LawPay buys MyCase; Modernizing Your Client Communications; and “What Would Florida Man Do? – Summer Edition!”

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. I’d like to thank our sponsors too, Clio, Scorpion, TimeSolv.

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Intro: It’s the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia with guest Matt McClellan around of What Would Florida Man Do? – Summer Edition. And now, to follow Margaret Atwood, let’s get some more celebrities, maybe Steven Spielberg, Walt Whitman, and Darth Vader, why not? But first, your host, Jared Correia.

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Jared Correia: Yes, it’s time to open up the Legal Toolkit, everybody. Stand back, this could be dangerous. Yes, it’s still called Legal Toolkit Podcast even though I’ve never even held a ball end glass cutter. Now, I have used a rectangle and glass cutter but that’s another story for another time. As always, I’m your host, Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Oprah Winfrey was unavailable, probably because she’s rich as fuck and has much better things to do.

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. We build chat bots so law firms convert more leads and conversational document assembly tool so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately. You can find out more about Gideon at gideonlegal.com.

Now, before we get to our interview today with Matt McClellan, co-founder of Milestones, a new legal tech company offering a new sort of client portal, I want to talk about a couple old legal tech companies getting together, not in the biblical sense. Don’t get too excited.

You will have heard probably and maybe this is the first time you’re hearing it that a AffiniPay, which is a parent company of an organization you might have heard of, LawPay, acquired MyCase, the case management software company. LawPay is one of the parts of AffiniPay. They also have segments of their business to deal with CPAs which is probably called CPAPay, for example, et cetera. That’s a big deal in legal tech. Maybe the biggest deal that has come out of the crazy vortex of legal tech spending and acquisitions over the last three years, really, ever since the pandemic started when everything blew up, LawPay has been around forever, way longer than MyCase.

LawPay is an e-payments platform for lawyers in case you haven’t heard of it before, most attorneys have and I’m going to get this wrong because I’m not referring to any notes right now. That’s right. All this is off the top my head, I’m going to say LawPay been around for about 20 years, maybe more, and they had probably the simplest and most brilliant marketing scheme of any legal tech company ever. They got in super early, so this partly about timing, right? Then, they partnered with every bar association imaginable.

In those early days, they were able to sign exclusive contracts with a lot of bar associations to the point where LawPay was to legal payment what Google was to online search. They were interchangeable, the two names. If you want to do payments to the law firm, you are getting LawPay. Now, over the course of time, that changed but LawPay is still super entrenched in the payments marketplace to the point where they had no meaningful competitors until very recently when companies like Headnote, LexCharge, and now, Gravity Payments is in the legal space. There’s something called Gravity Legal.

Until then, nobody even tried to break what was functionally a monopoly that LawPay had created through their own hard work frankly. If you look at the case management software space, for example, tons of different case management software, not a lot of legal payments software because LawPay was so embedded in the field. You maybe think to yourself, why do LawPay do something like this? They get this great e-payments gig that’s been going for forever. Why would they need to make a move like this?

Let’s go back into history a little bit again and let’s bring things forward. Before the cloud started being used by lawyers regularly, which I’d have to say like 2013 probably. In those days when most law firms were relying on desktop software, legacy software, payments in law practice management software are separate things. You had LawPay for e-payments if you’re doing that and then you had law practice management software on the other side. Two siloed systems didn’t speak to each other at all.

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Now, as more and more law firms started to utilize the cloud, well, it made sense for them to say, “Hey, let me link this law practice management software, this client management tool that I have over here with this payments tool. Let’s let them talk to each other.” And so, integrations came about. LawPay would integrate with case management provider X so that payment information could move back and forth between those two systems.

Good deal for everybody, right? Everything’s now connected yet to share information, you get to look at information in both places, good deal. Then, what happened was in some cases, these large law practice management software companies were stuck with potentially building out a payment processing tool on top of that, basically building their own version of LawPay.

To start with, they probably weren’t mature enough to do that. What ended up happening is some of those case management software companies not only kept a LawPay integration going, but they also built out their own payment systems, which are really white labeled versions of LawPay. Company X payments powered by LawPay.

