5 Upgrades for Engagement Agreements; Lean Law with Larry Port & Dave Maxfield; & “Disposable Income”

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 this 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, Nota, TimeSolv.

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Intro: It’s The Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia. With guests, Larry Port and Dave Maxfield. We play around the “Disposable Income” and then we’re going to make this show more efficient. Do we even need a host? But first, your host Jared Correia.

Jared Correia: It’s time for The Legal Toolkit. I haven’t even sheared the sheep yet. And yes, it’s still called Legal Toolkit podcast even though I’ve never actually used a stubby eater before. That’s right. I just eating nails on my own. I’m your host Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Robert Stack was unavailable. Also (00:01:08) just doesn’t have time for this shit. 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 also the COO of Gideon Software Inc. We built 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 Gideon at Gideonlegal.com.

Now, before we get to our interview today with both Larry Port of Rocket Matter and Dave Maxfield of Dave Maxfield Consumer Protection Law, I’ve got some things to say about engagement agreements. That’s right. I said engagement agreements because I don’t like to call them fee agreements. That’s so crass and limiting. It’s not just about the fee because if it was, you just send an invoice out to your clients, right? The reason you call it an engagement agreement is because it is respecting the entire engagement between you and your client. So what I wanted to talk about today is first of all probably a good idea to have a written fee agreement even if your jurisdiction doesn’t require it and some don’t. So I want to start today about five upgrades you can make to your engagement agreement and the last one is going to underscore why I’m calling it an engagement agreement. So here we go.

Upgrade number one, a technology clause. So, law firms use technology and clients are largely unaware of what technologies we are using. So by adding a technology clause to your fee agreement which again just describes at a very basic level the tools you use in your practice that gives your clients the ability to sign off on those tools. It also gives you the ability to present yourself as a forward-thinking law firm that uses modern technology like Cloud tools make it easier for your clients to communicate with you. And also, this is a great way to underscore the fact that you’re concerned about client security.

So let’s give an example. Let’s say you have a case management software that you’re using and you like to use the client portal in that case management software which is a great thing to do because your data stays encrypted as you share with clients, referral sources, et cetera, et cetera. You may say in your technology clause and in a hold on, spoiler alert communications clause which I’ll talk about in a second that you want your clients to use that tool exclusively to communicate with you. You may also get fairly aggressive about that. I have an attorney I work with who tells people that if they don’t sign on to that client portal within seven days of signing the engagement agreement, he’s going to fire them. You don’t have to be that aggressive about it necessarily but you want to alert clients the technology you’re using, you want to alert clients to the importance of data security, and to the extent of the technology allows you to communicate with your clients. You want to indicate a preference. More on that in a second.

Second thing which we’ve talked about in this podcast quite a bit is the payment model that you elucidate in your engagement agreement and I would like to take another moment here to advocate for Evergreen Retainers. Evergreen Retainers are fantastic. As I said, we mentioned this on the podcast before and the way they work is you take a retainer from a client as you normally would but you’re able to re-up that retainer with the client that’s why it’s called an Evergreen Retainer. Think of it as like filling a gas tank, right? Let’s say your retainer is for $1,000 and the deal is that every time that client’s retainer amount dips below $500 at the end of that month or at the end of that payment period, their obligation is to load that back up.

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So let’s say the engagement agreement is down to 300 bucks, clients are required to put 200 bucks in, get it back up to 500. Pretty easy way to run a practice if you’re willing to run trust accounts. And using Evergreen Retainers and stop work orders as our friend Brooke Lively has discussed in this podcast before is a fantastic way to generate more consistent income to your practice and never to build an arrears. So include that in your engagement agreement.

Number three, file disposition and when I say disposition, I mean what do you do to get rid of your files? There should be a clause in your fee agreement covering that. Oh, I did it myself, I mean engagement agreement. So make sure that your file disposition is laid out and your clients know what that means. So do they get a chance to get their file back? Does that come to them in paper, does that come to them in electronic format? Are you destroying files? Are you keeping files forever in electronic format? Are you storing paper files in your garage for the rest of eternity? Please don’t do that.

