Law Firm for Sale — Planning Your Exit Strategy, and “The Cost is Correct!”

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Intro: It’s the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia, with guest Jeremy Poock. We play the cost is correct and then Jared reveals a truth so shocking that it will change your entire understanding of human history. So, stay tuned for that, but first your host, Jared Correia,

Jared Correia: It’s time for the Legal Toolkit Podcast. Excuse me, your balls are showing. And yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast even though I lost my butter pick ages ago. I’m your host, Jared Correia.

You’re stuck with me because Larry Blyden was not available. He’s learning some new musical numbers with an angel band. 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 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 Jeremy Poock, let us preview the topic of law firm sales. Now, I may be going a little backward here because Jeremy Poock of Senior Attorney Match is going to come on to talk to you about, “How you sell a law firm, why you sell a law firm, what can you get for selling a law firm.”

So, I’m going to steal just the smallest amount of Jeremy’s thunder here and tell you that, “you aren’t going to get a whole lot for your law firm.” While tech companies, and software companies with subscription services usually sell for something like 10 to 15 times, their gross annual revenue or more in some cases, law firms are selling it at a tidy 1x. Yes, one time your gross annual revenue is what you can expect to receive when you sell your law firm.

Not only that, but it is also going to come out in revenue share over the course of a three to five-to-six-year period. So, you’re not going to get paid a lump sum. So, you better hope to hell that the business continues to function appropriately at least as well as it had done in the past to get that number. That’s probably disheartening if you’re listening to this and thinking “Ah, I could price up my law firm for seven figures retired to a Caribbean Island.”

So, you know why you can’t sell your law firm for more than that and Jeremy will tell you this in a second as well or actually several seconds. Law firms are really tied to the owner in many cases. I mean, look at the law firms, like they’re named after the attorneys, the attorneys drive the business usually through referral marketing, which is a very personal thing. And as soon as that person walks away, the business is devalued massively, and not just walks away. I mean that attorney could stay on and try and help with the transition, but like, they’re moving away from the business. It’s obvious to everyone that is still going to be a transition. It could be shedding clients like crazy. If that happens, it’s not a safer bet as say, it’s a free subscription-based software product.

Jared Correia: So, how can you add value to your law firm? Two big things, right? One is brand names. During the pandemic and afterward like, all these states had prohibitions against brand names for law firms. Those are pretty much all gone now. So, you can name your law firm like whatever you want to name it as long as it is not false or misleading in some way. You got a lot of latitudes here.

So, the first thing I would say is, if you want your law firm to be worth more when you sell it, be McDonald’s, the brand, and not Ronald McDonald’s Law offices, okay?

Next thing, you need systems, turnkey systems. When you sell a law firm to somebody, there are only really two pieces of value. One is your name as the attorney and your reputation, which is again, walking out the door, and then your client list, which, you know, if some of those client lists are not well kept by law firms, it’s hard to extract those and get value out of them. So, having systems in place is great. Marketing systems, revenue collection systems, and intake systems.

If I can come into your law firm and turn on a system as the purchaser. I think I’m feeling pretty darn good about myself. So, think of your law firm as McDonald’s. I use that analogy on purpose. Systematize, everything, give people a turnkey system that they can buy into, and the price of your law firm is going to go up. How much? I don’t know. Jeremy and I talked about it a little bit, but even if it’s 2x or 3x rather than 1x, you are doing pretty well.

So, how do you go about building turnkey systems in your law firm, which are so important? I got three steps for you. Three levels. I should say each with its own steps.

Level 1, the noob level, the starter level. Build your list if you haven’t done it already. Your clients, colleagues, referral sources, leads are all in one place, all segmented. Next, build a client journey. How do leads become clients in law firms?

Next figure out the ten most common questions we get from clients. That’ll be important later. After that, write down your workflows for each case type that you handle. Then in an associate fashion, tag every task that you do in your law firm from administrative to substantive. You’re like, “Yeah, that seems like an unconnected list of things to do, correct?” Let’s turn to the pro level. We can tie some of this stuff up. If you’re not already using one, get practice management software which is a relational database for running your law firm where you can implement the workflows that you built.  See, it’s all coming together now.

Then drill down to a single document repository of one source of truth and go paperless.  Next, adopt a CRM, customer relationship management software to manage the intake workflow, and the client journey that you developed. After that add engagement tools to your website chat, not necessarily intake forms, and scheduling, get a virtual receptionist service to answer the calls if you can answer them, build a level of engagement, and make that part of your system. After that create a marketing plan and focus part of it on content marketing so, you can build a reputation online without having that cost a lot.