What eventually ended up happening is somebody’s law practice management software company smartly said, “Okay, we’ve got this payment processing software that were using and to use it for the privilege of using it, we got to split the money we get and we’re getting a smaller chunk of that when we could be. Wouldn’t it be smart to build our own proprietary payment models that we could use and cut out the middleman?” The middleman, in this case being LawPay. Now, these companies are older, they have more users, they’re more mature organizations, they have a larger development teams, they can start to do stuff like that now.

Over the past probably five, six years, I was thinking that something was going to happen with LawPay because every time a law practice management software provider builds its own proprietary payment system, LawPay loses a significant chunk of revenue. I thought was going to happen is that LawPay was going to continue to sell off until somebody bought them, but they turned around to do something entirely different. Instead, they acquired MyCase kudos to them.

I’m a little bit surprised. Now, you know why LawPay would do this because there was significant threat to the revenue from proprietary payment systems being developed by case management software, but why did MyCase do this? Well, the cash helps getting bought out. Usually make a good chunk of change and MyCase I think has been acquired three times now in the last 10 years. Lots of money to go around in legal tech, right?

I thought this note from the press release was interesting. I’m going to read this verbatim. While the combined companies that is AffiniPay and MyCase, will now serve some 65,000 law firms, almost half of those firms do not have a law practice management platform, Drew Armstrong said. She’s the CEO of AffiniPay further. Of those customer firms that do not have LPM software, 40% want to adopt a platform, she said. Overall, only about 30% of solo and small firms have adopted any sort of LPM software.

Now, far be it from me to disbelieve a press release. I think it’s higher than 30% of law firms that have some law practice management solution of some kind. I don’t believe that 70% of law firms are not using LPM software, but I’m happy to be proven wrong. Call me. LawPay/MyCase.

Now, the interesting part here is that 65,000 combined law firms, half of them according to these numbers are not using law practice management software, 40% want to. That’s almost everybody. If our math is correct, it’s roughly 130,000 law firms as potential clients. That makes a lot of sense. MyCase LawPay combined, LawPay now has this pathway to execute on this large swath of attorneys and law firms that want to buy case management software and MyCase would want to do that because now they have a payment provider to access as well. Any clients who are not shared between LawPay and MyCase can now potentially get a little push to become MyCase clients.

What does this mean for legal technology? First of all, is that not totally surprised that this happened, just kind of surprised in the way that it happened. I thought the route was going to be reversed, but if you’re a law practice management software, why wouldn’t you want to create a proprietary payment model so you can keep all the money, makes so much sense. And honestly, this transaction is going to make it more likely that those providers who haven’t done so already will do so or will have to do so.

The question there is what’s going to happen with your LawPay integration for your case management software? That may go away and I had to figure out something else. This is the choice Matrix for you is going to be, do I stick with LawPay and inevitably at some point the feature that means using MyCase or do I keep my current provider and use their proprietary payment system which may not be developed yet.

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Interesting time for law firms and it’s funny, every time I talk to a law firm about technology usage for legal specific software, I might, now anything I say could change within the span of 2 days or 24 hours and I talked to several people about legal tech before this transaction went down and my warning proved to be true.

Several more questions, right? You’re going to have to make a choice as a law firm in the future, but what about the viability of stand-alone payment providers? If LawPay is now in the case management software business, which I think they are given this transaction and they’re going to be doing that rather than payment provision for newer law firms, I mean, they’ll probably do it for a little while but I don’t see that happening forever. I think LawPay is firmly entrenched in law practice management software business from this time forward.

What’s going to happen to all these other payment providers? Are they going to be able to hook into these case management software providers? Is there now a space for them to go in and say, “Hey, if you don’t want to work with LawPay, they own MyCase, use us instead.” That’s if any are available. The choice that this case management software is now have or do I develop my own proprietary system? Do I link up with another payment provider that is not affiliated with a case management software?