Depending on which state you’re in, you may have a template file disposition clause that you can use that’s accessible through your State Bar Association. And if not, there are fee agreement template clauses out there including template file disposition clauses, but you want to have something like that in place here. Not only does it communicate to the client, what they their relationship to the file is going to look like after the case is over which some clients have questions about. It also allows you as a law firm to schedule destruction of documents or whatever file disposition tools you decided to use and methods you decide to use, it commits you to that because played that out in your fee agreement. Oops, engagement agreement.

All right, number four. Scope provision. This becomes more and more important as law, firms move towards ever so slowly glacially different pricing models, potentially unbundled or discrete representations, limited scope representations. It’s important to tell the client what you’re going to do in a case and if you look at the very basic elements of a fee agreement, you’re looking at the basis or rate that you’re going to charge the client and then what you’re going to do for them so that’s scope provision. So if you’re trying to limit the scope just, remember that you want to be clear about what that is in the scope provision in the engagement agreement. If you don’t, if your scope is overly broad or unclear, it may be construed against you in a court case, you do not want that. So when you’re thinking of the services you provide your client, try to limit that scope to the extent possible. And again, there are templates out there for scope provisions as well.

Last thing, I’m kind of alluded to this before but you want to have communication guidelines in your engagement agreement and that may relate back to your technology clause. But you want to tell clients your preferences for communicating. And again, this is another way to underscore your reliance on data security. So if you’re a family law attorney for example, tell your clients, “Hey, if you share an email with your spouse that you’re about to get divorced from, maybe you stop doing that.” You can lay out some advice. You can lay out some guidelines about how you want to receive information. This is a great place to talk about the client portal if that’s something you want to do. You can talk about what a real emergency is in the practice, an actual emergency and not the client emergency that they just have to talk to you immediately for no significant reason necessarily. You want to talk about hours that you’re open and you want to take calls, you want talk about how quickly you return calls. That kind of stuff should all be laid out in a communication clause in your engagement agreement. Then you’ll probably have to have the conversation again, let’s be honest but at least you have a foundational agreement in place that you can use when you do have to have that conversation about communications. So I got five for you. I got five on it in terms of five changes you could make to your engagement agreements to modernize them. What more could you want?

Now before we get to our discussion on lean law, though I think lean law probably gained 25 pounds during the pendency of the COVID-19 pandemic with Larry Porter of Rocket Manner and Dave Maxfield of Dave Maxfield Consumer Protection Law. Let’s hear what your friend and mine, Joshua Lenon has to say in this edition of the Clio Legal Trends report which is sure to be, wait for it, engaging.

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Joshua Lenon: Here’s a fact, in 2018 only 23% of clients were open to working remotely with a lawyer. In 2021, 79% actively looked for a lawyer providing remote options. I’m Joshua Lenon, Lawyer and Resident at Clio and this is just one finding from our recent legal trends report. This massive shift shows that remote communications has become a real expectation amongst clients.

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Video conferencing in particular is becoming a popular format with over 58% of clients preferring video conferencing for their first meeting or consultation. Offering remote communication options along with phone and in-person services will give your firm a major advantage over others that don’t. For more insights on changing expectations of legal consumers, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at Clio.com/trends. That’s C-L-I-O .com/trends.

Jared Correia: Okay. Let’s dip into some dole whip everybody. It’s time to interview our guests. I got two guests today. It’s a bigtime episode and those guests are Larry Port who you probably all know is the founder of Rocket Matter a law practice management software and then I’ve got Dave Maxfield, the founder of Dave Maxfield Consumer Protection Law in South Carolina. Gentlemen, how are you?

Dave Maxfield: Great. How’s it going Jared?

Larry Port: I’m excellent.

