So, Trump Again? || Work-Life Balance Through Workflows || Lobster Roll Extravaganza

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

It’s a Legal Toolkit with Jared Correa with guest Alan Klevan. We learn everything there is to know about lobster rolls and then Jared gets down and dirty with his second favorite. President’s love life. But first, your host Jared Correia.

Jared Correia:

It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast where we talk about the law tools and kits, not necessarily in that order. And yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast even though I have no idea what reverse pliers are. Seriously, are you using that shit in another dimension? What gives? I’m your host Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Jay Leno was unavailable. He fell down a hill behind a Hampton Andn in Pennsylvania. No, that’s not a nursery rhyme. And now conspiracy theories are abounding because many people need a hobby. 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 Alan Klevan about law, practice, management, music and lobster rolls, let’s take a little bit of time to talk about what a complete dickhead Donald Trump is.

Earlier this month I was at my son’s a u basketball tournament with my family in New Jersey. Fucking hate New Jersey highways are terrible, but I digress. And on the way to a game, we roll past a middle school named after Carl Sandberg. Now being a middle-aged dad who spends a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire, I felt compelled to tell everybody in the car a little bit about who Carl Sandberg was. For purposes of this podcast episode, however, here’s what you need to know. Carl Sandberg wrote the definitive biography of Abraham Lincoln, who you may have heard of in two volumes, the Prairie Years and the War Years. This series is absolutely totemic, it’s brilliant, and reads like you imagine a presidential biography would sound if it were written by a great American poet. I would conservatively estimate that I’ve read around 30 Lincoln biographies.

Yes, that’s real. In my opinion, he’s the greatest American of all time and easily the best American president, easily. I don’t even think it’s debatable, frankly. Of course, he wasn’t the only great president that America’s had. Teddy Roosevelt was up there and was well ahead of his time, especially with his views around conservation. If you haven’t read it, there’s also a wonderful three-part biography on TR written by Edmund Morris, which is well worth your time. I also like David McCullough’s Truman biography, but there’s lots and lots of biographies out there about different presidents. I like the genre. There’s a lot of good writing on it, and generally speaking, America has gotten on all right in part because presidents have mostly been confident and none of them wanted to become a dictator. A fine tradition started by the first president George Washington. Joe Biden, I think is actually going to go down as an excellent president, certainly one of the best one-term presidents ever.

As he brought the country’s economy back following the Covid pandemic and invested massively in infrastructure, which was sorely needed. I believe that history will treat him kindly and frankly, I would’ve voted for the corpse of Joe Biden with Jill Biden as president over Donald Trump. Now, before we get into that, there’s a reason. This is the first time you’ve heard me talking about politics on this podcast. That’s because I fucking hate it. I think it’s mostly just really obnoxious, and I’m an independent voter registered as such, over the course of my lifetime, I voted for Republicans, Democrats, including for president. I’ve been all over the board. I try my best to review policy positions and make a reason judgment despite party membership, but this past election was not about parties at all. This was simply a choice between fascism and democracy and America. You’d done fucked up.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not just about this election. I’ve always thought Donald Trump was a colossal piece of shit, one of the all time pieces of shit. Maybe that’s because his dad, Fred Trump, was also a piece of shit. Both of them are racist and misogynistic assholes, but Donald Trump is also a fucking terrible business person. He got handed $400 million on a silver platter and ended up declaring bankruptcy no less than seven times. Oh, he’s a rapist and a convicted felon. He’s a cheap grifter too. And somehow he’s fooled the American people into electing him. President, not once, but twice. His last term was bad enough during which he incited a violent insurrection against the country of which he was purportedly the leader. The fact that he wasn’t impeached and convicted for that is a travesty. The fact that he was allowed to run for president again and was elected is a nightmare and is going to be an ongoing nightmare for the next four years.

I’m being completely serious when I say I’m not entirely sure that the American democracy is going to be able to survive this, which would be a really unfortunate outcome. The thing that disturbed me the most about the recent election cycle is that Trump and his lieutenants were actively and openly making racist and hateful comments on the regular and threatening the lives of dissenters. Some of this rhetoric being pulled straight from the Nazi playbook. If Trump and his team do what they say they’re going to do, there’s a real chance he becomes America’s Hitler. And just like the original Hitler, he will have been aided and abetted by the electorate in what he does. Hitler too remember, was voted into his position and then began to erode freedoms and the rule of law in much the same way that Trump is planning on doing, the Trump administration is looking around up illegal and legal immigrants looking effectively to legislate birthright citizenship out of the Constitution in order to place people into camps.

