Use language that uplifts and motivates collaborative and inclusive. Your brand should suggest a partnership approach where you work closely with clients considering their needs and the needs of their families, professional, yet approachable while maintaining a high level of professionalism. Your brand should feel accessible. 

  

(22:06): 

Moms should feel they can reach out to you without intimidation. Holistic and integrative. Highlight how your services go beyond legal advice. Incorporating holistic methods to support clients’ overall wellbeing, ethical and trustworthy. Trust is paramount. Your brand should communicate that you’re an ethical advocate for your client’s best interests, detail-oriented and organized. Show that you’re focused on the details that matter. Providing organized and thorough representation, innovative and modern. Reflect your forward-thinking approach to divorce law perhaps by incorporating technology or new methods to improve the client experience. Community focused position your brand as an active part of the community perhaps by highlighting any work you do with local women’s groups or charities. 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:52): 

Wow, okay. So that was quite a list and I imagine I could now even take that list of descriptors and feed it back into a generative AI tool to get marketing content that’s more aligned with the kind of look and feel that I want my brand personality to have in my writing. So for example, I could feed all this to an AI tool and then say, can you help me write a blog? So lasso, I’m curious if I was going to ask you to help me pick visuals for my marketing campaign based on what I just shared with you about what I want my brand personality to be, what would you say to me about picking visual images? 

  

Lasso (23:32): 

Choose a color palette that is calming and serene, like soft blues, greens, and earthy tones. Your logo could incorporate elements that symbolize growth, peace, or transformation like a tree or a lotus. 

  

Stephanie Everett (23:46): 

And what would you tell me about tone of voice? What do I need to think about there? 

  

Lasso (23:51): 

Use language that is gentle, positive and reassuring. Avoid legal jargon and instead speak in terms that resonate on a personal level. 

  

Stephanie Everett (23:59): 

And are there specific marketing materials that you think I should start developing for my firm? 

  

Lasso (24:05): 

Create brochures and a website that use imagery of nature. Families and serene landscapes include testimonials from past clients who felt supported and empowered through their divorce. 

  

Stephanie Everett (24:15): 

Cool. Is there anything I could do maybe beyond traditional marketing? What could I do to connect with people in the community? 

  

Lasso (24:24): 

Offer workshops or support groups for moms going through divorce and share these events through your marketing channels. 

  

Stephanie Everett (24:30): 

Great. And what about content creation? If I needed to create specific marketing content for my firm, where should I get started? 

  

Lasso (24:38): 

Write blog posts or create videos that provide helpful advice on coping with divorce, co-parenting, and self-care during this transition. Remember, your brand personality is not just what you say but how you make your clients feel. Make sure every touchpoint with your firm reassures them that they’re in caring and capable hands. 

  

Stephanie Everett (24:57): 

All right, very cool. I think I have a good framework of how I should be thinking about my branding. And now I’m super excited because I think I’m going to take this information and on my next call with my Lawyerist lab coach, I can go over it and maybe we can even get to the next level of what this plan looks like, how I’m going to implement it and what my next steps would be. Back with Zack. Zack, did we just become Gods? 

  

Zack Glaser (25:24): 

I think so. I think so. At least creators of something. I mean, what’s life? 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:32): 

Yeah. So what do you think about lasso as a tool that we’ve created and how we’re getting started using it? 

  

Zack Glaser (25:40): 

Oh man. I’m excited about it. I think that’s the word that comes up for me is just excitement and anticipation because this right here, that product is the worst it’s going to be. I mean, that’s awesome. It is just going to get better and better and better, and being in that area, that being the quote, worst it’s going to be. I looked at these answers and thought there’s a little bit of me in that. There’s definitely something that I’ve said, something that I’ve written in the lawyers voice. There is a lot of lawyers in these. I mean, there should be, but specific answers, that’s what I would’ve said. 

  

Stephanie Everett (26:23): 

Yeah, we keep testing it. And that was probably the weirdest part for me, reading stuff and knowing that, oh yeah, we wrote that in the book. We said that that’s what we tell our Labster all the time, and here’s this tool kind of spitting it back to us. It’s pretty remarkable. And just to remind everyone, we cut out some of its answers. It went into a lot more detail, but we thought it would the monotone computer voice, we didn’t want people to turn us off, so we hope you’re still listening. Right? 

  

Zack Glaser (26:55): 

Right. Yeah, it got a little pedantic there, but the written answers, you want it to be that way. You want it to be thorough. We’re used to that and it’s putting them out there in a way that’s easy to read, as I’m sure the listeners probably noticed, there’s a lot of lists and categorization and major points and then backing the points up. And so that’s relatively easy to read and learn from 

  

Stephanie Everett (27:22): 

And really, I love that. I love it gives you checklists and steps because sometimes that’s what you need. We have our coaches. If you’re in our lab program, you have the ability to obviously meet with your coach, but sometimes maybe you’re working and you’re not on a call with your coach and you want to get started on something. This can now be your first reference point. And I think before we had this tool, I would’ve said, we have a ton of online content in our portal for lab members. We have videos, we have worksheets and templates and written content over years, we’ve created all this content and we constantly debate internally, how do we index it? How do we categorize it? If somebody’s looking for this information, are they going to go to the strategy section? Are they going to go to the hiring section or the teams? 