Jared Correia: Pretty good. I love asking you both at the same time so you talk over each other. Sorry, I had to it. So, you might be asking yourself if you’re listening. Why are these two guys together on the show? And there’s a reason for that unlike much of what else happens in the show. That’s because they wrote a book together called the ‘Lean law Firm’ and they’ve now got a course about the Lean law Firm. So let’s talk about like the concept behind this Lean law Firm like what does that mean? What does the Lean law Firm look like, I mean it’s beyond using business processes, right? Larry, if you want, you can kick this one off.

Larry Port: So basically, lien, people think that it means like cost-cutting and really running their bones firm so that you like but what it really refers to is it’s a specific way of like viewing your law firm as a system and measuring the different components of that system so that you can increase your revenues and improve your efficiencies and really reduce the amount of waste in your law firm which contributes to those kinds of elements. So, I mean Dave, would you say that’s a decent halfway summary?

Dave Maxfield: Yeah, I’d call that decent. No, I mean, I think that’s pretty accurate. The thing is that it’s the way that like, if you look at the manufacturing world or at least like companies like Intel or Toyota, the very successful manufacturing world, it’s the way they’ve been running things for like years and years and years, and years and you dip into the law firm world and you see that like some big firms are professionally managed and they do things a certain way but they’re kind of tied to the billable hour, but then you get the vast majority of law firms that are small and medium-sized and a lot of them on like contingency basis and things like that and they’re not using any of this stuff and it’s like all businesses work the same way. You take some kind of raw material, you put it through some process, some finished product comes out the other side and you get paid for that. In the contingency world we get paid on the end based on our results. What do we produce and what turns out to be the case that I think is the overlooked factor in small law firms is like the quality of our production is really important but the speed is really important mathematically because it dictates likes how many of these units am I going to make in a given time?

Jared Correia: Yeah. I think some of the analogies you made were interesting. So we talked about manufacturing, going back to like the assembly line with Henry Ford, right? A lot of stuff comes from auto manufacturing in particular. They want to crank the cars into the marketplace as quickly as they can. So like when I talk to law firms about this, sometimes they blanch at this concept of like let’s do things more like a manufacturing plan. So how do you guys get people past that initial objection because a lot of law firms I talked to they don’t want to think about running their business this way. They want to sit in a room and pour over case law and that’s what’s interesting to them. 

Larry Port: Yeah. Well the first thing to know is that it’s not like this is the first knowledge-based industry that would be taking the lead from manufacturing to be able to run their businesses. The thing that I would say is that, like, it’s made the leap already to software and to government and to health care and all sorts of different places. So the first thing to know is that it’s not like this is this radical idea that we came up with that’s like, well, let’s try this with law. It’s pretty much everywhere but law. So that’s the first thing. So we’re trying to catch up. The second thing is that like what we try and tell people is that like if you don’t layer some business processes on top of what you’re already doing your kind of, in the book we say that you’re running a business like it was like 1911 like before there’s this mechanized measurement of businesses, but in reality, it’s like people are running their businesses the same way a blacksmith might in like the 1500s. It’s like a trade and you get paid for it. So I mean Dave, I don’t know. What do you think?

Dave Maxfield: Well, I think we should stop saying that it’s like what healthcare does because I mean to me that’s like the biggest turn off ever. It’s like whatever they’re doing let’s not do that. But, maybe that’s something that they’re trying to do with varying degrees of success.

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I mean, I think the way you get people interested in it or the way that this has interested me is the fact that there’s a tangible financial benefit to it. I mean, you start to see your numbers go up. And the other thing is I think you start talking about metrics and people’s eyes glaze over but we’re really talking about it’s like look, you don’t need to measure like everything you just need to measure like a few things that matters. I mean if you go back to sports and you talk about money ball and everybody thought oh well this is for years they thought, well, we’ll just look at this guy and he looks like a baseball player but then they would start to look at like on-base percentage plus slugging is like a really key or how much does like Kevin Youkilis get on base. You know, that turns out to be really, really important. So they actually narrow it down to fewer metrics and that’s what we do too. We’re like there’s a few things you focus on, just focus on those. Don’t worry about the other stuff. It frees you up from these other things.

