Laptop+Water; Incremental Resolutions; and “Sh!t Yoopers Say”

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jared Correia: I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode. 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 as well, so I’d like to thank our sponsors, too. Clio, Time Solve, Alert Communications and Scorpion. Now more than ever, an effective marketing strategy is one of the most important things your law firm can have and Scorpion can help. With nearly 20 years of experience serving the legal industry, Scorpion has proven methods to help you get the high value cases you deserve. Join thousands of attorneys across the country who have turned to Scorpion for effective marketing and technology solutions. For a better way to grow your practice, visit scorpionlegal.com.

[Music]

Male: The Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia.  With guests, Molly Ranns around of Shit Yooper Say and then this new year Jared’s resolution is to get ripped like Lou Ferrigno, but that little Debbie’s not making it easy. But first your host, Jared Correia.

Jared Correia: That’s right. It’s time for the one and only Legal Toolkit podcast. You’re in the right place. And you’re correct. It’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast. Even though I don’t know the difference between a Phillips head and a Flathead screwdriver, just kidding, I do. I’m your host, Jared Correia. Jimmy Fallon was unavailable because he’s painfully unfunny. So, you get me instead. Hopefully that’’ not great. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. A business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find us online at redcavelegal.com. I’m the COO of Gideon Software, Inc. We build chatbots so law firms can convert more leads and conversational document assembly tools so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately. You can find out more about getting at gideonlegal.com. Now, before we get turned for you today with Molly Ranns, the director of the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program at State Bar of Michigan about new year’s resolutions and other such commitments, maybe less timely in nature.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about my laptop. I’m on Reddit, a bunch. There’s this online acronym called TIFU. It stands for Today I Fucked Up. Well, today, you’re getting a released episode of Legal Toolkit a little bit later than your own really do. And I got to admit the reason for that is me this weekend, I fucked up. That’s a long acronym. I’m not going to try to do it. Let me tell you a little bit about my weekend. So, here with my kids by myself, my wife is in Florida, enjoying herself was five degrees in New England. So, I’m cleaning up the house a little bit. Sometimes I’ll like, bring my laptop here and there with me when I clean up the house, I’ll put it on a bed, put it on like a bureau and I’ll listen to Spotify or whatever. And so sometimes when I clean the bathroom, I’ll put like my laptop on the sink. Yeah, I know. It’s really stupid. I understand. But to quote Dr. Farthing in Dirty Work, “Hindsight is 2020 my friends”, except for my laptop on the sink in my upstairs bathroom.

And I forgot to turn off the water in the sink. So, clean the toilet or whatever, and as podcasts going and all of a sudden there’s no more volume, no more noise coming out of the iPad or the laptop. And I’m like, “oh, that’s not good.” And I look around and water is flowing over the top of the sink into the laptop. Problem. I turned off the water, I fetch the laptop, clean up the floor, and then I take the laptop and I put it on a side. Try draining the water. It is not looking good at this moment. My kids don’t know anything that’s going on, of course, but I’m holding it down. I’m not too concerned. Tell you why in a second.

So, I let the laptop drained for a little bit, take the bottom off, wiped it, and then get it to reboot a couple of times. You’re not supposed to do that, but there were like three or four documents I was working on my desktop that I wanted to pull off of it. So, it happened to me and I’m feeling okay. Not batting an eyelash. I mean, the week before, the laptop was a little bit funky in terms of like the screen. I noticed the screen flashing a little bit red every now and then so I thought to myself, I probably need a new computer. Didn’t expect to buy one this way, but here we are. So, you might be asking yourself like, “Boy, your computers destroyed. I got to buy a new one. What happened to your work?” Therein lies the rub with a lot of law firms.