Hey, does that sound familiar to you at all? How could something like this have happened in America, A country which for all is false, of which there are many is still the exemplar of democracy for the rest of the world, at least for another six weeks? Well, I think it’s pretty clear that far more Americans than I thought are stupid or vicious or stupid and vicious. What a combo Trump’s biggest supporters lack a college degree and don’t think critically. That’s why they don’t understand how tariffs actually work or that there’s no difference between Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act because a massive Trump voters don’t think critically and silo themselves into specific media echo chambers where they only hear what they want to hear. You get a recipe for disaster, which is that they believe everything sweet potato Hitler has to say about anything Add to the mix that loss of Trump voters also racist chuckle fucks, and they fall from the man who dog whistles better than anybody since George Wallace.

It’s actually not even a dog whistle. It’s just straight up human talk that people are afraid to condemn for fear of retribution. And if you voted for Trump because you’re rich and you want to get a tax break, the rest of the package was not worth it. Home slice. You’re also a greedy fuck who was willing to throw your own country under the bus for a little more cash. Hope the money comes in handy when our society completely breaks down. If I have some hope for this current situation, it’s wrapped up in two things. First, Trump is one dumb motherfucker. He doesn’t read or consider anything, and he’s not a planner. Everything just seems like he’s fucking winging it. Kind of like his bronzer application. Every cabinet appointment he’s made is just like he’s throwing shit against the wall. It’s like some tossed off story about Arnold Palmer’s dick.

It’s like your shittiest drunkest uncle at Thanksgiving was elected president and then reelected president. When people talk to me about conspiracy theories, I’m always doubtful and tend to employ Occam’s razor. That’s because most people are dumb as shit, and a conspiracy requires you to believe that a group of people are going to act in concert effectively. Trump won the election, not because him and JD Vance and insufferable Elon Musk ran a great campaign. They just got lucky in that many Americans are still backwards in terms of their views on race and women’s rights and a lot of other things. I guess you could say I may be pulling for Trump to bungle things so badly that it gets again and convicted or that there’s enough of a republic left by 2029 that a Democrat can come in and revise things. My hope is that this is just a speed bump, but when I think about impeachment, I start thinking about President JD Vance or Mike Johnson or Chuck Grassley.

No thank you. Jesus fucking Christ is this real life. The other thing that makes me feel some level of optimism is that we may have reached the fuck around and find out phase of the Democratic experiment. One of the worst things about Trump is that Americans electing him justifies his behavior. The truly terrible things he says and does that serves to embolden the worst of his followers. And you’re seeing this happen already with Nazi sympathizers walking the streets openly and men saying things to women like your body, my choice. Now, a lot of politicians in media talking had seemed to have given up on correcting this story of behavior with many choosing to sane wash what Trump and his team doing say. Of course, that may not be the case with some real Americans out there because guess what? I don’t have the time or patient for your intolerant bullshit anymore.

Some boy at school says, your body, my choice to my daughter. She has my ongoing permission to kick that motherfucker right in the nuts because it’s hard to say anything rude when you’re gargling your own balls. And if some maga dip shit makes a similar or related comment in front of me, there’ll be more trouble to pay. So my hope is that other ordinary Americans are fed up with this horse shit too and are willing to finally stand up for themselves if Trump truly doesn’t tend to round up immigrants or use the military against civilians or hold sham trials against his critics, it’s up to all right, thinking Americans to resist as effectively as they can. Yep. Amazingly, the shittiest president ever was just reelected like a lumpier version of Grover Cleveland with dictatorial tendencies, but he doesn’t have to win in the long term. If enough people stand up to an administration that’s hell bent on destroying the country, the rest of us just have to be as hell bent on saving it. And here in New England, we don’t suffer kings or want to be despots. Come at me, bro. While we weighed the takeover of the American experiment by the shittiest tech bros. Let’s hear from our sponsors. Then we’ll talk with Alan Klevan about law practice management.

Everybody. Let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting. Sandra says, meat is lobster. That’s right. Lobster meat. It counts as meat in New England. Alright, let me introduce our guest today on the Legal Toolkit podcast, making his first ever appearance shamefully because we’ve known each other for quite a while. We’ve got Alan Klevan, who’s the owner of the Law Offices of Alan j Klevan, pc. Alan, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Alan Klevan:

I’m doing well, and thank you for having me. It’s only been 20, 25

Jared Correia:

Years, 15 years.

Alan Klevan:

No, it’s longer than that, my friend.

Jared Correia:

I suck. Is it longer? Oh my god, I’m such an asshole. Alright, so I want to start with legal technology because ostensibly we’re a legal podcast, although we’ll talk about some other stuff too. You were one of the first people I knew who was an attorney who was actually an advocate for the use of legal technology and kind of like a relay aggressive fashion. So how did you get into that and how did you find the time to do that stuff? Being like a practicing attorney and all, and I’m talking like mid two thousands, right? Early two thousands probably.

