Productivity Software; What an IT Managed Service Provider Can Do For You; & “Hard Choices”—Boston Edition

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Legal to get with Jared Correia, with guest Mike Doherty. We play Hard Choices, Boston Edition, and then all this new AI tech is commonly described as a black box, but we show, if you dig deep enough, it’s just powered by assholes. But first, your host, Jared Correia.

Jared Correia:

It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast where all your dreams come true. That is, unless your dreams are expensive, because we do not have the production budget for that shit. And yes, it’s still called a Legal Toolkit podcast, even though I don’t know what a pry bar is, unless it’s an actual dive bar in Tallahassee, then I know it. I’m your host, Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Fred Rogers was unavailable. He’s hanging you with Daniel Tiger, but not the new stupid one. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm consulting at business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find us [email protected]. Now, before we get to our interview today about modern IT services for law firms, with my guy Mike Doherty of MikroDots, I wanted to wax poetic a bit about productivity software, which Shakespeare I believe was known to do at times as well.

So let’s string some couplets together. Everybody, yes, productivity software. It’s the broccoli of software. No one wants to talk about it. It’s really boring. Email calendar, big deal. I’ve had that since I had a fucking A OL account. I had AIM Messenger at that point as well. Life was good. Life was good in the nineties. Now I don’t know how many years do I have left until AI kills me. Now, unlike law practice management software, customer relationship management software, of which there are a number of options available, there are not many viable options that people actually use when it comes to productivity software. Unless you’re one of those freaks who uses open source productivity software, it’s fucking obnoxious. Just buy Google or Microsoft. Okay, so really two and in legal Microsoft 365, which is, do I say this? Yeah, probably the cloud-based version of Microsoft Office.

Most popular productivity software for law firms with a bullet. Almost everybody uses it. Some law firms use Google Workspace exclusively, and that number’s going up, but not significantly. I think a lot of lawyers actually use both Microsoft and Google. I do, I guess I’m not a real lawyer anymore, but I do use Microsoft for my work and Google for my personal life, which is very complicated. I won’t get into it anyway. It’s kind of like the accounting software choice. Everybody uses QuickBooks and then a small sliver. People use Xero and then a number of other random apps. So why do people use Microsoft 365 still even like what is it, 50 years now after Bill Gates and people were designing PCs and it’s garage in California. It’s because of Mikrosoft Word. It’s the killer app and it’s only the killer app because not many people use Word perfect anymore.

Although you can still buy the choral suite if you’re a real asshole. So when I talk about productivity software, the first thing that probably comes to mind, well maybe you don’t even use that term. A lot of people don’t. They just think of it as email software, but I call it productivity software because it’s a lot of other shit in it that is really helpful to you in the running of your business. So it’s got email and calendar, but it’s also got a bunch of other stuff that most business owners are under utilizing or not using at all. So the problem with that is that you buy other software and you’re paying twice for software you have access to within a productivity suite that you already own. Now, that’s not always a bad thing because you may be like, Hey, yeah, I know I’ve got video conferencing in Microsoft, but it blows which it does.

I’d rather use Zoom. Okay, cool. Using just the best in class software. I agree, I’m here for you, but at least know about the features before you go buy another one. So what’s interesting is over the course of time, Google Workspace, which is what it’s called now, because Google changes the name of their applications like every other week has kind of come into line with what Microsoft formerly office now 365 is offering in terms of applications, in terms of costs, which are relatively the same. So what I wanted to do was pinpoint some of the features in these softwares that you may not be using and or may not even be aware of. And I’m going to start with most common, most commonly used, I would say to least commonly used. Let’s start with the obvious ones. And as you’ll see, the pricing is about the same as well, but the feature says the same.

So every time I give you a Google version, I’m going to give you the Microsoft Analog slides is PowerPoint for Google Docs is word for Google, sorry, A frog in my throat was telling me that Docs is a piece of shit compared to Word. It’s a terrible product. I’m not even one of these hardass lawyers who want to do reveal codes and Word perfect and continue to live for that. I live for the mid nineties. Remember, not Word perfect. I couldn’t give two shits about Word perfect. So word’s still better, much better. And I don’t know if Google’s going to be investing in a drafting software. I think they’ve given up the ghost on this at this point. Hey, people are using Word okay, or at least lawyers are using Word whatevs, so I’m not going to dwell on it either. Then you go one drive for Microsoft and Google Drive for Google, which is where you share your documents.

