Breaking the Copycat Cycle: Building a Law Firm with Personality, with Patrick Patino

Episode Notes

Transcript

Zack Glaser:

Hi, I’m Zack.

Chad Fox:

And I’m Chad, and this is episode 606 of The Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. And today Zack talks with Patrick Patino about what it means to be a new fangled lawyer.

Zack Glaser:

Which obviously everybody has an image of what a newfangled lawyer is in their head. So there’s no reason to stick around. Patrick has a podcast of his own called The Newfangled Lawyer. He’s an attorney out of Minneapolis. He works with one of our labsters. He’s part of ALH Law Group, and he has some really interesting ideas on how to connect with clients. So this is actually part of a pair of podcasts. This one is a little … We went for an hour and 15 minutes, Chad, and we’re not going to put the whole hour and 15 on this episode, but he is on his podcast, Newfangled Lawyers. So if you listen to this and you think, “I want more of that, ” which I think should be everybody. Go listen to Patrick’s podcast, The Newfangled Lawyer, pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts. So

Chad Fox:

Yeah. It’s going to be a good one.

Zack Glaser:

So Chad, I haven’t seen you on Strava as much lately.

Chad Fox:

Oh, man. Calling me out.

Zack Glaser:

I mean, I don’t want to do it in public, so I’m going to do it privately here while you and I are just on a call. To be fair, I actually haven’t been on Strava as much lately. It got too cold. I’m 40 something years old. I don’t know. And sometimes I just don’t want to.

Chad Fox:

Sometimes I just don’t want to.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Chad Fox:

So I feel like since we made this whole stink about this several weeks ago about the Spartan races and training and doing all this hard- Let’s get after it. That now that I have been absent on Strava, there is an explanation due. And there is actually a reason. And I think that there’s a lesson here, not only for athletes, but also for law firms. And it is don’t try to do too much too fast. Ooh.

Zack Glaser:

There is the … Yeah. Okay. So what happened? What happened?

Chad Fox:

So I was running basically three times a week, which was too much, too fast. I should have eased into it more. And so that was part of the problem. And then also my running shoes I was wearing, I had those running shoes when I trained for the last Spartan. And so I desperately needed to get new shoes and did not do that prior to starting this training regimen. And now I have flared up my shin splints and now I am in rest mode.

Zack Glaser:

Well, there’s only one thing you can do for shin splints and that’s rest. This actually makes me think of … I have been dealing with the idea that I’m not an 18-year-old college athlete anymore, and I can’t just go out there and rock on my good days and be like, “Oh, I’ll recover. I’ll recover.” You got to have a bigger idea of balance when you haven’t eased into it for 18 years. When you’re running in college, it’s like, “I’ve been doing this for years and years and years and years.” I

Chad Fox:

Could run five miles every morning and it’s fine. Just

Zack Glaser:

Knock it out because you forget that you already eased into it. You already kind of got into there. So I use ChatGPT probably more than I should in my training for my high school athletes.

And we do a lot of workouts that are injury prevention workouts. So workouts that are designed to keep us from getting shin splints, designed to keep our knees healthy, our hips healthy, things like that. And I asked ChatGPT one day, I said, “Design the injury prevention for me personally, because I was thinking the same thing. I want to make sure that I’m not going too hard too fast.” And it gives me this 2X or 3X the amount of injury prevention to do that we do for the kids. And I pushed back because I was a little insulted. And it’s like, “Buddy, you’re old.” If you’re 16, we just have to do little things, but your main thing, Zack, your main exercise is actually injury prevention.That’s the deal here. That’s a good point. And I think that’s tough for us to hear sometimes when we’re doing so much stuff is you got to get the basics right.

You can’t just run in fits and starts. When you’re young and able to get beat up a little bit, you can do fits and starts. But when you’re seasoned, let’s say, you can’t do that. And I think what you’re getting at obviously is that maybe don’t do that in your firm either.