(00:05:01)

Like if you lose a specific device, your ass is grass. So instead of shitting my pants, I just bought a new laptop, but I didn’t even have to do that right away. So, two important things to talk about here. One is the Cloud is good. So, I have probably looked around my house right now. Three Chromebooks. Two iPads that I can see in my line of vision. So, since all my stuff is online, all browser-based apps, I just log in and continue to work as if nothing happened. My computer is a little smaller. It’s a backup computer, but I’ve got all my stuff. There’s no necessity for me to run out and go to the store and buy a new laptop but it’s just easier to work on a bigger device. So, if you can’t do that in your law firm, that’s a problem. You know, if you’re cleaning the bathroom and listen to some podcasts. So, I just picked up right where I left off. Now, I’ve been talking about this for years, obviously, but the real value in Cloud software is that it’s device agnostic. So that means is that like, as long as I have an internet connection on a secure device, and every device I have in the house has antivirus, anti-malware software on it. You buy one account; you can put it on a number of different devices. So, I’m good to go. I just pick up. It doesn’t matter what device I’m on. I can still access all the same stuff and all my solutions look the same.

And I can’t believe that at this juncture, a lot of law firms have not adopted the Cloud wholesale. I know it’s a working progress for a lot of firms out there, but now is the time if you haven’t done it already to go full Cloud and to paraphrase Wesley Snipes, “if you go full Cloud, you never go back.” That was terrible. Moving on.

So, the other thing too, is backing up data, right? So, I lose my laptop no big, right? But at the moment in which I don’t have my laptop, maybe the internet is unavailable to add an at a guy in my town crash into a telephone pole recently. And as it turns out, that telephone pole hit both my phone internet. I have a smartphone, I have a flip phone rather, but it actually gets internet believe it or not. You have to use that weird typing though, where you have to do the number of keys to get to the letters. As some of my kids hated, and it takes a million years to type anything and that’s why I have it. And then the other piece of it is I lose my internet also. So, I got nothing, nothing at all. But what I have, I have a physical online backup that I can access.

So, you got a hard drive, but you could use it some drive, make sure it’s encrypted. You’re not online, pull out that thumb drive, you’re good to go. Now the other thing is, let’s say you can’t get into some of these systems, right? So, you’re like, “Cloud sounds good, but what if I actually can’t get into a particular system?” Well, you’ve got an online backup protocol too. Right? So, I talked to a lot of lawyers who were like, “Hey, I’ve got Google drive or I’ve got one drive and that’s where all my stuff is stored.” But honestly, that’s not a backup. That’s just a Cloud drive. That’s the replacement for your physical server and your physical server had a backup too.

So backup is a redundancy. It’s another place where you can get your data, not the same place where you always get your data. And I know Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, they back all that shit up. I get it. But what if that goes down for a little bit? What are you going to do? You’re out of luck unless you have a physical backup. But if you don’t need to access physical backup, maybe have an online incremental backup that you use. Like a Carbonite or a Backblaze, something like that. Because if you’re in the Cloud and you’ve got online and offline backups, you’re in really good shape. You can pick up and run your business at any point in time even if you don’t have access to the internet. Pretty good deal, right? And it’s sometimes makes the difference between a law firm that goes out of business and a law firm that stays in business.

Now the one thing I will say is that the backup piece of this is important, right? So, if I’m in a pinch and I need to get my data from a backup source and I’m panicking as water is flowing over my laptop, let’s say, or I can’t access the internet via my phone or my home modem. I don’t want to be trying to figure out how to get my data at that point. I want to figure out how to get my data before that. So, when you do data backup, make sure that you test it in a non-threatening, non-emergency situation to make sure that you can do it easily when that emergency situation does arrive.

(00:10:10)

So, my old laptop looking at it right now, got it on his side, draining any additional water this in it.  I’m going to take this to somebody, haven’t fixed it up and give it to my son as a gaming PC. But looking at that busted up laptop 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do what I’m doing now. But with the prevalence of Cloud-based software, with the prevalence of data backup, your business never stops. Your business shouldn’t have to stop. And if you’re not making these changes to your law firm, if you haven’t already made them, now’s the time. Just be careful when you’re cleaning your bathroom. And yeah, I’m going to get a Bluetooth speaker.