If you’re listening to this and you have a physical server, please tape a kick me sign to your back right now and then go buy a cloud-based document storage tool, which will replace your server, your physical server that you will never have to replace again, sheer point in Microsoft sites in Google basically allows you to establish an intranet where you share documents, files, et cetera, with internal and potentially external people. We did a whole episode on the difference between OneDrive and SharePoint and Microsoft. It’s worth the listen because I still really don’t know the difference. Alright, then you’ve got Google Forms and Microsoft Forms. You can use that for intake forms for example, if you wanted to, but you may use Built-in tools for that in other softwares, like it’ll offer practice management software, your CRM software. Google has Google Meet for video conferencing. Microsoft has Teams, which is the hindenberg of video conferencing.

Google Tasks is Google’s internal task management tool. Microsoft has something called to-dos, very similar, super basic task management software. If you want anything robust, if you want any kind of automations, go with something different. Go with a standalone task management software. Try to use what’s available in some of your other products like those law practice management softwares and customer relationship management softwares. Google Voice is Google’s VoIP application. Microsoft Teams actually has a VoIP system as well. I’ve heard bad things. I can’t tell you how much I hate Microsoft Teams. It’s like the worst software out there. I’m actually trying to hide my disdain for it right now. Getting back to the calendar, Microsoft has a cool feature. Yes, that’s right. I said it called Microsoft Bookings, which is sort of like Microsoft’s version of Calendly or Acuity. Google also has an online appointment booking software.

I don’t believe it has a formal name though, but they’ll probably change it to Google event at some point or something stupid like that. Alright, next note. Taking software. You like Evernote, you’ve heard of Evernote. Well, Microsoft’s got a tool called OneNote that’s like that. As it turns out, Google’s got a Ciro tool called Keep Notetaking trial notebooks. You want to do those? This is a good place to do that as well. Let’s get to some hard ass stuff, which I really like. Microsoft and Google both have authenticators, which are tied to apps, which is the most secure way to get a second factor of authentication in the year of our Lord 2024. So you’ve got Google Authenticator, you’ve got Microsoft Authenticator that’s going to allow you to set up the second factor authentication within those systems, but then also for other systems as well.

So I love that really underutilized tool in either the Google Workspace Suite or the Microsoft 365 program. Now, we couldn’t get through a monologue without talking about ai. So let’s talk about ai. Two things. Google has something called Gemini, which is their generative AI tool, which was formerly called Bard, hence the Shakespeare reference from before. Remember that? Yeah, this is all planned out and strung together. I’m not just pontificating here. You’ve got Bing copilot, which is Microsoft’s version of a generative AI tool. Gemini is more closely tied to the Google Workspace product. Then copilot is tied to Microsoft 365. But both platforms, both workspace and 365 have what I would call an AI overlay. At this point, Microsoft is called copilot, real fucking original guys, and Google’s is called Duet. So for a mere $30 additional a month, which is by the way more than double what both these programs cost in the version I’d recommend you buying that will provide you AI writing assistance, image and document generation summaries, meeting agendas, task lists, et cetera, et cetera.

So if you are all in on the AI revolution, which I’m not quite all in on, you can get your AI overlay in your productivity software now for 30 bucks a month. Now if you don’t have that, then the software products are going to run you around 12 bucks a month. So both Microsoft and Google call the product that I think law firm should buy at a baseline level. You can go higher than this. The business standard version is 12 bucks a month per user for Google is 1250 a month per user for Microsoft. Add on the AI products and that’s about 42 bucks a month. Still a pretty good deal, although Big Brother would be watching you at that point closely like a hawk. Why is Microsoft 50 cents more? Call it the word tax I guess. Speaking of which we’re done with this monologue and we’re going to carry on with the rest of the podcast now.

