Jobst Elster is the Head of Content/Legal Marketing Strategy at InsideLegal.com. Jobst has extensive experience working with...
Jared D. Correia, Esq. is the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, which offers subscription-based law...
Published: | January 17, 2025 |
Podcast: | Legal Toolkit |
Category: | Legal Technology , Practice Management |
It was the 80s, man! The Xennial microgeneration (born between 1977 and 1983) is, arguably, the best generation, but growing up in the magical, tech-free 80s wasn’t actually entirely happy-go-lucky. TV and movies of the era loved inflicting psychological scars on children, so Jared takes a therapeutic moment to get all that emotional damage off his chest.
Next—what you’re actually here for—insights on legal technology, conferences, products, and more! Jared welcomes Jobst Elster of InsideLegal to get his take on the latest trends. They discuss technology use in law firms and spend time hashing out why legal tech conferences are still a pretty essential part of tech education and making connections with progressive, reputable vendors.
And, lastly, the Rump Roast! As it turns out, Jobst has a serious barbeque hobby, so, in homage to the name of this segment, he and Jared talk about the literal roasting and smoking of delicious meats.
A playlist full of…meat?
Jobst Elster is the Head of Content/Legal Marketing Strategy at InsideLegal.com.
Special thanks to our sponsors iManage, TimeSolv, CosmoLex, and Clio.
Announcer:
It is the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia, with guests, Jobst Elster. We talk legal tech and smoking meats, and then it’s the frozen bowl. Yeah, no, not that time. Your Aunt Wilma put her dead cat in the freezer. But first, your host Jared Correia.
Jared Correia:
It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast. This episode promises to be a feast for the years, and yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit Podcast, even though I have no idea what a pigtail hook is. Can you smoke it? We’ll find out. I’m your host Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because James Cordon was unavailable. I lost his cell phone number. If I’m being honest. 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 Jobst Elster of Inside Legal to talk about legal tech, legal tech, conferences and the like. I would like to once again visit some childhood trauma because I’m a complete and total masochist. Lemme trauma dump on you for a little bit. As a child growing up in the eighties, I was aged three to 12 in the eighties, there were lots of opportunities to be traumatized.
We call that Tuesday. There’s a great Bluey episode, as you may know. The dad from Bluey is my spirit animal and the episode’s called Fairytale. It’s the finale of Bluey season three, which may be the best bluey season. I dunno, I don’t have to speak out of turn. Basically, bandit, who’s Blueys dad is telling Bluey and Bingo a story about how he met their mom, Chile and it’s all vibes. He’s living in the eighties, riding bikes with his brothers, hanging out at the arcade, going to the beach. There’s not a smartphone in sight. Nobody has the internet. Nobody’s talking about ai. It’s fucking great peak humanity. Whenever a bandit mentions some questionable behavior, he’s engaging in like not wearing bike helmets, but girls express surprise and he just says it was the eighties, man. I spent a whole monologue talking about the original Transformers movie that came out in 1986, which was a Titanic achievement.
Should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Fucking Orson Wells was in it. People wake up again, it’s crazy because all the main characters are pretty much brutally murdered in the first 10 minutes. Absolute cinema also pretty traumatic. Nobody would ever do that shit in the kids’ movie today. Now, I was arguing with my kids the other day about whether a xal was a thing. They said it wasn’t. Spoiler alert, my kids are stupid. So I was obviously right that it is the thing. I explained to them slowly and carefully that a xal is someone who was born between 1977 and 1983. Effectively it’s a micro generation or a sand risk generation. It comes between two generations. So basically a xal is a combination of somebody who’s Gen X and millennial or has traits of both those generations. In other words, distilling it down as much as I can.
