Emerging Legal Ethics for AI; How-Tos for AI in Law Practice; & “Michigan Man”

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

It’s the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia, with guest Josh Noffke. We play a game called Michigan Man. And then we all see Jared as a Renaissance man, right? Right. So Jared in a rap battle seems right, right? Damn right. But first your host Jared Correia.

Jared Correia:

It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast. But don’t blame me. The big and little hands dictate the hour. And yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast, even though I don’t even know what a scribing tool is, unless it’s a pen, then I know what it is. I’m your host, Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Seth Meyers was unavailable. That’s because he sucks balls. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find us [email protected]. Now, before we get to our interview today with Josh Noffke, a brass tax consulting, let’s talk about the emergence of legal ethics around artificial intelligence because people are finally starting to say some stuff about this. So with respect to AI and legal ethics, there’s at least a couple things you want to know. One is that there’s been a number of items of case law that have come out on the topic.

Lawyers love case law, right? And then there have been some guidance documents and or ethics opinions that have been starting to trickle out. So let’s quickly talk about the case law first. The vast, vast majority of case law around lawyers’ use of AI involves hallucinations. And so if you are unaware of this problem, basically what it means is that when an AI is asked to do something, provides you an answer, it’ll provide you the answer even if it doesn’t have the right one. And this is what’s called hallucinating. It’s making up an answer. I guess I don’t love the term hallucination. What’s actually happening is that the AI is making up an answer just out of whole cloth. It’s plugging in an answer where it doesn’t have one, but where it knows one should be. So the examples you’ll see are law firm goes into chat, GPT asks chat GPT to draft it a brief or asks chat GPT to give it some case law.

Law firm takes that case law inputs it into a brief uhoh. The cases don’t actually exist. So why does this happen? Well, as I mentioned before, AI tools are existing to give you an answer, basically think of it as their prime directive. That’s what it is to provide you an answer to an input, an output for an input. That’s the way they operate. So if the AI knows, hey, there should be case law here, I don’t have any case law, I’m just going to put some in i’s what people refer to when they talk about hallucinating cases. And the reason for this is partly based on the fact that every AI has access to a large language model, but that doesn’t have all the information in the world in it. Large language models are finite. So if I am using a large language model that doesn’t have access to the cases secondary sources, I need to make my argument, AI is not going to be able to find it.

Now, it’s a different situation if you’re using the AI tools in Westlaw or Lexi or Fast Case because you’ve got a large language model, the history of case law, the history of secondary sources where the AI is going to be able to say, okay, there is a solution here that we need to find and here’s the correct input. It just doesn’t have the correct input in other scenarios. So really if you’re using a standard tool like a Chad GBT or Google Gemini or something like that, and you want to get access to correct case law, you got to go check that someplace else. So basically you’re checking the AI against the relevant sources. And that means you go to Lexi, you go to West, you go to textbooks, wherever you go to Google Scholar potentially. And the first check is just to make sure whether those cases actually exist.

Put ’em in, see if you can find them. To me this is real easy. This is directly related to the competency rules for attorneys, and it’s kind of similar to the way you would check the work of an employee, whether it’s an associate attorney or an administrator. And we’ll talk more about that in a second because that’s an important concept. Basically, you are checking your sources as you normally would. You don’t leave it to the judge or the judge’s clerk to say, oh, these cases don’t exist, then you look like a fucking idiot. Do it yourself. And the sanctions in these cases have been kind of like all over the board, right? One case somebody had to write apology letters, another case there was a suspension, another case there was a small fine. So I’m not rolling the dice on that if I’m a law firm, super easy solution.

And I also think that the sanctions are get more severe moving forward because now there’s information available on this. Now you’ve got case law that actually exists. So I think there’s going to be less tolerance probably not only for lawyers, but also for pro se people as well. So let’s talk about now some of the jurisdictional guidance on this topic. So I’m going to talk about three directives pieces that have come out through various state bars to give you a sense of where this stuff is heading. So Florida came out with an ethics advisory opinion, the first one of 20 24, 24 dash one, which effectively said lawyers should obtain informed consent from their clients before adding confidential information about the client’s case to an AI tool. Makes sense? And it’s similar to the way that law firms try to gain informed consent over the technology that they use with their clients.