As you can see, it’s called productivity software for a reason. Now let’s get to step in and be productive about the last two segments of the show. Now before we talk with Mike Dougherty of Mikrodots about MSPs, don’t know what that is, don’t turn off the show now. Let’s hear a little something from our sponsors before we get there. Then we’ll get into a rump roast that Jack Kennedy would love almost as much as he loves loved past tense infidelity. Alright everybody, let’s get back to it. Let’s hit the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting sandwich. Today’s meat is roast beef, the most disgusting meat of them all. Alright, and then let’s get to our guest interview. It’s what you’ve been waiting for today. We have another first time guest on the Legal Toolkit, which is kind of a travesty, I should have had him on before, but it’s Mike Doherty, the founder and CEO at Mikrodots. Mike, thank you. You’re making your long awaited appearance. How are you doing?

Michael Doherty:

I’m doing great, Jared. It’s good to see you again.

Jared Correia:

I feel like it’s been too long. So I want people to get to know you a little bit. So you started an IT company and you’re running it now. So I kind of want to know how did you get into that space? You decide to launch your own company? Tell you, I was talking with a lawyer the other day and he was like, ever since I was six years old I wanted to be a solo attorney. I’m like, that’s fucked up. When I was six years old I wanted to play professional baseball. So what’s like your founder’s story here? Why do you like this? Why’d you do it?

Michael Doherty:

The truth is I’m kind of just a crappy employee.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, me too.

Michael Doherty:

I wish it would. Yeah, I mean I wish I had this great story. I really enjoyed the jobs I had and the opportunities I had at lots of places. I got to travel the world working for certain companies and stuff. It was great. But what I found is my limit was two and a half years and I’d just be like, I’d get antsy. It’s like I got to do something else. I’m not one to phone it in either. So if I got to a point where I’m like, I’m not providing the value that I promised, it’s like it’s time to move on. And so what happened is I had started doing the building PCs in 1992 or three, somewhere around there. Interesting. And I was doing it as a hobby and back then a PC was like $4,000 back in early nineties. So I’d started with building them for some people that I knew that had companies and just doing it for cost and as a hobby. And then it’s like, yeah, you can actually make a living at this. So I actually launched Mikrodots in 1995, officially in 96, I guess.

Jared Correia:

Okay. So back to the present day for a moment. A lot of attorneys I talked to, they’re like, Hey, I want IT services, but I want to access it on an as needed basis. So I need some shit. I call somebody up, they charge me by the hour. However,

Michael Doherty:

However

Jared Correia:

Most IT vendors now, including you, you’re set up as a managed service provider. People have probably also heard the term MSP, you were talking about what it was starting out. It’s much different now in terms of the way services are provided. So I don’t know that everybody has a sense of what that means, what it is to work with an MSP. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it’s different from those traditional IT services?

Michael Doherty:

Well, there’s a couple of things that really stand out. First off, the first scenario, the break fix, it simply means it’s broken, come fix it. That’s break fix. And usually what you have is, is what people want. They want a guy that they can call when something’s

Jared Correia:

Broken. I got my guy, right?

Michael Doherty:

Yeah, I got my guy. Well, the problem is that guy has other obligations and it’s a guy or a guy. It’s

Jared Correia:

Usually one dude or one lady.

Michael Doherty:

So if they’re working for somebody else or they’re on vacation, or more likely than not, they’ve been doing it for several years and they’re so burnt out that they’re barely functioning anymore. That’s unfortunately what happens to the guy because it’s typically a one to three person shop and it’s too much ground to cover. And the other issue with it is just by its nature, break fix is entirely reactive, which means everything’s an emergency. So you’re never ahead of it. And this actually affects the smaller firms a lot more. Believe it or not. People think, well we need managed services only in a bigger company. It’s really not that way. And small firms are tough because if you have five people and somebody can’t print, that’s 20% of your workforce is dead in the water. And the law firms, the law firms that we take care of that have a hundred people, it’s like nobody notices. It’s like, oh, and plus they have other resources. Well can’t you print down the hall? Oh yeah. So they’ll have other options and everything else. So the smaller firms really, they don’t have any economy of scale. So it really makes, it’s really a tough place and managed service providers, we’ve managed to create a product for the smaller firms, but it’s a tough space to work in. Yeah,

Jared Correia:

Okay. So that’s an interesting point. The other part of this I think is just the natural inclination of a lot of service businesses these days to adopt that subscription based model. So part of this is a financial component. It’s steady income, steady payments, and I think on the consumer side it’s also like, Hey, I know what I’m going to for IT services every month. Yeah,

Michael Doherty:

It’s a little deeper than that even because you think of the break fix or what some people call will call kind of services, they’re making bank while you’re losing money, you are dead in the water and you’re paying them to fix your stuff, right? So you’re getting hit well, you’re getting hit from both

Jared Correia:

Sides. That’s a good way to look at it too.