Alan Klevan:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess I should say thank goodness that Al Gore invented the internet. I was pretty interested in that from the start, but I was working in a law firm in Boston. I had two kids, I had a third one on the way, and I went to a seminar on practice management. The speaker at the seminar came over to me and said, Alan, you’re a really talented guy. I have one word for you. And I said, why? And he said, quit. And I’m like, why? And he said, you should probably go out on your own, just find ways that you could practice more effectively and be able to spend time with your soon to be three children. So I found this thing in Chicago called Tech Show, and I went to

Jared Correia:

Tech show, ABA tech show, which is still happening for

Alan Klevan:

Those who I’m aware of that you want to going to talk. It’s the American Bar Association Tech Show April 2nd through the fourth of 2025 fifth, the McCormick Center in Chicago. So I went to tech show in 2004, 2005, and I was handed a floppy disc of a case management software program called Amicus

Jared Correia:

Amicus Attorney.

Alan Klevan:

Still, right? I got involved in case management software and I learned about scanning solutions. And again, because I had a direct access to Al Gore, he and I talked a little bit about buddies, the internet buddies, best buddies, and I guess without tooting my own horn, even though that’s what I do, because I’m a talkative Jew from Brooklyn, I was known as one of the first attorneys here to have a paperless or less paper practice.

Jared Correia:

That’s true. I can vouch for that. That absolutely happened.

Alan Klevan:

I mean, I just love it. I love talking to people about how to achieve a better work-life balance through technology. Technology is always changing though, Jared. And I think one of the things that we should talk about today, and I can’t believe I’m telling you what we should talk about since you’re the host,

Jared Correia:

It’s your podcast now. Go ahead. I’m just going to take a nap.

Alan Klevan:

Okay. Well, just to talk about what we should do as lawyers with existing and emerging technologies.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, let’s definitely talk about that.

Alan Klevan:

Honestly, Jared, what I see is a lot of lawyers just going out looking for the best and brightest and shiniest new toy and throwing it into their practices when they’re still kind of wafting around in the water. But the cliche is you can’t stop the waves from coming, but you could learn how to surf. And what I mean by that is that, again, we get the shiny toys, but if we don’t know what to do with them, they just sit on the sidelines.

Jared Correia:

Well, let me ask you this before we get into some of that stuff. I think you’re involved with the A BA currently, right? You’re on a committee. Are you the chair of Law Practice Management? Is that right?

Alan Klevan:

No, thank goodness. No, but I am on the law.

Jared Correia:

I would’ve given you that role.

Alan Klevan:

Well, thank you. I am a member of the Law Practice division, but

Jared Correia:

Right, the law practice.

Alan Klevan:

this year, I’m actually honored to be the chair of the Legal Technology Resource Center.

Jared Correia:

Oh, right, right, right. Okay.

Alan Klevan:

Yes. I mean, if I was going to give a plug to the American Bar Association, I think

Jared Correia:

You may feel free.

Alan Klevan:

Thank you. I think that people should join and the LP division is free, and the Legal Technology Resource Center is exactly that. In 2008, it was great. It could go onto the Legal Technology resource center. Now I’m talking 2008 because that’s the first year case management platforms went in the cloud big. So in 2008, it was a choice between Clio, my case and Rocket Matter. That’s not the case anymore.

Jared Correia:

Now there’s a few more right now. Just a few. Just a few. So you’ll be a tech show this year then?

Alan Klevan:

Yes, I will. I’m not going to be speaking this year unless someone wants me to assist them with respect to Adobe Acrobat. But if not, I will be at the expo hall, which is going to be amazing this year at the Legal Technology Resource Center booth.

Jared Correia:

Okay. So you’re at a tech show, you’re ensconcing technology. What are you doing for case management right now and where have you seen that travel from 2008 to now? There’s been a lot of changes.

Alan Klevan:

Well, yeah, I had a case management platform that I used up until last year, and the last year has been pretty tough for me because my kid served in the Israeli army and he does infantry and ground ops. So he called me on October 8th and told me he was going to Gaza, and it made me apoplectic for a couple months. And when I came back to when I actually became semi-conscious again, I realized that my case management platform wasn’t really working for me. And you actually had a great podcast on that a couple of weeks ago. But

Yeah, so I actually researched some case management platforms and I transferred my stuff to another case management platform. I don’t have a gigantic caseload. It’s not a small caseload, but not a gigantic one. And I highly recommend that if you are either going to get your first case management platform or migrate to another one to do a little bit of the onboarding yourself, because that actually allows you to understand the guts of the case management platform a little bit better. I’m using one of the larger ones. I’m migrating to Clio, and we’ll talk about the workflow that works best for me. We’re just going to talk about how you can be the most efficient and effective in the practice by this thing called workflows.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, let’s talk about that now. What do you do for workflows and has that changed over the last 15 years? Gosh. And what software do you use for that? Yeah, jump into it. Go ahead.

