Founder Stories: Lawmatics — And the Greatest Rap Diss Tracks of All Time

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

It is Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia with guests Matt Spiegel and Bobby Orozco. We talk the best distracts and read you in on a little cultural literacy. And then hopefully we’ll run out of time before Jared can talk endlessly about the Celtics win. But first, your host Jared Correia

Jared Correia:

It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast where we’ve got beef with literally everyone. This is really just an ongoing distract that never ends. And yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast, even though I don’t even know what a laser level is. That’s because I simply requested fricking sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads. Is that too much to ask? I’m your host Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Fab Five, Freddie and Ed Lover were both unavailable. Yo Legal Toolkit wraps, you just wait. I’m the CEO O 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 about CRMs for law firms with Lawmatics, CEO, Matt Spiegel, let’s first address the primary question, why should law firms even have CRMs? Alright, so what’s the crm? You may be asking yourself.

It stands for Customer Relationship Management Software. Now, you may be saying to yourself as well, those are all just words to me. What the fuck are you talking about? So simplest way to think of this is that it is intake software. It is a lead management software, and that’s particularly important for attorneys because attorneys have ethical rules tied to when someone becomes the client of the law firm. And when they’re in that pre-client state, when they’re a lead, there’s less stuff that you can do to or for them as the lawyer. So I think it’s really important to split those things up into two separate softwares or at least two instances in the single software. So you have the front office lead management and the end of the back office client management. So as I’ll talk about in a moment with Matt Spiegel, Clio launches in 2008, rocket Matter launches in 2008, they’re still debating which one came first.

I couldn’t care less. My case comes out in 2009. So you’ve got all these successful law practice management softwares launching at the same time, and what do they do? They manage clients. And what is the sincerest form of flattery that would be imitation? So everybody sees these products working well and they’re like, you know what? Relational databases for managing clients and law firms, that is the way to go. Let’s do that. Let’s do more of that. So oh eight to probably 2020 ish. Everybody’s building client management tools. You got hundreds of these products, maybe thousands. And what I think really put the intake model over the top, how do we manage leads as a law firm was the pandemic. All of a sudden, you can’t have people walking into your office. You can’t have people throwing a stack of cash on your desk. Nobody’s signing things with physical pen and paper anymore.

Lawyers are fucked because that’s basically all they did. So pandemic hits. Now you need a virtual intake pathway. Now the problem is there’s hundreds of case management softwares, client management softwares, but there’s very few legal specific legal focused CRMs. And not that you actually need a legal CRM, we’ll talk about that in a second. It is advantageous in some cases though, to have a tool for your industry, but you need something and lawyers just aren’t using those tools for the most part. Law practice management software, uptick usage has gone through the roof up to the pandemic, right? A lot of law firms are using that. Almost every law firm uses it now because the pandemic is behind us. But at that point, hardly anybody who was using the intake software, even though they’re using the LPM software. So that happens Now, it’s become a little bit of a different world.

So the primary way that law firms are intaking leads is through this virtual model oftentimes using, or the law firms that are doing it right in my opinion, are using an intake tool like A CRM. And that analog option still exists, but it’s more of a backing track, like the old cassette tapes we know and love. So if you’ve got an elderly person or if you get somebody who doesn’t like the fact that there’s hardly any privacy on the internet, you’ve got those people opting out. And they may come in and they may hand you a check or they may give you a bag of cash, they may sign something with a pen, but most people aren’t going to do that. So the primary model now is a virtual intake. And what do you need for that? Well, you need intake software. That’s where the CRM comes in.

So what does the CRM do now? We know what it is. What does it do? I think it does at least a few important things. So the first thing A CRM does that I like is it creates a pipeline. That’s the way it’s referred to in that type of software. And that’s effectively like a workflow for your intake process, that client journey. You may have heard that term before. How does somebody move from being a lead to a client or a purchaser? It’s through this pipeline. There are stages and the steps are pretty obvious at this point. There’s at least seven major steps. So the first thing I want to do is figure out where my referral sources are coming from. I got to track those. Sometimes that’s manual, like somebody calls you up and you got to figure out how they heard from you.

So they say, Hey, did you do a Google search? Did you click on an advertisement of some kind? And maybe that’s a paid advertisement. And if it is, you’ve got these things called UTM codes in the software, which can track paid advertising automatically. You could use a software to track calls as well. A CallRail would be an example of that. So basically you want to define down where the referral comes from so you can see how successful that was or not. All the software is going to do that for you at this point, even if it’s a manual entry, I prefer the less manual route as you’ll soon discover the automated option. So look for that first. Next step is you got to do a conflict check, and that’s always manual at this point. Now, I think there’s a lot of promise in terms of AI being able to effectively perform conflict checks for lawyers.

