Why Sackboy is Super Dope; How AI Makes State Court Data Accessible; and the “Three Questions” Rump Roast

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Legal Toolkit

Why Sackboy is Super Dope; How AI Makes State Court Data Accessible; and the “Three Questions” Rump Roast

03/11/21

 

[Music]

 

Intro: It’s The Legal Tool Kit with Jared Correia with guest, Nicole Clark, a round of three questions and Jared reads war and peace; not allowed mind you, but we recorded it anyway, but first, your host, Jared Correia.

 

Jared Correia: Welcome back.  It’s The Legal Tool Kit Podcast.  My name is Jared Correia and because Mike Douglas was unavailable.  I’m your host.  I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys.  Find us online at redcavelegal.com.  I’m the CEO of Gideon Software, Inc.  We build chatbots, so law firms can convert more leads.  You can find out more about Gideon at gideon.legal.  Before we get rolling, I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode.  Hi, mom.  Now, my mom is the real reason you’re listening to the show right now, but the sponsors have a little something to do with it also.  So, I’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsors right now.

 

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Let’s be real everybody.  Screen time limitations for kids, those are pretty much out the window during a pandemic.  A lot of kids aren’t in school.  There’s no sports, no play dates.  What the hell else do we have to do, right?  Except for watch TV and play board games.  Now, my kids have been playing more video games than ever.  I’m not ashamed or even embarrassed about that.  So, don’t have me.  That’s the way it is right now, not always the case.  But, right now, it’s keeping everybody sane.  So, we’ve got a Playstation 4 in the house, which is largely my son’s.  And the other day, he was downloading this game and it was called Sackboy: A Big Adventure.  So, immediately, I checked to make sure this wasn’t a porn and it wasn’t.  And so, we played it as a family, and Sackboy is maybe what you would think Sackboy is.  He’s a boy made out of a stuffed stack.  He’s basically a burlap sack with arms and legs and a head that runs around.  So, with this like game thesis in mind, I didn’t have a lot of high hopes.

 

But, what I want to tell you, our listeners, is that Sackboy is actually pretty dope.  This game is super fun, like high level entertainment for the whole family.  It’s like infectious playing this game, and I will tell you that we paid 80 bucks for this game and it was well worth it.  I probably would have paid 120 bucks for this game, 150 bucks for this game.  Don’t tell Sony.  So, what I learned is that it’s a spin-off of this Sony puzzle game called ‘LittleBigPlanet’ and that’s all I know about it.  I am not intending to buy any LittleBigPlanet titles or even research them further.  What you need to know is that it’s a puzzle game and the Sackboy is one of the characters in LittleBigPlanet.

 

So again, I know nothing about LittleBigPlanet, but you don’t have to know anything about LittleBigPlanet either.  You don’t need to know any of that backstory to be able to play Sackboy.  So, I can tell you that if you want to get into Sackboy, go ahead and get a Sackboy immediately. Whoa! Phrasing.  So, the game itself kind of reminds me of a multiplayer version of Super Mario Brothers.  It’s got the same addictive qualities and, by the way, quick digression.  Back in the day in ’85 when I was then seven-year-old boy myself, I saved $5 for 20 weeks to buy a Nintendo entertainment system.  That was a big deal for me.  I got the Mario Brothers game and the Duck Hunt tied all together.  That was sweet.  I would blow into and put it into the system.  It would work.  And that was like one of the highlights of my youth.  And I think that it’s really cool that this game reminds me of Mario Brothers.  So, of course, the graphics and the gameplay are on like another level, even though I’m an old man and I think there are still too many buttons.

 

(00:05:03)

 

So, there are several reasons I think Sackboy is amazing.  Probably, the primary one for me is that they clearly spent a ton of money on buying music titles for this video game, which some of my producers on Legal Talk Network refused to do.

 

[Music]

 

In any event, Sackboy has got music like Uptown Funk in it, David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, really cool like upbeat songs.  And there’s a water level where they have like a coral version of Madonna’s Material Girl.  So, I’m sitting there playing this game and I’m like, “Man, that hook sounds really familiar,” and I figured out that was Madonna and it blows my mind.  Again, how much money they paid on music for this, but as like a nostalgia play for somebody who’s sitting home all the time these days, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s amazing.”  Probably, the coolest thing they have is they have a surf rock version of, A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’, which is great.  So, part of the time, we’re spending playing the game.  Part of the time, we’re spending looking up was that actually the song we thought it was in that level.  The thing I like also is a cooperative game, so you have to work together.  So, you’ve got as many as four players, which means three and my whole family can play together and some of the tasks you have to do on your own.  You have to help each other out.  That’s great for my kids.