Michael Doherty:

So that’s kind of where we run into issues with that. You’re not aligned with your provider then They’re not monitoring anything. They’re waiting. They’re just waiting for it to break. And it’s a tough spot. And again, I’m not bashing that model. It’s a tough spot to be that guy that shows up every time the client sees you, it’s bad and they’re writing a check. Well, it can create a lot of problems between the service provider and the client. It’s tough to maintain that business relationship.

Jared Correia:

But I think you bring up a lot of good points here. I think a lot of people look at the MSP thing and they’re like, okay, I have to be a certain size to access that. I mean, I think it’s more about what needs they have. So what’s your position on that? Can you be too small for an MSP or is it more like, Hey, here’s what I need and this is a service product that fits it.

Michael Doherty:

It often depends on the type of law they practice and stuff and how dependent they are on their devices and computers, which almost all practice areas do now. But some are way more dependent by insurance defense clients. It’s like they have so many compliance requirements. So that’s part of it. It’s also how technical are you? And the third part is do you want to practice law or do you want to practice it? The value in an MSP is first our goals align and we get this question. It’s kind of funny in an ironic sense, people we’ll get the question when we take over. They’re used to a break fix model and I actually had a managing partner of a law firm say this to his business manager. He said to her, why do we pay Mikrodots all this money? We never have any problems.

Jared Correia:

Let me finish that for you. Why don’t you think you have any problems?

Michael Doherty:

Right. Well, to her credit, the office managers didn’t even try to answer. She said, you get rid of Mikrodots, I quit.

Jared Correia:

Oh, that’s

Michael Doherty:

Awesome. Well, she had come from the old model and it’s like, look, this was a few years back and technology is a lot more reliable these days, but all the principles still apply, but it’s more reliable. But we rely on it a hundred times more than we used to. It’s not like the urgency hasn’t gone away.

Jared Correia:

It’s really interesting the way you describe it because a psychological component to this that I hadn’t considered, which is in the break fix model, you’re always around and there are problems. And then this other model, you just smooth over the problems. Alright, so let’s talk about one specific issue that I see with firms. I want to do the question about how do law firms interact with their clients over data security? But I think one of the best reasons to hire an MSP is to gain some level of control over setting up and managing data security systems, which I think law firms really struggle with if they’re trying to do it on their own or using one of these ad hoc IT services. Can you talk about that a

Michael Doherty:

Little bit? Absolutely. This is one of the biggest things we come across, honestly, in law firms specifically you guys, you’re supposed to be as efficient and effective as you can. And every piece of security we put in play takes away from that. And they’re always, it’s funny, people are like, oh Mike, you want to turn on MFA multifactor authentication to all these things and it’s a pain for the end users. I’m like, it’s no joy for us either. So yeah, we’re kind of control freaks in it, but this is necessary stuff these days. And Massachusetts two on CMR 17, yeah,

Jared Correia:

We got a data security law, the state, but every state does too.

Michael Doherty:

They do, but Massachusetts kind of let off. That’s kind of moved into more of the NIST stuff, national Institute of Standard and Technologies. That’s where it all falls from today. And so it’s more of a national kind of thing. The problem is what we see in the insurance defense is the best example because the insurers we’re finally at where they had to do their cybersecurity and now it’s rolled down to second tier and third trickle down

Jared Correia:

Cybersecurity. Is that what you told

Michael Doherty:

Me? Shit rolls downhill as they say. So what they do is they do, if you are representing them, they want you to do a third party threat assessment to retain their business. So what we’re getting is, hey, do this or bye-bye, right? So their business is relying on that. Those are now at the first tier one. So if you’re working with a firm already, it probably hasn’t come to you yet, but it will eventually. It’s going to get to where they have to ensure that you are doing what you’re supposed to. Now law firms, they manage to get a couple of carve out for certain things too. HIPAA is a funny place for lawyers because you guys kind of got a pass, but you probably don’t want to take that pass. You probably want to put the right stuff in place, but it’s being forced by the clients of forcing the third party service providers to get their act together with cybersecurity. So what our clients are running into, even though we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years, Hey, we got to get on this. Do it

Jared Correia:

Yourself.