Chad Fox:

Yeah. Like you had mentioned the basics, getting the basics, laying the foundation, which we do in lab when people first join as we focus on getting the foundation so we can build a strong and healthy law firm on top of it. And the foundation was the part that I skipped in my training this year.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. But doing my ABCs with my foot in order to strengthen my shin or picking up things or grabbing a towel with my toes, that’s not sexy. That doesn’t go away. It’s not exciting. Strava. I’m not like, oh, guess what I did today? I did 17 lunges. Good job, Zack. But that’s the thing that keeps you

Chad Fox:

Going. It’s boring. The discipline is boring until the results walk in.

Zack Glaser:

Let’s wrap the intro up on that, Chad, because I think you said it really well right there. Discipline is boring until the results walk in. You’re absolutely right. Well, maybe be disciplined and stick around and listen to my conversation with Patrick here. It’s not boring. This is not working. But yeah, here’s my conversation with Patrick.

Patrick Patino:

So I’m Patrick Patino and I’m the new Fingle lawyer. I have a podcast of that name. I like to lead off saying I’m a novice Potter, coffee enthusiast, lover of all things, Japan. And lawyer is somewhere towards the bottom of the list of how I self-identify. And this is intentional. I’ve been an attorney now for over a decade and I’ve iterated a ton. I see my law practice as a lab, a way to experiment and try new things and push the boundaries of what it means to be professional and provide a new experience. And so that’s what I’m out here trying to do is change the narrative around what it means to experience and consume legal services from something that people avoid, dread, or endure into something that could be delightful. And so this is a whole new perspective,

Zack Glaser:

I think. I think you’re right. I love that. And I love that intro. I wish I had as fun an intro because I love your … Lawyer kind of sits in there somewhere in my identity. I’m with you on that. It sits in there, but I mean, it’s not what I tell people I do when I go out to parties. It’s like-

Patrick Patino:

I don’t lead off with it.

Zack Glaser:

What do you do? I’m a high school cross country coach. Great. Cool. And then three weeks later, they’ll find out I’m an attorney.

Patrick Patino:

And then they’re like, no way. Seriously?

Zack Glaser:

Hell you are. I’m with you on it being Friday. I’ve got my cat over here. She’s just chilling also in a sleepy mode. And I noticed we both have … I never know how to pronounce this, but we both have, is it Kodapaki?

Patrick Patino:

Kotapoxy? Yeah,

Zack Glaser:

We both have-

Patrick Patino:

Katapoxy?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Kodapoxy gear. Your hat is, right? That’s

Patrick Patino:

Right.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

It is. This is not a paid sponsor.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. No. I mean, if they want to.

Patrick Patino:

I mean, I’m still trying. I’m still trying to get Liquid Death or someone to do a collab with me. I’ve pitched it to them of being like, “Hey, Liquid Death, we should do a collab where you have a drink called Last Will and Testament.” And it’s like a mint tea. It would crush.

Zack Glaser:

I love that. Okay. So that kind of segues into one of the things that I wanted to chat with you about is that your practice, I noticed, and I’ve been following you for years and kind of seeing you going around to different places and on different social medias and whatnot, but your practice, a lot of what you do is intentionally meet clients where they are. Like you said, it’s obviously intentional, but I saw on social media the other day where you’re doing coffee meetups or it looked like it was like you were going to be playing a show at six coffee shops coming up, which I thought was like … And I think it’s a, “Hey, come and meet me clients,” right? Something like that?

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. Or it’s like occupy the environment of where clients are. So I mean, background, I was a bankruptcy attorney for over 11 years. That’s all I did was consumer and business bankruptcy and a lot of what I did was the traditional business development of meet with attorneys, take attorneys to lunch,

Go to coffee with attorneys, do stuff at the bar, do a lot of presenting, writing, kind of that idea. I held myself out as the bankruptcy Swiss Army knife. So all things bankruptcy, I did, which was unique in that many people that do bankruptcy do consumer or business to do debtor or creditor and I would do it all. And that worked, right? That playbook worked until like any great experiment when you’re an experimenter, you go, okay, I’ve run through the experiments and the outcomes I wanted to see. I even went so far as rebranding and calling my law firm High Five Legal with the tagline, high fives not handshakes.

Zack Glaser:

I think I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. And I took kind of the newfangled approach of backwards hats and hoodies as my branding and the outcome, because any experiment, you don’t want to really predetermine the outcome. You’re trying to see what the outcome is against a thesis. And my thesis was, this is what clients want. They’re craving for someone who’s going to meet them where they are, approachable, kind. So I just leaned into it of having fun colors, having fun in a practice area that is not known for fun.