Jared Correia: All right, there are some substances being created here, but what pray tell is the final version of turnkey systems in a law firm once you built out all that stuff. So, it’s a hacker level. Do you want to build automation and nurture campaigns? If you got a law practice management system if you got a CRM tool. If you got workflows for intaking clients and managing clients, now automate that so your staff doesn’t have to do it. So, if somebody comes in and replaces your staff, or doesn’t want to use your staff, or maybe you don’t have staff to give them because you’ve got these automated systems, that’s going to be a real value to a modern law firm purchaser.

Now you’re answering all your phone calls, track them. Also, track all your lead sources. You’ve got a system for doing this now. You got a CRM, you could use call tracking software, make sure that all the data is collected in your law firm, and if you haven’t done so already, go full Cloud. Everything is in the Cloud, everything’s flexible. The law firm could exist anywhere, including in your mind.

Next staff up and build profit centers. So, once you have the systems in place, the idea is that the workflows make you as efficient as possible as a law firm. Then every time you hire new staff or utilize staff in the existing context, you want them to be profit centers to the highest extent they can possibly be. So, if you’ve got an associate attorney, you want to know what you’re paying them and you want to know what the systems you have in place, what they can make for you. Deliver those profit numbers to the world of profit centers to a law firm purchaser, you’re in good shape.

And last but not least, you got systems in place. They’re running. You need to analyze how effective they are. If you’re going to figure out how efficient your staff is, you need to not just track data, but analyze it and utilize KPIs.  Key Performance Indicators.

Now, imagine your law firm using the right technology which is not that expensive building out workflows and managing them taking in data and analyzing it. You’re looking a lot more like a software company rather than Joe Schmo on the corner running a law firm with a painted wooden sign. Do you know who’s a great salesman for the value of data in legal practice? Willy Loman, no? Joshua Lennon who’s got you for this week’s edition of the Clio Legal Trends Report Minute.

[Music]

Advertiser: What do lawyers with great client relationships all have in common? They use Cloud-based legal practice management software to run their law firms. I’m Joshua Lennon, lawyer, and resident at Clio, and this is just one finding from our recent legal trends report. There is no getting around it. The fact is when it comes to client expectations standards are higher than ever for lawyers. The proof is in the numbers. 88% of lawyers using Cloud-based software report good relationships with clients. For firms, not in the Cloud barely half of them can say the same. That gap is significant. For more information on how Cloud software creates better client relationships, download Clio’s legal trends report for free at Clio.com/trends. That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O dot com forward slash trends.

[Music]

Jared Correia: Okay, let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal sandwich. Today’s meat is salami. I’ll just leave it at that. It’s time to interview our guest. My guest today is Jeremy Poock of Senior Attorney Match. Jeremy, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you?

Jeremy Poock:  Doing well, Jared. Thanks so much.

Jared Correia:  I think it’s a tragedy that people can’t see us right now because you have some badass headphones on. I just want everybody to know.

Jeremy Poock:  Yeah, we were just saying that you know, we were going live on this chair, and I think we’d get a million hits on TikTok real fast.

Jared Correia:  Easily, easily. All right, I want to talk to you about what you do because I think it’s really interesting. So, you helped to broker a law firm’s sales. So, like how does one get into that? I don’t know of a lot of kids for like six years old at Christmas being like, “Hey, when I grow up, I want to be a law firm salesperson.”

So, talk to me about the story.

Jeremy Poock:  Got it. Thanks so much, Jared. So first, probably it should have gone on stage right to the business school instead of going stage left to law school, okay? So, there, they have to be born entrepreneurs, you know, get into law school. Law school, I don’t know how many people have fun in law school. I certainly didn’t, you know, man. I was ready right from day one to be done with school.

And then, when I passed the bar, I remember going to the lawyer that I was working with at the time he said, “Jeremy, welcome to the next five years of learning how to become a lawyer.”  I said, “Oh, my goodness. Thanks a lot.” And it’s called a nightmare.

Jared Correia:  Yes, yes, that’s right.

Jeremy Poock:  I thought that a nightmare does not end. When I actually got the thin luckily, the thin is in, and actually passed the bar, Jared. And I gravitated pretty early on as a young lawyer to working with business brokers, just have a passion for small businesses generally, had an introduction from a financial planning colleague as I remember that introduced me to a local business broker here in the Boston area where I’m at and helped them to pay for their deals on both right purchases and sales of what we call Main Street businesses of two million dollars and less.