 

So, we call ourselves a Sack family and we’re just rolling down the road beating levels together.  However, during a pandemic where everybody is stuck at home with each other all the time, some frustrations ensue.  So, the other thing I really like about the game is that you can beat the other characters senseless and they can’t really do anything about it.  So, if I tell my son that he has to go to bed early the night before, he can just punch my Sackboy character in the face, get his frustrations out and not yell at me later.  You can also beat up some of the game guys as well.  So, that’s fun too for sure.

 

Another cool thing is that different levels have different powers.  So, in one level, you’re in space and you’ve got rocket boots.  In another level, you’re taking down cactuses, cacti.  So, you’ve got a boomerang that you can use and really awesome that you learn a new skill every level almost.  And then, there’s like this costume store that you can access.  So, you collect these little gem things and you can buy different costumes, which my daughter really likes.  You know, she’s six.  So, that’s like right up her alley.  So, I think Sackboy is just tremendously fun, and if you’re looking for something to do that’s a family game and if you’re tired of board games, this is a great one; Sackboy: A Big Adventure on the Sony Playstation 4 and 5.  And maybe, the best part of all is that if you want to find out more about Sackboy, there’s an online Wiki called ‘Sickipedia’.  Uh-oh, phrasing.  So, as it turns out, Sackboy is the man.  Looking for more legal tech goodies to add to your Sack, stay tuned because we’ve got our guest, Nicole Clark, from Trellis coming up next.  But first, a quick commercial break.

 

[Music]

 

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[Music]

 

Okay.  Welcome back everybody.  It’s about time to get to the chicken tenders buried at the bottom of the new Arby’s meat mountain sandwich, which I have not had yet.  How do you know that?  Because I’m not dead.  Let’s interview our guest.  My guest today is Nicole Clark, who is the Founder and CEO of Trellis, an AI powered state core research and  analytics platform built by litigators for litigators.  Nicole, welcome to the show.

 

Nicole Clark: Thanks so much, Jared.  Good to be here.

 

Jared Correia: How are you doing?

 

Nicole Clark: I’m doing well.  All things considered.

 

Jared Correia: All things considered, right?  So, let’s get started.  We’re going to do legal research today.  No doubt a thrilling topic for all concerns, right?

 

Nicole Clark: Riveting, absolutely.

 

Jared Correia: I actually think and maybe it’s because I’m nerdy is that there’s a lot of really interesting things going on in legal research, and I want to talk to you a little bit about that.

 

(00:10:02)

 

Nicole Clark: Awesome.

 

Jared Correia: So, first thing, I want to chat about is your software product, Trellis, one of the things you do is provide access to court records, state court records and information.

 

Nicole Clark: Yep.

 

Jared Correia: So, why was it necessary to do that?  Where were the gaps that required more information, more curated information coming from state courts as opposed to federal courts or other administrative agencies?

 

Nicole Clark: Yeah.  It’s a good question.  So, generally, the gap is the entire state trial court system.  So, that’s a fairly —

 

Jared Correia: Oh, that’s unfortunate surely.

 

Nicole Clark: Fairly wide, yeah.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: So, currently, if you think about it, if you’re trying to access any information about a state trial court case, you would try and go to the county court website and use a docket number.  And if you have the docket number, you might be able to get into the docket of the case.  Without having that docket number, there’s no way to find out any information.  And as I was practicing at the state trial court level, which granted is the largest court system in the world and is a 30 to 1 ratio between number of cases filed in federal court and number of cases filed in state court.

 

Jared Correia: Wow!  That’s crazy.

 

Nicole Clark: So, we’re talking really where all the litigation takes place, right?  And it didn’t make sense to me that accessing this data was so difficult that it was fragmented by every separate county court and that there was no sort of, you know, pacer for the state trial courts.