So when I talk to lawyers, I say, Hey, have a technology clause in your fee agreement, which basically says, Hey, I use cloud-based technology, which has inherent risks. Or it says I use cloud-based technology. These ones which you’re signing off on, you can do the same thing for ai. They also suggested in this ethics opinion that law firms create office policies related to the use of ai, which I think is a good thing. You want to have an AI acceptable use policy. I’ve got some templates if folks want ’em. And then the diligence piece, I already talked about you reviewing your own work product that’s created by ai. I feel like that’s an easy one, unauthorized practice of law, they talked about that as well. The question is what can be ethically delegated to generative ai? I don’t know what that answer is either. And I think if you look at this in the appropriate way, you’re thinking of AI as like an assistive technology.

They can get you 80% of the way there, which is what our guest will talk about today. And you have the final review as the attorney. And then you talked a little bit about fees. So I want to pull a couple of quotes that I think are interesting from the Florida bar opinion. So the opinion itself says in terms of charging for the cost or use of ai, cost of building solutions, cost of using AI solutions, lawyers must not duplicate charges that are already accounted for in the lawyer’s overhead. I sort of agree with that. I think it would be the same thing as passing along software costs to your clients. I don’t think that changes just because the software is ai. Another quote from the opinion is this, though generative AI programs may make a lawyer’s work more efficient, this increase in efficiency must not result in falsely inflated claims of time.

In the alternative, lawyers may want to consider adopting contingent fee arrangements or flat billing rates for specific services so that the benefits of increased efficiency accrued to the client and lawyer alike. This is not a new issue. You could say the same thing about document assembly software. You could say the same thing about email software. It all makes you work faster. And basically they’re saying you can’t just increase your billable hours randomly because you’re using software that makes you work faster. However, I do like the suggestion that lawyers should be looking at alternative billing arrangements. I’m a huge fan of that. Okay, maybe the most interesting piece of this Florida ethics opinion, this part is something I’ve been talking about recently and I think this is the first time it’s been squarely addressed and they don’t even get all the way there. But the opinion says while Rule 5.3 defines a non-lawyer assistant as a person, many of the standards applicable to non-lawyer assistance provide useful guidance for a lawyer’s use of generative ai.

I would go even further and to say that the technology as it exists today and definitely as it exists in the future, is really going to operate more like a staff person than a software. And so that rule 5.3, supervising non-lawyers, there’s also a room of 5.1 supervising lawyers. I think if you are using AI correctly with an eye towards how can I do this ethically from an ethics standpoint and from a logistics standpoint, you want to treat AI technology like their lawyer assistance, not like they are softwares, traditional softwares. And I think that’s the best way to look at it and I think you’ll be all right if you do that. Lastly, the opinion says it’s recommended that the lawyer obtain the effective client’s informed consent prior to using a third party ative AI program if the utilization would involve the disclosure of any client information.

That’s the piece I talked about before in terms of having a fee agreement clause potentially covering that. The other thing is I want to read that because you also want to look at your local rules for courts. Are courts in your jurisdiction requiring you to say whether or not you’re using AI to create briefs? Are they requiring you to utilize a disclaimer that includes the specific types of AI you use? That seems a little bit weird to me. I don’t see lawyers putting information in their briefs right now that say, Hey, we used an online legal research tool to work on this brief specifically. That seems silly to me. So I think that’ll probably go away as people get more used to using ai. But I think there’s some interesting nuggets in there. California through its standing committee on professional responsibility also has some guidance on AI and how it’s used by law firms.

They’re saying some similar stuff to Florida, but I think some of this is worth going over. It says, as our guest is going to say, coming up, don’t input confidential information into ai. And if you do anonymize the data, the one thing that’s interesting from the California approach is they are suggesting that lawyers should not over rely on AI such that it hinders the critical attorney analysis fostered by traditional research and writing. And I think this is something that folks are not really focused on right now, but I’m kind of focused on it because I think that lawyers and anybody who uses generative AI are going to pop their question to AI and rely on that single answer without thinking of other avenues. And I think that is massively impactful in a negative way on human creativity. So if I’m a lawyer, I almost don’t want to be poisoned by AI’s approach to a problem because I may have a better, more effective approach.