Jeremy Poock:  I really enjoyed working with the business brokers, you know, my mantra with them was, “Guys, I’m just not going to get in the way.” Okay, let’s try to get your deals done, get you guys to closing, and got closer, and closer with different business brokers. I got on to the board of directors of the growing Business Broker’s Association, which was fun, and started observing that their focus was on baby boomers, but they weren’t brokering any boomer law firm sales. And that’s when the light bulb went off, Jared.

Jared Correia:  That’s super interesting. So, you didn’t end up using your legal career to get into the brokerage stuff. Like that was a pathway that you took.

Jeremy Poock:  Oh yeah. I mean like, you know, practice law, and I still, Jared full disclosure, I practice a very little bit still.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, I was going to ask you still do, okay?

Jeremy Poock:  Very little. I’m at about 95% senior attorney match and 5% of the working with a group of people for many years and still represent them, but you know it’s helpful of course when you broker a law firm sales to be able to understand and feel the pain of you know,

Jared Correia:  Yes.

Jeremy Poock:  having been able to review Lisa’s review trust and estate, a little dibble and dabble with litigation earlier in my career. I know how much it sucks to run a law firm, trust me.

Jared Correia:  But the other thing that’s interesting about this is we ended up focusing on a niche too, which a lot of people end up doing and having success with. So, you found that like people weren’t brokering law firm sales, wouldn’t it be great to have a lawyer do that? That’s really cool.

Jeremy Poock:  Thank you. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. It was a lot of opportunity out there. So, many lawyers, Jared. They don’t realize that their practices have value and when lawyers think of how you grow your practice, you’ know so many of us just think like, “Okay, let’s go to the next networking event. Let’s write the next blog.” You know, let’s go to dinner or lunch breakfast, Zoom meetings of course now post-2020 but I’m very bullish that growth by acquisition is here too.

Jared Correia:  That’s super. So, like one of the things I was thinking about as you’re talking about this like, I’m sure there are lawyers out there who are saying themselves, “Wait for a second, you can sell a law firm?” That’s a thing. So, like, how much of this for you is education? Also to let people know like, “Hey, this business, you own is an asset just because the law firm that doesn’t change the equation.”

Jeremy Poock:  Yeah, it’s a lot of education and that’s why I’ve seen your Attorney Match growing. It dawned on me a couple of years ago that we needed to pivot and offer two types of services. So, the first type of service that we do is design succession plans for our clients, and it starts with what we call a nest. They will have a workshop. So, it’s a Zoom workshop, and we meet with lawyers, and they ask that question, like, “Is it really worth something?” Like, who would buy it? What is it worth? What’s the market for it?

Jeremy Poock:  And we help our client realize that yes, there is value. Yes, there are willing buyers out there and we have them design what it would look like. Who’s the right buyer? Is it an internal person lawyer at your firm or someone you get recruited or is it a rolling firm, a third-party law firm that’s looking to grow by acquisition, and once we finished that design phase and people realize that they have value, we help weighing out where the value points are in the practice that we can actually go-to-market?

Previously, I going to market too soon, actually even I didn’t know, and it was bad.  I was bringing people to the market without doing the appropriate research and learning more about what’s the value proposition that each of our clients and lawyers doesn’t even realize necessarily the value proposition that they present to buyers.

Jared Correia:  I think that’s interesting in the sense that like, you’re right, there are two sides to this equation, right? Get somebody’s buying the firm and I guess somebody’s selling the firm, and they need a succession plan. So, to what extent does that succession plan involve like continuing to work for the firm as the transition happens? Because a lot of law firms that you know, it’s like based on the attorney’s personality, their referral network, word of mouth is developed. I’m like cutting that person off immediately is not necessarily the best idea. So, that succession plan I’m assuming involves like working with the new owner and then transitioning out eventually.

Jeremy Poock:  Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Jared Correia:  Okay.

Jeremy Poock:  And the good news for lawyers, we meet so many lawyers, Jared like they love practicing law or there lots of aspects of it, you know? Maybe not everything. It’s electrically stimulating. I meet so many of our clients that we speak with a say, like “Listen, I don’t play bridge. I like to golf when I couldn’t golf every day, you know? I’d like to come into the office. I like interacting with clients or I like writing riffs, where I like writing estate plans.