 

Jared Correia: Right, right.  And could you talk briefly about what pacer is for people who don’t know —

 

Nicole Clark: Sure, sure.

 

Jared Correia: Or under federal litigation practice?

 

Nicole Clark: So, in the federal courts, it’s all one unified system for e-filing and being able to find documents and information on federal cases.  So, it’s sort of this one unified system that you can go through and look up, and all of the different federal courts are unified and searchable through this system.  I like to think of what Trellis does as sort of a Google that sits on top of state trial court data in a similar way to the way that pacer sits on top of  federal court data.

 

Jared Correia: So, what you’re saying is that the state system is fairly disorganized and every state does things in their own way.

 

Nicole Clark: Even more.

 

Jared Correia: That sounds familiar if you’re trying to get a vaccine, right?  No, I digress.

 

Nicole Clark: You can guess.

 

Jared Correia: Go ahead.  Let’s keep talking about legal research.

 

Nicole Clark: Well, it’s even.  No, I mean that’s a great another example of some similar organizational failings.

 

Jared Correia: Right.

 

Nicole Clark: But, it’s even more so than just state by state.  It is actually fragmented county by county.  So, there is no unification even all of California, all of New York.  Each one of the courts are their own internal sort of king of their own fiefdom in terms of how you access the data.

 

Jared Correia: Right.

 

Nicole Clark: So, what we do is bring all that data into one interface structure and normalize it because it is in every format you can imagine.  And then by having it structured, then you can seek information on judges and opposing counsel and legal issues and be able to search the data like that.

 

Jared Correia: So, if you’re a litigator, that’s a huge problem.

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: I could imagine that being a morass, and I think you’re out of L.A. if I remember correctly, like a cast state like California probably has to be a bigger morass than most states —

 

Nicole Clark: There’s no question.

 

Jared Correia: Just because there are so many counties, so many court systems, so many filings.

 

Nicole Clark: Absolutely.  With Los Angeles county being three times the volume of any other court in the nation.

 

Jared Correia: Wow!  So, this concept of structured data is important.  You know it.  I know it.  But let’s talk a little bit about what structured data means so people have an understanding about why unorganized data is really difficult to get after.

 

Nicole Clark: Yep, so almost in any classification that you can think of.  One example would be case numbers.  So, let’s just talk about case numbers for a second.  So, there’s no unification that all of — even an entire state.  Let’s go with California that all of California uses for their various cases.  So, the actual numbering system from every single court is entirely different, same with the way that they list out the parties of the case.  Some listed last name first, some list only the law firm, some list only the attorney.  So, when you get in this data, there’s no way because there isn’t already a structure.  There’s no way to actually get meaning out of the data because it’s fragmented, disorganized and what we have to do is take that disorganized data in and create our own classification schema and hierarchy to be able to search across case numbers, to be able to search across case types, you know.  Every court lists a wrongful termination case in an entirely different case number and case type way.  So, what we have to do is basically create that structure and then map the data that’s organized data that we get in back to a schema that actually makes sense, so that when an attorney wants to search by their opposing counsel and pull up all of their opposing counsel’s cases, now there is actually a field and structure for being able to find where that opposing council is litigating on certain cases as one example.

 

(00:15:04)

 

Jared Correia: Right.  So, when we’re talking about structured data like the way to make that as easy as possible for people to understand, I think is organized data in a specific way —

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: Using like naming conventions for example.

 

Nicole Clark: Yep.

 

Jared Correia: So, that allows you to do two things.  The first is that what you talked about before.  There’s no pacer for state court records.  So, how do you functionally create access points?  But then, two, is once you start creating that structured data and managing it, now you can start sticking machine learning and AI technology onto that data.  So, do you want to talk a little bit about how that works and that’s going to provide insights beyond, like just a case docket.  That’s going to give you some deeper insights and lawyers have ever had before, right?