Now, before we get to our conversation about whether your New Year’s resolutions are worth it or not and whether you can even form new habits, we’re going to talk to Molly Ranns, director of the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program at the State Bar in Michigan, about that. Before we do that, let’s bring in the one and only Joshua Lenon to provide some completely dry insights in the form of the Clio Legal Trends Report minute. And if just one minute of the Clio Legal Trends Report is not enough for you, how could it be really? Go download the whole series. It’s free.

Joshua Lenon: It’s a fact. Solo law firms tend to benefit from technology adoption 35% more than larger law firms. This is based on data that shows how key technology solutions for lawyers helped solo practitioners earn $50,000 more than other firms on a per lawyer basis. I’m Joshua Lenon, lawyer in residence at Clio. In today’s world, technologies like online payments, client portals, and client intake software help lawyers deliver the types of online services that have become essential to legal practice. But while solo law firms tend to benefit the most, we’ve also seen that they’ve been slower to adopt these types of Cloud technologies that today’s clients look for. To learn more about the unique advantages that solo attorneys have over other law firms, and much more for free, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for solo law firms at clio.com/solo.  That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O.

Jared Correia: So, let’s put some smoke on this carp. It’s time to interview our guest. My guest today is Molly Ranns. She is the director of the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program at the State Bar of Michigan. Molly, how are you? Happy New Year.

Molly Ranns: Happy New Year. Thank you so much for having me, Jared.

Jared Correia: Yeah. So, thanks for coming on. This is going to be fun. I was mentioning before we started recording that. I saw you do a presentation for a bar association. I thought you were really great. And I said to myself, “we got to get her on the podcast.” So, I’m terrible identifying these roles, right? Like there’s psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists. I don’t know the difference between those things. Can you tell me what it is that you do and what your official title is?

Molly Ranns: Yeah, absolutely. So, I am a licensed professional counselor. I am a nationally board-certified counselor and an internationally certified advanced alcohol and drug counselor. So, I referred to myself as a therapist or a clinician. I do psychotherapy, but my job for the State Bar is the director of the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program, or LJAP, as you just mentioned. And through that role, I offer services to law students, bar applicants, lawyers and judges that have mental health or substance use issues or those who are looking to really just optimize their overall wellness.

So, we do a lot of work on the back-end where we’re actually helping those folks with mental health or substance use disorders but we also do a lot on the front-end where we’re promoting well-being in the legal profession. And that’s what you saw me do a few weeks back when I was talking about compassion fatigue to the Indianapolis County Bar.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Because you’re not just doing stuff in Michigan. You’ve talked to bar associations and lawyers across the country.

Molly Ranns: Yes. So, recently I’ve had a couple of requests from other States, which has been really fun.

Jared Correia: And so, I should mention, like, this type of program is not unique to Michigan, right? There’s a bunch of different lab programs across the United States and most of them are free and confidential for bar members, right?

Molly Ranns: Yes. You did your homework. That’s wonderful.

Jared Correia: I have zero board certifications, but I can Google.

Molly Ranns: Yeah. Most every State in the US has a lap lawyer’s assistance program and we’re all different. There’s a saying that if you know one lap, you know one lap because we all do really different things. But most of our programs are well, all of our programs are confidential and most of our services are free. And we all do similar things in that. We’re offering services to legal professional with mental health and substance use issues.

(00:15:02)

Some of the differences would be based upon, for example, Michigan, we offer a good service with the Attorney Discipline Board, the Grievance Commission, where we’re one of the only States if a lawyer has a mental health or substance use issue and the alleged misconduct is directly related to that, they can have the opportunity to participate in our program in lieu of sanction or in addition to sanction with regard to their license.

Jared Correia: That’s cool.

Molly Ranns: Yes. It’s a huge service in Michigan.

Jared Correia: It’s kind of like a diversion type of thing.

Molly Ranns: Absolutely. Yes, exactly. Because we know discipline doesn’t make sick attorneys well, but treatment does.

Jared Correia: I like it. And I imagine you do work with the Law Office Management Program out of the Michigan State Bar as well from time to time.