So I think that is a really important thing, not necessarily related to the ethics conversation, but I think an important consideration for people. California also says lawyers cannot charge for the time saved by using generative ai. They’re telling you to review all your output, know your local rules. That makes sense. But there’s also some consideration here on bias. And so this is something to remember as well. AI tools are biased right now because they were written and coded by biased humans. So if you get deep enough in Chad GPT, it’s going to assume things like a doctor is a male and a nurse is a female. So everybody’s trying to work those kinks out, of course, but it’s going to take some time and you want to be aware that generative AI right now can be just as biased as a human could be. And then New York has also come out with some guidance through a committee that it has a state in New York, so we’re hitting the big ones, Florida, California, New York.

And my friend Nikki Black over at my case, had a great writeup on this at LinkedIn. If you want to go over and check out her profile there, it says some of the things you would expect it to say, like lawyers have to understand how the technology works, how the governing documents between the law firm and the technology vendor operate like a service level agreement, privacy policies, data protection rules, et cetera. And then interestingly, it’s got a few other things to say as I think are somewhat new and interesting. The first is that generative AI tools may trigger data preservation obligations for litigation, which is interesting. Makes sense. And then it also talks about deep fake evidence, which is going to be a challenge moving forward, as I noted those other two jurisdictional guidance pieces did not. So yeah, in terms of deep fakes, you can fake somebody’s voice, you can fake a video of somebody saying things, it looks just like them.

That is going to be really problematic to root out not just for the court system, but everywhere else in the world. And I think one of the great pieces that this document from the New York State Bar Association will lose to is that education is the way to solve all this. You got to educate lawyers, you got to educate judges, you got to educate regulators. And if we’re talking about three groups that are behind the curve on AI is definitely those three and age has something to do with it, right? Like judges are older, regulators are older, a lot of lawyers are older, and they’re not comfortable with this type of technology, but you got to get comfortable with it rapidly. And the way to do that is to educate yourself about it. So you’ve taken the first step, which is listening to this podcast, and there are further steps he can take as well when we interview Josh Noffke in a second, they’ll have some information about how all this stuff works and where you can find further information, but you can find a lot of information out there on the web on your own.

If you want to talk to me, I’m more than happy to talk about ai. Actually, I’m getting a little sick of it. So we may stop talking about AI on the Legal Toolkit for a little bit at least, but I think I’m still going to have to talk about it everywhere else. Speaking of talking more about AI before we host an impromptu conversation with Josh Noffke Brass Tax Consulting on his use of AI in law practice. Let’s hear a little something, something from our sponsors, then we’ll get into a rump roast that’s only from Michigan men. Well, I guess you could listen if you’re from Ohio State too, but you’re going to hate it. Alright everybody, let’s get back to the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting. Today’s meet is Squirrel, the other gray meat. Alright, it’s time to interview our guest today. We’ve got a new fish on the Legal Toolkit podcast and it’s Josh Noffke who is not only the principal of Noke Law, but also the principal of Brass Tacks Consulting. Josh, my friend, how are you today?

Josh Noffke:

I am fantastic. Thank you for having me, sir. I appreciate you.

Jared Correia:

Let’s get into it. Talk to me about your career. Let’s do the legal stuff first. So you ended up founding your firm when you were relatively young, which takes a lot of

Josh Noffke:

Balls. I appreciate that.

Jared Correia:

Give me the rundown, tell me your story.

Josh Noffke:

I got told by a lot of people it would not work and it was not worth it, and I should go work at Big Law and all over the place and get all this different experience. And I really just looked at it and said, there’s no way I’m going to be manageable by anybody else. I could only manage myself. It was fun. It was also a decision to work the way I wanted to work. I definitely knew I wanted to do something a little bit different with how I did my billable model, how I serve clients. Access to legal was a big proponent of why I went into the particular starting my firm and getting all that going. And the other big one too was just utilizing technology. And I think that’s probably the biggest reason why I chose to go is I did not want to be limited in moving forward at the pace I wanted to go.