Michael Doherty:

Yeah, yeah. Well, so what we did, of course we do all the cybersecurity controls underneath the hood, but what they’re looking for for these third party threat assessments, the assessment’s pretty onerous. It’s 300 plus questions. And even the questions are somewhat vague and outdated. They don’t really track to modern NIST as they should, but that’s what it is.

Jared Correia:

So let’s talk about this now then. Is it always like this long form application style thing of their document requests? And just to be clear, you manage all that stuff on behalf of the law firms and they sign off on it, which would be a great reason to work with an MSP if you had those clients, if you did nothing else, I feel like.

Michael Doherty:

Well, absolutely. And out of the gate, I like to warn people that look, don’t just sign the stuff you’re attesting to this. Don’t just sign it because your IT guy said sign it. There’s a reason that it has to be someone in-house that’s responsible for cybersecurity. I’m not responsible for your cybersecurity when it comes to who said we were okay, we’re the third party that did all the work and stuff. When they come and say, Hey, there’s a problem, you better know that your third party IT people did their job for you because it puts people in a phony spot. They have no idea what the stuff even means, but they have.

Jared Correia:

Right, and to your point, Massachusetts law and a lot of other states require there to be someone in the business who’s like the monitor for all this stuff. So that’s a great point that you make.

Michael Doherty:

So it’s someone in the business is attesting to it. You can’t really get arm’s length by just hiring a cybersecurity third party. And the other part that people think in that same vein is like, oh, I gave that to Mikrodots. We’re all set. It’s like, no, this pulls it back to your question is there’s a big section of this that’s about policy. So it’s like all your use policies, your data use policies, even to social media use and all these other things, AI

Jared Correia:

Use policies probably are going to come into play there too.

Michael Doherty:

Those are coming and there’s always a lag, but it’s accelerated now. It used to be this stuff that we’re talking about, it’s not new, it’s just new to the client base at this point. So we’ve been putting all the controls in place for years, and this is a big difference between a guy and a managed service provider, is that we’ve already built the foundation and we maintain it. And now when we hit with these 300 and something questions we deliver, our solution stack is designed to check 200 of those boxes. So I know if we implemented our stuff, I can rip through and go, we’re good on all these. It still leaves you a hundred questions roughly. And those are going to be about this stuff that people don’t think about. Physical security of your building. And then policies, people will write a policy of, oh, personal information is in this second drawer of the file cabinet and only Jane has keys. It’s like, well, what happens if Jane goes on vacation? Oh yeah. People will never

Jared Correia:

Think about that. Yeah. I got one more question for you and I think it relates to that. So if somebody’s out there and they’re like, okay, I definitely don’t want to manage all this stuff. How do I find an MSP? How do I vet them? What kind of questions do I ask? And related to that, I think is the question of, I see a lot of firms who want to move into the cloud, for example, and they have these old school IT guys they’re working with and they’re very into desktop systems. But as soon as you start asking questions about how do you manage a cloud software? Here come the acronyms. Yeah,

Michael Doherty:

Right.

Jared Correia:

How do you find a modern provider? If you’re a law firm and you’re listening to this and you’re like, I hadn’t really heard of this. This is a cool idea. What do I do next? Well,

Michael Doherty:

Referrals are the best. If you talk to some, well, you’re a perfect example. Jared, these people work with you already. You have known entities

Jared Correia:

Very with happy to refer out to you. I think you guys do a good job

Michael Doherty:

Or we’re not right for everyone either. So if you have someone that’s better suited for that client, be it geographic location or it just makes more sense then, but whatever you do when it’s a position of trust and what happens, here’s another way to say it. When you are sitting around the conference room table interviewing a potential managed service provider, and you’re asking questions like, oh, what tools do you use? And it’s like, that means you’re not comfortable yet because that’s like going to your mechanic and he says, Hey, look, I have wrenches. And you’re like, good. He has tools. It’s like you didn’t prove anything. Any managed service provider is going to have the proper tools and the remote access and the monitoring. There’s a list of a hundred different things that we have to have in play to even think about being a managed service provider. But it truly comes down to you trust them. And I understand that’s a tough place to get to. So see if you can get someone,