Alan Klevan:

Well, I mean, the first thing that I think about in workflows is you need to be truthful and honest with yourself. And what I mean by that is that workflow broken down into its simplest terms is to get from point A to point B in the most efficient and effective way possible. So it’s really what you want out of the workflow. And my suggestion is to listen to a song by the group. Yes. In 1978 called Going for the One,

Jared Correia:

I’m Googling it right now. I don’t know that album.

Alan Klevan:

Good deal. But I’m looking for the best way possible for me as a lawyer to get from step A all the way to the end, doing as little work as possible, but also being the most effective and efficient, no mistakes and all the other stuff. What I mean by that is,

Jared Correia:

Can I just briefly say that Elvin came out before I was born?

Alan Klevan:

I’m sure. Listen, I remember the first time we spoke that we had to take a break because she needed to get more yuhoo for your sippy cup. I get it. I totally understand.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, I needed the cup with the top on it so I wouldn’t spill it.

Alan Klevan:

Exactly. So let’s talk about workflows. The first thing you need to do is you really need to have a clear head. And what I mean by having a clear head, and I’m sure that you had no idea that I was going this route, Jared, is you got to practice about five minutes of mindfulness in the morning just to make sure you clear your head. And you don’t have to sit there with diggy bells and crossed legs or anything like that, but before you

Jared Correia:

Although, you could if you wanted to,

Alan Klevan:

You could. Yeah, if you want to live in California and do that shit, that’s fine. But in Massachusetts, my mindfulness is what donut I’m picking up on the way to work. So just sit for five minutes and just do some deep breathing and get yourself to a good place. You could go on the internet and learn about mindfulness, but make sure you get into a good place. Now, as Jared knows, I become brain dead at around one o’clock in the afternoon, and the reason why I become brain dead around one is that I work without interruption from nine to one.

Jared Correia:

You’ve been great about that for forever. That’s been a thing that you’ve really locked into.

Alan Klevan:

Thank you. We talked about the way how I map by time and in the morning. I’m ultra effective and I do not take interruptions. And the easiest thing that I like to say is a client that’s not going to fire you if you don’t call them for three hours. So no one interrupts me. My door is closed, and from nine to one, I am plowing through work. And Jared, I think that you could agree with me that if you work three or four hours completely uninterrupted, that’s like working six or seven hours or more with all the interruptions.

Jared Correia:

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I do the same thing. Yeah.

Alan Klevan:

So my workflow is I want to be able to get out of work every day at one, but how am I going to do it? So the first thing that I did was automate my documents. What I mean by automating documents, I don’t know if we have any one point ohs, two point ohs or three point ohs here.

Jared Correia:

We may have all of them

Alan Klevan:

Honestly. Okay, good. Well, automating documents is being able to create a template that you repeat over and over and over and over again. For example, if I’m doing a request from medical records,

So many people out there are still cutting and pasting and opening up their explorer file to request for medical records, taking out the last hospital they input and typing in the new hospital input. The issue with that Jared is a, you’re prone to spelling errors. And what I’m seeing, I don’t want to say more often than not, but here in Massachusetts we call ourselves asshole assholes for a reason. What I’m seeing more often than not is that when people are sending something electronically or sending something to a fax, the fax number is wrong or the email is wrong. And

By creating a template that eliminates that potential for error. So you could automate documents using Microsoft Word these days. As a matter of fact, you could use Microsoft 365 as your case management program for 12 bucks a month using something called Share Going. But automating documents for me is the most important thing. You could do it on Microsoft Word. I find it a little complicated, but the workflow for me is I will take all of the fields, the hospital name, the address, the date, quiet, sn, and using Clio, you literally just press a button and it creates the document. Right now, I’ll say this, that case managements, it will only spit out that which you put in. So the more information and better information you put it in, it’ll spit it out. But the workflow for me creating records is once I put the relevant, pertinent and correct information into my case management system, I then create the medical record just by pressing a button, and now all of a sudden on the screen, it’s got my letterhead and all the information. Beautiful. What I then do is that I will turn that into an Acrobat document by pressing one button, Microsoft Word, right at the top toolbar, it says Acrobat. Then I combine using the combined function. So now I have the medical record to what they call the HIPAA form and anything else I need. This is the cool part. Now

Jared Correia:

I thought this was all cool, but keep

Alan Klevan:

Going. No, no. That’s all crap for now. But I use Nextiva as my fax provider, and all I have to do is type in the fax number, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, x tiva.com, send it off, and all of a sudden, that’s my request for medical records. However, this is where the cool part is. That was my workflow.