Molly Ranns: Yes. So, JoAnn Hathaway, who is with the Practice Management Resource Center, we collaborate on a lot of things in addition to our own podcast, On Balance, which is also produced by Legal Talk Network.

Jared Correia: No way. No, I knew that. So yeah, we should mention that you’re also a podcast host, and the name of the podcast is On Balance, right? And it’s both you and JoAnn to do that?

Molly Ranns: Yes. It’s State Bar of Michigan, On Balance podcast. And JoAnn is coming in with the PMRC side, so she’s talking about practice management, and her guests usually have a tie into practice management. And I am coming in on the wellness side and so my guests are usually wellness related. And we talk about the intersection between practice management and well-being.

Jared Correia: All right. Now we’re doing cross promotion. Everybody, listen, On Balance, do it today, binge those shows. So that was helpful. I appreciate all that. Let’s get down to the real thing, I want to talk about today. I want to talk about New Year’s resolutions. That time of year, everybody said New Year’s resolutions, which will inevitably fail, right?

So as somebody who is a therapist, I think you’re maybe uniquely qualified to answer this question. Are New Year’s resolutions bullshit, why even do them? Because no one keeps them, right?

Molly Ranns: So, I could not agree more with you, and I’m pretty anti New Year’s resolution. I’m glad you brought this up. I think a lot of times people make New Year’s resolutions and they’re so negative. The biggest one I hear all the time is I want to lose X amount of pounds because I’m fat or because I’m overweight. And so, it seems to me that the resolution is always based upon a way that we are not good enough as individuals. And very rarely do you hear people say, I want to lose weight because I want to be healthier. Because I want to be stronger. Because I want to be able to play basketball with my son or those types of things.

So, if people are making resolutions, I encourage them to think about it in a much more positive way instead of making a resolution or creating a resolution because you’re not good enough in some way.

Jared Correia: I like that. That’s a great take on it and I’ve never really heard anybody say that before. So, it sounds like you could do a New Year’s resolution, if you put a positive spin on it, right? And it doesn’t have to be New Year’s where you could try to form a new habit, do a new thing at any point in time.

Molly Ranns: Absolutely. Or just something you want to do more of that year. So, we’re big travelers. Our family loves to travel, which has been certainly impacted over the last couple of years with COVID.

Jared Correia: Yeah. I travelled to my kitchen and to my bedroom.

Molly Ranns: Exactly. Yes, exactly. But what we do instead of New Year’s resolutions, we’ve started this thing years ago where my husband and I and our two children now they are ages eight and five. We all write down someplace in the world we want to go or an experience we want to have, and we put them in a hat and we draw them out on New Year’s Day. And we talk about what it would be like to have that experience and how we can make it happen. So that’s our way of doing New Year’s resolutions. It’s really just kind of travel planning.

Jared Correia: I like that your kids sound like they’re well behaved. I feel like I would do that with my kids. They’d be like Jupiter, and then I’d be like, get the fuck out of here, we’re not going to Jupiter. So, let’s talk more generally about this notion of, like, habit forming, because I think people have a really hard time with that. And I mean, it comes up in so many contexts. I consult with law firms and, like, part of employing a system is changing your habits. So, how can you at a personal level instill a habit? How do you do that effectively?

Molly Ranns: I think with habit forming, we have negative habits and we have positive habits, right? And so, I really think that the best way to instill something new is just creating that new routine. So, for example, if somebody is trying to quit smoking, but every morning at 9:00 a.m., they sit in the one chair in the one corner of their room to have a cigarette and have their cup of coffee and read the paper, removing the cigarette but sitting in the same chair, in the same location with the same cup of coffee is probably not going to be beneficial for them.

So, I always encourage people to start a new routine. And I think once you carve out a new routine, start something new, it’s so much easier to keep it going. It’s so hard to get to the gym at one time but once you go, it feels great and it feels awkward to not go. So, it’s really just what is your routine look like? And if you can create that routine and start that routine, chances are you’ll be much more likely to continue it.

(00:20:01)

But doing something new is what is most helpful.