 

Nicole Clark: Absolutely, absolutely.  So, one of the ways to think about it is that this data has just historically been almost entirely inaccessible.  So, by creating the structure, ultimately, that allows us to do analytics on top of the data where you can — let’s use judge analytics as an example where you can now look up the judge that you’re appearing before.  You can see how many active cases they have.  What the case breakdown that their hearing looks like, you know, are you going to need to educate them in a particular case type area that you’re practicing or is this judge super experienced in it and you can jump right in?  And then, all the way down to how the judge rules on specific pretrial motions in particular case types.  The next classification we’re digging down to is even introducing moving party into the analysis.  So, on a motion to dismiss, does the judge’s analysis change if plaintiff is a moving party?  Does a change of defense is the moving party, particularly in torts cases or practice area tort and then dig down to personal injury and how does that change the analysis of a particular judge.  So, by creating the structure, we’re able to really help attorneys glean insights that a human just wouldn’t be able to do.  There’s too much data.

 

Jared Correia: Right.  It’s that data problem.

 

Nicole Clark: And a human is not going to be able to go through exactly, exactly.  And so, this is actually while AI is a buzzword that we’re all probably annoyed at hearing, legal is actually the right use case for AI.  It’s an area where there is massive amounts of data that need structure and classification and that insights can be gleaned that just couldn’t be gleaned by a human who can’t go through millions of cases on their own.

 

Jared Correia: All right.  I think if you talk to the average lawyer, they might say that “Hey, there’s a lot of legal technology out there.”

 

Nicole Clark: Sure.

 

Jared Correia: My impression of it and probably yours too is that, like this is still at really nascent stages especially when we’re talking about applications of machine learning and AI because challenge number one is organizing all this data.

 

Nicole Clark: Yes, yes.

 

Jared Correia: So, there’s 50 states.

 

Nicole Clark: Yep.

 

Jared Correia: Untold numbers of counties in the country.

 

Nicole Clark: Three thousand different counties, yep.

 

Jared Correia: Right.  So, how does this problem get tackled by the industry?  Like how labor intensive is it?  How do you get the data to a point where it becomes structured?  What’s that process look like?

 

Nicole Clark: So, that is really interesting and I can tell you by looking at sort of our applications of AI as nascent right now is absolutely correct.  We are in the infant stages of really being able to apply AI, and you’re right that you can’t do it.  You can’t create machine learning algorithms unless you have good structure data that the machine can learn from.  So, one of the things that we spent the last sort of a year-and-a-half doing was not starting with machine learning algorithms but instead classifying the data, structuring the data, so that we could train the machine, so that it could continue to learn and get better.  But, that’s largely a logic; a human-based logic effort of going through and not only sort of structuring by an overall case.  So, let’s say a docket.  But, in fact, going deeper to structure and classify everything by docket entry level, so you can imagine an incredibly  time intensive practice that now got us to the place where now we can effectively utilized machine learning.  But, if you want to talk about why, you know, what are some of the barriers?  It’s that in the first place.  It is the amount of effort that it takes to make the data structured, so that it can be useful for any AI applications in the first place.

 

Jared Correia: Right, right.  And if people remember back 20 years ago when we had the Y2K thing, everybody was like oh man.  Now, we got to add two numbers in front of every date record or the world is going to implode.

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: Clearly, that didn’t happen, but an effort like that seems small compared to what you’re talking about because this is really what you’re talking about county by county, state by state effort, which is really like guerrilla warfare and —

 

Nicole Clark: That’s a great way to think about it.

 

Jared Correia: It starts with the big states first and then go to smaller states afterwards, right?  That would be the play.

 

Nicole Clark: Yep, yep, absolutely.  So, highest — yeah, we decide on our states based on a variety of different things, so volume of litigation, —

 

(00:20:01)

 

Number of lawyers, value of the type of litigation that takes place there and then also technology considerations.  What’s sort of going to be?  You know, your low-hanging fruit and then what because it’s technically difficult is actually important for us to get because it creates a moat and a barrier that others won’t be able to jump into as easily.  So, large combination of how we decide states to prioritize in counties to prioritize.

 

Jared Correia: Right.  And let’s talk a little bit more broadly now.

 

Nicole Clark: Sure.

 

Jared Correia: As I mentioned before, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening in legal research, and I think a lot of attorneys look at legal research and they say, “Well, I’ve got my Lexis or Westlaw subscription.”

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: And now, I’m done and maybe they have like a fast case/case maker subscription through their bar association.  But what kind of interesting things do you see happening in the legal research community that is outside of those big players?