And then the other thing is what it really lets you do once you build a good system is that runs itself and it frees you up. If you are that kind of a lawyer, i sure as hell am not but that wants to like read a bunch of case law and like pour through that stuff. Whatever it is that you do that you love, you could do more of that and focus on what you’re really good. If you’re the only lawyer in your firm what the lawyer has to do instead of all these sort of business details that are nag you but they’re ever-present if you don’t tame them in some way.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Got you. That’s a great answer. I think a lot of lawyers is like change management stuff but specifically like they probably grown up with a certain image of what a lawyer is and they’re afraid that this is going to change how they practice law.

Dave Maxfield: You know, just to hit on that. I now teach this as a class at the University of South Carolina School of Law. We teach lean law firm lab. Yeah, which is great. And those kids definitely come in with a very defined media-based preconception of what it looks like to be a lawyer in the real world and the great thing is it’s like it can be like whatever — I mean you’re a great example Jared. I mean it can be like whatever you want it to be really. Do you want to come in to work wearing an Anthrax t-shirt and a Braves hat? You can do that, you know?

Jared Correia: Yes, can and do.

Larry Port: Yeah. There you go.

Dave Maxfield: Freedom baby.

Jared Correia: Yes. No, that’s cool. So you guys also have converted this into a course as well. You’ve still got the book available and you got some new concepts coming out in the book as well. So do you want to talk about why you made the choice to turn this into a course?

Dave Maxfield: One of the cool things we should mention about the book if people aren’t familiar with it, is that the ABA we talked them into letting us do it as a story. So the book is actually like a business novel where there’s a main character who’s got a kind of save this failing firm and then they let us in a further display of bad judgment, let us do it as a graphic novel. So, there’s comic book panels in the book. 

Jared Correia: Oh, really? Are you serious?

Dave Maxfield: Yeah, first ABA graphic novel. 

Larry Port: It is hard to know when we are serious but yes, we are serious about this.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Wow. I like that. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

Dave Maxfield: So we did as a graphic novel. What that means is that the audiobook, when you’re not listening to some textbook, you’re listening to a story which makes it real listenable. And so, but what we’re really trying to do with the course is like, i watch my kids get assigned like, “Oh, you got to read ‘The Scarlet Letter’. So immediately they start looking at like Netflix to finalize ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and I’m like, listen to me.

Jared Correia: It’s like there’s going to be a movie on this shit somewhere.

Dave Maxfield: Yeah. Demi Moore is no Hester Prynne. Just trust me, kids. But i did see that and I’m like, well then we have to have another way to deliver it. We’ve got new content to add. How do we get that in, and how do we put it together in a way? We call it the five stage sprint where it’s like digestible 40-minute segments that you can stop and start whenever you want, giving you these concepts and if you want to learn it in a day or a weekend you can do it if you don’t have time to read the book and get a bunch of new stuff and a bunch of downloads like worksheets and spreadsheets and things that will really make these things kind of concrete and usable like immediately for lawyers. That’s what we were trying to do plus naked capitalism. We were also trying to do that.

Jared Correia: Oh, naturally. All right. I got one more like question for you guys here before we get into the last segment which is I like data analytics utilizing that to better manage a law firm like, i think everybody agrees at this point that that’s a smart thing to do and you’ve actually developed some analytics as far as new concepts in your program. You’re talking to me before we started about this dollar per case unit per day type of tool you’re using and this notion that you talked about before which is like, let’s drill down to stats that are going to tell us something that’s real broad about our law firm so you don’t have to look at all these metrics that don’t necessarily mean as much. Could you talk about some of those metrics and how you developed those?