But that’s not happening right now, and I don’t know when that’s going to be viable. I’m not sure. We’ll see. The third piece is scheduling that initial consultation. That’s either going to be on Zoom or in person. And so you want to make that request. And usually that’s a feature that’s built into the software or an integrated tool. Think Calendly. Number four is you want to determine whether or not you’re hiring the client. That’s the manual part of the process that a lawyer’s going to do. So the lawyer’s going to make the call as to whether that hire is going to be made, whether they’re going to convert the client. Fifth, you need to send a payment request and closely tied to that is sixth. You’re going to need to send an engagement agreement for signature. You can make, as you’ll find out from Matt in a second, payments on retainers, payments on flat fees in A CRM before you move those leads into the client phase in a case management software.

And it may be more advantageous and streamlined a process for you to do that. And then the last step is you take that lead profile. If the client converts, once they’ve made their payment, once they’ve signed their engagement agreement, and you move that into the law practice management software. That’s basically how your pipeline is going to work. In almost every instance in A CRM, what’s really helpful there is follow up architecture. So if somebody doesn’t schedule an appointment, if somebody doesn’t make a payment request, if somebody doesn’t sign something, you want to follow up with that person, but you don’t want to rely on a human to do that. Automation is the key here. You send those follow ups and you need a system that’s intelligent enough to know when the person has done what you’ve asked them so they can move to the next stage.

And lastly, something I think Matt does a good job during our interview, which is coming up in a second, is the reporting piece. You’re capturing all this information including lead types, lead source. You can run some process metrics on here. How long does it take me to get from point A to point B in the client journey? All that stuff is available in the reporting in a good CRM. So there are different flavors of CRMs. There’s at least three that I would categorize. The first is what I would call a light CRM, that’s a CRM or a basic intake tool that’s built into another software. If you’re looking for examples out in the wild, my case Mass first company, they have a light CRM. I can create a pipeline, I can create an intake form, I can do some general reporting. The second type of CRM, kind of beyond that would be a CRM that does all the stuff I talked about but doesn’t have the automations.

That would be kind of a manual CRM. Those tools are going to be cheaper. Obviously, you’re going to be paying already for the light CRM that you’re using in another software in terms of the manual CRM, you’re going to be paying less for that because the automations is a real thing that people want. That’s like the killer app when we’re talking about CRMs. So that’s where the price is going to be a little bit higher. And that’s the third option, the automation piece. And Lawmatics would be an example of that. There are a bunch of other softwares that do that as well, both inside and outside of legal. But this I think is a key piece. So if you buy a basic CRM that doesn’t have the automations, you may be paying like 50, 60 bucks a month with the automations you’re paying probably closer to 200 a month.

Although prices will vary. I would go for the automations because it’s going to save you so much time. And I know you’re a lawyer, you’re probably like, yeah, I’m a lawyer. I’m really cheap. I don’t want to pay for that. I get it, I get it. But that’s a whole heck of a lot cheaper than hiring an admin person to manage all this. So if I’m going to buy a CRM, I’m going to buy a CRM that has real automation in it. And as I mentioned, there are legal specific CRMs out there, but there are also a lot of non-legal specific CRMs that you could look at as well. If you like the world as it were of client intake management is your oyster. Before we talk with mass spiegel about law firm intake software and a bunch of other stuff, let’s hear a little something, something from our sponsors.

Then we’ll get into the rump roast. And it’s a rump roast that’s all about iconic wrap beefs with Lawmatics, Bobby Orozco breaking things down for us like Kendrick. Okay, everybody, let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting sandwich. Today’s meat is just beef and not even the edible kind, just the concept of having beef with someone because when we’re done talking to Matt, we’re going to be talking distracts. All right. All right. Let’s get to our guest interview today. On the Legal Toolkit, we’ve got the one and only Matt Spiegel, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Lawmatics. Yes, that’s right. Matt took a break from reducing his golf handicap just to talk with us. Matt, how you doing, man?

Matt Spiegel:

Doing well. My handicap could be better, but I’m doing well.

Jared Correia:

That’s why I Said you are working on it. My handicap is terrible. I once almost killed a cow on a golf course, but we don’t have to get into that. So I talked to you a little bit before, we’re trying to do these founder interviews, CEO interviews. So I think it’s really interesting to dig into the founder story and have a broader conversation about what the software does, what the vision behind it is. So that’s why I want to get into you with you today. So I kind of want to start at the beginning because correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re a lawyer also, right? You went to law school, passed theBar, did that whole thing.

Matt Spiegel:

I went to law school, passed the Bar, practiced law, big firm, then started my own firm,

Jared Correia:

And me, you’d stop doing stuff with your law degree. Good call on your book, by the way.

Matt Spiegel:

But you stayed in the field, right? Related to the field. So yeah, you really, I think ultimately I just followed your footsteps and so Oh, right. Yeah. And just stand on the shoulder of Giants, Jared.