Jared Correia:

But you have to have conversations around that. Talk to

Michael Doherty:

People. Absolutely. And don’t be afraid to have those informal. If the guy’s coming in with a PowerPoint selling you, it’s like just say, Hey, why don’t we run over to Dunking Donuts for coffee? See, this is someone, well, this is someone that’s going to

Jared Correia:

Have, that’s a good idea.

Michael Doherty:

Well, they’re going to have access to all your stuff now. And people get worried about that. It’s like, well, first off, you’re servicing a couple thousand clients. I don’t have time to look at your stuff. But we do have access to it, so it better be trusting. You read my, yeah. Are you reading my email? But that’s a

Jared Correia:

Concern that lawyers has I my

Michael Doherty:

Own email course.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, exactly. I think, yeah, it’s a time thing. That’s a good point. So

Michael Doherty:

That’s a big deal. Get to where you trust, get the referrals. Whoever they list for references, call their references and ask questions. Ask the questions like, well, when’s the last time you had a bunch of downtime? How long did it take ’em to fix stuff for you? Have they ever lost any data? The way we built our deliverables, so we deliver, we include the servers and we include all that equipment so that we know what works. And it’s not great to go in and have your client buy all the stuff, but that’s an aside. We control the stack of equipment so that it’s like Rich, put another one

Jared Correia:

In there, which I think would be appealing to a busy lawyer potentially.

Michael Doherty:

Oh, it is. And we actually do everything redundantly too, so we can have a server fail. And this is even with our smallest clients. It’s like, okay, that failed. Alright, try it now and we’re good. We have the equipment already in place, but that’s kind of an aside. RPO and RTO. Good old acronyms, recovery point, objective and recovery time objective, recovery point, objective stated. Another way is how much data are you willing to lose? That’s your recovery point. How far back in time do we have to go if we have a problem to put us back? And Mikro DOT’s goal is to keep that under an hour, which is, it’s a lofty goal, but we’ve been pretty good at hitting that. So recovery point objective. So how long, Hey, if we lost a server, is it days, weeks? It can be. And ours, we would like to, we already have the redundant equipment, OnPrem.

That’s why we can do what we do. The second half of the recovery point objective is the recovery time objective and recovery times. How long does it take for you guys to put us back in business? Say we lost a server, the server crashed, or how long does it take to put everything back together and how much data are we going to lose? RPO and RTO? Ask that question. Don’t get too hung up on the acronyms. If they don’t know what RPO and RTO is, I wouldn’t hold that against them, but there was a kind of comment in the industry. But yeah, how much data are we going to lose in an incident and how long to put us back to work? Mikrodots shooting for an hour maximum on recovery point, maximum hour of data that would have to be redone. The recovery time objective we’re looking for under four hours. Once we determine that, hey, you lost an entire server. So that’s the goal. Ours is one hour and four hours, so it’s tough to beat, actually. I

Jared Correia:

Think this has been really instructive. People have a lot of questions that they can ask now to their vendors. Definitely look at an MSP. Do you have time to stick around for another segment even though you don’t have any idea what we’re going to talk about?

Michael Doherty:

Oh yeah. I think, yeah, I’m good. I’m good. I’m happy. Check clock. Good. Good. I’m having a blast, so I’m good. Yeah, let’s keep going.

Jared Correia:

Alright, 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 to the rear end of the Legal Toolkit podcast, everybody. That’s right, we’re back after. It’s the Rump Roast. It’s the grab bag of short form topics. All of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Because I’m the host, Mike, I’m launching a new game today just for you. I think you might like this and I think this could become a recurring segment for us. So I want to do something. I’m going to call, because you’re a Boston guy, I think it’s fair to say you’re a Boston guy,

Michael Doherty:

Right? Yeah. Okay. Can you tell by the accent?

Jared Correia:

Alright, so I’m calling this one Hard Choices Boston Edition, or maybe I should call it Hard Choices, Boston

Michael Doherty:

Edition.