If I wanted to be distracted on an afternoon, I could take that afternoon off and dive into some deep eight hour research hole of the newest tech or do something like that. So that was a big reason why I decided. Absolutely, absolutely. And then too, I also wanted to be around my family and I knew a lot of people who were coming right out of school. And I actually live with a guy who was working at a big firm here, great firm, but he left the house at 5:00 AM and he got home at 10:00 PM and I already had a kid and I didn’t want to do that. So those were two of the proponents for why I started. And then two, just being able to be authentic with clients. That was another big one. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to curse freely.

Jared Correia:

We’re about as explicit as you can get. All right, so I think those are all good reasons to start your law firm. Now you’re working on a new venture because one of the great things about running a law firm and having it be successful is that you can try other things. So you’ve got this consulting organization that you’ve just started building out. So can you tell me a little bit about that because that’s interesting too.

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. Brass tax really came about because I like talking about technology and I don’t want to do law all day every day. And AI came in and it was one of those components of I jumped in full deep end of the pool, cannonball and loved every second of it and then started talking with a bunch of other people, including some of my existing legal clients. Hey, how are you using this stuff? Just introducing it to ’em nice and slow, just peppering ’em at a

Jared Correia:

Medium pace as it

Josh Noffke:

Were, depending on the particular person. And then my very closest friends will tell you I rammed it down their throats and say, you have to use it. My employees will tell you too. That too,

Jared Correia:

It’s going in the wrong direction. Okay. No, keep going. Go ahead.

Josh Noffke:

I told my employees, you are mandated every day you have to use some sort of ai. They will tell you yes,

Jared Correia:

It’s pretty baller move. You don’t see a lot of law firms doing that. A lot of law firms are like, don’t use it.

Josh Noffke:

No have to. In my opinion, you have to. I actually think it’s part of the technological competency. I don’t know that we need to have that debate, but that requirement for lawyers I think requires us to at least be familiar with the technology and make use of it. No question.

Jared Correia:

I would totally agree. Okay. What’s interesting about your practice is that you actually use AI in your business as you alluded to. You’re not just bullshitting like me. So let’s do broad strokes first. Talk to me a little bit about how you use it and then we’ll get into specific use cases.

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. So I actually use it so much that it prompted a tech purchase I am pretty excited about and I got a 49 inch screen. And so AI can always be up in some way, shape, or form. So that was very exciting in terms of how I use it, it’s really a component of being my brainstorm buddy. I’d say the most 30,000 foot way I could say I use AI every day.

Jared Correia:

Well, no, I think that’s a good description

Josh Noffke:

And it really is. It’s just refining where you don’t have to spend the extra time even writing a specific email or something like that. You don’t have to spend the extra time thinking of that perfect word. I always think about Hunter s Thompson, a great author, hunter, would spend 18 hours looking for one word, literally just and type of guy who had piles and piles of books and everything on every surface in his home. And that was awesome and admirable, but I’m not a rider, I’m a legal professional. Well,

Jared Correia:

You are also not over there riding the white horse and staying up for 24 hours of shots.

Josh Noffke:

Exactly, exactly. So the thought of just being able to have someone kind of suggest something and me be able to edit it very carefully, really appealed to me. And that’s the biggest way I use it. So when I draft a proposal, if I can’t think of the exact right way to phrase something in an engagement agreement or a lot of different types of contracts that use contract tools all the time, emails is a big way I use it. And then backend, backend,

Jared Correia:

Drafting emails you’re talking about and responses. Absolutely.

Josh Noffke:

And even if we’re producing something legally significant or giving legal advice on that, structuring it, that’s another big one. So, hey, I have all the meat and potatoes here, make this more digestible for my client, especially if it’s 3:00 AM and I’m talking how I talk, it’s going to be a little bit all over the place. It’s all going to make sense and it’s all going to be in there. But if it’s structured out, it’s going to be more easily understood, take less time, create less frustration. And I’ve really noticed an uptick in just overall demeanor when I talk to clients and now that I’ve been using this and doing that type of thing. So I think

Jared Correia:

So you find that your clients are more responsive when you communicate with them? Absolutely. Oh, that’s really interesting.