Jared Correia: I do not know if you know Sean Healy, who works for the Massachusetts Lawyers Concern for Lawyers Group, but I feel like he has a great analogy for this or talks about like if you want to start running, just put on your shoes and then put on your pants for running and put your headphones on. Because if you do not do it, you are sitting on the couch and all your workout clothes and not doing anything, you feel like an idiot. So, it sounds like part of it is like getting started, right?

Molly Ranns: Absolutely. No, that is a great analogy. And I think so many people get overwhelmed and do not start a new positive habit or routine because they are jumping from A to Z. If your goal is to become the President of the United States, that is a pretty big goal to start from A and jump to Z. But if you start with really small steps, like maybe researching what that entails. So, like Sean is saying, just put on the shoes and you do not have to agree to go for a run. You are just agreeing to put on the shoes. And once you get on the shoes, you can agree to put on the next thing.

So, I think in general, people get really overwhelmed when they create these lofty goals or these lofty New Year’s resolutions, and then it is so overwhelming that they feel like a failure immediately. So, I say if you can just stick to something really, really small, you are just going from A to B. You are not going from A to Z. You are just taking one step.

Jared Correia: Incremental New Year’s resolutions people, listen up. Now, you brought up something else I thought was really interesting, which I had not intended on talking about at all. But I think this is like the flip side is also interesting. So, you talk about positive habits, starting to instill those. Like, if you have got a negative habit, how do you go about trying to change that?

Molly Ranns: I think in the same way you instill positive habits, right? So, if you are trying to get rid of something negative, changing the routine so it does not have a place of existence anymore. And this is a range, right? Because some habits are related to addiction issues, for example, that are, this is a disease. Right? So that might take more than just changing your routine and then we are talking about treatment and 12-step or —

Jared Correia: Yeah. Biting your nail versus like a drug which is a big difference.

Molly Ranns: Absolutely. But like, we were talking about cigarette smoking or I have someone I have been talking to who she wants to drink less coffee because it makes her anxious and she drinks it throughout the day and it is not good for her. And so, sitting in the same place, doing the same thing, stopping at Starbucks, only getting something else, that is not helpful for her. She needs to do something completely different. So, she is creating a new routine for her mind and body and she can start to get rid of what that negative habit is.

Jared Correia: The smoking analogy you gave before was interesting. It sounds like it might help if like you always smoke in the same chair to just move the chair to another place. That seems like a really simple starting point.

Molly Ranns: Absolutely. It seems like that would be a good way to see if that is helpful.

Jared Correia: So, here is another challenge, I think for people and this will be the last question I have in this segment for you, which is it is hard enough to create habits on your own, right? But is it possible? Is it even worth trying to try to create habits in other people? Like if you run a law firm and you are like super diligent and efficient and you are like, “Man, I wish my associate attorney was as efficient as me.” Is that a worthwhile thing to do? Can you encourage people? Can you get them to change?  Like how do you do that as like a business owner?

Molly Ranns: Yeah, that is the million-dollar question. I think that encouraging people is great. I think about that in terms of being a parent, which I think becoming a parent helped me in so many other areas of my life. But how do you get your kiddos to do something? You model that behavior, right? So, your children do not learn from you never making mistakes, for example. If you are a perfect parent, whatever that means, and you never make a mistake, you are not really teaching your children anything, right? But if you make a mistake and you say to them, “Hey, mommy screwed up. This is what happened. I should have been more patient.” They then learn how to make a mistake and correct it and change their behavior.

So, modeling is a really good way. When I am in firms talking about well-being, that comes from the top down. If you want your employees to take care of themselves, the first thing that you need to do is to take care of yourself. They see that you take off Monday for the holiday and are not in the office anyway. They see that you are not sending emails on Saturday at 11. So, modeling that behavior, I think is really helpful.

The other side of that is when we go into something and the purpose is to try to get someone to do something or to say something or to be something, right? So, I think there is kind of two ways that we do that. If you are saying something to just truly express yourself. Like if I wanted my husband to take out the trash and you forgot to do it, and so I said to him, “Hey, I do a lot around here. You did not take out the trash.” That is really upsetting.