I just can’t stand let’s say, managing the office. So, to your point, you’re exactly right and so many law firms the value of the firm is the personal goodwill of the selling attorney or the leading partners of a firm. And we’re calling this law firm sales 1.0, right? It’ll offer sales of 1.0 for the selling lawyer or law firm to derive the value from the practice, they need to transition their clients and referral sources to the firm that they join. Whether that’s an internal sale or an external one because these are not turnkey transactions. We are not selling a Subway, a Dunkin franchise again, or some other kind of widgets-based business. We are selling a business where the clients’ referral sources know the senior attorney who has practiced and has been their lawyer or their referral source often for like a generation. But at least years and decades. So, it’s very important to transition over typically, Jared a couple of years.

Jeremy Poock:  But the beautiful thing is and like you and I are stuck here in the Northeast right now and like winter is a couple of days away, right?

Jared Correia:  “Hey, it’s here, is it not?”  Yeah, yeah. That’s right.

Jeremy Poock:  Yeah, it feels 90 degrees yesterday.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, go ahead.

Jeremy Poock:  But in the Zoom world, you know, when you’re no longer stuck with having to run and manage the office and you’re transitioning clients, you can be in Florida, you can be in California, we overseas work on matters on your laptop, meet with clients on Zoom, transition clients to new lawyers back at the firm that our clients join.

Jared Correia:  So, just out of curiosity, how do you see this usually go? Is it an internal sale or an external sale? Because I think I’m guessing it would be fairly hard to find somebody, bring them into the firm, and groom them, because there’s a timing component too, right? You don’t want to have that person come into early because they might get frustrated or come in too late, right?

Jeremy Poock:  So, we look at internal sales, we call that the potential option. We’re going through the design and then we look at external journeys of third-party firms is really the preferred option. And you put your finger on, you know, one reason why it’s only a potential option that is if you try to recruit someone in, first of all, good luck in today’s market, right? It’s really hard to recruit talented people.

Jared Correia:  Yeah.

Jeremy Poock:  And that I said before that, you know, I should have gone on stage right to business school versus a stage left to law school. But most lawyers do go stage left because they’re just, they’re not entrepreneurial. They don’t want to run a business. So, the internal option is often the potential option because what the senior attorney with a seller is looking to do, his or her employee’s key employees, and say, “You’ve been my key employee for many years, and how would you like to now be the business owner?” And often they will say, “Oh well, how did the Red Sox do last night?” Yeah, it’s just changed the conversation because they really don’t want to purchase a law practice. And they can’t afford it too often either.

Jared Correia:  Oh yeah. Well, let’s talk about two things. First, I want to know like how do law firms get priced because I would guess that you’ve got lawyers out there who really have a high opinion of their law firms, and they think it’s going to sell probably like a tech company to sell in the 10 or 12x. It doesn’t happen in law firm sales, right? The numbers are lower.

Jeremy Poock:  The numbers are lower for now and that law firm sales will employ now that I mentioned to you, were so dependent on the personal goodwill of the senior attorney, or the senior attorney-led firm. We are not putting values on law firms, Jared. It’s just too complicated. And a what-if factor that if something happens to your key person, right? Your key person is often Atty. Jones that has practiced, let’s choose a state planning for a moment, and Atty. Jones may be putting up a million dollars in revenues a year from his estate planning practice because he’s still generating new estate plans, and clients are passing away. So, he’s doing the probate and trust admins. Something happens to Atty. Jones, there’s going to be absolute client flight. So a buyer is really weary to pay upfront money despite the fact that he is regularly showing let say a million dollars in revenues. Even as important if not more importantly, banks will not lend on it, right?

Jared Correia: Right.

Jeremy Poock: Because the bank doesn’t know if those revenues are going to continue and the last time anybody went into a law office, good luck finding any assets of any significant value, right, for them —

Jared Correia: Right.

Jeremy Poock: — to put financing statements on. So the way that that we structure the value of law practices is via an earnout. Our clients when they’re selling, going back to value proposition, their value proposition to a buyer let’s say I have a million dollar practice in this example, I will deliver my clients to you by working here or for a couple of years and transitioning them.  We call it trust transfer, transfer the trust to the clients so the buying firm, buying firm, will you pay me the seller a percentage of the revenues that come in that are attributable to my clients and referral sources. Buyers love it and low risk for buyers. Sellers, it’s a great way to monetize. Your question like what does that mean in terms of how much value we’re seeing in the marketplace Jared, somewhere the range of a 1x of gross revenues.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Yeah, that’s not too surprising with the business model. Just out of curiosity, ever see anybody come in with a lump sum and be like, “Hey, I’m going to buy the law firm for X.” Do big firms do that when they acquire small firms? Yeah, go ahead.

Jeremy Poock: So I think we’re going to see more of it in what we call law firms 2.0 which is your WorldShare.