Jared Correia:

Oh, wait, are we going to do ai?

Alan Klevan:

No, I mean we can should.

Jared Correia:

We’ll do this and then we’ll do ai.

Alan Klevan:

The operative term is now, if you’re a personal injury attorney and you’re seeking records, Clio has partnered with a company called Yers, where now all I do is spit some information to Yos. They get me medical records and bills that automatically slide into my client’s file. Great thing is, is that Yos is going to send me stuff that’s already ocr. So using ai, using Clio Duo, I will have AI draft my demand letters by reading my medical records and bills.

Jared Correia:

Shit, you’re sandbagging me. Now we’re talking about ai, which is good. Contractually obligated to talk about AI at least once an episode. So please tell me about CLE Duo.

Alan Klevan:

Clio Duo is great because it actually reads through everything Clio. I’m using Clio Duo to review medical records that come in. It’s too new for me to fully understand it. I’m a copilot guy and

Jared Correia:

Which is Microsoft’s ai.

Alan Klevan:

Exactly. So again, this is my workflow. My workflow is, and again, you and I have talked about this forever. I’m pretty much brain dead after one o’clock. That is when I take my client calls, and that is when I take all of my new client phone calls, because if a client is coming to me with a new case, they could give a rat’s ass if I actually say anything. They just want to talk.

Lawyers are counsel. That’s what we are. Let them talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and every once in a while say something so they know that we’re listening to them, but I will tell them that I’m going to send them an intake through Clio, and I send the intake through Clio. It comes back. The minute it comes back, Clio, boom. Automatically spits out signup papers because I’ve used my workflow to do that. Once the signup papers come in, boom, my workflow says send out requests to the insurance companies, the doctors, and all the other stuff. Bottom line is that I haven’t even gotten out of my chair and I’ve done all of this stuff. Now, mind you, I’m still going to have to tease the demand letter a little bit, but what I want to say about workflows is again, don’t get the shiniest, don’t get the best. Microsoft 365 and SharePoint work for you. Great. But the thing about workflows for a sole practitioner, everything is standardized and nothing changes. You could create workflows for different types of practice for different

Jared Correia:

Types of cases within a practice. Yeah, exactly.

Alan Klevan:

For a team of lawyers, workflows again, just keeps everything standard and you’re working parallel to all of the other people in the office. Everything’s the same. If someone leaves your practice or if you’re hiring someone into the practice, the workflow is already there. No one is creating the wheel. And again, you have to look at what works for you. I use the term scalability. Can you scale the workflow that’s best in your practice? You should take a look at the features, what works best, but again, what Yes says in going for the one, you got to start at that one. What is your ultimate goal? And then pull it back and work your way backwards. I just think Jared that if you understand what a workflow is and whatever you implement, even how small, it’s going to save you a shit load of time and you’d be able to sleep better at night.

Jared Correia:

You don’t have to worry anymore. Alright, that was a perfect segue. You talked about, yes, you used to work for a record company and you’ve got a lot of great music stories. Now it’s time Do the thing.

Alan Klevan:

So it has to do with Sheryl Crow’s longest tenured drummer. His name is Jeremy. Stacy,

Jared Correia:

Okay,

Alan Klevan:

So again, I was talking with Al Gore about creating websites.

Jared Correia:

I can’t believe we mentioned Al Gore three times in the podcast in 2024. Kudos to you, sir. Well done.

Alan Klevan:

Thank you. So Al and I were talking about a website for the band. Yes. And the website. Yes. Fans was born and for some reason I became the resident attorney on Yes fans, because I don’t even know if I told you this. My babysitter in Massapequa Park, long Island was a gentleman named Elliot Steinberg, who used to come over to my house in Jan to the Grateful Dead with my brother and Elliot Steinberg. Went to Berkeley College Music, changed his name to Elliot Easton and the Kid Lead Guitars, the cars. So I got into music that way, but that’s cool. I dabbled in some music law, big music, Boston in the eighties, and now I’m dating myself, but I became known as kind of like the resident legal advisor on this website. And then lo and behold, in 2004, yes, broke up for the 16th or time. I don’t remember. And I’ll tell you this story, which very few people know, but it’s a good one. In May of 2004, yes, played Madison Square Garden. It was their second to last show of this tour, and I was down there and I was with their manager, Paul Vera, managed Van Helen. I’m name dropping and it is fucking great.