Zack Glaser:

Bankruptcy, not known for fun.

Patrick Patino:

Shocking. But bringing levity is unexpected. And when people experience unexpected in a way that can allow them to have a reprieve, it brings about some amount of joy or calm or relaxation that is counter to what a lot of attorneys market in this spaces is like fear-based almost. You’re going to get garnished.You’re going to lose your house. Where I was like, no, instead I’m going to be like, I’m going to be your best friend. And the outcome of this was that I saw a huge uptick in my Google Reviews of people saying I was professional.

Zack Glaser:

Fascinating.

Patrick Patino:

Yep. Patrick, super professional, very professional. And so then it really led me to, well, what does professional mean? Where else can I bring this? And I’m getting to the coffee stuff, but then at a certain point I was like, okay, bankruptcy, I think I’ve saturated as much as I can do here. I’m going to let this all go. I’m going to let this all go. And

Zack Glaser:

So- I built my thing. I’m going to-

Patrick Patino:

I built my whole thing, right?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, we’ll let the water take it now.

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. And one day, I can still remember because it wasn’t that long ago, about a year ago, I had just finished doing an intake call and I’m really hardcore. I have always operated in the, I like helping good people in bad situations, not bad people in bad situations. And I just hit a string of kind of bad people in bad situations. And I went upstairs, I told my wife, “I’m done. I’m done doing bankruptcy.” I went downstairs, I removed all the content from my website and was just done. And I joined ALH Law Group with the intention of bringing my kind of vibe, my brand to a different practice area completely, something I’d never done. I’d never done estate planning, I never really had done business transactional work. So the playbook has changed. And so right now I’m experimenting with what are industries that need legal that there’s a lot of that lawyers don’t find themselves in those communities.

So I’ve targeted basically creatives. What falls in that? Tattoo artists, potters, chefs, coffee shops. I had

Zack Glaser:

People that made jewelry when I was doing … Yeah, when I was doing business law. Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

And so my playbook now is I’m going to be in that industry. So I reached out, I want to be in coffee. I want to be in restaurants. I love food. I love culture and the risk people take when being creatives and they have legal needs, right? Yes.

Zack Glaser:

Yes.

Patrick Patino:

They have leases and they have employment issues and they have buy-sell agreements and-

Zack Glaser:

But they don’t have the time to come deal with stuffy attorney though. No. They don’t have the time to go to some … As one of my professors, Dent Gichel in law school would say the tall building lawyers. They don’t have time to go to the tall building lawyers.

Patrick Patino:

No, it feels either inaccessible or they won’t be understood. And so I am like, well, that’s where I’m going. I’m just going to go get tattoos and go eat at coffee shops and bring something with me as a gift. We have these branded wallet ninjas. It’s a wallet

Zack Glaser:

Ninja.

Patrick Patino:

Well, I have one right over here. I have a prop. I’m going off screen. It’s show and tell. So it’s a multi-tool.

Zack Glaser:

Okay, gotcha.

Patrick Patino:

And it’s like solid metal, right? This isn’t cheap

Zack Glaser:

And

Patrick Patino:

It’s heavy. And how I’ve been framing it is I have a gift for you. So every coffee shop I go to, every food truck I eat at, every tattoo shop I go to, I say, “I have a gift for you. ” And people are not expecting a gift and it’s something practical and it’s not cheap and it’s something that you can carry around with you. And in Minnesota, people love tools. I mean, a lot of hobbyists here. We have hardware stores on every corner, so people love it. So I’ve been handing these out. So I’m not handing out a business card. I’m not saying call me. I’m saying, “Hey, I have something for you. ” I like that a lot. Yeah. So it’s like now this tour here in Minnesota, restaurants, coffee shops have been hurt really bad with what’s been going on here. And some attorneys are like, “I can do habeas work or that.

” I’m like, “Well, I’m not a litigator. I don’t go to court, but what I can do is create community and experience. What if I created a tour where I pick different minority owned restaurants and coffee shops

And invite other people to just join me

Zack Glaser:

There?” Yeah, just join me. We’re not going to do a presentation or something like that, right?