I don’t know where that’s going to go. I’m just asking questions and then what does that mean for scale, for new payment providers that are on the horizon or that are already in the space? I don’t think the total addressable market is anywhere near what it was for LawPay. Do those providers become smaller in scale? I think so. The scale’s probably shrunk significantly.

Last question I have is, is there such a thing as an operating system for legal? You hear a lot of people throw this term around like there’s one software to rule them all, one software platform that lawyers are going to choose, whether it’s Clio, whether it’s a MyCase, LawPay conglomerate, whether it’s Filevine, I don’t know, I just don’t really see it. I see lawyers being fiercely independent in the choices they make. I see law firms wanting to pick a case management software and have options to use.

It’s going to be really interesting to see at which point company strike force people to make a choice about what software systems to use, but the overarching analogy I often make is Microsoft 365. That can be potentially a massively effective productivity software for law firms or any business owner, but how many people actually use all the features in Microsoft 365? This is not necessarily an educational thing. This is not that people don’t know that One Note or Microsoft Teams exist, it’s just a people think that One Note and Microsoft Teams blow compared to other tools that they can use.

As (00:13:24) myself as someone who talks to you other lawyers quite regularly, I think the lawyer is going to continue to want to mix and match despite where the marketplace seems to be going, which is all these providers falling all over themselves to create this notion of A, operating system for legal. It kind of strikes me is the Holy Grail. This is never going to be found, but we’ll see. 24 hours from now, I might be totally wrong again.

Now, before we get to our discussion on client communications with Mr. Matt McClellan of Milestones, let’s acquire some more knowledge from Joshua Lennon who has you for this week’s edition of the Clio Legal Trends Report. Now, I should know before Joshua begins that Legal Toolkit sponsor Clio has also recently announced it has achieved centaur status. What does that mean? Has Jack Newton changed into a mythical half man, half stallion? Nope. That term is used to designate companies that generate 100 million ARR, that’s annual recurring revenue, every year. Congrats to Clio.

Before this, Clio was also designated a unicorn because they achieved a billion-dollar corporate valuation. Seriously, what’s with all the horse stuff? It’s just fucking weird already. What? No one wants to be a raccoon or some shit? What’s wrong with raccoons? Anyway, here’s Joshua.

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Joshua Lenon: What’s the difference between law firms that grow their revenue versus ones that don’t. Law firms with growing revenue are 37% more likely to use online payment software. I’m Joshua Lenon, Lawyer in Residence at Clio and this is just one finding from our recent Legal Trends Report. The benefits of offering electronic payment options at your firm are plenty for both you and your clients. Billing and online payment software make it easy for you to access up-to-date information on outstanding bills and follow up with clients who haven’t paid.

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It also simplifies the payment process for in-person and remote clients operating several quick payment methods for them to complete the transaction. To learn more about what technology is being used by successful firms, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio, spelled clio.com/trends.

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Jared Correia: All right, let’s dip into some of that fry sauce. It’s time to interview our guest. My guest today as promised is Matt McClellan, Co-founder of Milestones. That wasn’t a question. The company is actually called Milestones. Matt, how are you doing?

Matthew McClellan: I’m good, Jared. How you doing?

Jared Correia: Good, man. Thanks for coming on. Remember when we talked and I said I would definitely have you on my podcast? Now, it’s come to fruition.

Matthew McClellan: We’re here. We’re here and we made it.

Jared Correia: Thank the gods. Don’t go too crazy here because we’re not doing product placement, but Milestones, new legal tech company, can you give me the down low on what you guys do?

Matthew McClellan: Totally. Milestones’ essentially like a Domino’s Pizza Tracker but for law firm’s clients. What we do is we automatically update the clients as to where they’re at and the status of their case and then beyond that, there’s a lot of education so that they understand not only where they’re at but also what’s going on in their case.

Jared Correia: That’s super good. I’m going to give out the website for Milestones before we’re done here so people can stay on and check that out. Let’s talk about client communications because that’s functionally what we’re talking about here, keeping clients abreast of cases where they’re at, educating them on next steps. Tell me, Matt, why is it that lawyers suck so hard at client communications?