Jared Correia: But even that sounds nice the way you say it.

Molly Ranns: Well, I am not sure I say it exactly like that. But we are just on air, Jared.

(00:25:02)

But that would be a way that I am saying something to express myself, right? But if three days later, he says, “Hey, I will grab those dishes.” And I say, “Are you sure? You cannot even take out the trash.” Now, I am saying something not to express myself.

Jared Correia: That is much meaner.

Molly Ranns: Yeah, exactly. But to make him feel a certain way or to be a certain way or to do a certain way or to think a certain way. So, I always tell people if you are doing something or saying something because you want to express your feelings, your emotions. If that person in the law firm wants to say, “Hey, I am taking care of myself, I would love for everybody to do that, too.” They are expressing themselves. If you are going beyond that and now you are doing things, saying things to make someone do something, say something, that is a red flag.

Jared Correia: I think that is great. So, I think what you are saying is I should probably stop bribing my kids to do things. All right, duly noted.

Molly Ranns: No, I think bribery is a very helpful parenting tactic.

Jared Correia: Oh, good. Okay. I like that. Molly, will you stick around for the next segment?

Molly Ranns: Sure.

Jared Correia: All right, we are going to take one final sponsor break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice. Then stay tuned for my favorite segment, the Rump Roast. It is even more supple than the Roast beast.

[Music]

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Jared Correia: Welcome back, everybody. It is the rear end of the Legal Toolkit, the Rump Roast. It is a grab bag of short form topics all of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Because I am the host. Molly, do you know what a Yooper is?

Molly Ranns: I do. I live in Michigan.

Jared Correia: All right, well, that is what I was hoping. What is your definition of a Yooper, or you can give it to me?

Molly Ranns: I think a Yooper is somebody who identifies as living in the UP, the Upper Peninsula.

Jared Correia: Right. So, Michigan is like a Mitten, which is the bottom part, and then there is like a little hook at the top. So, you are correct. It is a native or resident, it could be both, of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Do you know how I found that definition?

Molly Ranns: How?

Jared Correia: It is in the Merriam Webster dictionary. Did you know that?

Molly Ranns: I did not, but that is pretty good.

Jared Correia: Official as of 2014. It says the word Yooper comes from the common nickname of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The UP and the etymology requires the same follow up question the challenging joke does. Get it? We do. So, I want to play a game with you. That is what we do during the Rump Roast. This game is going to be called Shit Yooper Say. Are you ready to play?

Molly Ranns: I am ready.

Jared Correia: I came up with this title before I found out that there was a Twitter account of the same name. This is actually a Twitter account as well. So, if you want to look at things Yooper Say, you can find it there as well. So, here is what I am going to do. I am going to read some phrases and your job is to tell me how likely it would be that an actual real-life Yooper would say this.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: And to rate it, are you familiar with the Gipper?

Molly Ranns: My brother is a huge Notre Dame football fan so he would be so disappointed in me if I did not know that 

Jared Correia: George Gipp was an All-American at Notre Dame and Ronald Reagan played him in the movie New Rockne All American. What we will do is you tell me how likely it is that this is an actual thing than an actual Yooper would say by giving it one Gipper head and all the way up to five. One being least likely, five being most likely.

Molly Ranns: Okay. Well, one of my close girlfriends is a Yooper so I hope I get this correct.

Jared Correia: Oh, great. Hopefully she does not hate you after this. Okay.

Molly Ranns: I hope not.

Jared Correia: And I do not have an Upper Michigan Peninsula accent so I am going to do my best.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: I had a Boston accent. Now it is like more of a Midwestern radio voice. So, here we go. So, these trolls came up from Lansing to spend the weekend on Grand Island. How likely would it be that a Yooper would say that on a scale of one to five Gipper heads?

Molly Ranns: These trolls? Gosh, I do not know. I have not heard that before. I am going to go with the one on that one.