Larry Port: Dave can I sing your praises here for a second? Like honestly, this is like legitimate. So, it’s one thing for me to like, you know, be a software guy and come in and start working with all these law firms and be like, “Jeez guys, what are you doing?”

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But it’s another thing for Dave to be like, okay, this is like what other people are doing and one of the big things that Dave brought to the table was the notion of two things — well, three things really. One is throughput rate which is the amount of things that you’re able to finish in a given time period like how many cases per year or something like that. Then we have this thing that he developed called the income formula which it’s basically a financial forecast but it really only takes into consideration your throughput rate and then the other thing is cycle time. So those are kind of like the fundamental pieces and cycle time is how long it takes you to finish a case. I mean, those are the foundational elements and what Dave did that’s very interesting is be able to — is able to layer these things on top of an operational law firm which I found to be pretty insightful.

Jared Correia: That’s great. All right. Dave I think you have to respond.

Dave Maxfield: I think I’ve been setup here. Well, A couple of things and thank you, Larry. I think that like what we were really trying to get at. The cool thing for me is I’ve got the small law firm with a couple employees and I like it that way. That’s how I want it to be and a lot of people like me I think really love that, that freedom. And so, the cool thing is that coming up with like an income formula is like we say, what can we control and what can’t we control as much? We can control to some degree like the value of our cases. We can say, “Okay, I got this.” We’ll use a PI firm for example. You get somebody God forbid gets hit by the log truck. That’s what we always say in the South. Like, “Oh, he got hit by the log truck”. 

Jared Correia: That’s like a thing in the South.

Dave Maxfield: Yeah.

Jared Correia: I’ve actually heard that from other attorneys in South Carolina like there are waivered logging trucks everywhere in the South.

Dave Maxfield: Everywhere.

Larry Port: Hardly violent.

Dave Maxfield: The log truck cases kind of like, that’s a whale of a case. That can be like this huge case. And we sort of think, first of all, to talk about value for a second, cases have a certain starting value. You don’t have to be F Lee Bailey or you know, if I can still say F Lee Bailey. To make a lot of money on a log truck case if one comes in. You just got to be able to get that case. But that’s something the value of that case can you enhance it, can you make it better by being a great lawyer? Sure you can but only to a certain degree. It kind of has its own starting value. And the big realization for me has been that I have some control over the value of cases but ultimately other people get to decide what they’re worth. The jury, an insurance adjuster, somebody else.

I’ve got way, way more control over what happens, inside the law firm. And so the other part of the income formula is like what Larry referenced as throughput which is heavily influenced by how much does each case take to get finished from beginning to end and I have a ton of control over making that time shorter. I’m really the one who can control it. And so when you’re talking about dollars per case units per day, kind of the counter intuitive realization is that some cases, we tend to think of our best “cases” as the ones that are these whales, the biggest ones and those are great. And we think we just need more and more of those and we don’t pay attention to how long those are actually taking to finish.

Sometimes your best case is a case that’s maybe puts $2,000 into your pocket but it happens in like three days. And so, if we measure like how much was this case worth for every day that I held it in inventory, that turns out to be a really useful measurement about like what should I be looking for more of? What should I be marketing for? Because if you can put a whole bunch of those easy small quick turnover cases together, you’re not reliant on like the occasional big case and you can really make very good living with a combination of those things and one that you can control a lot more than what’s the starting value of your case.

Jared Correia: Great point. Yeah, I thought this is really interesting. So now you guys can tone it back a little bit. We’re done with Lean law Firm stuff. Will you come back for one final segment? It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Larry Port: Yes.

Dave Maxfield: Yeah.

Larry Port: Yeah, totally.

Jared Correia: It’s going to be a lot of fun for me. Okay. So we’re 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 the Rump Roast. It’s even more supple than the roast beast. 

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Welcome everyone. Here we are back at the rear end of The Legal Toolkit. I call it 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. Larry and Dave, you’re back. Today, we’re going to play a brand-new game I developed just for you. I’m calling “Disposable Income”.