Josh Noffke:

Okay. Absolutely. And they understand it a little bit more, whereas I might use not a complicated concept, but just a

Jared Correia:

Concept. So you’re stripping down the legalese,

Josh Noffke:

Making it more approachable. That’s right. It really has made a big difference. And my employees too. I have employees that don’t have legal backgrounds, and I also offshore some of our work overseas and talking with ’em, that makes a huge difference in instructions, teaching them how to do something. It makes a big difference. Sometimes when I’m talking to them on a staff meeting, you can kind of see their eyes gloss over as I’m giving them kind of notes to take down. It’s like, all right, give me two minutes here. I’ll give you my rundown here after I put it through AI and they’re like, oh, okay, I got it. Once they get that,

Jared Correia:

That is really cool.

Josh Noffke:

Yeah.

Jared Correia:

Now the other thing you alluded to before was backend processes on ai, which is a use case I personally see a lot because a lot of the conversations I have with law firms, like, okay, I’m not somebody who does substative legal work anymore, but if you can lock your processes down, that’s really helpful in any business and AI is useful for that with law firms. So you can talk just a bit about how you use it for that.

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. So I’m a big notion guy, so I use Notion, so Giant shoutout, I run my entire

Jared Correia:

Pack through task management software, project management software folks, dunno what that is.

Josh Noffke:

So notion allows me to document in a Wiki type style. It also has AI features that I highly recommend you try out any one try out for any reason whatsoever, but they allow for us to not only organize, but also make it searchable. So notion is kind of an iterative never perfect domain where your docs and processes live and your projects live and your templates live and things like that. The AI makes it searchable, and then the backend processes are just right there when you need them. And so anyone on your team can pull ’em up at any time. And it’s exactly right there. You can embed all sorts of different things like Loom videos, which for those who don’t know allows you to record yourself showing a process or showing whatever. Even giving quick instructions. I think their tagline is say meeting time,

Jared Correia:

Asynchronous video, which is also great for managing a firm.

Josh Noffke:

There you go. That’s why you get paid the big bucks. Jared,

Jared Correia:

Summarize. I’m like a human ai.

Josh Noffke:

Exactly, exactly. Allowing that for us has been really, really great because it’s freed up so much of my time not having to re-explain something. Even training someone when someone new comes on, they get one document and one something called Scribe. I’m shouting out all these softwares.

Jared Correia:

That’s fine, that’s perfectly fine. You say whatever you want, love it.

Josh Noffke:

So scribe literally scribes down steps in a process for you to give a visual for what you’re doing. So doing that in Notion and using all the different softwares that we use, it can be a lot for people, especially if they aren’t software centric, which I obviously am.

Jared Correia:

So if you’re in a typical law firm and you come and work for Josh, it’s going to be a whole different ball game.

Josh Noffke:

We definitely don’t just manage things in our practice management software. We create in all sorts of different ways, and we also have social media stuff and marketing stuff getting created. So I always like to tell my people, Hey, on a Friday, make sure you try and schedule a demo or try out a new software or something like that too. You never know what might be the next notion or whatever. And especially with ai, forget about it. We haven’t even thought of the stuff that’s going to be coming out in two months. Right, right.

Jared Correia:

Okay, so we’ll get to all that stuff. Let me ask you specifically about billing because I think one of the best use cases for AI without a doubt is speeding up the billing process for law firms. And you’re starting to do that, right?

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely.

Jared Correia:

So what does that look like in your firm?

Josh Noffke:

Billing was really transformed by ai. I ran into a lot of issues just figuring out how to bill, what was the right way to Bill, and I got a lot of people saying, well, you’re a lawyer, you just bill hourly. Well, I didn’t want to bill hourly. One of the reasons I went into my firm and doing things the way I wanted to do it, I wanted to do it subscription and flat fee because that to me was a better value. Why should you pay for my time? Also, why should clients get to control your time to a point, right? Yes. I didn’t really want to have the conversation of saying it took you that long, my time’s, my time. And that was kind of an internal philosophy that drove me to do it the way I wanted to do it. So billing got tricky. Hey, how much do I actually do this? Well, I spent this long on it. Okay, so the billable hour rate would be X. Is it really worth that? If I were the client, I started asking myself, if I were the client, would I like to pay that? And then you very smartly told me, no one likes to pay lawyers ever for anything.

Jared Correia:

That’s true.