 

Nicole Clark: You know, I think that the largest players have the difficulty of being slow-moving.  You know, it takes a ton of inertia to be able to move a large organization to be able to innovate.  So, I actually seen some of the smallest players as doing some of the most interesting and innovative stuff in legal research but, generally, it’s not enough I think anymore to think about.  Well, you know, I’ve used my trusty yellow legal pad and I rely on, you know, the basic Lexis that I always have and —

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Nicole Clark: And that’s enough because the truth is that what ultimately happens there is you have younger, hungrier attorneys that are willing to embrace technology.  And then, it becomes an issue of sort of asymmetrical access to data, which is going to disadvantage those.  I mean, if one has data and one doesn’t, it’s very obvious that the person with data and insights that’s going to be able to have more of an advantage.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, right, absolutely.

 

Nicole Clark: You know, I generally think that we should continue to watch the smaller players that can – it’s easier if you think about it for us to test something out, try it out, see if it works.  If it doesn’t, move on to the next thing, whereas a very large organization by the time they go through, the gauntlet of going all in on a new project, they’re already too far in and they’ve got to make it work at that point.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, right.  And I think part of this too is this notion that I feel like what most attorneys view this as is, “Okay, I have my legal research product and now I’m done.”  But in the current environment, I don’t think it’s a terrible idea to look at potentially multiple legal research products based on your needs. Would you agree with that?

 

Nicole Clark: Definitely.  You know, it’s a little bit annoying I’d say for the user because – well, I use this product because it’s good at this thing and I use this one because it’s better for this particular thing.  But the truth of the matter is some of the things that are being tackled by the different companies are really, really difficult and it is useful to utilize that particular company for the thing that they’re best at as we all continue to grow.  But there’s no question that if you don’t take advantage, for instance, let’s say you’re practicing in state court.  You’re only using Lexis or Westlaw.  You only look at court of appeals case law, but that doesn’t give you the insight where Trellis tells you how your judge actually thinks about your particular issue, what is the case law that your judge thinks is persuasive.  And so, by only relying on Lexis, then you’ve lost the ability to really target and tailor your emotion in particular outside of Trellis just doing basic sort of citation checking.  You’re going to have such an easier time doing that with some of the more innovative, you know, systems that come out and say, actually, this citation is wrong.  And you don’t have to spend your hours and hours doing, you know, really wrote citation checking, but instead —

 

Jared Correia: Right.

 

Nicole Clark: Have a machine help with that and get back to focusing on the more sophisticated aspects of practice.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  I think there’s a lot of really interesting stuff being done in AI and machine learning and legal research.  In my estimation, it’s probably the place where the most significant work is being done there across all of legal technology and you guys are sitting right in the middle of it.  So, thank you so much.  That’s Nicole Clark from Trellis.  She’ll be back in a moment because we’ll take one final sponsor break, so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice –

 

[Music]

 

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(00:25:00)

 

Remember, that’s t-i-m-e-s-o-l-v dot com.  As the largest legal only call center in the U.S., Alert Communications helps law firms and legal marketing agencies with new client intake.  Alert captures and responds to all leads 24/7, 365, as an extension of your firm in both Spanish and English.  Alert uses proven intake methods customizing responses as needed, which earns the trust of clients and improves client retention.  To find out how Alert can help your law office, call (866) 827-5568 or visit alertcommunications.com/ltn.  Welcome to the rear end of The Legal Toolkit.  I call it the rump roast.  It’s a grab bag of short form topics of my choosing.  Today, we’re going to play one of our games that we bring out from time to time.  It’s called three questions.  In three questions, I offer a list of three people or items and three descriptions.  It’s our guest job to match everything up.  Our victim today — I mean, guest is Nicole Clark from Trellis.  Nicole, are you ready to play?

 

Nicole Clark: I am so ready.  What could go wrong?

 

Jared Correia: Nothing is going to go wrong.  Don’t worry.  And we can always edit it out in post.  So, we’re going to do four categories.  I’m going to give you three items and three descriptions, and then you got to match them up.  Are you ready?

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: Okay?  Category one is called getting sacked.  So, the choices are Sackboy, Sacagawea and Saks Fifth Avenue.  One is a video game character in LittleBigPlanet.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: Another is a Native American guide for Lewis and Clark.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: And another is a famous department store.  I’m prefacing this by saying I started you out with what I think is an easy one.