Jared Correia:

This is great. This is great. The transcript for the show is going to be amazing.

Alan Klevan:

So yes, plays Madison Square guarded and they’re finishing a song called, and You and I, and for whatever reason, this version of Van You and I was Majestic, and there was like a 10 minute standing ovation. And John Anderson, the lead singer who, if anyone knows anything about John Anderson, he does not live on this planet. So John Anderson called his advisor, someone named Audrey up on the stage, and they chanted for 15 minutes. And if you don’t believe me, just go onto to YouTube and you’ll fight it. Receipts. I got the receipts. Exactly. So the show ends at 1115 and the union laws in New Yorker, that show end at 11 o’clock, the band got fined a shit ton of money. So the next day they’re taking the train up to Massachusetts because they’re playing SGAs Arena and Lowell that’s known as songs from SGAs. If you want to take a look at the videos and audio and stuff. So we’re all in Penn Station and I shit you not, there are five members of Yes. They took five separate train cars up to Massachusetts and I’m sitting there Lawmatics one car and we’re like, this is really fucked up. This just is not going to be good at all. I don’t remember what happened the next day because I wanted nothing to do with them. Then they played the SGAs Arena the next day I drove the drummer to the airport and he wasn’t really happy at all. But all I’m going to say is that this was one of Yes’, 16th or 17th breakups. That’s not even the story. So the story is,

Jared Correia:

Wow. Okay, okay, okay, keep going.

Alan Klevan:

So the story is, there was a group in the mid sixties called the Sin, SYN. Okay, I think I’ve heard them. Yeah. It was Chris Wire’s first band, the bass player. It was Chris Guires first band. And Peter Banks who was, yes’, first drummer was in the original incarnation of the sin. They had a song called Flower Man because everyone in the sixties had to have a song about flowers or drum, all that other flowers. And they had a song called Grounded. And in the sixties they played at a place in London called The Marquee Club, and they were actually founded by Jimi Hendrix because Jimi Hendrix was there and he really liked the sin. So the sin were a pretty decent group, but as with anything that has to do with Chris Squire and yes, the sin broke up. So the sin broke up and Chris Squire joined. Yes. So fast forward to 2005 and I get a phone call from someone who had something to do with this band, the Sin, and they said, yeah, I saw you on this website and I know that you’re a lawyer. We haven’t really done much in 30 or 40 years, but we need some help. I said, okay. So the Sin originally was the singer Steve Nardelli, a keyboard player, Gerard Johnson and Chris Squire. Gerard Johnson is an amazing individual and he did all the arrangements, but they didn’t have a drummer or a guitar player. So I have no idea how or why, but Paul Sta of Oasis Fame joined the group because Oasis was in one of their 150 breakups. We needed a drummer. And Paul said, my drummer Jeremy, who plays with Sheryl Crow, it’s free. So now we have this band called the Sin They’ve Reformed, and it’s the singer and the keyboard player who are all great Chris Squire of Yes. And the Stacey Brothers, who are tremendous musicians. The Sin put out an album in 2005 called Sin Destructible. And I will tell you that Sin Destructible, in my opinion, not that I had anything to do with it, even though I did, but not that I had anything to do with it. But Sin Destructible, in my opinion, is one of the greatest albums that no one has ever heard of. If anyone’s a fan of Decent, I don’t want to say Prague Rock, because it could be Prague Rock, but it’s just an amazing Listen,

Jared Correia:

You love Prague Rock though. Let’s be real P’S Project.

Alan Klevan:

Yeah, I live in, I’m seeing him in January in Florida. But don’t, there you go. And I’m seeing King Cruise worry December, December 6th. So it takes a little while to get totally into it, but I think that Sin Destructible is one of the best albums out there. It’s available on Apple Music for free Sin Destructible. So what happened was, hold on. So the sin kind of break up. There’s more, yeah, so the sin kind of break up and

Jared Correia:

Should I just leave the room? You should. No, no, go

Alan Klevan:

Ahead. So now we need to put together a tour to tour the album, and we got no one in the band. So Paul, Stacy and Jeremy, Stacy left, and Chris GUI stayed with the band. But to make a long story short, don’t ask how, don’t ask why. I get a phone call from yes’ manager, Paul S Silver, and he’s like, you got to call Alan White. I’m like, why? You got to convince him to join the band? So I’m like, Hey, Alan, remember I’m the one who drove you to the airport after that shit debacle and whatever. I said, I’m going to send you a desk and you got a place. So now we’ve got Chris Squire and Alan White of Yes, in this band, and we need a guitar player. We ended up with a gentleman named Shane Terrio, T-H-E-R-I-O-T, who used to play with Aaron Neville. Yes, Aaron Ne now he’s to musical. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think now the Mo is six Feet underground, but yes,

Jared Correia:

Mall along with Aaron Neville. But yes, go on

Alan Klevan:

So Shane Perio, who’s now, he’s now the lead guitarist and musical director of Daryl Hall’s Band and live from Daryl House, a Powerhouse. Unbelievable. A powerhouse. The tour was great. We lasted eight shows until everything fell to shit, and we ran out of money, and that was the end of the sin. So that’s the story.