Jared Correia:

Alright, well let me ask you this. What was practice like for you? You had two very different experiences. You were at the big firm, you started your own firm, not enough to keep it compelling enough for you to stay involved, obviously. But what was better? What was worse? How was it pricing law for as long as you did?

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, I mean, I did criminal defense, which I feel like is a bit unique in the world of law. I feel like it’s the type of law that everyone thinks about when they’re not a lawyer. Oh, you’re a lawyer. Oh, okay, cool. You must do criminal law, right? You go to trial and stuff, but 99% of law practice is not criminal defense. So that’s what I did. And it’s an interesting question to ask about the difference between the big law firm and the small and my own law firm. And I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about it, but if I look back, there were definitely pros and cons. I mean, having my own firm obviously is fantastic because the revenue that comes in is my revenue. So basically I kind of control the whole, and I also control the whole experience for the client.

But the big law firm was pretty cool too because there’s just a shitload of money. I feel like there were perks and value that was associated with that. Just perks with maybe how you handle a case or resources that you have available to you when you go to represent somebody, paralegals and all of these other different resources. And I think that was definitely cool. And other lawyers being around there was always kind of nice. It was just a good atmosphere. I think the vibes in the office were pretty good. And so there was a pretty big difference. But I think at the end of the day, you go out on your own, you start a firm, it’s because you understand you want a better living, you want to make more money, and that’s the opportunity.

Jared Correia:

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about that. I think this happens a lot when there’s a lawyer founder. People are like, well, this part of the business is fucked up. Let me fix this. So I know people know this. Let’s backfill a little bit. You started my case, which was one of the first case management software companies. Why did you decide to leave law practice to do that in the first place?

Matt Spiegel:

So that was an accident, really, right? And it’s kind of like what you just said, which was I started my own firm, ended up, I took a few clients with me from the old firm. And actually looking back on that, that was really silly because in criminal defense, they’ve paid all the money up front, right?

Jared Correia:

So

Matt Spiegel:

I’m taking a client, yeah, it’s not like I’m taking a client with me and getting all these billable hours. And I think maybe the law firm, my old law firm gave me a small amount of money to take the cases so that they didn’t have to be burdened with them. But ultimately the clients wanted to stay, or most of them wanted to stay with me. I guess I was knee deep

Jared Correia:

In their case. Why wouldn’t they?

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, you don’t want to switch around in the middle of representation like that. So they came and one of them complained. They basically filed theBar complaint and it was turned out to be a local, a city bar complaint. It wasn’t all too serious, but at the time I didn’t realize it and it just freaked me out. I had just started my own law firm and now

Jared Correia:

Criminal defense clients, they’re more likely to make complaints anyway,

Matt Spiegel:

And you never know what they’re capable of. So I was pretty freaked out. And so I started talking to theBar and inquiring what this was about, and they’re like, well, this person says that you spoke to them this day and then you said you were going to call them back at this time and then you didn’t. And I’m like, okay, wait, so you’re telling me that this person made a bar complaint because I didn’t call ’em back quick enough, basically

Jared Correia:

Right at 2 43, like you said, you were. Yeah,

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah. It was like they called at maybe eight o’clock in the morning and I didn’t get back to them until 6:00 PM or something like that. And I was in court all day and maybe they didn’t answer the phone. And so the bottom line was I thought to myself, this is insane. They did tell me, theBar told me, they’re like, Mr. Spiegel, you would be shocked to know how many complaints we get that are related to this same issue. Basically my attorney didn’t call me enough

Jared Correia:

Light bulb.

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, light bulb. It wasn’t even a light bulb. It was more like, alright, I got to go use some software out there. I was like a techie guy, kind of a tech forward guy. I mean, this was 2009. And so I said, let me go get some software that’s going to help me better communicate and keep my clients up to date. Because the other thing was, it’s not like he was calling to discuss the strategy in World War ii. He was calling just to be like, when’s my next court date? This wasn’t like nuanced small talk or really, when does

Jared Correia:

D-Day start again?

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, this wasn’t intellectual banter mean when’s my court date and where’s my police report? And so I’m like, you know what? These are basic things. I should be able to use software and provide them to my clients without much effort. So I went down this road of trying to find that and I couldn’t find that that didn’t exist. And so I decided that I better build something like that on my website for my clients because they’re going to need it and it’s going to save me a bunch of time. So I got some people I knew to help me build who was building my website, brought in another engineer to just build this backend thing. And I’m like, if I want this, and if theBar is getting tons of complaints about people’s communication, then I’m sure this type of client portal would be something that every lawyer would want. And so I said, Hey, let’s go build that. And long story short, we ended up building my case out of that.

Jared Correia:

That’s interesting. I didn’t know that the start of that was this kind of notion of a client portal.

Matt Spiegel:

It was just a client portal. It was really the first one in legal.