Josh Noffke:

So once I got that kind of through my head, I was like, okay, I need a better system again with a lot of conversations and help from you. And we got it down to a better system by building an app. Once I figured out and trained the app also, including on previous invoices that I had sent out, it became a hell of a lot easier to say, Hey, I need an entry for this type of contracts I charge last time. How much was it? Is that about right? Yeah, it’s gotten a little bit more granulated now in terms of how we figure that out and move forward, but it really just takes all of the churn out of it. When you’re a little bit nervous, especially as a young attorney running his own firm, those starting days, you’re a little bit nervous about sending out a big bill, especially when you haven’t before, right? So one, you kind of have a confidence boost. So it is that brainstorm buddy saying, you can do it, my guy. And then also it just makes, it gets you across the threshold way quicker. So instead of you having to do the entire task, it takes you from zero to 80 and then you’re only spending the time and consternation and mental effort to get from that 80 to a hundred if you will.

Jared Correia:

I want to get your take. You just mentioned this. One of the big concerns people have is do I put confidential data or client information into an AI tool? Can you run down your thoughts on that? Because I think you largely avoid it, right?

Josh Noffke:

Yeah, I do have a fantastic answer though.

Jared Correia:

Two words hit me.

Josh Noffke:

Yes. It depends. It depends.

Jared Correia:

Jesus, here we

Josh Noffke:

Go. I roll QDI roll and drum shot.

Jared Correia:

All right. All right. Tell me why. It depends, Mr. A lawyer,

Josh Noffke:

You got it. If you’re using any kind of free ai, most of these are what’s called large language models or LLMs, which train based off the actual input or you type into the chat GPT. So if you’re typing sensitive data, is it necessarily going to be regurgitated exactly as it is? No, but that name now enters the zeitgeist to be used. However the AI will use it. That’s not ideal and certainly violates many of the confidentiality restrictions of our profession, right?

Jared Correia:

Yes. Problematic to say the least.

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. And again, if it got, it seems rare, but I’m sure it’s going to happen somewhere. Somehow there’s going to be very secretive, important worth a lot of money, details leaked in some sort of ai.

Jared Correia:

It’s definitely going to happen

Josh Noffke:

At some point, and that’s something you don’t want to have happen. And also I can also see a reality too where insurance carriers will stop ensuring if you don’t make sure that you attest that you only use AI a certain way. That’s another thing coming for our profession too.

Jared Correia:

Oh, without a doubt. And I think the other thing that, I was on a program the other day and I thought one of the audience members had a really astute observation, which is like if you’re putting any sort of client detail, even if it’s minimal into an ai, you don’t know what other information exists in that language model and what connections could be made. Absolutely. You have no idea if somebody could putting together certain data sets reveal information you don’t want revealed even if you don’t reveal it directly.

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. If you talk about someone being nefarious with it too, if they can hack a software,

Jared Correia:

Who would ever do such a thing?

Josh Noffke:

No one I know. No one I know, but that’s another big, big risk why I don’t like it either.

Jared Correia:

So your strategy is like you are either not putting the data in or anonymizing it, is that the idea?

Josh Noffke:

Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. And typically anonymizing it, and there are shortcuts and ways I’ve made that faster for our team. It is a manual process. It’s a

Jared Correia:

Little bit, give me one example about how you anonymize data so people know.

Josh Noffke:

Yeah, so I actually will have a local file, Microsoft Word, or I actually use Notion for this and I find ’em replaced, which I have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized for, right? So I’ll find ’em replaced with whatever client name is and literally client.name, right? Of course you do. Yeah, of course. There are things that can help you with this though, like Rocket Typists, which is actually what I use, but the more popular one. Text Expander, that’s what it’s called.

Jared Correia:

Oh, text

Josh Noffke:

Expander.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, people love Text Expander.

Josh Noffke:

That’s the one everyone uses. I use a corollary of it just because it was cheap when I bought it and I like it.