Jared Correia: Okay. That may be the case. Again, I do not know because I am not from the Upper Peninsula.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: But a troll is actually what people in the Upper Peninsula called the people from Michigan who are in the Mitten because they are under the Mackinac Island Bridge.

(00:30:03)

They live under the bridge.

Molly Ranns: Got it. Interesting. Okay.

Jared Correia: This might be great. We might learn several things today.

Molly Ranns: Yeah, I am.

Jared Correia: All right, here is another one. Do not blame Brendan. He is just a fudgy. He is on vacation from Connecticut.

Molly Ranns: That is likely, I think the term fudgy. Yes. I am going to give that a four.

Jared Correia: Can you tell people what a fudgy is?

Molly Ranns: No, but I have heard it used a lot.

Jared Correia: So, fudges are tourists who spend time up north where they can buy fudge. Apparently, there is a lot of fudge.

Molly Ranns: There is. Mackinac Island is known for the fudge.

Jared Correia: So, interestingly enough, I am a big fan of ice cream cakes. Carvel ice cream cakes in particular. And fudgy that I know is fudgy the whale is a chocolate whale ice cream cake. He is delicious. I got another one for you. You will want to punk (ph) that snow down a little bit more if that Fort is going to hold up.

Molly Ranns: I mean, I can see them talking about Fort, so I will go with a three.

Jared Correia: All right. That is good. So, the word punk. Do you know what that means?

Molly Ranns: No.

Jared Correia: Okay, so to punk means to pat something down to make it more compact.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: This is great. Like, your vocabulary is just expanding massively. I got a couple more for you.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: Now make sure your chook does not cover your eyes when you are in the middle of that snowball fight! Give me a one to five on that one.

Molly Ranns: I am going to give that a two. I do not think I know what a chook is. A scarf?

Jared Correia: We had somebody on from New Zealand, and a lot of this actually sounds like New Zealand slang but some of it is like French Canadian. Some of it is Finnish. So, a chook is actually a knit winter hat. And it comes from the French-Canadian word toque. I have one more for you, last one. You have been a good sport.

Molly Ranns: Okay.

Jared Correia: Here we go. Oh shit, I left my best choppers at Bailey’s House.

Molly Ranns: I will say three choppers.

Jared Correia: Okay. Do you know what choppers are?

Molly Ranns: I do not.

Jared Correia: This sounds like a very UP thing. So, they are deer skinned mittens with a wool insert. So, it is like the deer-skinned mittens are not warm enough so, you put some wool in there and you can survive the cold winters up in the Upper Peninsula.

Molly Ranns: Yeah, I would need those.

Jared Correia: So, how did I do? I do not even have anything close to an Upper Peninsula accent, do I?

Molly Ranns: No, but those were good questions. I am a huge MSC basketball fan. I love Tom Izzo and he is a Yooper, so I need to know these things if I ever happen to get the opportunity to meet him in person.

Jared Correia: Well, maybe Tom Izzo will listen and one of these days you will be able to grab a coffee with Tom Izzo, the famous Yooper.

Molly Ranns: I only hope. That’s right.

Jared Correia: Thanks for coming on. This was a lot of fun.

Molly Ranns: Thanks for having me.

Jared Correia: All right. Molly, we will talk again soon. And holy wah, that was great.

[Music]

Jared Correia: If you want to find out more about Molly Ranns and the Michigan State Bars Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program, visit the Michigan Bars homepage, www.michbar.org. and you will find the last page under four members. Find them on Twitter at mistatebar_ljap.

Now, for those of you listening in the proposed 51st state of Superior, you know who you are. We have got a Spotify playlist this week. This going to knock your socks off. That is right. It is songs about starting over. Happy 2022, everybody. Started off really well for me. Unfortunately, we did not have time to address my physical fitness effort during the show, but I would like to know that I have been told that I put the hot in hot yoga. I have also been told that I put the goat in goat yoga, so I am not really sure what any of that means.

That will do it for another episode, the Legal Toolkit Podcast. This is Jared Correia, reminding you that life moves pretty fast. If you do not stop and look around once in a while, you miss it.

 

Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

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