Jared Correia:

Well, we couldn’t get Bill Burrs, so we got Mike Dougherty with us, who I think is going to be great. So this is pretty simple. I’m going to ask you some tough questions that represent difficult decisions for Bostonians, and I would like you to educate the nation on how you would choose. So are you

Michael Doherty:

Ready? Oh boy. Yeah. This rump is about to be roasted. Go ahead. I’m ready as I could possibly be.

Jared Correia:

This is a really tough one. Okay, would you rather attend? You got four choices. Game seven of a Red Sox World Series home game, game seven of Celtics, NBA playout, NBA finals home game game, seven of the Stanley Cup finals Bruin’s home game, or a Patriots Super Bowl. So you got all four Boston teams. Where would you most like to be situated as our resident Boston guy?

Michael Doherty:

Oh man, I want to drive the Zamboni for the Bruins in the playoffs. That’s my choice. I don’t want to be up crowd. You up

Jared Correia:

Crowd. Don’t even care about the Cub finals. You just want to drive. The Zamboni

Michael Doherty:

Are, we can zag. It means I can stand on the glass and watch the whole thing, but I want to be that guy in between the periods.

Jared Correia:

Even for regular season game, you would value that over like a Patriot Super

Michael Doherty:

Bowl. No, no, no. I’m impressed. I’m talking NHL Stanley Cup playoffs

Jared Correia:

Is where I want to do that. Stanley Cup playoffs,

Michael Doherty:

Game seven, I mean, yeah. Stanley Cup playoffs. Yeah, absolutely. Well, for Boston fans, it gets a little, we have to know what team they’re playing against, how much we hate them. That inspires us to go more.

Jared Correia:

I should have known the answer to that one. All right, I got another one for you. We got six of these. Here’s number two. If you were driving from Southeastern Massachusetts to Northeastern Massachusetts, or vice versa, you got to go through Boston. Do you take 93 and drive through the city, or do you take 95 and drive around the city? I feel like this is an eternal debate.

Michael Doherty:

Yeah. It truly depends on the time of day. What

Jared Correia:

A perfect answer.

Michael Doherty:

Well, yeah. Well, here’s the thing. 93, let’s take out the serious rush hour traffic in the afternoon. Yes. Okay. So 93 from start through Boston. If you love some excitement, man, that’s the place to get it. A little bump of cars on the way. Little sides swiping on 93 is not an accident, by the way. People just wave and keep going.

Jared Correia:

Right? Moving

Michael Doherty:

Along. Yeah. 95. If you’re looking for a less stressful ride, going around the city is probably better. And I’m in Woburn, so I am. I’m at the crossroads of 93 and 95, so it’s a good question to

Jared Correia:

Ask me. Right? I feel like you are the per person to ask all these questions too. Here’s your next one, another hot topic, bone of contention. What is your preferred northern New England vacation destination? Do you go to Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine?

Michael Doherty:

Oh man. Well, my family has way, well, this is a tough one. My family has a place in northern New Hampshire, so that’s where I go most often. And I love stove, Vermont. It’s absolutely beautiful. That’s Py. Also ride a motorcycle. I got to tell you, Vermont is just a gorgeous motorcycle riding state. Now you’ve got my wheel turn. New Hampshire made absolutely stunning too for motorcycle riding. But Vermont’s got those rolling Green Hills you can see forever made in New Hampshire, more mountainous. So you are in and out of the views, but the views are stellar there too. So if I had to, oh man. If I had to pick, I think Stove ’em on is still one of my favorite places. Yeah,

Jared Correia:

Yeah. I like it. If you live in Northern New Hampshire, send your hate mail to Mike Doherty, care of Mike Dust.

Michael Doherty:

Just remember you said vacation. I’m thinking, well, we have a place, so it’s kind of like one of those kind of funny, it’s like,

Jared Correia:

So feel free to offer another option here. I’m just talking about my favorite places. But if you are in downtown Boston for lunch, where do you go? I like Choros Chilean sandwiches. I like Sam La grasses, pastrami sandwiches with brown sugar. Would you choose one of those? Or if you were in town for lunch for a day, where would you go?