Larry Port: Okay.

Jared Correia: So, I know I personally been thinking about weird shit that I could buy to frustrate my wife but I do that all the time. So I’m going to name some crazy things that rich people have actually bought and I want you to tell me, would you buy this? Would it be of interest to you to own this thing as a human being regardless of whether or not you could afford it. And of course, this is just a game everybody so no one needs to take this too seriously. I’m certainly not. And after all, I’m not actually selling any of this stuff yet, that is until we start releasing Legal Toolkit merch.

Larry Port: I hope you say salad spinner because I totally am in the market for a salad spinner.

Jared Correia: You know what, we’re going to start small and then we’re going to go bigger and I’ll throw in as well. I’ll tell you if this is something I would buy or not because some of this stuff is actually should have thought about buying. All right.

Larry Port: Because we make a lot of kale salads and you know, it’s very difficult to watch that.

Jared Correia: So we know you’re in on a salad spinner so I don’t have to ask that question.

Larry Port: Yes. Okay.

Jared Correia: Now, let’s do the next level because I think this is like a step up for some people. Laundry and dishwasher pods. How do you guys feel about that as opposed to laundry and dishwasher detergent like the liquid? I’ve recently upgraded to pods. They’re a little bit more expensive but I love them. Thoughts?

Larry Port: I like the pods.

Dave Maxfield: I like the pods.

Larry Port: Can I give a reason?

Jared Correia: Yes, go Larry. You have a reason for your like 

of laundry dishwasher pods.

Larry Port: I spill detergent all over the place routinely so pods are helpful for me.

Jared Correia: Fair. Well, let’s move up the chain a little bit. Something a little bit more expensive. Something I’m strongly considering buying right now so I’ll put that out there. I want your advice on this 3D printer pancake maker also known as the pancake bot. Now available as pancake bot 2.0 for $450.00 online. What it does is it 3D prints images to make pancakes now. Partly this is because I really suck at making pancakes, I can’t even make like Mickey Mouse pancakes, but with this thing I could create like the Statue of Liberty or any number of images I see on Google. Thoughts? Does anyone have a pancake bot? I really want one.

Dave Maxfield: Wait a second, so it would make a pancake in whatever shape you want? Is that you’re saying?

Jared Correia: You put like an image in the system and it will 3D print the pancake of that image. It’s amazing.

Dave Maxfield: Oh, so it’s actually — but making an edible pancake. Not like a carbon pancake.

Jared Correia: Yes. It’s a real pancake.

Larry Port: I’m going to say no unless it was combined with that one 3D printer that can — that is like enormous and can make a house and you can make like a house-sized pancake then I would buy it.

Jared Correia: Oh, now that would be amazing. Okay. Okay.

Larry Port: Like my scene — my favorite — just to clarify, my favorite scene in almost any movie is in “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” when the pancakes fall from the sky.

Jared Correia: Oh, this is like right up your alley then. I thought you were going to say this reminds me of all those movie montages where they make houses out of pancakes like in “Rocky”.

Dave Maxfield: Oh yeah, that was the best and Rocky had to taste that chicken through the pancake, that was amazing. I remember that. The good thing is when they say, Jared has like the 9 to 12-year-old lawyer demographic lockdown, you can see why. You know, we have discussions legally.

Jared Correia:  Yeah. I mean this is on all the YouTube videos with all the creators. Zebra, I’ve been wanting to buy for my backyard to really piss off my neighbors for a really long time. It’s like a running joke on the show. I’ve done this on like three podcasts already. So, there are actually websites out there like Zebras R Us for example which is a real website where you can buy zebras. It’s illegal in Most States in the United States and they go for about $10,000. I really want a zebra. So far, my family has said no to this.

Larry Port: I would consider it actually. I would like to buy an alpaca and like have — but I think it’s you got to have a bunch of them because zebra could get lonely so you can’t just buy one zebra, that’s not nice. 

Jared Correia: That’s true. That’s true.