Jared Correia:

That’s fair. Yeah. Josh, this was great. Will you stick around for one last segment, even though you have no idea what it’s going to be about

Josh Noffke:

Unequivocally,

Jared Correia:

We’ll take one final break so you can hear more about our sponsor companies and their latest service offerings. Then stay tuned as always for the Rump Roast, it’s even more supple than the Roast Beast. Welcome back, everybody. That’s right. The rear end of the Legal Toolkit podcast. That’s right. It’s the Rump Roast everyone. It’s a grab bag of short form topics. All of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Well, because I’m the host now. Josh, welcome back. Thanks for coming on again.

Josh Noffke:

Thank you, sir.

Jared Correia:

I think I have this right. You actually played for the University of Michigan football team, right? As Walk-on, do I have that correct?

Josh Noffke:

I did indeed.

Jared Correia:

What was that like? Because not everybody’s fucking walking on to D one programs.

Josh Noffke:

You typically have to be a certain size. That’s true. Certain skills are required. Sound likeon. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I was actually not of the size required to the position I wanted to. I was not tall enough,

Jared Correia:

Which was

Josh Noffke:

Line, offensive line. I do have the girth, but not quite the height that they need. They want all their guys to be 6 4, 6 5, and the good Lord bless me with six foot of manly clunkiness. So I went through the walk-on process, and this was happening when Lloyd Carr was there. So I went to the walk-on tryouts. I didn’t make the team. He said, do X, Y, and Z come back in January. That’s when he retired. So when Rich Rodriguez came in, I tried out for the January and I had done X, Y, and Z and they said, okay, come on, let’s go.

Jared Correia:

So Josh, given all that, I wanted to play a little game with you that we’re going to call Michigan, man. Okay? So we’re going to do let’s Michigan football trivia, and I think you can’t fuck this up, right, because your reputation is very much on the line.

Josh Noffke:

I’ll try to, my reputation is on the, hold on, lemme queue up a chat. GPT real quick. Hold on.

Jared Correia:

Okay, great. Yeah, let’s do this at chat GPT. That’s perfect. We have only had, I think, two perfect scores in the history of the Rump Row. So let’s see how you do. I’m going to start off with an easy one to get your feet wet. So first question is this former Michigan quarterback went on to win seven Super Bowls in the NFL and I got three choices for you, Brian Greasy, drew Henson and Tom Brady. Seven Super Bowls in the NFL. Who could it possibly be?

Josh Noffke:

None of those ring a bell. Well wait, it’s the goat, the legendary, undeniable best, greatest of all time TB 12 baby, obviously time. Thanks for teeing it up. An easy one to start. I like that.

Jared Correia:

That’s where we’re alive. Type of patriot switch. That’s

Josh Noffke:

Always worth reminding people. It’s always worth reminding

Jared Correia:

People. Yeah, they had a good draft too this year. Okay, they’ll get progressively harder from here, but we’ll see how you do. I think you get a lot of these. Okay,

Josh Noffke:

I’m hoping

Jared Correia:

This slightly higher degree of difficulty. This former Michigan cornerback, not quarterback cornerback won the Heisman Trophy in 1997 as Michigan also won the national championship. Charles Woodson, Glenn Steele or Sam Sword Love and all those guys played for the 97 Michigan team, by the way. Yes, they

Josh Noffke:

Did. Yes they did.

Jared Correia:

Which I know talk

Josh Noffke:

About a bunch of beasts. I love it. Obviously. Number two, the defensive goat, the only defensive player to ever win a Heisman. I love this game. I love this game. Love getting to tell my guys.

Jared Correia:

Chuck Woodson, everyone okay now the degree of justly ramped up slightly.

Josh Noffke:

Let’s get it.

Jared Correia:

This head coach has the most wins in the history of the Michigan Wolverines football program. Is that your very own Lloyd Carr be Shem Beckler or Jim Harbaugh? Most wins in the program.

Josh Noffke:

I’m pretty sure it’s Bo. I actually don’t know this offhand.

Jared Correia:

Bo is correct

Josh Noffke:

By a while too, right?

Jared Correia:

194. Lloyd Carr has 122. Jim Harbaugh has 86. Interestingly, and I don’t know if people from Michigan outside of Michigan know this, but Schembechler never won a national title. Kind of sad. That is

Josh Noffke:

True. That is true. The 10 year war was worth the price of a mission though. So that was before I was alive, and I’ve seen every single minute of those game films that you want to talk about. Oh, good old, old fashioned, hidden, bearing your knuckles in the ground, getting after it. Let’s go. Let’s go.