Jared Correia:

That was impressive. The story of the sin.

Alan Klevan:

Yeah. Go into Apple Music and just check out the last three songs, city of Love, golden Age, and The Promise, and you really get a good feel for the sin.

Jared Correia:

All right. That was fun. We had a fun interview. Can you hang around for one final segment before we let you go? You got some energy left for that.

Alan Klevan:

As long as it doesn’t involve me dressing up like little Bo Peep, and

Jared Correia:

Maybe we’ll have to cancel this. We might have to cancel this next segment then. All right, 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. All right, everybody, welcome back. We’re at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit podcast. That’s right. It’s the Rump Roast. It’s a grab bag of short form topics. All of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Well, because I’m the host now, as I tell people all the time, if you have an interesting hobby, you can escape the general tragedy of the Rump Roast, because I won’t ask you any trivia questions. I’ll ask you about your hobby instead. Now, Alan’s back, he’s got an interesting hobby when he is not hopping across the country forming bands, which is that you are kind of a lobster roll connoisseur. Is that correct? I hate lobster. I think it’s gross, and I’m also allergic to it, but you clearly have different feelings on that. So how did you get into the lobster thing? Why lobster rolls and why not like roast beef sandwiches or beignets or something

Alan Klevan:

To impress my then girlfriend? I think

Jared Correia:

So was she the one who got you into lobster rolls or

Alan Klevan:

Do you have

Jared Correia:

Affinity for them to begin with?

Alan Klevan:

Her family grew up in Westin, so I guess maybe they were snotty and had lobster all the time. I grew up in New York. I was a big clam digger, and I liked seafood. So I think at some point, I mean, I know that it was our first date, but was we went to Neptune Oyster House when nobody knew of it.

Jared Correia:

In Boston, right? In the North End,

Alan Klevan:

Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. America and the World, there’s a place in the North end called Neptune Oyster House that has about eight seats, and the wait is hours on end. But before it was popular, we went there and had a lobster roll. And then on our second date, we went to Jared’s backyard, we went to Rockport, and we had lunch at my Place by the Sea, and we had a lobster roll. And on our third date, we went to Hyannis and we went to a place called The Raw Bar, and we had a lobster roll. And because I’m a guy, I’m sensing a theme. After three dates or so, I realized that maybe she’s into lobster rolls. Right,

Jared Correia:

Right. Maybe we, we’ve gone on six dates and they all

Alan Klevan:

Follow lobster rolls. So on our fifth or sixth date, once I realized that lobster rolls were a thing to do, I decided to surprise my girlfriend in New Hampshire. In Seabrook, there are competing seafood shacks, one’s called Browns and one’s called Markies. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them.

Jared Correia:

I’ve not. I’ve never been to it

Alan Klevan:

Either. So we did a lobster roll challenge by going to Brown’s and then going to Markey’s, and then I decided to top it off by going to a place in Northampton Beach, New Hampshire called the Beach Plump, where after our lobster rolls and steamers, we decided to wolf down a 10 ounce lobster roll, followed by their homemade coffee Oreo ice cream.

Jared Correia:

Oh, that sounds delicious.

Alan Klevan:

No, it’s really disgusting. I thought she was going to break up with me because well, fucking three lobster rolls, a couple pounds of muss, and then coffee Oreo

Jared Correia:

Ice cream. Oh, I see. Yeah, top of the lobster rolls. I get that. Yeah, not a great

Alan Klevan:

Mix. I mean, she was totally into it. She was totally into it, and we decided that we were going to review. I mean, by this time, we’ve been going out for, I dunno, a month, and we’ve had about 20 lobster

Jared Correia:

Consumed, about a thousand pounds of lobster. Very impressive.

Alan Klevan:

Well, I have high blood pressure now and my cholesterol through the

Jared Correia:

Roof, but it was worth it. Alright, let me ask you this. So people should go check out your LinkedIn.

Alan Klevan:

Well, no, no, it’s actually, it’s Instagram. If you go to Instagram, it’s lobster Roll with us, the Couple’s Guide to the Ultimate Lobster roll.

Jared Correia:

Oh, very nice. That it’s got to be a book at some point.