Matthew McClellan: Great question. I wouldn’t say that lawyers suck so hard at client communications. It’s really comes down to they’re just really busy. Every attorney I talk to doesn’t even have time to practice the law, and so, they’re always just trying to keep up with that side of things and moving cases forward and doing their daily legal work that the updating clients sadly, sometimes, just falls to the side.

Jared Correia: That’s a big complaint that clients have, so it’s an important thing for lawyers to do. When you talk to those law firms, I mean, technology is part of the solution but how do you help them figure out how to break up the time to do that, or to use something to help them do that? There’s a combination of both those things.

Matthew McClellan: How do we start typically as we get an understanding of their current cadence, how they typically speak and go back and forth and communicate with their clients. Just about every attorney has the golden standard. They say, “Yeah. We talk to our clients every 30 days. We at least reach out every 30 days.” Or every 15 days, whatever it may be. Then, usually, that follows with, “But we don’t even do that.”

Jared Correia: the standard cadence is like nothing for the most part or I need money from you or a document.

Matthew McClellan: Yes, especially when you’re talking about the transactional law stuff. It’s a little bit quicker but when you get into litigation, if you’re personal injury, mass tort, these cases take years to settle. And so, oftentimes, these clients are kind of just left in the dark. They get a good understanding in the beginning of what goes on, but the expectations aren’t really set properly and because of that, the client is left with so many questions. What’s going on? What do I need to do? Am I missing something? Does the attorney needs something from my end? Or is the attorney not working?

I’m sure plenty of attorneys get that question. I’ve heard it where the attorneys get asked, “Are you even working on this or did you forget about me.” The reality is they didn’t forget. The reality is it hasn’t progressed things. Things take time when you’re dealing with opposing counsel, things just take time and the clients don’t understand that.

Jared Correia: For sure. A lot of what happens in practice, especially some of these litigation practices like you’re talking about. Nothing happens for 9, 12 months and clients are just sitting there biting their fingernails and client lawyers are just like, “Hey, this is part of the process. This is how it goes.” But if you’re a client, you’re thinking, hey, this person took a bunch of my money and they’re not doing anything.

Matthew McClellan: Absolutely. We use the personal injury example. It’s, they know they’re going to get a settlement check later, but in the interim, they had probably one of the worst accidents they’ve ever had in their lives and a lot of cases, they’re injured pretty seriously. And so, it’s a really personal thing to them and they entrusted their attorney with this case. And so, they trust that attorney and they want to hear from them and because of that, I think it gets a little bit more personal on the plaintiff’s side. 

Jared Correia: Let me ask you this because I think this is akin to attorneys, when I talk to them about content marketing, they’re like, “What do I say? I don’t have anything interesting to say.” I think in this context, it’s a very similar thing because if nothing’s happening with the case, I think a lot of lawyers are like, “What do I even tell my clients? We’re still waiting for something to happen?” During those fallow periods which is not a lot going on, what should the lawyers be saying to their clients? How should they stay in communication?

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Matthew McClellan: I’ll use the personal injury example, probably a little bit, just because that’s 50% in personal injury.

Jared Correia: Makes sense.

Matthew McClellan: In personal injury, there’s that long treatment phase. They’re going to their doctor’s appointments, they’re going to the chiropractor, they’re doing all that stuff just getting well. And so, oftentimes that’s 6, 9, 12 months depending on the severity of the incident. And so, they need to get updated and the typical update we see and we kind of push our clients to do is, “Hey, we know you’re still in treatment and getting well, please make sure you’re listening to your doctor and doing everything that you’re being prescribed to do. We want to make sure you get to full recovery.”

And so, those sort of updates every 14 days, every 30 days are definitely something where you just want the client to know that you’re thinking of them and that you care that they get better. You’re not just another number to them, but rather, they care about your well-being and they want to get you a check at the end of this.

Jared Correia: It doesn’t always have to be a question, which I think what a lot of attorneys are looking for. If I’m reaching out to a client, it’s because I need something. This can also be a statement or just some notification that, “Hey, we’re thinking about what’s going on with you. Let us know if you need anything.”