Jared Correia:

So fast forwarding quickly here, you found my case. You run that for a little while, you sell it, I mean, fairly early on. What caused you to make that call at that point?

Matt Spiegel:

I think it was a combination of a lot of things. Ultimately, there was actually an article that one of my mentors sent me about deciding whether or not to sell your company. And this article had a profound impact, but at the end of the day was, look, I was 32 years old when we sold it, and it was a really amazing company that wanted to buy it and the opportunity to go and learn from that company how to build a product like this. I mean, we had done really well and we had built my case to something pretty cool, but we had never done that before. So I think you get a little bit of doubt of like, well, how far can I take this? At some point I’m going to need help. I’ve never raised money before. I don’t know how to do that. So this company is offering me life-changing money, and I get to go learn from them for at least two and a half, three years.

Jared Correia:

Alright, so I want to get to Lawmatics, which is your new venture, which is a product I actually really love that I’m excited to talk to you about. But before we get there, so you get this life changing money, now you’ve got a little interregnum, right? You didn’t start Lawmatics right away. So I got two questions for you. The first is, what did you do during that time off? Did you just surf? Did you just golf? And then the second question I have is did you know that Lawmatics was going to be the next thing or did that come about over time?

Matt Spiegel:

So when I left my case, I started a company expo guru, and I was actually really excited about this one, but it was basically a software for companies or marketing departments that exhibit at a lot of trade shows to manage all of that, because this was a huge problem at my case. We did a ton of trade shows and it was all these wonky spreadsheets and we try to keep track of like, oh, well this is our 10 foot booth and this is our 20 foot booth and this booth is going here and this booth is going there and here’s all the people who are going to this show and here’s all the people who are going to that. It was a nightmare. There’s got to be a better way to do this. And so we started building that product and it was after about eight months into that, we’re about to get our first customer.

And then I was approached by Christian Beck Leap. He approached me and said, I’d love to bring you out to Australia and ultimately have you run one of my legal tech companies. At the time, there were several of which they had a ton, and this was back in 2015. And so I went to Australia and I was wooed by which Christian a tendency to do as South goes. And so basically I had a non-compete, right? So I was not able to go and work for a legal tech company at the time. And so I took on this position to set up, he had a company called Cami, which was a non-legal tech company. And the idea was, well, let’s just get, he wants that in the US so I can help him open up an office and start giving the company a US presence. And then after four months when my non-compete expires, I should be in a good position to kind of go and work at whatever legal tech company I want.

And after the four months passed, basically I was having fun with Cammi, and so I was made the global CEO and I ran that company for the next, I don’t know, 15 months. And then that company was, it was time to kind of part ways and go do something different. And I wanted to go back into legal. I wanted to create something again from scratch. It was time for me. And so when I started looking at it and thinking about what to do, I mean, it was pretty obvious for us because this idea of a CRM marketing automation platform, the idea of HubSpot for lawyers was something that we identified as a real need or a burgeoning need in 2014 at my case. And we were really looking into customer profiles and what the market was thinking about, where it was going, where it was moving. And so fast forward to 2017 and the end of 2017 and wanting to build another product to the legal space, it was sort of natural to look there. And then I realized that it was not being addressed. No one had really done anything for that problem. And so Lawmatics was born at that point.

Jared Correia:

I don’t know if you feel, I mean, it sounds like you felt the same way about it. I’ve always been really surprised that there’s so little front office technology for law firms. It’s crazy to me, it seems like the case management softwares came out, my case included, and everybody’s like, let’s build a fucking billion back office softwares. But yeah,

Matt Spiegel:

Because it’s money, right? Time and billing,

Jared Correia:

Right? Right. But even so, I’m surprised that more people weren’t like, Hey, maybe we should do this front office tech too, because there’s money to be made there. So kudos to you for having the vision and recognizing

Matt Spiegel:

That the market, I think it took a little while for the market to be ready. I mean, I think what you needed was, well, first of all, I think you needed a more competitive landscape in legal. And I think that competitive landscape started to evolve in 2010 and beyond when advertising on Google became very commonplace for lawyers, and then the market became more competitive. So I think we needed that to happen. If that didn’t happen, then there wouldn’t have been a need for this type of software. But once the inertia behind that started going well, now it’s like lawyers are thinking about their firms as more than just a law firm. Now it’s a business and they need to think about it as a CEO. And that’s when I’m looking at it as, okay, well I’ve run this company in my case for a while, and I was the CEO of that company, and we had these tools that allowed us to obsess over metrics and the relationships with our customers and what they meant to us and just glean as much data from all of that as we could. It was really critical to the business that was live and die stuff, the business, that’s what it required. It was table stakes. So then I look and I was coming off of running my own law firm, and actually for a lot of my case, I still had my own law firm. So I’m running these two separate companies in contrast to each other. And I’m seeing all these things that you do at a tech company that you don’t do it a law firm, but I started asking myself, well, why the hell not? Why would you

Want to know these things? Why would you not care about metrics? Why would you not care about cost per lead or cost per client? These are just the lifeblood of your firm, your business

Jared Correia:

Fucking love metrics, man.