 

Nicole Clark: With the easy one.  You threw me a softball here.

 

Jared Correia: So, I feel confident that you’re going to go three from three.  So, let me know what you got.

 

Nicole Clark: All right.  So, we got Sacagawea as the guide for Lewis and Clark.  We got Saks Fifth Avenue as the department store, and then provide me the last one.

 

Jared Correia: Sackboy.

 

Nicole Clark: Because that’s where that fits in.

 

Jared Correia: Video game character.

 

Nicole Clark: Sackboy is a video game character.  There we go.

 

Jared Correia: Three for three.  I did the show monologue on Sackboy, —

 

Nicole Clark: Really?

 

Jared Correia: Which is a video game that my family and I have been playing.  It’s super fun.

 

Nicole Clark: That’s awesome.

 

Jared Correia: Is this your first learning of Sackboy?

 

Nicole Clark: It is.

 

Jared Correia: Okay.

 

Nicole Clark: You broaden my horizons.

 

Jared Correia: Really.  I’m trying to.  Your horizons have only begun to be broadened.  Okay.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay, awesome.

 

Jared Correia: Next category is semi-famous Richards.

 

Nicole Clark: Ooh, okay.

 

Jared Correia: Your choices are Dick York, Dick Sargent and Dick Swett.  One is a New Hampshire politician.  One is the first Darrin on Bewitched, and one is the second Darrin on Bewitched.  So, we’re getting a little more difficult here.  These questions are becoming harder.

 

Nicole Clark: They certainly are.  Okay.  Dicks, then these are full guesses just to be clear.

 

Jared Correia: Okay.  Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.  So, Dick Sargent first Bewitched.  Dick York politician.  Dick Swett second Bewitched.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, wow.  That is — I’m so sorry.

 

Nicole Clark: It’s absolutely wrong.

 

Jared Correia: We’re over three.

 

Nicole Clark: And that’s hard to do.  So, I feel like I should get some credit there.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, that’s really.  I’m giving you one on that one.  The Dick York and Dick Sargent thing is really hard because I can never remember which one is like the first Darrin and the second Darrin.  So, the first Darrin is Dick York.  Second Darrin is Dick Sargent.  And then, Dick Swett is actually a New Hampshire politician that ran for office —

 

Nicole Clark: That’s amazing.  Poor guy.

 

Jared Correia: When I was in college.  Let me tell you it was hard to keep Dick Swett signs on people’s lawns.  They were often stolen, and —

 

Nicole Clark: I love that.

 

Jared Correia: I don’t know if you’ve seen the history of curse words on Netflix yet with Nicholas Cage.

 

Nicole Clark: No.

 

Jared Correia: It’s a really funny show.  They do like a documentary style on curse words for like five or so swear words, and Dick Swett actually made it into one of the episodes, —

 

Nicole Clark: He did?  Oh, it’s infamies.

 

Jared Correia: Which I was sitting there like, “Oh, my God.  I remember that dude.”

 

Nicole Clark: That’s awesome.

 

Jared Correia: All right.  Next, we’re halfway through.  How do you feel?  You need a break or are you ready to continue?

 

Nicole Clark: I’m ready to do this.

 

Jared Correia: All right.  Next, odd couples, odd couples.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: We’ll get a little bit easier here.  I feel that.  The number one is Bing Crosby and David Bowie.  Number two is Tod and Copper.  And number three is French fries and mayonnaise.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: One odd couple sang a version of the Little Drummer Boy together.

 

Nicole Clark: Weird.

 

Jared Correia: The other odd couples were a fox and a dog and they were best friends played by Mickey Rooney and Kurt Russell.

 

(00:30:03)

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: And the last is a disgusting food combination that only sick freaks would eat, and I’ll repeat this for you.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: Bing Crosby.

 

Nicole Clark: Yes.

 

Jared Correia: David Bowie, Tod and Copper, and French fries and mayonnaise.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.  I’ve got this one.

 

Jared Correia: Okay.

 

Nicole Clark: So, French fries and mayonnaise that is a gross combination of foods.

 

Jared Correia: Yes, yes.  It totally is.