Matthew McClellan: Absolutely. That sort of stuff goes a really long way as far as the client experience.

Jared Correia: I think a lot of law firms do intake, client journey, which is kind of related to what we’re talking about as well, client communications in a way that’s easy for the law firm so you can just check a box, but client expectations, legal consumer expectations have changed a lot recently. And so, law firms have to adjust that and have to think about what does my client want, not just what’s easy for me. How do you talk to law firms about that and how do you explain some of the changes that have happened really pre, during, and post pandemic, if we’re at post pandemic right now, which I hope we are?

Matthew McClellan: Yes, I do too. Typically, attorneys have been a little bit slower to adopt technology.

Jared Correia: I’ve heard that.

Matthew McClellan: And so, a huge catalyst in adoption of legal technology was the pandemic because all of a sudden, they had to overnight turn into not a virtual law firm, but the ability to be with your co-workers and still get work done cooperatively, even though you’re not in the same office space anymore. And so, that’s led to a big push and also, I think there’s been a big change in the consumer over the past 10-15 years and I think primarily, a lot of that has to do with the internet and Google.

You can Google so much different things and you can get a pretty vague understanding. You don’t become a lawyer from Google but you become a little bit more attuned to what happens during the process. And so, people are just a lot more used to knowing what’s going on and having expectations set up front and being updated throughout the process. But that’s something that legal really hasn’t ever focused on. There hasn’t been anything that has that emphasis.

Jared Correia: I agree that legal consumers are more interested in the legal process than they’ve ever been before. If you leave them in the dark about it, that’s a challenge and that’s when they start asking questions about how much work the lawyer is doing. I think that’s probably related to relationships they have with other providers. Medical providers are getting better about this. If you look at the streaming service by something like that, you get tons of notifications, the value proposition is easy, and this is about lawyers really modernizing their client communications more than anything else.

Matthew McClellan: Absolutely. There’s so much more technology now to make this communication seamless. Last plug for Milestones is we connect to their case management software, the attorney’s case management, or whatever they’re using to manage the cases. And then, as the case progresses, say, into a new phase or into a new part of the process, Milestones recognizes that change and just sends that automatic update to the client saying there’s been an update in your case.

Jared Correia: Let’s talk about that. That’s a good point that you’re making there is like the automatic nature of it because I think when a lot of attorneys think about how they’re going to communicate with their clients, they don’t want to do it because it’s another manual touch point for them.

Matthew McClellan: Exactly.

Jared Correia: I got a pick up the phone and call somebody or I guess write an email. Talk a little bit about the technology and how that works in terms of automation these days and feel free to speak about technology generally as well.

Matthew McClellan: For instance, case management has been really widely adopted over the past, really, the COVID kicked it off, but they were definitely early adopters as early as 2010 when the were really getting —

Jared Correia: 2008 even way back then.

Matthew McClellan: Especially with the cloud-based abilities for integrations and for technology to be able to speak to other pieces of software, it allows for something like the data held within your case management software. For instance, the client’s information, the phase that they’re in, in that case, what type of case it is. That can be extracted really simply into another software and we use it to push those automatic notifications but there’s a lot of other really cool use cases for those connection points or those APIs that are built into the more modern case management software.

Jared Correia: For sure. The workflow and the automatic notifications are one piece of this. Where do you see the technology evolving next?

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Matthew McClellan: I think as everything becomes more and more cloud-based, there’s going to be really, really robust integrations. In the past, it’s been one system to kind of rule them all, which is great but that’s what they push for. But now, more modern software is realizing, hey, we do this portion of it really, really well. Why don’t we instead integrate with a really good partner who can do this piece really well?

Say, one’s really good at case management and the other is really good at billing, you want to combine those and the best way to do it is usually through an integration right now. There’s really not that one-size-fits-all software for these attorneys. It’s, “Hey, find these pieces that work well together that don’t complicate your day-to-day workflow, that you can just do your daily workflow out of your case management system and everything else connects and work together in a seamless ecosystem.”