Patrick Patino:

No, no sales, no hard sell, no like, “Hey, this is the ideal client for me. ” I’ve really moved beyond that to just being like, “Hey, I want to have a conversation with you.

Zack Glaser:

” Have you had any of those yet? Have you had one of the tour days yet?

Patrick Patino:

No, it’s coming up.

Zack Glaser:

Okay.

Patrick Patino:

Man,

Zack Glaser:

I’m super interested in how that goes.

Patrick Patino:

And I’ve done tattoo events for lawyers where Tyler O’Brien, he’s the long hair lawyer. He flew in twice from the West Coast to do this, came in, got thigh tattoos, flew out, and it is the most fun. I’ve kind of gotten known for this. I’m trying to, there’s some attorneys in Copenhagen that were like, “Hey, you should do this event in Europe.” And I was like, “Well, I’d go to Europe.” I’d go to Copenhagen to go get some tattoos. So it’s like the traditional way of doing things of let’s say billboards or any kind of keeping an email list Or A lot of those things, I was like, this is not where everyday people are looking for lawyers. That’s what they expect. That’s why Bob, who hasn’t updated his practice since 1985 and still uses word perfect, it’s clients, because that is what people expect, not because it’s a good experience.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, man. Okay. We’re going to go on a

Patrick Patino:

Little bit of a tangent

Zack Glaser:

Here.

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. Unpack that, Zack.

Zack Glaser:

Unpack

Patrick Patino:

That.

Zack Glaser:

So I used to live in Nashville and I’m from Nashville, but now I’ve moved to Memphis and I like Memphis a lot. I intentionally moved here. But when I was living in Nashville, I was in East Nashville, which was like a superhip sort of area, had a lot of creatives. I did a lot of work for people that made jewelry or photographers, things like that. But everybody was building these tall skinnies. There was just a boom in building houses. And all of my quote unquote realtor friends were like, “Oh, people love these tall, skinnies.” I’m like, “No, they don’t. It’s just the only shit that’s out there.”

Patrick Patino:

That’s right. Yeah, they’re ugly. “Go to Austin, Texas. Now that’s all there is.

Zack Glaser:

” Yeah, they’re absolutely terrible, but it’s the only freaking experience that we can have because nobody wants to actually put a real house on something. So just because people use an experience or a tool or something like that, like you’re saying, doesn’t mean it’s not total crap or they wouldn’t go do something else because who really wants to think like, “Okay, I’m going to go get a divorce. I’ve got to go into all of this. I want to go have that normal…” Yeah. Nobody says, “I want the normal law firm experience. Let me just go do that sometime.”

Patrick Patino:

That’s right. But that’s the default setting. And so even when the Law is this interesting profession of copycat where it’s not about differentiation, it’s about sameness. That’s why we end up with similar logos and similar color stories and similar bios and similar marketing. And we’re starting to see a change though of what is the rise of almost like what I call the vibe law firm. You’re giving an experience because most people in a Google review aren’t like, “Patrick, he wrote the best bankruptcy schedules.” Man, blew my mind. His case citations, he’s like learned hand. Oh my gosh. No, no, no. What people leave is how they felt, how they experienced the law and you are the guide and the curator of that experience. And so I mean, what does that mean is even with now let’s say technology, this is not hard. Some people are just like, you know what I liked about your firm?

You could schedule online.

Zack Glaser:

Right. You’re

Patrick Patino:

Like, “You know what? I’ve been able to do that with my barber for a decade.” Or you have a way to pay online. The stuff’s not hard. This stuff is- It’s a low bar. Right? It’s like to exceed this bar, to create this immersive client experience, you see it in other industries all the time, like restaurants. This is why I love restaurants. I love reading about restaurants. I think there’s a lot of comparison between being a chef and being a lawyer. It’s very hierarchical. It’s very stressful.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

It’s very much so work really hard and someday you’ll be a top chef. Sometime.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. If you don’t die of alcoholism before then, yeah, you’ll be

Patrick Patino:

Tough to- To try to burn out or-

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, burn out.