Alan Klevan:

We’re going to get there soon, and you and I are going to talk about that.

Jared Correia:

Oh, great. Coffee table book lobsters. Well, no, the reason I was talking about LinkedIn is because you had a lobster roll posted on LinkedIn and it was about, yeah, and I of course said it’s not about the length of the lobster roll, but the motion of the ocean because I’m a child and I can’t keep myself from making comments like that on LinkedIn, but here we are. I’ve never seen a lobster roll that big before.

Alan Klevan:

Taste of Maine and Woolwich Maine, baby.

Jared Correia:

Alright, I want to know this. What are your top five? Give me your top five lobster roll places. Anywhere in the country.

Alan Klevan:

Anywhere in the country. We’ve gone everywhere. Not everywhere. We’ve gone to about 150 places.

Jared Correia:

Oh my gosh.

Alan Klevan:

Between Nova Scotia and Key West. And I’ll tell you that having lobster rolls or reviewing and eating lobster rolls as hobby is really unhealthy and fucking expensive. The lobster roll that we got in Woolwich, the one that’s on my Layton was $169.

Jared Correia:

Really? Although that makes sense because lobster is expensive.

Alan Klevan:

Yeah, I think we gave it an 8.5, 8.6, I don’t necessarily remember, but the top five top lobster rolls, there’s a one and a one a, the Beach Plum in Northampton Beach, New Hampshire, there used to be two Beach Plums. There was one Northampton Beach and one in Portsmouth. Now there’s five. The reason why I like the Northampton Beach one so much is that they don’t have fryer later. They don’t have hot foods, so they only concentrate on this.

Jared Correia:

Oh, that’s cool.

Alan Klevan:

But you’re also in Hampton Beach in the summer. It closes off season. So the place in Portsmouth is really good as well. They serve ’em anywhere between four ounces and 10 ounces, but you could ask them to order off the menu and get a 16 ounce lobster roll and they’ll serve it in two hot tub buns. But I guess I need to preface this Jared by saying I’m a main lobster roll fan. The Connecticut Lobster roll is hot and butter, and for

Jared Correia:

Me, that’s an important distinction to make

Alan Klevan:

It, it’s an important distinction, but the issue that I have is that you could put butter on Rocky Mountain and oysters and make ’em taste amazing.

Jared Correia:

Could you though

Alan Klevan:

Enough butter? I’ll probably eat those bad boys, but I think Cold Lobster will just really gets you the best version of the meat possible. And we like a little bit of crunch, maybe some lettuce, maybe some celery, and the mayo. The ratio’s got to be perfect, so the Beach Plum does a really good job with that. My one A, which actually may be higher than the Beach Plum is in New Seabury, Massachusetts. It’s called the Raw Bar. The town is called Pomp ssa. It’s expensive, it’s 60 bucks, but two people could easily eat it, and I highly recommend their rum punch with that as well.

Jared Correia:

Oh, nice. All right, so we got one in one A. All right. Got three more.

Alan Klevan:

I really, really enjoyed the lobster roll at a place called the Five Islands Lobster Pound in Georgetown, Maine. That was an excellent lobster roll. I don’t know if my wife would agree with me or not, but I’d probably put James Hook in downtown Boston.

Jared Correia:

Right? That’s a famous one. Yeah,

Alan Klevan:

I mean, it burnt down, then they moved it. But I think that James Hook does a really nice job with their lobster roll, and to surprise everybody, and I’m going back there in January, we’re going to go to Key West Florida on Duval Street, and we’re going to go to a place called DJ’s Clam Shack. Over the years, I’ve become friendly with the owners of DJ’s Clam Shack, and they fly their lobster in from Maine three times a week. It’s really fresh, and maybe just the fact that you’re on Tuf Falls Street in Key West. I mean, maybe the experience, the environment has something to do with that.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for the tremendous rundown on Lobsters. That was very impressive. More extensive than I even thought.

Alan Klevan:

Lobster roll with us on Instagram.

Jared Correia:

Thank you for coming on today, sir. I appreciate it. You are welcome. Jared

Yard. If you want to find out more about Alan k Klevan and Klevan Law office, visit Klevan law.com. That’s K-L-E-V-A-L-A w.com. Now, for those of you listening in, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Edita Dick. For everybody else, we’ve got a Spotify playlist all about eighties pop. What a time to be alive. It’s like we’re taking a tour of Alan Kelvin’s own cassette collection circa 1988. Now, sadly, I’ve run out of time today to talk about the traitorous James Buchanan, but that shit might seem like Charles’ play at this time next year. This is Jared Correia reminding you that Donald Trump also destroyed the USFL because he was a narcissistic lying. Fuck. Look it up. See you next time.

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