Jared Correia: I think the integration is the way to go. I don’t see this being a one single solution for every law firm. I think that’s pipe dream.

Matthew McClellan: Absolutely.

Jared Correia: That’s really interesting in terms of where you see the technology gone in the integrations. I think that makes a ton of sense. One other question I have for you and I know attorneys have had is if you’re automating notifications to clients, if you have workflows and reminders for tasks, what do you do with your staff? Do you get rid of your staff? Do you upscale your staff? Because a lot of law firms employ people to do this, to follow up with clients, schedule appointments. How do you respond to that when people talk to you about that?

Matthew McClellan: Well, with the current employment situation, most people are like, “I don’t have to rehire.” It’s hard to find a good employee and someone that software can automate some of those more menial tasks that you typically would need an employee to take care of. A lot of attorneys actually light up, but I’ll speak a little bit more into the ones that you’re needing to progress actual legal work, because there’s a lot of those.

Those paralegals and those legal assistants, their time is better spent progressing a case or progressing a matter to the next stages. And so, when their time is getting muddied up by an email asking for an update or they’re getting phone calls constantly asking literally just for the redundant question of where’s my case at in the process? Those legal assistants, those paralegals, they can do more volume and they’re actually happier too.

They don’t like the irate customers or the clients that don’t know what’s going on in their case. They want all the clients to be happy and just appeased essentially.

Jared Correia: For sure.

Matthew McClellan: It’s not enough just to keep clients updated, but they actually want to understand what’s going on. And so, that education becomes almost more important than the update itself because an update can often cause more questions to arise.

Jared Correia: All right. I’m going to put you on the spot. I’ve got one question left for you, and you’re not allowed to answer, get a client portal. What’s your best communication tip for lawyers?

Matthew McClellan: Lawyers need to build out a cadence and stick to it. If they’re the ones who are managing that project, it often won’t get done. And so, my biggest piece of advice is you need to delegate that piece of it. If client communication is something that’s important to you and your firm, which I believe it should be in every firm, you’re going to get better reviews, you’re going to have happier clients, you’re going to get more return clients, you’re going to get more referrals, all that stuff is going to improve with a better client experience.

And so, if you really take that seriously, recognize that you’re probably not going to be the one to make sure it gets done and delegate that to somebody who you know is going to be responsible and make sure that it gets done because that’s going to pay dividends in the long term.

Jared Correia: Systems, delegation. I love it. All right, everybody, we’ll take one final sponsored break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice and stay tuned for the rump roast. It’s even more supple than the roast beast.

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Jared Correia: Imagine billing day being the happiest day of the month instead of the day you dread. Nobody went to law school because they love drafting invoices for clients and chasing overdue bills. At TimeSolv, our attorneys have the tools to achieve a 97% collection rate. That means more revenue for the same work and turning billing day into a happy day. Learn more about how to get to your time and billing happy place at timesolv.com.

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Jared Correia: 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 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.

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Jared Correia: Welcome back, everybody. Here we are at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit we call the rump roast. It’s a grab bag of short-form topics, all of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Because I’m the host. Today, we’re going to bring back one of my favorite games, What Would Florida Man Do? Only this time, we have a new twist. This is What Would Florida Man Do? Summer Edition.

We’ve got some crimes with a summer twist. Sun’s out, guns out everybody. Matt, the way this works is that I will read off something that a deranged individual has done usually but not always a crime, and all I need you to do is to identify whether this was a Florida man or not. Super simple game. Easy to do. Are you ready to go, sir?

Matthew McClellan: Sounds exciting. I’m super ready.

Jared Correia: All right, good. Let’s start with number one. A man was caught on camera trying to evade arrest by cartwheeling away from the police. The now viral footage shows the gymnastics enthusiast blocking the path of a truck at a gas station by doing flips in the middle of the roadway. Officers took him down for apparently blocking traffic, but the man was about to wiggle out of their grasp. He then launched into a cartwheel, but didn’t get very far. The Sheriff’s Office identified the spry 40-year-old is Gianfranco Fernandez. He was charged with battery on law enforcement and resisting arrest. Matt, is the cartwheeling criminal a Florida man?