Patrick Patino:

And so-

Zack Glaser:

Stab your sous chef.

Patrick Patino:

Who knows? Yeah. Or whatever the other ills that could befall us. And both these are professions, but the difference, right? The difference is the best restaurants in the world. It’s about the experience. What do we talk about the best law firms? It’s really about experience, right?

Zack Glaser:

You’ve got something there because it also is. Some people have figured that out, but the experience, the expected experience is potentially changing. In some places, it is about the, I go into this fancy law office and it smells of rich mahogany and all of that. And my attorney shows up in a very fancy vehicle dressed very well. And so yeah, that’s about the experience and that’s what some firms are selling. But a lot of us are not selling that and not everybody, and I think this is a lot of what you’re getting to. Not a lot of people really want that experience.

Patrick Patino:

They’re hungry for what I call the crumble cookie experience. They want it to be frictionless, delightful, easy, tech-enabled, where it’s like, here’s your … You wanted this box of cookies? Look, there’s limited options. We sometimes have some specials. The pricing is very clear. It’s quick.

Zack Glaser:

Pricing is clear.

Patrick Patino:

And we open the box and it smells like chocolate chip cookies. So it’s like, what does the future law firm look like? I think it’s brick and mortar. I think it’s-

Zack Glaser:

Going back.

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. I think it’s community. I think it’s you’re creating experiences that are adjacent to your practice. What if you walked into a law firm and there’s a barista there and the barista goes, “Hey, you can have any drink you want. ” That’s the first thing you get greeted with when you walk in. And here’s a baked good. What a totally different thing. What would be the cost of a law firm to have a good barista just run basically a coffee shop front of house? Nothing. Who would talk? That’d be everywhere. People would be … And so I just think I talk all the time. We’re spipping all the time. The benefit I have is Allison, Harrison and I are a one, two punch of this. I was like, “Allison, when we go to events, I was like, what if we had a branded bike that we served ice cream out of?

” A pedal bike that had a freezer in the front, you partner with a local ice cream shop, you have two flavors that are like Law Puns. It would crush. And the cost of that is not expensive. And so this is how I’m thinking, Zack,

All the time is how do we just … There’s so much opportunity in the legal profession because we’re so far behind.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh man, I love that idea of the ice cream. So okay, the barista has gotten me here because I’m going down the path because people coming in, those smaller creatives who are just trying to run their photo business or their events business or something, they’re working out of these coffee shops. And if your coffee shop is sitting there and it’s like, well, right through here is the law office that is here, or could potentially be a pretty good experience. What strikes me a lot of times about your ideas here, because I mean, the guts of this is what do people want? Let’s make an experience out of this, is how much it … You didn’t strike on something that just happened to live in bankruptcy, and then it was like, oh, I go and do something other than bankruptcy, and damn, if people aren’t not wanting this now, everybody else in the world is just like, “Nah, I’m going to do … I want crappy attorney experience.” No, it can go across

Patrick Patino:

All

Zack Glaser:

These practices of law.

Patrick Patino:

So one of the things we’re exploring right now at ALH is what I’m calling the pod model, POD. Essentially, we have a centralized set of systems. We have Lawmatics, Clio, Zacpier, our Tech, the brains, the nerve system. And then you have geographic pods. I’m here in Minnesota, Allison and the Columbus team are in Ohio, but it’s like, how can you both share in resources and create these experiences and create geographic pods that essentially allow this to scale? Because it’s difficult. It’s difficult to do solo if you’re creating … Because there’s also substantive legal work that needs to happen. Right.You’re still selling

Zack Glaser:

Something. You still got to get the widgets out the door.

Patrick Patino:

There’s still a commodity, right? Yeah. It’s the productization of legal service delivery models

Zack Glaser:

Is that

Patrick Patino:

At the end of the day, you still are selling something. And so practice area agnostic, it’s how do you scale this vibe, this culture, this experience where it stays consistent across geographic location while also taking into account the local nuances.

Zack Glaser:

I think the inexpensiveness of content that gets to a lot of what we’re talking about here is that it is so easy to talk at or to people. And right now, because of artificial intelligence, because of phones, because of video conferencing, because of all that, but it’s not easy to talk with people. And lawyers are … I’m crappy at that. I didn’t want to go talk to my clients, but that’s … I mean, the clients I had were not necessarily always the people that you wanted to go hang out

Patrick Patino:

With necessarily. Seriously?