It’s basically somebody who had a technology free early childhood, but then became a technology using adult, Hey, like me, I think it’s the greatest Microgeneration that led me to a Xal Reddit group where I uncovered even more childhood trauma as if that was even possible. Stay away from Reddit, everyone. It’s strange. What we remember, something that’s burned into my memory was an episode of the TV show, empty Nest. If you’ve never heard of Empty Nester, not to Blame, it was one of those shitty late eighties, early nineties series that inexplicably ran for seven seasons because streaming didn’t exist and live sitcoms was all anybody could watch. So this is actually a spinoff of the Golden Girls, which everybody knows, which itself had another spinoff called Nurses as well as a sequel called the Golden Palace. Did the Golden Girls deserve to generate three additional shows off of its conceit?
Who am I to judge? I’m not here to talk about The Golden Girls though, even though I was How I learned about Bon? Well, I kind of knew about boners beforehand, but you get it anyway. Empty Nest is a show about a doctor who’s the golden girl’s neighbor. He’s played by Richard Mulligan. He’s an actor, probably know what he looked like even if you don’t know his name. But as I said, the show’s totally unremarkable. The only thing I remember about it, the only thing don’t even remember the theme song, and I remember this fucking vividly, is when this one kid ate a fish or ate a par of a fish or a fish stick, I think it was fish sticks out of a trash can and got botulism and he almost died. From that point on in my life, I lived in unrelenting fear for at least the next 35 years, thinking that I might be eating food from the trash accidentally without knowing it.
How would I ever know how the struggle is real and I’m not alone? There’s a whole fucking Reddit. It’s right on this. If you don’t believe me. Wait, there’s more. My parents took me to CET when I was five at the drive-in. That was a mistake. The worst vacation I ever took was afraid to swim in the pool at the hotel because there was a cartoon shark painted on the bottom, ridiculously cartoonish, obviously a painting and not a shark, but that shit was Jaws. It had to be. And then the priest ripped a dude’s heart out in Temple of Doom, and then I was afraid to travel anywhere, couldn’t get me near a pyramid. Then there’s that episode of Punky Brewster where Cherry got trapped in the refrigerator, the one I’m talking about. That’s why you take the doors off of refrigerators now before you throw them out so kids don’t get stuck.
That’s the legacy of the eighties, everybody. Then there was a different strokes episode where Gordon jumped from WKRP in Cincinnati. He’s later the Maytag man on the commercials. Yeah, he played a child molesting photographer in the eighties, almost got Arnold. Shit was real in the eighties. People danger it lurked around every corner. This is probably why modern day kids are so soft and coddled. We’re all out here as parents trying to protect them from all the shit we had to go through. But hey, it was the eighties, man. Now that we resolved that, you should never eat anything out of the trash. I’m fucking serious. Okay, let’s talk about Q. Let’s talk about legal tech with Jobst Elster. He’s the head of content at Inside Legal. But before we get to all that, let’s now hear a little bit more from our glorious sponsors. Everybody, let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting sandwich, which I guess is smoked meat today. More than that later. Stay tuned. Alright, that’s enough of that for now. Let me introduce our guest today on the Legal Toolkit. We have in his very first ever guest appearance, which is my bad. We’ve got Jobst Elster who’s the head of content at Inside Legal better than Outside Legal. How are you doing sir? Thanks for coming on.
Jobst Elster:
I am doing very well. I appreciate the invitation and yeah, what’s up with that? It took you so long to get me on this thing.
Jared Correia:
That’s okay. I’ve had this podcast for so long. I’m like for a time whenever I’m like, oh, it is someone’s first appearance, I’m like, oh, does that make me an asshole? Probably. We’ve known each other for a while obviously. So talk to me a little bit about what you do. So what is Inside Legal? What are you doing over there? What else do you have on your plate?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, so Inside Legal started back in early two thousands as a website slash blog if you will, to sort of fill the void.