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, me too. And so once you had that inertia and everyone was thinking about it in a little bit of a different light, then the need for those tools which have existed outside of legal for forever, those tools were now needed in law. And so we built it.

Jared Correia:

Do you think that that was sort of cresting pre pandemic? Because in talking to a lot of lawyers, I felt like the aha moment on the intake stuff was like, oh, there’s a pandemic on. I can’t collect money from people. They can’t come into my office. No one wants to touch my pen. Did you see an explosion then, or was it

Matt Spiegel:

Happen happening

Jared Correia:

Before that? Okay.

Matt Spiegel:

It was definitely happening before that. But covid was definitely a boost to our business as I think it was to a lot of software businesses, anything that was software as a service. When you’re less in person, you’re more virtual, then obviously you’re going to want more tools that help you execute on everything virtually. So we definitely saw a nice lift when Covid hit, but I mean, we’re very happy to be back in our office. We have a great office culture here, and we’re pretty, I’d say at this point, significant. Are we almost as far off of Covid as Covid lasted?

Jared Correia:

I feel like we are. Yeah. Which is kind crazy. It’s way in the rear view mirror. But yeah, it

Matt Spiegel:

Feels, I was just going to say, it feels pretty rear view mirrored, even though we had a sales guy out this week with Covid, but it just doesn’t even really seem matter much anymore.

Jared Correia:

And yeah, you’ve been growing your team, you got a lot of great people that work for you. Alright, so the first time I saw a Maddox, I was just impressed right from the jump because for a while I’ve been telling people there needs to be more marketing, there needs to be more front office software and law firms. There’s really not a lot. And then bonus was Lawmatics is built on workflows, automations, which I think is really lacking in a lot of the front office tools in legal. So can you talk a little bit about that approach and why you designed the software that way? Yeah,

Matt Spiegel:

I don’t really remember why. All I knew was that, well, I guess I do know why. It’s like, again, we were bringing a tool that we’ve used for many, many years into a market that hadn’t used it and had never had anything specifically built for it. So one of the things that we knew coming from any sort of marketing automation platform, whether it be HubSpot or anything else, was that at the end of the day, you have to be able to set up cadences at its very core, a marketing automation platform. Forget the CRM part, but a marketing automation platform at its very core is drip campaigns.

Jared Correia:

Pretty much

Matt Spiegel:

That is probably more than 50% of the battle. I mean,

Jared Correia:

Even following up on a scheduled meeting, that’s effectively a drip campaign. Yeah, go ahead. Right.

Matt Spiegel:

So I think just coming at it from that lens, we need to build a platform that allows you to automate sending emails and maybe scheduling a call for yourself. And so by scheduling a call for yourself, we’re like, all right, well that’s tasks. So now all of a sudden we’ve got email and tasks, and then we started thinking, okay, we’re building this for lawyers, so what are the things that lawyers are going to need in their marketing flow? And it’s like, okay, well how does a lawyer get a client? Whereas as a software company, we just want them to click a button and then put their credit card in and start using product. But for a lawyer, they want to actually look at a contract, they want to sign that contract, and then they’re going to pay retainer. So we said, okay, let’s build in the ability to take e-signature and put together your retainer agreement and let’s make sure that that’s automated.

And it just started kind of going from there where we started looking at all the different pieces and it was like, oh, well look, what’s one of the most important part about doing sales at a law firm? Well, it’s about the intake. It’s about getting all the information that you need in order to make a determination on whether you want to take that matter or not. And so, okay, now we need to do forms and now we want to automate that as part of, so it’s just peeling back the onion and looking at all the specific things that lawyers are really going to need for their marketing and also for their sales process. And then we just kind of kept throwing that into the automation engine and making sure that it was something that could be built out

Jared Correia:

Super customizable software. Like I said, I really like it and you’ve kept adding features. All right. I know you’re busy. I appreciate you spending time with us. I got two more questions for you. The first is, I have to ask about this because if I don’t, there’s a trained chimp that comes out and tass me, ai. Can we talk a little bit about ai saw anyone wants to talk about right now? I know you guys have built in some features

Matt Spiegel:

Very, very surface level,

Jared Correia:

Right? And I’ve used it a little bit, but what do you have right now and what are you going to be building out in the future that you can talk about at least?

Matt Spiegel:

So I think without giving too much away on what we might do in the future, one because I don’t know precisely, and two because probably good to keep that close to the vest, but I can tell you what I can tell

Jared Correia:

You. Don’t yourself in trouble here.