 

Nicole Clark: Often used in Canada.  I think there are some —

 

Jared Correia: I think there’s a Canadian thing about franchising mayonnaise as well as poutine, —

 

Nicole Clark: Poutine, correct.

 

Jared Correia: But we won’t get that far.  Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: Yeah, yeah.  Okay.  Copper, that’s the dog.

 

Jared Correia: Yes, correct.

 

Nicole Clark: And then, of course, I mean the most interesting odd couple we’ve got is the David Bowie, Little Drummer Boy.  You definitely broadened my horizon there.

 

Jared Correia: Very weird.  You should watch the video if you haven’t seen it.  It’s really strange to see, but so that was Tod Copper from the Disney movie, ‘The Fox and the Hound’, 1981 Disney release.  You’re doing really well actually.  I’m pretty impressed.  You’re six for nine.  That’s a really good batting average.  All right, our last one fictional weapons, so.

 

Nicole Clark: Ooh, my area of expertise.

 

Jared Correia: I know.  This is like right in your wheelhouse.

 

Nicole Clark: Yeah.

 

Jared Correia: Lightsabers, phasers and Jewish space lasers.

 

Nicole Clark: Wow!

 

Jared Correia: One is what they use in Star Wars for sword fights.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.  Yeah.

 

Jared Correia: Two is what they use in Star Trek to shoot people.  And lastly, the cause of California wildfires according to an actual congress person, and you’re a Californian.  So, you can debunk that if it’s not true.  All right.  And the choices again are lightsabers, phasers and Jewish space lasers.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.  So, we’ve got lightsabers for Star Wars.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: We’ve got — what was the —

 

Jared Correia: Phasers?

 

Nicole Clark: Last Star Wars one?

 

Jared Correia: Star Trek.

 

Nicole Clark: Star Trek.  You can see my mass amount of tracking knowledge.  Okay.  So, phasers has got to be Star Trek.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: And then, the clear cause of California wildfires would be the Jewish what?

 

Jared Correia: The Jewish space laser just firing off from the cosmos.

 

Nicole Clark: Space laser.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah, yeah.  So now you know.

 

Nicole Clark: You know I wondered what it was that was causing our wildfires because we do.  We have a problem.  It’s the damn Jewish –

 

Jared Correia: Jewish space lasers.  Now you know.  I’m here to help inform you.

 

Nicole Clark: I can’t even get it.  It’s so shocking to me to find out this information.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  And you would think it was just like the standard causes of wildfires for centuries, but no.  Thankfully there are folks out there who can inform us of the real deal.

 

Nicole Clark: Well now, we can take care of it.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: So, that’s great.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.

 

Jared Correia: Nicole, you were great.  Thank you for being such a good sport.  How was that?  That wasn’t too bad, right?

 

Nicole Clark: No, that was super fun.  I did — I learned multiple things each round.  So, that’s always a win.

 

Jared Correia: A 9 of 12, a 750 batting average.  Amazing!

 

Nicole Clark: I feel like I could have done better, but there’s the next time.  I’ll have to have a rematch at some point.

 

Jared Correia: Yes, we’ll do it again.  Now, for those of you listening on Ghana, India’s number one music app, I know you’re out there.  Our Spotify playlist for this week’s show covered some of my favorite musical duets.  So, listen into that.  Nicole, you got any recommendations for my playlist?  Any duets you like in particular?

 

Nicole Clark: Okay.  This is a super recent one and a little poppy, but I’m digging it.  It’s the Taylor Swift ‘Pony Bear’.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, yeah.  What is it?  Is that Styles?  Is that that song?

 

Nicole Clark: Yeah, good job.  Yeah, yeah.

 

Jared Correia: My daughter loves Taylor Swift.  Okay.  That’s going on there.

 

Nicole Clark: Minus two.

 

Jared Correia: Excellent.  So, thanks again.  Nicole, you’re great.  I really appreciate you coming on.

 

Nicole Clark: Thanks so much for having me.  It’s been fun.

 

Outro: Our guest today has been Nicole Clark of Trellis Legal Research.  For more information about Trellis, go to trellis.law.  Now, my producer tells me we’re running out of time.

 

[Music]

 

So, I unfortunately will not be able to read war and peace today and that’ll do it for another episode of The Legal Toolkit Podcast where Bob Wills is still the king.

 

[Music]

 

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