Jared Correia: I’m already in 2.0.

Jeremy Poock: Exciting. Yeah.

Jared Correia: All right.

Jeremy Poock: I think you are in terms of when firms are more digitized. When clients are coming to firms not just because, “Hey, I heard Attorney Jones is the best estate planner in my community, hence I want to meet with Attorney Jones” versus let’s say we’ve got the Atlantic Estate Planning Firm.  Okay.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Brand names.

Jeremy Poock: Trade it exactly. So let me answer your on lump sum. So the reason why we’re not seeing lump sum is because of risk in law firm sales 1.0, personal goodwill for someone like Attorney Jones and the fact that a bank won’t lend on it. Okay.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jeremy Poock: Here’s an exception to it, is when there are certain firms that do have repeat customers, repeat people clients, so think to ourselves like a condo firm or that is condo that represents a number of condo associations. Right? Year in year out, they’re getting retainers paid by those associations. There are firms like that Jarred and they represent hundreds of associations, you know collections agencies. You represent Blue Cross Blue Shield, —

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jeremy Poock:— Visa, MasterCard, you know wherever the economy is, you’d know, that there’s going to be certain amounts of revenue coming into those collections firms.  But somebody like attorney Jones and our example of the estate planning attorney, much harder for lump sum.

Jared Correia: Yeah, and I think like the point is well taken that if you’re going to buy a business like that where there’s so much trust transfers you’ve talked about, you’ve got to have that person involved at least to some level for a little while to make that absolutely possible.

Jeremy Poock: Absolutely.

Jared Correia: What do you think about non-law firm buyers of law firms? Maybe this is law firms 3.0, right? It’s like you’ve got alternative business structures happening in some states now. That’s probably going to come to more states across the U.S. In 10 years, that might be available in like most jurisdictions. So do you see potentially like companies coming in and buying law firms like LegalZoom or Clio or somebody like that?  Is that on your radar?

Jeremy Poock: So I’ll tell you personally. It’s not on my radar because I’m skeptical that it’s going to happen.

Jared Correia: Okay. Yeah. I’ll talk about that a little bit.

Jeremy Poock: Okay, so I’m skeptical that it’s going to happen to me.  I will hold out and we can go back to this podcast five years from now, 10 years from now and be like Jeremy, you know, egg on your face, you know for –

Jared Correia: Or on mine. We’ll see who’s right.

Jeremy Poock: For predicting, you’re going to have non-lawyer owner of law firms. My rationale behind that is the lawyer-client relationship and that when you bring in non-lawyer owners of law firms —

(00:25:00)

— and that you have non-lawyers that are sticking their nose into the profitability of the lawyer-client relationship, I think that that’s going to result — that would result in my opinion with reducing the fiduciary relationship nature of the lawyer-client relationship. That’s playing with your hypothetical thought. Let’s assume that that you can segregate the two. Okay, let the lawyers lawyer and let non-lawyer money come in and would that make the law industry a heck of a lot more efficient. Will we have the equivalent of each and our block for state planning? Okay. Will it make law and accessing legal assistance a heck of a lot more affordable?  Okay. I’m picking a lot on estate planning by working a lot with the estate planners and I know —

Jarred Correia: Yeah, that makes sense as a model to get the product eyes as well.

Jeremy Poock: But you know and I know like the cost of the basic estate plan could be ranging from like a thousand dollars to like five thousand dollars and sometimes this is not —

Jarred Correia: Yeah

.

Jeremy Poock: — I don’t want to knock the estate planners out there Jarred. There may not be all that much of a substitutive difference.

Jarred Correia: Right.

Jeremy Poock: Okay.

Jarred Correia: Right.

Jeremy Poock: And if you bring in the H&R block of the estate planning, well, the average American is going to be able to get a will, a trust Health Care proxy, a durable power of attorney for probably in that thousand dollar range if not less because they’re just going to be because private money is going to figure out how to make it more efficient.

Jared Correia: Right. Yes, Absolutely.  All right, let’s end on this topic. You kind of alluded to this before. I just wanted to put a bow on this. Lawyers right now who are maybe thinking of selling their law firm at some point down the line, what should they be doing like today to maximize the value of that asset? And you can go ahead and tell me like this is a model for somebody’s going to retire five years from now versus 30 years from now. I’m sure there’s a difference. So feel free to riff on that and I will finish up this part of the interview.

Jeremy Poock: Terrific. So let’s talk about with five years, maybe not 30, but let’s go out like 15 years.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jeremy Poock: The lawyer was five years out, number one priority is contact. First of all someone like yourself from Red Cave okay, and organize your client list. Okay?