Zack Glaser:

Debt

Patrick Patino:

Collection clients.

Zack Glaser:

I mean, they’re fine, but yeah, I wasn’t like, “Let’s go to the show, man. Somebody’s playing at Basement East. Let’s go get a

Patrick Patino:

Beer.” Yeah, but why is your collection rate so low, Zack?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. I’m like, “You guys are going to get me down to 16% now instead of

Patrick Patino:

My normal-” 16 cents on the dollar. Yeah, instead of my normal 18%. We need those margins. Okay.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. We need them.

Patrick Patino:

We’ve already charged a lot of this off. Okay.

Zack Glaser:

It takes effort to talk with

Patrick Patino:

Your clients

Zack Glaser:

And to show up where they are like you’re doing.

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. So is that inherently me by design, I am an introverted person. I was a pretty shy person for a long period of my life. And the law favors the extrovert, the loudest person, the most vocal. Where on the flip side, I like having deep conversations and I can have those with clients. I have to navigate very deep things, death, disability, divorce. Even now with what I’m doing, you’re dealing with people’s businesses and estate planning. These require deep conversations. You have to be comfortable showing that vulnerability and that connection piece of saying, “I have kids too. Oh, you might hear my kid in the background.” Oh, same. “Oh, you might hear my dog in the background.” “Me too.” And it’s that skillset of conversation. Is it like a lost art conversation? Is creating content where it’s like, “Hey, I’m here with you. ” What I say is, “You’re not hiring me to do this for you.

The law shouldn’t be done to you. I hope I’m not definitely not against you. I’m here to do it with you. ” It’s a partnership model. It’s collaborative. This is very different than the historical model of, “Well, I gave it to my attorney.”

Zack Glaser:

And

Patrick Patino:

The attorney then feeling all the pressure to say, “Well, now I got to figure this all out.

I never tell people, “I’m taking this completely off your plate,” because that’s not true.That’s false. And that’s actually showing a lack of compassion and actually a false expectation because in any kind of law you practice, you’re going to need the client. You’re going to need to know what their goals are. What outcome do they want? How do they want to feel? What do they value? Going to debt collection, I did bankruptcy is that one person would be like, “I can’t stand.” If I get a phone call, I’m like, “Well, have the phone call started.” No, just a thought of maybe getting the phone calls. I just can’t do it. I had other people that was like, “Whatever. I’m on social security.” What

Zack Glaser:

Are they going to do?

Patrick Patino:

What are they going to do? I can stomach it. They could mail me stuff, whatever. Historically, the experience for both those people would be the same.

Zack Glaser:

As

Patrick Patino:

Opposed to just being like, “Okay, I’m going to meet you where you are and I want to hear. What do you want out of this? ” Because it’s your life. People will ask me, “Well, what would you do? ” Well, I’m not you.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

So you have a different risk calculus. You want different things. Some people want to save as much as I can. Some people are like, “If I have to start over, I have to start over.” Let’s

Zack Glaser:

Do quickly. Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

Yeah. I just want this done. I don’t care. I don’t want to do advanced planning. And I think for a long time, attorneys would be like, “You get a group of lawyers together, what do they do first? Complain about clients.” Well, my pushback to that is get better clients, start saying no to people and get clear on who your ideal client is, so that when someone comes to you and you’re like, “Well, you’re not my ideal client.” So that then it’s easy.

Zack Glaser:

You

Patrick Patino:

Don’t fit this archetype, this avatar. Sorry, you’re not for me.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

And so then when it ends up happening is you want to actually have a conversation with the client. You want to ask them questions like, “How are you doing?” Honestly, and they can ask you, “How are you doing? What’s new in your life?” Because quite frankly, most of what we do as lawyers has nothing to do with the law. Very rarely, even let’s say if you’re a litigator nowadays, most of it just comes down to, what can people live with? Because most things settle. What’s fair? What’s reasonable? What practically makes sense?

Zack Glaser:

For

Patrick Patino:

Many of the types of consumer-based law practice areas, you’re like, “Yeah, the law says this, but.