Matt Spiegel:

Well, but I can tell you my philosophy on it, which I think let’s do that, is revealing in and of itself, I think that there are, every company in the world has gone level one deep, right? Level one deep on AI is super, super basic. It’s what we’ve done right now inside Lawmatics is level one. We’ve basically taken chat GPT, and we let you create some content and then have chat GPT refine it for you. And now we’re kind of doing some prompt engineering. We’re kind of making sure it has a little bit more context than it’s just like you submitting things. So we allow, you can tell it what kind of email you want to create and it can create an email for you and it will understand a little bit about the type of law firm you are and things like that. So we have done some setup so that it’s a little bit more than just using chat GPT, but that’s sort of very surface level. And that’s kind of table stakes now. I think almost every company is doing something like that. There’s value in that, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not significant value. I think where there is real value is much, much deeper down, and that’s where you get into building your own model or having your own. The most valuable thing at a company, Lawmatics, besides our incredible customers, is our breadth of data, right?

Jared Correia:

Right.

Matt Spiegel:

But the data itself is our customers, obviously. But the metrics behind that data, the numbers of things, the counts of things, just the anonymized data is ours and it’s valuable. The aggregation all, I’m

Jared Correia:

Glad you’re bringing this up, that data, because I think this is really, not a lot of people talk about this in the legal tech space, but it’s really important. So I just want to underscore that. Go ahead.

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, and I understand why people say that or they think that because they’re like, well, I don’t want my data being shared. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying that the name of your cases isn’t important, but how many cases we have and how valuable those cases are, or how many of those cases have become clients, how many leads have become clients like any other? For my case, for Clio, for any of these companies, the corpus of data that they have is what’s really valuable in this situation. And so I think where I’d love to see things go is like, well, how do we activate that? And that’s very deep within the AI stack, but that’s where I see a ton of value. And I think where you’re going to start to see some really amazing products, I think a lot of companies, too many companies rushed to do that surface level thing thinking that it was going to be the all end all. And it’s really a really nice, shiny, expensive pile of shit. And so I think we really are interested in being very thoughtful and safe about how we might do it. And I don’t think we know fully yet just how it will play out inside of the platform, but I know that it will play out.

Jared Correia:

That’s great, man. And my guy, I didn’t even need to bring up data analytics. You brought it up yourself. Alright, last question. I promise. I believe you rolled out time and billing features in Lawmatics maybe like a couple years ago?

Matt Spiegel:

Yeah, actually it’s been a while now. Probably

Jared Correia:

Maybe more. Yeah,

Matt Spiegel:

Four years maybe.

Jared Correia:

Oh really? Three or

Matt Spiegel:

Four years.

Jared Correia:

Yeah. All right. An entire Olympics. Do you foresee more of these traditional law practice management software features coming into Lawmatics such that this tool becomes LPM and CRM at some point down the line?

Matt Spiegel:

I don’t really, I think for the law firm that we really fit, which is probably that law firm that has maybe five lawyers and more, I mean, we love the solo and the smalls and then we definitely serve them. But I think the bigger firm typically uses a bit more of the functionality that Lawmatics offers. And I think for us, there’s so much to do in mapping that client relationship, which is what we really focus on, that I think there’s value in us just doing that. And I think what we’ve done all the time on billing side is really useful for a subset of the market. And it’s also important for the part of intake that does involve the money, right? Because some of the money, you take a flat fee, it’s a retainer, whatever it is that is part

Jared Correia:

Of the intake.

Matt Spiegel:

So we wanted to make sure you have the capability to do that. But really our focus is on that client relationship, on that marketing side. And there’s a lifetime of features and functionality and problems that we can solve on that side of the client experience that I don’t see us focusing on the LPM stuff anytime in the near future.

Jared Correia:

One might say it’s not the client journey, it’s the destination. Matt, thank you man. This was really great. I appreciate you giving us so much time. I’d like to do these extended interviews.

Matt Spiegel:

I’ll always give you the time, man. I enjoy it.

Jared Correia:

Thanks so much. Alright everybody, 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 at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit podcast. It’s the Rump Roast, it’s a grab bag of short form topics. All my choosing. Why do I get to pick? You may be asking yourself. Well, it’s because I host the show. We just spoke with Matt Spiegel of Law Manix. Now we’re bringing in Bobby Orozco also at Law Manix. He’s the director of sales over there. Bobby, welcome in. How are you?

Bobby Orozco:

I’m doing great, Jared. Just having a blast today at work.

Jared Correia:

Now, I think you started out at the company as an account executive. Right now you’re director of sales, is that right?

Bobby Orozco:

Yes. I think the correct number is I was employee number five here. Started off as the first account executive and pretty much was the only account executive I think for the first couple of years at the company. And now we’re a lot more of me here, so that’s good.

Jared Correia:

So you were the senior account executive clearly, but congratulations on the rise. That’s awesome, man.