Dave Maxfield: I’m sure it’s legal in Florida Larry, though. I mean — 

Jared Correia: I’m sure it is.

Larry Port: Actually, when you move to Florida, everybody gets a zebra.

Jared Correia: Right, and then they and then they arm it.

Larry Port: Exactly.

Dave Maxfield: I think what I would like to do is 3D print a zebra shaped pancake.

Jared Correia: Oh. Yeah, okay. Not only is that better, it would take less food.

Dave Maxfield: Clean up is — clean up is better.

Jared Correia: I just want it to like –I think it would be really majestic if I like rode out and buy some sash on my zebra like pick up the mail.

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That’s kind of my use case I’m thinking of.

Dave Maxfield: Okay.

Jared Correia: Tell me how cool would that be.

Dave Maxfield: Yeah. I’m seeing that now. 

Jared Correia: Its’ a one-shot thing but —

Larry Port: Are you still all ripped like I’m just trying to picture it in my head.

Jared Correia: No.

Larry Port: You still got the six pack?

Jared Correia: Definitely not ripped. More of a keg so like — as I said, mostly I’m doing this to frustrate and annoy my neighbors so it’s better that I’m not ripped in this case. All right, here’s another one that I think I would not want one of these because I think the cleanup would be terrible. But there’s a 227-pound golden toilet. It’s a fully functioning toilet. It’s a sculpture called America by an Italian artist and it was currently stolen. No one knows where it is right now but it was originally housed in the Guggenheim Museum and so as four million dollars to buy and use as a toilet and randomly six million dollars to buy as a piece of art. I don’t know what the difference would be frankly. And so, early on in the Trump White House, they asked for a loan of a Van Gogh painting to put on display in the Oval Office and the Guggenheim offered this instead. So if you could get like a golden toilet on loan for your home, would you do it? I wouldn’t. I think like it would be a disaster. I don’t want to clean that.

Larry Port: I would not. No, I don’t want any part of that at all. That’s insulting the Italian made a golden toilet and called it America.

Jared Correia: I know. Isn’t that fucked up? We’re only allowed to make fun of America.

Dave Maxfield: Well, only we. Yeah. Well, when you said buy you said it was four million dollars like buy and use. 

Jared Correia: Yeah, you can get this on a loan. You just call the Guggenheim and you’re like hey, could I display the golden toilet at my house for a week? There may be a way out here.

Dave Maxfield: Our local library checks out art too. I wonder, you know, maybe I could at the Richland County South Carolina Public Library they may have — and you know, here’s the other thing about the —

Jared Correia: It could be a bronze toilet that you can get instead. Just throwing it out there.

Dave Maxfield: A bronze toilet might be more in my like wheelhouse pricewise but when you think that being a metrics guy, when you said like 227-pound gold toilet, like the first thing I thought it was like that’s not very big. Gold is really heavy. So that’s probably not — I mean so the main thing is like am I going to fit, will I fall off? That’s what I would worry about in that situation more than like the ideological statement it makes.

Larry Port: I’m going to make a gold litter box and call it Italy. I’m very upset about this.

Jared Correia: I’m sorry. You’ll have to google this afterwards. There are a lot of inflammatory articles. All right. I got two more for you guys. We’ll see how many of these actually make the show. All right. This is not something I would buy either. I think this is overkill but there’s something called a Ford F-750 World Cruiser. So it’s like a Ford 150, right. But it’s built out like blinged out. It has a full living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, and six people can sleep in it. Full bathroom and shower and a lounge area with a flatscreen TV. Great for tailgating. I don’t know as a daily driver. This was created by some guy who runs like a construction company in the American South. I forget where exactly but —

Dave Maxfield: Really, in the American South? Are you sure?

Jared Correia: It’s badass. Not that you would expect this. This dude is from upstate main. So it’s a Ford F-70. It’s called the World Cruiser and you live in this thing. I don’t know, like I’m not a big camping person so that would not be on my list. How do you guys feel about the World Cruiser?