Jared Correia: Right.

Jeremy Poock: You and I talked about this a bunch of times.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jeremy Poock: The biggest asset that lawyers are sitting on is their client lists. Okay. Anytime I get into a meeting and talk with lawyers about the value of their business and this law firm sales 1.0 where it’s based upon the client list and referral source list, we can no longer rely upon letting dust accumulate on your clients and maybe send out a Christmas card, you know, once a year. In a latent world, a Facebook world, a Clio world like you mentioned, you could take your clients with them into a CRM and if you don’t know CRM, I’m going to give it away, just Google it, okay, or call Jarred.

Jared Correia: Yeah, that’s the light lift. You can Google CRM. Yeah.

Jeremy Poock: It start communicating and connecting with your clients and referral sources because that is the key to monetizing your practice in law firm sales 1.0 and first will be paying based upon the revenues that come in from your client’s referral sources. Connect with your clients and this is always a hard message Jarred because those people their five years help, but really consider that now is the time to sell. I’m not saying that it’s a broker. I’m saying it because I see post-2020 and you see it to that younger firms are digitally marketing a heck of a lot smarter than senior attorneys and you have your client’s referral sources now. They are going to catch up with you and beat you to new clients. It’s already happening. So consider selling in the short-term, continue to practice, monetize your practice while continuing to practice instead of waiting too long and your clients diminish.

Now the lawyer, that’s 15 years out. Okay. Same advice okay, but the difference is develop your brand, okay. Develop a digital presence. If your Attorney Jones and they’re coming to you, try to make sure that they’re not just coming to you because they heard about you from their friends, their neighbor, their co-worker. Establish a presence on Google. I’m regularly saying I’m far from unique, I think that uncle Google I think is the number one referral source for lawyers in America.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Jeremy Poock: And that’s going to cost you. Just to add on to that and I’ll just say because we alluded to it before about law firms 2.0. In 2.0, there will be fixed price and fixed price and banks will come in when lawyers and law firms can look at their data analytics and show we have real brand value. We have real digital value in the marketplace. A bank can rely upon that and lend to a buyer whether that’s a law firm or maybe even Jarred I’m wrong, egg on face, normally owners you know will come in and look at that data and pay real money at a closing table for a law firm.

Jared Correia: Oh man, from your mouth to God’s ear. That was super enlightening.  Can you hang on for the last segment Jeremy?

(00:30:01)

Jeremy Poock: Absolutely.

Jared Correia: Okay, So we’ll take one final sponsor break everybody so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law, practice. Then stay tuned for the always entertaining Rump Roast. It’s even more supple than the roast beast.

[Music]

You know those attorneys, the ones who are always on their game, working cases they love, helping people around them, and making a great living? In other words, the attorneys who are building a fulfilling life? They’re probably using Smokeball. Smokeball case management software takes care of your busy work, automating and organizing your firm and helping you make more money without working more hours, so you can focus on what matters. Get on your game with Smokeball. Visit smokeball.com to learn more and sign up for your free demo. Smokeball, run your best firm, build your best life.

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 percent collection rate. That means more revenue for the same work and turning billing day into happy day. Learn more about how to get to your time and billing happy place at timesolv.com.

[Music]

Built for lawyers, Nota’s cloud-based business banking is perfect for your solo or small law firm. Easily set up categories to track income and expenses in a way that integrates smoothly with your practice management, accounting, and payment systems. Create instant transfers to your IOLTA that can pass any audit, print checks from your desk, and get excellent service from reps who only work with attorneys, online at trustnota.com/legal. Nota, banking built for law firms like yours. Terms and conditions may apply.

Jarred Correia: Welcome everyone to the rear end of The Legal Toolkit. That’s right. It’s 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, I want to play a little game I’m calling the cost is correct, which is definitely not based on any television game show you’ve ever heard of. So here’s how it works. Jeremy, you price law firms, so I want to see how good you are at pricing some other things. I’m going to tell you how we play. So I’m going to name an item and a price and you can tell me if it’s the exact price, if it’s too low or if it’s too high, and if it’s too high, you can even bid a dollar, okay? If I can base this on The Price is Right, so sue me. No wait, please don’t, please don’t. All right Jeremy, you ready?

Jeremy Poock: I’m ready.

Jarred Correia: Now, the twist is like we’re going to go back to the future because as anyone who listens to this podcast knows I live in the past precisely 1993. So let’s talk about historical items and price those. Okay? Number one, Jeremy the base price of the 1982 Chevrolet Chevette, I’m going to give you the number $5,898, is that too high, to low or the exact price?