Jared Correia:

All right. This is a tough one. I believe you though The 1901 Michigan team represents their first claimed national title. How many Shutouts? 12 in total. That team have in 11 games, 12 in total. Many shutouts in 11 games. How many shutouts did they have? Seven. 10 or 11.

Josh Noffke:

What a good looking question.

Jared Correia:

Shutouts. This kind of blew my mind, honestly. I’m trying to work up a hint here, but it’s staggering. 11 games. How many shutouts? Seven, 10 or 11 are you on chat? GPT. What’s chat? GPT telling you?

Josh Noffke:

Oh, I could look that up.

Jared Correia:

You can.

Josh Noffke:

I’m going to say seven.

Jared Correia:

They had 11 shutouts. No one’s supposed. Are you kidding? Single point on that team. The entire season’s and they won the game. 128 to nothing.

Josh Noffke:

That one I could have told you I did not know they had 11 shutouts. That’s unbelievable.

Jared Correia:

Fucking glue. Go crazy,

Josh Noffke:

Crazy. It’s always worth celebrating. Always.

Jared Correia:

I think this one’s easy too, but let’s give it a shot. The center on the 1934 team who was also selected most valuable player by his teammates. We’re talking about the 1934 team, was Jack Kemp, Gerald Ford or Steve Largent. All football players turned politicians.

Josh Noffke:

Hopefully you heard that one. Our president Gerald Ford. Correct. Captain an extraordinaire. Absolutely. He looked good in that football uniform too.

Jared Correia:

Probably the most athletic president in history, frankly,

Josh Noffke:

You got to say. So

Jared Correia:

I got two more for you. You’ve only got one run so far. Pretty impressive. Your reputation is holding up. Alright. The Michigan State winner gets the Paul Bunion trophy every year, which is something I did not know. When was it first awarded the Paul Bunion Trophy? 1942. 1953 or 19 71, 42, 53, 71. The very first Paul Bunion trophy in the Michigan Michigan State rivalry.

Josh Noffke:

I’m going to say 53,

Jared Correia:

Correct. You’re

Josh Noffke:

Smoking.

Jared Correia:

All right. Only one. Let’s get it. Last one. There’s some crazy Michigan stats out there. Last one. How many rushing attempts did Michigan have in the 1972 Rose Bowl in a loss to Stanford? Just rushing attempts. 74, 87 or 92 by Michigan. Just Michigan, not Stanford Included in that in the 72 Rose Bowl. 74, 87, 92.

Josh Noffke:

I’m going to say because it’s a running clock and Stanford’s also is probably a run heavy team. I’m going to go on the low end. I’m going to guess the 74.

Jared Correia:

Correct?

Josh Noffke:

Correct.

Jared Correia:

I love it. Very nice, very nice one wrong. I got to say this was one of our more impressive rum Pros performances ever.

Josh Noffke:

I love it. My favorite subject too. I feel very, very appreciated and flattered.

Jared Correia:

Thank you. You vindicated. Imagine you in the ghost of Gerald Ford rolling down the offensive line in Michigan, coming down on Stanford in the 72 Rose Bowl. What a dream scenario.

Josh Noffke:

That sounds fun.

Jared Correia:

Josh, thank you very much for putting up with us. I appreciate it.

Josh Noffke:

Right back at you. Thank you Jared. Appreciate you guys.

Jared Correia:

If you want to find out more aboutJosh Noffke, his law practice, Noke Law, and his consulting business, brass tacks, just email him. Simply email him at [email protected]. That’s Josh at noke N-O-F-F-K-E law.com. That’s [email protected]. Philip is inbox right now or check out his LinkedIn. Now. For those of you listening in Dick Michigan, I’m rolling out our official Motown playlist on Spotify. Check it out. It’s in the show notes. And I forgot how much I love Motown music when I was making this playlist. Sadly, I’ve run out of time today for me to tell you about the rap battle I want you to engaged in with Eminem, but you’ll just have to imagine how badly I would’ve been crushed. Not all white guys can. This is Jared Correia reminding you that while the Wing TT is worn by many colleges, universities in high school, Michigan still does it best.

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