Michael Doherty:

Oh boy, I can’t remember the name. There’s a sandwich shop that, it’s kind of like Seinfeld Soup Nazi. You better know what you want when you get to that counter man. They’ll make you stand aside. I can’t remember that name of it. It’s going to drive me crazy.

Jared Correia:

That’s all right. We’ll update the show notes everywhere.

Michael Doherty:

If you want the real Boston experience, it’s like you get up there and saying, Hey, look, roast beef three ways. They’re like step aside. It’s like if you don’t know what you want, they’re really like, don’t waste my time. It can be a little intimidating, but it’s all fun. But so that’s at the other one is, I mean, if you could set the food aside for lunch, fan hall in the spring is just

Jared Correia:

Wonderful. Yes, that’s a good spot. Food, they got a food core. Plenty of stuff to do down there.

Michael Doherty:

Yeah, the food probably better off Brown bagging it, but whatever. It’s very touristy. But in the spring, right, you hit one of those beautiful spring days, you get the

Jared Correia:

Right day.

Michael Doherty:

The people watching is superb in that spot.

Jared Correia:

Okay, so let me ask you that. That’s a perfect segue to my next question. I couldn’t choose between Chare and Sam Mcgras, by the way. Both. Great Santa.

Michael Doherty:

Okay.

Jared Correia:

Now, let’s say you take you to lunch and you sit outside and Fan Hill Hall is not available to you. What is your preferred destination? Boston Common or Boston Public Garden. Do you have a preference?

Michael Doherty:

As long as it’s not the Fenway, we’re good.

Jared Correia:

Okay.

Michael Doherty:

Boston Common’s great, but if you want less people, you can go to the botanical gardens and those are kind of cool too. And then the public gardens too. It’s just like Boston people. Boston is a living city. People that come from other places don’t understand that everybody walks in. Boston’s a tiny city and

Jared Correia:

That is very true. It’s super walkable. Yeah.

Michael Doherty:

And the public gardens are active public gardens. Residents of Boston are farming in downtown Boston. They got these little lots and stuff. It’s great. It’s great. And you can wander around in there and don’t have your lunch too, so it’s all good.

Jared Correia:

I’m looking forward to the start of your mayoral campaign. Last question for you. I think I’m teeing you up on this one because I think you got an alternative option here as well. But if you’re driving into town for an event, what do you do? Are you bold enough to try to find on street parking, or do you just give up and go to a parking garage?

Michael Doherty:

Do I have to give up my secret?

Jared Correia:

You don’t have to. You don’t have

Michael Doherty:

To. I’m going to anyways. Alright. I take one of my company’s cars, one of my company vehicles because they have commercial plates and I can park in commercial

Jared Correia:

Zones. Brilliant.

Michael Doherty:

Don’t tell

Jared Correia:

Anyone. Don’t tell anybody. If you’re listening to this,

Michael Doherty:

Don’t

Jared Correia:

Mention any of this.

Michael Doherty:

It’s

Jared Correia:

A secret. Yeah. Good reason to start a business. Everybody. Mike, thank you for being our Boston guide. I knew you would shine in this role and thanks again for coming on the show. This was a lot of fun. I’m

Michael Doherty:

Game anytime, man. Thank you.

Jared Correia:

If you want to find out more about Mike Doherty and his work at Mikrodots, visit Mikrodots.com. That’s M-I-K-R-O-D-O-T s.com. Mikro dots.com. Check ’em out. Now. For those of you listening in Boston, Lincoln Shire, England, you can eat a fat dick because we won the Revolutionary War Bitches. This episode’s playlist represents Boston’s best, Boston, Massachusetts, and it’s only on Spotify. It’s only attached to this show. So not to jump the gun, but you may be asking yourself, no new kids on the block, no marking Mark and the funky bunch. Yeah, I have a longstanding beef with the Wahlbergs. They just dunno anything about it. Now, sadly, I’ve run out of time today to talk about how Sam Altman is an asshole for trying to co-opt Scarlet Johansen’s voice in sky. See, you can’t trust these AI motherfuckers. I told you, actually, I’ll probably get back to this later. This is Jared Correia reminding you that short-term memory loss is a real problem in America. Wait, what the fuck was I talking about?

Continue Reading