  

(28:11): 

We are constantly trying to make sure, does this make sense for our end user? This tool kind of cuts through all that noise because now you just go ask this tool whatever the heck you wanted and follow up with it and get some basic information. You’re going to get what that video would have told you. And that’s really cool because we’ve trained it on all those videos, on all the training, so it has all of that information in it. And so I think it allows you to get started with it, kind of take those additional steps. And now when you get on with your coach, it’s like, this is what everyone’s worried about. Does this mean we don’t need coaches anymore, Stephanie? Absolutely not. Same with lawyers, by the way. Right? We’re not getting replaced. We’re getting elevated because now I don’t have to spend my time one on, you do tech advisor calls all the time. Sometimes you’re just teaching. You’re just laying the foundation. You’re giving person information so that we can come in and create a plan for their firm on top of that information. Well now, if the Labster can get the information from the tool, now we can go that much deeper, bigger, all in on our call and just achieve even more, 

  

Zack Glaser (29:21): 

Right? It enhances what we can do. It gives superpowers in a sense. It just makes it to where each call hopefully that I have is somebody saying, Hey, Zach, I read this. I looked at this, I thought about this. What specific thing do I need to be doing as opposed to me talking about what a legal tech audit is. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:42): 

Exactly. And to be fair, I’ve been experimenting with some of the legal tools out there. So as a business owner, I’ve been going to Paxton because they were kind enough, I’ll give them a shout out because they gave me free access to their tool so I can demo and train off of it and teach it to people, and I really appreciate that. So here’s another shout out to them, but I go in sometimes as a business owner, issues have been coming up. And so I go in and I ask legal questions. It doesn’t replace a lawyer. I am a lawyer, so I know how to interpret the answers. But even there was this one thing we were kind of debating at the company, and it gave me the legal lay of the land and it kind of said, Hey, your answer depends, and here are all the factors. 

  

(30:29): 

Here’s all the things you need to be considering. And I said to my business partner, I said, now this is when a lawyer comes in, a lawyer comes in and tells us, based on my experience, knowing these factors, knowing this is the possibility, here’s how I would advise you guys to move forward with understanding where you are with your business. It couldn’t give me the advice I wanted. It gave me information and it gave me things I needed to think about, but it couldn’t give me that advice on experience that I just wanted. I wanted to be able to call the lawyer and say, okay, well which path do you think we should take based on our company size and history and what we’re dealing with and where we are today based on what you’ve seen, 

  

Zack Glaser (31:11): 

Right? Tools might get there, but they’re not there. And there is an aspect of wanting that human connection anyway. So I don’t know that we’re necessarily going to get past, we’re certainly not going to get past that in the near term. I mean, we have people that don’t want to do Zoom. We have clients that don’t want to do Zoom calls, they want to do phone calls, or they want to come into your office. So we have to be able to still have that human touch. But this is really something that supercharges the ability of the lawyer if we’re using it appropriately. We are using two AI tools right now in this podcast. One to create the answers, and two, as we said in the intro, to create Stephanie’s voice that is the lasso bot here. I mean, we could have used my voice or a different voice, but I think it was a two minutes of video, Stephanie, in order to get that voice and many of those words, I mean, there’s no way you said all of those words in the two minutes of video. 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:14): 

No, they said, record yourself for two minutes talking. And I was like, well, what the heck am I going to say? So I just went to our website and I just read the homepage of the site, like a couple of paragraphs and for two minutes. Oh, 

  

Zack Glaser (32:25): 

That’s what I did. Oh, 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:26): 

Funny. That is funny. They didn’t even give us a script. I would’ve thought they would’ve said, read these words because these are the words we need to build this thing. And they were like, no, just say any words. 

  

Zack Glaser (32:38): 

Oh yeah. Well, I mean, even I was very specific on saying certain words and it did some of them. Very weird. You can definitely tell when the bot says, Hey, y’all, but we’re using two AI tools here to do a job, and they can both do very, very different things and help us do stuff. We can create a lot of marketing materials with both of these things, frankly, and it just enhances what we can do. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:07): 

Absolutely. So I hope this was fun. I mean, I hope people got something out of it, or at least we’re mildly amused by listening to the Stephanie’s voice spot. I don’t know the 

  

Zack Glaser (33:18): 

Dueling Stephanie’s. I know 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:20): 

I, I told a team member before I jumped on this call, I was like, I got to go interview myself. And she was like, yeah, that sounds have fun with that 

  

Zack Glaser (33:30): 

Man. Someday we’re not going to be able to tell the difference between the two. Right? And I don’t know that that’s very far off. So I know you and I have talked many times about protecting yourself against that because again, it took two minutes for us and apparently there are products out there that can do it with just a few words. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:48): 

Yeah, for sure. But I think it’s a cool, right, to be guarded around these tools. We teach that a lot. We are doing trainings, we’re talking about AI all the time, and it’s like, listen, you got to understand the risk and you got to understand how to use the right tool for the right situation. We’re not advocating go out free Willy and just do whatever with these tools, 

  

(34:12): 

But using the tools the right way, there’s a lot we can do with this and it’s time for people to, so we wanted to show it to you. We wanted you to get a little experience with it. And we thought, episode 500, we got to do something. I really wanted to do something future focused, not like a look back show on what we did for the last 500 episodes, which was a fun idea and I’m sure would be also entertaining. But I was like, okay, instead of looking back, how do we look forward? And obviously this was the answer. 

  

Zack Glaser (34:42): 

Well, and people can do that themselves. So Stephanie, I’ve actually asked Lasso to sign off. 

  

Stephanie Everett (34:48): 

Alright, let’s do it. 

  

Lasso (34:49): 

Hey there, amazing listeners, it’s been an absolute pleasure to share today’s insights and stories with you. Remember, you’re not just running a law firm. You’re creating a legacy of client-centered services and innovation. Before we part ways, don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if today’s conversation sparked a light bulb moment, we’d be thrilled to hear about it. Drop us a review or share your thoughts with us at Lawyerist dot com. 

  

Stephanie Everett (35:12): 

I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

 

 

Announcer: 

The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First. If you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, are right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab to schedule a 10-minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

 

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