Matthew McClellan: That’s a Florida man if I’ve ever heard of one.

Jared Correia: Yes. What’s your best clue? The cartwheeling? Simply that.

Matthew McClellan: It was the cartwheeling and I just felt that there were alligators close by.

Jared Correia: There probably were. This reminds me of a friend I had in college she liked, he would tell me the story of high school gym class. He determined that skipping was the fastest way to get around. He would be playing like Wiffle ball or basketball and you’ll be skipping up and down the court. Really weird and he thought he was faster. I don’t think he was.

Matthew McClellan: I don’t think he was.

Jared Correia: Allan, if you’re listening, you skipped very slowly and you should have just ran. All right, you ready for number two?

Matthew McClellan: I’m ready.

Jared Correia: This is a good one because this is a lawyer. A lawyer dressed as a horror movie character on a beach said his eccentric actions were just a prank to make people smile, but it also led to the arrest of Mark Metzger, the attorney some people saw are roaming a local beach in a Michael Myers costume. He was cited for disorderly conduct and released by police. Police received a call Monday about a masked man holding what appeared to be a bloody knife while walking on the beach ahead of a tropical storm. Officers found Metzger dressed as a serial killer from the Halloween movies and put him in handcuffs before determining the blood and knife were fake, the newspaper said.

Metzger, decided, you know this guy’s a lawyer, said in the Facebook post Monday night, he was still fuzzy on what exactly was illegal. Bringing positive vibes to the gloom and doom out there, generating some laughter, helping people crack a smile and restoring our faith in humanity through humor is 100% what I’m about. I guess that leaves little time to practice law, right? It’s all I’ve been about my entire life. My methods might not work for everyone, but I guarantee I’ll please more than I’ll piss off.

He compares the rest to a scene out of another popular franchise. This one, a little more kid-friendly, it felt like a scene out of Scooby-Doo after they handcuffed me and pulled the mask off. I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling Karens, he told the television station. First of all, what do we think of this asshole? I don’t think this was a Karen situation. I think that this was actually a frightening individual walking on a beach in dust.

Matthew McClellan:  This man is a Florida man if I’ve ever heard of one.

Jared Correia: All right. I’m going to have to disappoint you. This is a Texas man. Galveston beach.

Matthew McClellan: I thought beach and tropical storm.

Jared Correia: I know.

Matthew McClellan: We don’t we those at the beach California so I figured it had to be in Florida.

Jared Correia: You’re close. You’re certainly close in the California, but these seem like typical comments for a lawyer. This guy’s probably a listener, so Mark, if you’re out there listening, please continue to listen to the show and do something else stupid and we can make fun of you.

All right, number three. A 59-year-old man don some very unusual beach wear, displaying something you don’t see or want to see every day. Police said Stephen Wochajowski(ph) spent two days on the island wearing a bikini made out of plastic wrap exposing his genitals. The man was charged with lewdness. Wochajowski was arrested Monday and released pending further court proceedings. A woman who answered the phone at his house said nobody was home and hung up. Surprise, surprise.

59-year-old man, plastic wrap bikini. I don’t know if we’re talking bikini tops and bottoms or what, but is this a Florida man?

Matthew McClellan: Jared, I might have a bias towards Florida, but I do think that this sounds like someone from Florida.

Jared Correia: All right. This is not a Florida man.

Matthew McClellan: Wow, I’m off.

Jared Correia: New Jersey. New Jersey.

Matthew McClellan: It could be a New Jersey person too. That makes sense.

Jared Correia: Totally. If you’ve been to New Jersey, I could totally see somebody doing this. Saran-wrapped bikini. I suppose works well for your tan, but not so much for your arrest record.

(00:35:16)

All right, I got two more for you. You ready to continue on?

Matthew McClellan: Absolutely.