Zack Glaser:

” Do you really want to do that? Yeah, you’ll technically win, but you have to live next to your neighbor for the rest of your life or whatever. But yeah, I remember that many times. And the law says this, but they also have an appeal. And so you’re going to have to deal with 45 days of, you might as well settle this thing. Yeah.

Patrick Patino:

And so it’s like right now when looking at this kind of holistically from a business standpoint, because at the end of the day, the law is a business. This isn’t just purely altruistic. It’s not a game. This isn’t a show. I show up like this hat, hoodie, joggers every day. It’s not an act and it’s not an invitation that that’s what I mean by being newfangled. That’s not it. It’s really an invitation to do you. Some people, what I’ve discovered is some people love big Law. They strive in big … They thrive. Yeah. And they love the billable hour. Cool. Great. I mean, that’s not for everyone, but cool.

Zack Glaser:

Good luck with AI. You know what

Patrick Patino:

I’m saying?

Zack Glaser:

But hey, I mean, yeah, you can love it.

Patrick Patino:

And some client’s going to say, “I don’t want you to use AI at all.

” There’s market segmentation that’s going to happen where there’s an attorney for everyone and there’s more people that need legal services than lawyers. And so I’ve really tried to divorce from this idea of we all have to be laid back, chill. I mean, there’s a time and place for, I guess, that aggressive litigator. That doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. They’re just maybe … I call them technicians. People say bulldogs. No, no, no. The technician, in order for our profession to continue to evolve, we need to just start embracing that there’s many different ways to practice and be and have values. And there’s enough for everyone that’s not a scarcity. I mean, there is an opportunity for all of us. And I’m a huge proponent of Solo Small because it allows you to do this very … There’s no better time than now. The cost of entry of doing it is very low.

Yeah.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. And you can be very nimble as well. Oh yeah. And there’s a lot of tattoo shops out there that you can go hang out

Patrick Patino:

At. My man can dream. Right. It’s one of those things that you ask a lot of lawyers, what’s your ideal client? They’re just like personal injury. No, no, no, no, no.

Zack Glaser:

Pay.

Patrick Patino:

What beer do they drink? Where do they spend time on the weekend? Are they Packers fans? Are they University of Tennessee volunteers fans like I was as a kid? Do you like the Manning Brothers? Do you not? I mean, you can get to that level and the more you put that out there, it’s amazing how it starts showing up.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. It attracts that client anyway, if you’re putting yourself out there like that. Yeah. I like

Patrick Patino:

That. Well, Zack, how I wrap it up is what do you think it means to be a newfangled lawyer?

Zack Glaser:

To me it is … And I’m going to step away from the idea of what I know you are as the newfangled lawyer, but to be a newfangled lawyer is to question. It’s to be comfortable in the questions. Where are the clients? What do I do? How do I practice law? Even if you’re in the box to observe the box, to know it’s there, to know that it’s meets and bounds and whatnot, and to be comfortable in the question.

Patrick Patino:

I love that. Acknowledge the box with maybe not respecting it. Yeah. You don’t have to respect it. Treat it like one of those range rooms and just smash it to bits. Well, if you’re going to

Zack Glaser:

Acknowledge it, you’re likely going to destroy it. Once you see it, nobody wants to be there.

Patrick Patino:

Well, it’s because you and I are disruptors. So that’s naturally our first inclination is to say, “Well, I’m not going to sit here.” I’m going to rip a hole. I’m going to rip this all down while I’m sitting in it. This sounds really smart. And then someone comes along and goes, “Zack, Patrick, you realize you’re in the room still and you’re like, Ooh, one second. Yeah. Well, Zack, this is a ton of fun. I can do this all the time with you.

Zack Glaser:

Same here. Same here.

Patrick Patino:

Friday afternoons post burrito while your cat’s taking a nap.

Zack Glaser:

It’s a long title, but I think it’ll catch you on.

Patrick Patino:

We’ll let the lawyers team massage something out of that. Well, I appreciate it and thank you so much for the conversation and I think this is going to be a big hit.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Thank you too. Thank you too. I really enjoyed this one, Patrick.

Continue Reading