Bobby Orozco:

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Jared Correia:

So I’ve got consulting clients who use Lawmatics and you’ve been really helpful with everybody I’ve sent you way, so I appreciate that. And what I thought was interesting is that we were on this call with one of my clients and she was like, Hey Bobby, you got all these rap posters in your background. And so I was like, I got to have this dude on to talk. We got to do East Coast, west Coast stuff. And I also think this is a really fortuitous time to be doing a rap based Feud podcast because Bobby, I dunno, you may have heard there’s a beef going on right now with Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Have you seen this?

Bobby Orozco:

Absolutely. So it’s dominating my real feeds, my TikTok feeds showing up in all my playlists. It’s pretty fun actually. I think it’s hilarious to be honest.

Jared Correia:

I’ve got these white suburban moms coming up to me in my town and they’re not like us as a fucking balls. They’re like, can you turn that up? I’m like, what are we doing here? I’m like, there are children around, but it’s like a legitimate, all right, I’m going to tip my hand a little bit. My favorite disc track ever hit ’em up? Tupac, explicit version, just fucking savage. Talking about guys having sickle cell anemia. The worst shit you could do and I think not like us is possibly on that level. I like no vest Lean with Ice Cube too. It’s up there. Yeah.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah. You took no Vaseline from me. I was going to say, that’s probably one of my favorites. I think it really, the fact that it was on the radio too, which is fantastic. They wouldn’t play that anymore.

Jared Correia:

Yes. I was talking to my son the other day about this and he’s like, oh, are there other tracks you like? I’m like, yeah, no Vaseline. And he’s like, what’s that about? I’m like, let’s change the subject. Alright, so can you just give us a brief walkthrough of the Drake Kendrick Feud for those uninitiated who may not know what’s going on, if you wouldn’t

Bobby Orozco:

Mind? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So to my knowledge and how I’ve been following it, they actually were friends for a while. I think one of the first songs I was introduced to that they all collabed together was on an asop Rocky track. They all had verses. I think Kanye was on it as well. And it was a pretty awesome track. And that’s kind of how I got hooked into Kendrick. I think I was a little behind on Kendrick, but in 2000, I want to say 2000, maybe 13 or 12 Kendrick releases a song called Control where he pretty much just everybody goes after, I think he goes after the rap game as a whole, right? And kind the condition of it and

Jared Correia:

Really just not fucking around.

Bobby Orozco:

And look, he can, I think he’s incredibly talented. It would be tough to really above him, but I think he’s just an artist in his own and beyond rap and his awards kind of say it there. But the other, I want to say that there was a track. I think the 2023 Track is I think really where Drake probably made the fatal mistake. There’s always been these subtle jabs in a lot of his music. But I think the biggest one I thought, which was pretty eyeopening was Push A Tee, I think was outed Drake’s son. Now Drake has a kid, and then he tried to crown himself as part of the big three, or I think Jake Cole said there was a big three. And Kendra’s like, no, there ain’t no big three. It’s just big me. So that’s kind of where we’re at now.

Jared Correia:

Yes, that’s a great letter as well.

Bobby Orozco:

It is. It’s great. But I think, I don’t necessarily view Drake as a rapper per se in the traditional sense. I think he is a combination of what you would say is like LL Cool J, where a lot of his raps were more r and b or maybe just it was very singular focused on him and women and less about substance, if that makes sense.

Jared Correia:

No, I am right on board there with you.

Bobby Orozco:

And this is kind a disrespect to L Cool J because Ella Cool J is actually a great rapper in his own right. I mean I, I don’t know if you ever watched the movie Crush Groove back in the day. It’s a story of finding Def Jam, basically. That’s kind of what’s about run DMC and all that. And there’s a scene without

Jared Correia:

You started out and you were like, I’m not a rap expert.

Bobby Orozco:

Oh, please. I know. Go

Jared Correia:

On.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah. So I had a lot of really great friends that used to educate me when I was younger. Hey, watch this movie or listen to this track or whatever. But there’s a scene where they’re trying out people for Def Jam andLL Cool J kind of makes his introduction and he’s like, Hey, are you guys still trying people out? And then that’s where that song was like B Box. And then it’s like, I can’t live without my radio. And he starts singing that song kind of live, and it’s pretty mind blowing to me. I was like, ah, this guy’s amazing. And then after that, he just really became more about Lady Loves Cool James as opposed to, LLCool J the Rapper. But that’s kind of where I see Drake. I mean, Drake has a ton of ghost writers. I think his team consists of just him at this point, and that’s the side he’s on. I’m pretty sure. I think everybody has chosen Kendrick at this point, so I think it’s over never really started, but yeah, I did have one thing

Jared Correia:

To add though. I can’t say Drake man can just say quickly, I hate Drake Old School LL Cool J eighties, LL Cool J mid eighties early, going back to Cali, stuff like that. That shit was good. But the r and b, the James Ingram version of LL Cool JI do not like, go ahead.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah, I like it, but I don’t think it is just an evolution of him. It’s kind of the same thing that people used to knock on Drake for. Drake’s the kind of guy that saves his tears in a jar. I think it’s one of my favorite memes. Right, because he just cries on every song or it sounds like he is so it’s not really rap me. He

Jared Correia:

Sucks so much.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah, scorpion was my favorite album from Drake and I haven’t really been able to recover from that. Everything else just seems pretty rushed. But yeah, I mean, I also remember hip hop with GMC, obviously run DMC and you have Curtis Blow and you have Grandmaster Flash, who I’ve seen live before too when I was much younger. Really? Yeah. All of those guys are amazing. And to kind of see what my daughter listens to, or at least to try to prevent her from listening to. And I can’t understand a word that they’re saying. The lyrics probably fit on one page, right? Because it’s the same thing repeated. Maybe a paragraph or two. Hopefully they don’t find me.

Jared Correia:

Hopefully

Bobby Orozco:

You’re going to mumble wrappers listening to your

Jared Correia:

Podcast now you’re off my lawn guys. Yeah,

Bobby Orozco:

It’s bad. Exactly.

Jared Correia:

Okay, I got two more questions

Bobby Orozco:

For you. Let’s do it.

Jared Correia:

East Coast, west Coast Wrap. I think everybody knows the Biggie and Tupac thing. Tupac lost a testicle, it got ugly, and then he lost his life as did Biggie. That’s a hardcore feud. Is that still going on? Is that still a thing or There’s so many places where people come from now as rappers that they don’t do the East Coast, west Coast thing anymore?

Bobby Orozco:

I don’t. Don’t view it as a thing anymore because I think it was detrimental to the business. I mean, the amount of money that was probably lost by them getting killed.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, people fucking dying. Pretty detrimental.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah. Let me rephrase that. The amount of money and probably just if I was in charge of let’s say one or the other, I probably would’ve quieted it down a long time ago because just them dying I think ruined an entire generation of rap. And also just kind of the possibilities of all of these albums and music. And so I think today it’s more about the money, right? It’s always been about that in this is why you have these non-threatening beefs. It’s not even on the same level. I think the AI generated music has done more damage than this beef period, because a lot of the songs that are on TikTok are AI generated, but it’s never going to get to the point where I think one of them is going to get killed. I think that we’re long past that because they care more about being alive and money as opposed to settling some beef.

Jared Correia:

Bobby, one more question for you. Not to put you on the spot, but I’m going to best track of all time in your opinion. Like I said, I’m a hit him up guy all the way. How about you?

Bobby Orozco:

I would say that Hit Him Up is still my favorite. I still listen to it. I still get pretty pumped to it. I just recently been going back and buying a lot of music on vinyl. Oh, nice. And ordered that particular where that song, that dish track is on there. To me, I think that was probably the, when you heard it, you’re like, holy cow. Really? Did he really just say he slept with Faith Evans?

Jared Correia:

Right, right. What a tic.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah. And he put it on. I couldn’t believe it. It was so impactful. I’ve never really heard somebody go after somebody that hard. But in comparison to other tracks that are out there, I think that’s probably the boldest one I’ve ever heard.

Jared Correia:

And you’re listening to it on Wax, like a real boss.

Bobby Orozco:

Yeah. I love that. No, it’s coming.

Jared Correia:

Bobby, thank you. This is

Bobby Orozco:

Great. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Jared Correia:

Rap expert, product expert. Reach out to this man. I promise you we won’t. We’ll talk some other time. Bobby, thank you. Alright,

Bobby Orozco:

Thanks sir. Appreciate it.

Jared Correia:

If you want to find out more about Mass Spiegel Bobby Roscoe and their work, visit Lawmatics dot com. That’s L-A-W-M-A-P-I-C s.com. Now, for those of you listening on Park Lane Circle in Toronto, Ontario, like a little bitch, I’ve got a Spotify playlist that all the haters are going to love. It’s the best diss tracks. Roll this one out on your way to the next annual Player Haters Ball. Now, sadly, I’ve run out of time to talk about how the Celtics won the 2024 NBA title, and I was in the building. Oh, fuck it. I’m going to talk about it anyway. Joe Missoula calling for a video review with two minutes left on an out of bounds play and a clenching finals game. What a maniac. The Tatum closeout with maybe the best game of his career. Yeah, it turns out he is got that dog in him. Jalen Brown, holding up the NBA trophy with his left hand. What a savage. Tus Pinus gutting it out for 15 minutes on a bum ankle. Al Horford winning his first title in year 17, drew Holiday and Derek White being the best defensive back court maybe ever. Peyton Prichard draining half court shots at the end of quarters. It was his job like it’s a layup. Big Minutes from Sam Hauser. All right, I’m done.

This is Jared Correia reminding you that when you write that diss track about me, just don’t miss.

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