Jared Correia: All right. Leaders of a business masquerading as a church sold a toxic bleach solution as a religious sacrament and marketed it as a miracle cure for COVID-19, cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and more, the federal prosecutor said. This sounds like an infomercial. A federal grand jury indicted Mark Grenon and his sons. Prosecutor said on Friday that they violated court orders and fraudulently produced and sold more than 1 million dollars of their mineral miracle solution, a dangerous industrial bleach solution. The solution contains sodium chloride and water. When it’s ingested orally, it becomes chlorine dioxide, a strong bleach used in industrial water treatments and in bleaching textiles, pulp or paper.

I just want to clear up. This is not one of the COVID solutions that Donald Trump was peddling several years ago. Now, is this like Donald Trump, another Florida man or someone from another state?

Matthew McClellan: This is a Florida man, because of math. I think this should just be a Florida answer.

Jared Correia: Yes, because of math. I like it. We haven’t answered Florida answers in a while. Yes, this is a Florida man. In fact, some of the shit that people were taking for COVID is just unbelievable. The thing I think that is crazy is they made a million bucks off of this to give people to drink bleach.

Matthew McClellan: Did they really?

Jared Correia: It’s insane. Now, I’m kind of thrown off here, Matt, because we’ve got two Florida men and non-Florida men. We’ve got one more question. Let’s see if we can figure out the way I’m going to go here.

Matthew McClellan: Great.

Jared Correia: A man with an apparent tattoo of a machete on his face was arrested for allegedly attacking someone with, wait for it, a machete. Over the weekend, authority said Justin Couch, 25, is accused of slicing the victim’s forearm with a blade, leaving him unable to move his left hand. The victim, an adult man, said the incident started Monday when Couch began arguing with him for no reason, I’m sure of that, and kicked him out of his home. When the victim asked if he could grab his wallet and cellphone before leaving, Couch allegedly told him, “There’s nothing for you here.” I guess except for this machete.

Perhaps one of the most ironic crimes ever, the guy gets that machete tattoo, then attacks someone with a machete and apparently is that they’re feeling like he’s not going to get caught. Who is this Nobel Prize winner, Florida man or a man from another state?

Matthew McClellan: I don’t want to make any enemies here but I believe it’s New Mexico. Oh, I love it. Why? I got to know.

Matthew McClellan: I don’t know if I can elaborate.

Jared Correia: All our New Mexico listeners, I want to make sure we get your email so the New Mexico listeners can send you email.

Matthew McClellan: It just felt like it. Sometimes you have the feeling and it felt like it, so we’ll see if I’m right.

Jared Correia: Interesting. You’re wrong.

Matthew McClellan: It’s Florida, isn’t it?

Jared Correia: This is a Florida man. Yes, the math has it, 60% Florida, 40%. Non-Florida. I may do that every time, I’m not even sure. Hey, that wasn’t bad though. You’re a trouper.

Matthew McClellan: Perfect. Thank you.

Jared Correia: Matt, you did a great job on the rump roast. Thanks for coming and hopefully, we’ll have you on again sometime.

Matthew McClellan: Appreciate it, Jared. Thank you so much.

Jared Correia: All right, thanks man. Take it easy.

[Music]

Jared Correia: If you want to find out more about Matt McClellan and Milestones, visit getmilestones.com. That’s G-E-T-M-I-L-E-S-T-O-N-E-S.com, getmilestones.com. Now, for those of you listening in Eggnog, Utah, I have a great playlist on Spotify for you. Since we talked about Florida man’s summer plans, I’ve got songs for the summer. Put that shit on repeat.

Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time to interview our next celebrity guest. Matt Damon is here, but Matt Damon fucking sucks, so we’re going to move on. That will do it for another episode is Legal Toolkit podcast. This is Jared Correia reminding you that those little plastic or metal tips at the end of your shoelaces are called aglets.

[Music]

Christopher T. Anderson: The Un-Billable Hour Podcast is devoted to all aspects of managing your law practice outside of your client responsibilities. I am Christopher T. Anderson, a lawyer and the host of the podcast that each episode, I invite industry professionals to discuss best practices for marketing, time management, client acquisition and everything in between. For actionable and practical information to refine your practice, turn to The Un-Billable Hour on the Legal Talk Network.

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