Dave Maxfield: Positive. Isn’t there a movie where like there’s some people who are the last people on earth who are driving like exactly what you’ve described and there’s like — 

Jared Correia: Quite possibly. I haven’t seen it. I need to though if it’s out there. 

Dave Maxfield: It’s good. I don’t remember what it is.

Jared Correia: We got to no’s on the World Cruiser.

Dave Maxfield: That’s a yes.

Jared Correia: That’s a yeah. Oh, we got one no and one yes. Okay. Larry is the tiebreaker.

Larry Port: Yeah, no for me. 

Dave Maxfield: They need to change it to — like change the name to like the End of the World Cruiser.

Jared Correia: The apocalypse vehicle.

Larry Port: That’s actually brilliant.

Jared Correia: I like that. All right, you want to do one more? I got one more. This is the most fun one. I really want this. A cannon. Your own cannon. I get something that I’m going to read off of Reddit from a user.

Larry Port: Okay. I guess Wait a second. Can we — I guess I should have told you this that at the beginning of the podcast.

Jared Correia: Do you own a cannon?

Larry Port: I’m a minimalist. So I have about three shirts so the answer to most of the stuff is no aside from the salad spinner.

Jared Correia: That’s all right.

Larry Port: Which I introduced by the way.

Dave Maxfield: Yeah.

Jared Correia: Yes. That’s all right. Well, no is fine. No is fine. Dave is I think going to be the other side of this because he’s in on the Ford F70. Let’s see if he’s in on the canon.

Dave Maxfield: Strong yes.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Don’t you want a cannon?

Dave Maxfield: Yes. I spent most of my middle school years trying to construct the very thing you described so out of like 10 tennis ball cans and so yeah, absolutely. I would buy a cannon.

Jared Correia: So this is an actual post from —

(00:35:00)

Dave Maxfield: Because you never know.

Jared Correia: Right. I mean, if you got the apocalypse truck, you might as well have the cannon as well. Just to be on the safe side. I got this Reddit post that I was reading with this guy. I was talking about his uncle who had a cannon in his backyard and he has specially made bowling balls for it and he would just fire off the cannon randomly and the bowling balls are like 100 bucks a piece. He’s got his property with like all these embedded bowling balls everywhere from his home cannon off his back deck.

Larry Port: I don’t know about you.

Jared Correia: I know you’re a minimalist Larry but that sounds amazing.

Larry Port: That sounds a lot of fun but every minimalist needs a cannon that fires bowling balls. I would argue. The other thing is that like I might ask for a Howitzer because it sounds cooler than a cannon because it’s got a bigger name.

Jared Correia: That’s true. All right. We can go with that.

Dave Maxfield: So the guy with the bowling ball cannon, the rest of his money he just wasted.

Jared Correia: Clearly. Yeah, I mean really. Honestly. Well, he had Ford 750 parked in this garage so he had that going for him. All right, guys, thank you for humoring me. I personally had a ton of fun on this.

Larry Port: Thank you so much. No, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Dave Maxfield: Thank you, Jared.

Jared Correia: If you want to find out more about Larry and Dave and their Lean law book check out lienlawfirmbook.com. That’s as LienLawFirmbook.com where you can read the book probably obviously or check out panels from the graphic novel. That’s right, there’s a graphic novel as we heard. Or listen to the podcast or take the course or you can do all those things. Why not right? Maybe they’ll create a zipline at some point. Now, for those of you listening in Lone Cabbage Florida, let’s get you some more cabbage. Our Spotify playlist this week is all about making money. So get that paper and you too can buy a golden toilet. That’ll do it for another episode of The Legal Toolkit podcast. Now, even though I’m inefficient, I look damn good doing it that’s why I remain the host of this semi Legal podcast. And so this is still Jared Correia reminding you that ancient Romans used human urine as mouthwash but I just stopped doing it last week.

[Music]

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