Jeremy Poock: Can I like mimic what the crowd would be doing behind me at this point too Jarred?

Jarred Correia: Yes you could. Please do.

Jeremy Poock: Too low, too high, too low, too high. All right.

Jarred Correia: Yes. That would be great. You can do that.

Jeremy Poock: All right. Jarred too high. Too high at that price.

Jarred Correia: What do you think it is just out of curiosity?

Jeremy Poock: So remind me to get this, it was Chevy —

Jarred Correia: Chevrolet Chevette which my family once had actually. The worst car in history of cars.

Jeremy Poock: It’s 1982 right?

Jarred Correia: 1982 is the first year that it became —

Jeremy Poock: $3,995.

Jarred Correia: Oh, that’s a good guess, but that was the exact price, $6,000 for a Chevy Chevette.

Jeremy Poock: Really. Wow.

Jarred Correia: Which I think is like really high given how shitty a car it was. I hated that car. All right. Here we go, the original Pet Rock, I had one of these. It came out in 1975 $3, high, low, exact. I’m not going easy on you.

Jeremy Poock: Yeah, that’s a stumper. That is a real —

Jarred Correia: That’s a hard one.

Jeremy Poock: Because $3 sounds fair.

Jarred Correia: That sounds right where it should be.

Jeremy Poock: I think it came in a little lower, though. I’m going to go too high again.

Jarred Correia: Pet Rock $4.

Jeremy Poock: That’s over too Jarred.

Jarred Correia: Well, you know, it’s crazy. It’s like I was reading up on this before we started like the rocks themselves they put in, they cost a penny for the rock.

Jeremy Poock: You know that’s some kid — that was like the owner’s kids probably just going to beach and grab them or something. Okay.

Jarred Correia: Right, and then the straw like is negligible. It’s just a packaging. So they’re probably killing it at $4, the Pet Rock.

(00:35:00)

Jeremy Poock: Yeah, I wanted that well and shark tank 1975, yeah.

Jarred Correia: So you’ve got plenty of time to redeem yourself.

Jeremy Poock: All right. Let’s hope so.

Jarred Correia: The average price of an American home in 1963, $22,000, high, low, exact.

Jeremy Poock: All right Jarred I hope I’m redeeming myself here. I should ask the crowd again.

Jarred Correia: I guess I’m —

Jeremy Poock: Too low, too high, too low. All right, I’m going against the crowd, it’s exact.

Jarred Correia: It’s $18,000, $18,000. Just so you know, adjusted for inflation, only $145,000. Not bad. Like that would be a massive deal in today’s market.

Jeremy Poock: You know, it’s amazing when you see like parents, right, that have been in the same home for 50 years.

Jarred Correia: Yes.

Jeremy Poock: You know what their homes have become.

Jarred Correia: Yeah, sitting on a ton of equity. This is a tough one.

Jeremy Poock: This is proving to be a lot harder.

Jarred Correia: I don’t like to make it easy on people.  All right, so we got a few more here. The first compact disc was sold in 1982, the first commercially sold compact discs, 16 bucks, high, low, exact. I had a number of CDs back in the day. I don’t know about you.

Jeremy Poock: Yeah, absolutely.

Jarred Correia: Even cassette tapes. Cassette tapes.

Jeremy Poock: But when they first came out, I got to think there was a premium based on that, you know, I mean its cassette tapes which just sucked to like have to fast-forward and rewind and like of course the damn thing like to waft the reel sometimes and stuff like that and the CD which is beautiful, right? You could just skip ahead and —

Jarred Correia: Sound quality was tremendous and it look good.

Jeremy Poock: Yeah.

Jarred Correia: And it look good too, right?

Jeremy Poock: It looked awesome.

Jarred Correia: Like your whole Back to the Future thing. It looked like we had like you know a hit from Mars or something with that. I think you’re fixing on the right direction here.

Jeremy Poock: I got to go exact.

Jarred Correia: Okay, you said there was a premium for CD.

Jeremy Poock: I did say – oh, you gave me ahint here. All right, too low.

Jarred Correia: Too low, too low, 20 bucks.

Jeremy Poock: Thank you Jarred.

Jarred Correia: $20 for the original CD. Now, do you know what the first CD that was sold was? There’s an interesting story behind this.

Jeremy Poock: I’m assuming it’s music-oriented right? What was the year?

Jarred Correia: Popular music? The first CD sold in 1982.

Jeremy Poock: 1982. Are the Jackson 5 still around at that point?

Jarred Correia: That’s a good guess. Okay, so that’s too hard to guess that.

Jeremy Poock: Okay.

Jarred Correia: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, got the first CD and so they’re actually 50 CDs that came out at the same time and 52nd Street was just the one they gave the first number two in the catalog. It was number one. But what’s interesting is the 52nd Street came out in 1978 and Billy Joel had a new album out in 82 which I think was the Nylon Curtain album, and that’s not the one they sold. So pretty interesting history the CD.  All right, I got a few more for you.

Jeremy Poock: Alright. You help me get on the board on that one. Okay.

Jarred Correia: We can do hints. I’m working with hints. Okay. The Altair 8800 is often referred to as the first personal computer that came out in 1974. What’s the price $400, High, low, exact, $400.

Jeremy Poock: Alright,1974 computer, if that’s not too low, then I’m really doing terrible at this game show. I’m going too low on that one.

Jarred Correia: It’s high.

Jeremy Poock: What? For a computer?

Jarred Correia: Yeah, listen to this. That’s $297 for that device.

Jeremy Poock: And what could it do? Would you wait 10 hours —

Jarred Correia: Nothing.

Jeremy Poock: — to get between like keystrokes or something.

Jarred Correia: Yeah, it probably didn’t anything. It’s probably a glorified word processor. I don’t own one. So it’s $295, But if you want it to go up a level and buy the case that came with it, $395.00.

Jeremy Poock: That’s awesome. Okay.

Jarred Correia: Pretty good deal. All right.

Jeremy Poock: That sounds like too much. For that old Commodore, wow. Okay.

Jarred Correia: Two more. The original Monopoly game came out in 1935.

Jeremy Poock: Wow.

Jarred Correia: What did it cost? $1.50, low, high, exact.

Jeremy Poock: Boy Jarred, this has been brutal for me. That sounds right. I guess I don’t have —

Jarred Correia: You don’t have the worst performance in the history of the Rump Roast, so don’t feel bad about that.

Jeremy Poock: $1.50, I gotta go with that one. It got to be exact.

Jarred Correia: It is low, $2, $2.

Jeremy Poock: $2, really. That seems pricey. That does seem pricey.

Jarred Correia: From 1935.

Jeremy Poock: Yeah.

Jarred Correia: Because that’s like depression.

Jeremy Poock: Depression. Yeah exactly.

Jarred Correia: You got to play Monopoly. I got one more for you, last one.

Jeremy Poock: Okay. All right.

Jarred Correia: So McLaren P1. Okay, I don’t definitely don’t have in my driveway, production car, available until 2015. They don’t make these in production anymore. What was the price of that car off the production line? $1.2 million, low, high, exact?

Jeremy Poock: All right. So full disclosure, no idea what that is.

Jarred Correia: It’s the fancy sports car.

Jeremy Poock: Okay, guys.

Jarred Correia: Imagine like probably the fanciest sports car that you could buy.

(00:40:02)

Jeremy Poock: All right. Okay, and the price was?

Jarred Correia: $1.2 million.

Jeremy Poock: All right. All right.

Jarred Correia: Google so we’re done. My son loves this fact.

Jeremy Poock: I want to search for a lawyer, I’ll go to Google. Okay.

Jarred Correia: Yes. Absolutely.

Jeremy Poock: I will not cheat on your show Jarred. I’m going too low.

Jarred Correia: It is exact $1.2 million Seas.

Jeremy Poock: Ah, geez. So I got like one half answer right on this whole show.

Jarred Correia: I had fun. I had fun. These are hard questions, like I didn’t throw any softballs.

Jeremy Poock: No.

Jarred Correia: Thank you for coming on though, this is fun.

Jeremy Poock: Absolutely. All the best Jarred.  Thanks so much, really appreciate it.

Jarred Correia: If you want to find out more about Jeremy Poock and Senior Attorney Match, visit seniorattorneymatch.com. That’s seniorattorneymatch.com. Now, for those of you listening in Duckville, Massachusetts and the Patriots areplaying right now Stockbridge Massachusetts, I’ve got a great Spotify quick list for you.  Since we talked about pricing law firms in this episode, all of these songs have an amount of current in the titles. Check it out.  Now, I ran out of time today, so I won’t be able to discuss my theory on who built the pyramids. Spoiler alert, it was the fucking aliens obviously. This is Jarred Correia reminding you not to eat berries that you find in the forest. The strong likelihood is that they’ll taste like burning.

[Music]