Jared Correia:
Oh,
Jobst Elster:
Filling the void of connecting buyers of legal technology with sellers and primarily through useful information, whether that was interviews with influencers and interesting people or market research that the industry should know about that maybe slipped through the cracks or our own research that we commissioned or associations that you should be affiliated with. I mean, kind of how we got to know each other too at trade shows and things like that. Just being sort of a repository for useful information as it relates to legal tech, especially useful for bigger companies like the UPSs and even the Microsofts and the big companies that all of a sudden decided, oh, we really care about legal at least for a minute. That’s a whole different world. How do we jump into that? So it’s always been more of a passion project and more of a Good Samaritan project than a big revenue stream, but that’s sort of what Inside Legal is and continues to evolve.
Jared Correia:
That’s interesting. So I think when you were talking about connecting buyers or interested parties to legal tech, I was immediately thinking of lawyers getting information, but you’re also talking about potentially larger companies who are like, Hey, we want to do legal, and I feel like in my experience it’s been like every four years Microsoft’s like, there’s a lot of lawyers, we should do a legal thing and then they lose steam on that after three months. Is that stuff still happening? Do you think there’s still interest there?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, I think what they definitely recently have had going for them is so the necessity of teams and the necessity of all those tools that people already have that they now need to or want to more aggressively adopt. So right now there is actually a lot of interest on the Microsoft side obviously,
Jared Correia:
And it doesn’t have to be just Microsoft by the way. There are other larger companies that are interested.
Jobst Elster:
Oh yeah, right. Feel free to explore as Studio a good example because they’ve been kind of like a
Jared Correia:
Whack-a-mole
Jobst Elster:
For a long time of disappearing Very Much and Google was another one. Although Google with Google apps and trying to kind of legalize that, if you will, I don’t think that’s happening. So they sort of bowed out. They’re like, yeah, no.
Jared Correia:
Do you ever think somebody like Microsoft is going to come out with a legal software that lawyers would be able to use? Or at this point is it more like how do we market our existing tools as they are to law firms? Because Microsoft as an example, they have a lot of shit in there. They’ve got Dynamics, they’ve got Power bi. A lot of lawyers don’t even know what that stuff is.
Jobst Elster:
What I’ve seen is Dynamics is a great example. Here’s your CRM and then let’s find a specialist company that will customize it and make it what it needs to be for the lawyer. So I don’t really think it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to do that. They can work with their ecosystem of partners to do that and there’s plenty of them to go around across all the different applications. So I think that’s what they’re doing. Yeah, I would be shocked if they literally had their own legal products.
Jared Correia:
I know they were gunning for that in the past, but the solution we just talked about seems like such a more logical solution.
Jobst Elster:
I remember it was like ELTA 15 years ago where the big announcement was that Microsoft is going legal and here is their matter management system and they had three.
Jared Correia:
Kidding.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, they had three big law firm CIOs up there that looked very uncomfortable to talk about how they’d be utilizing it. Yeah,
Jared Correia:
No, it’s always funny. They’ve been dancing around a little bit and it’s never come to fruition as far as that’s concerned. Let’s move to buyers of legal products, legal tech products and other tech products. So you found that you had more attorneys accessing your content, so did that change the way you provided content and engaged with those attorneys over the course of time?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not necessarily how we provided it, but what we provided. So use cases and examples and things that they could relate to on how technology works for them and they’re always wanting to know what the partner at the firm across the street is doing. So doing those sort of interviews and case studies and things and sort of giving them access or communicating it to them in a way. First of all, there are no dumb questions kind of thing. Meet them where they were at technologically.
Jared Correia:
That makes sense. Obviously you’ve had Inside Legal since 2010, is that right?
Jobst Elster:
No, I want to say early 2000.
Jared Correia:
Like 2001
Jobst Elster:
Probably early. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny you can tell because the URL inside legal.com is a people, you got that
Jared Correia:
One back in the day
Jobst Elster:
I’m old, man, we’ve had that a while. What do you mean just bought it website? I’m like, yeah, we’ve had it shoot 25 years now pretty much.
Jared Correia:
Alright, so what you were talking about was something else I wanted to get to, which is obviously lawyers, they love to know what other lawyers are doing. Like oh, build down the street, bought that software, I probably should too. But then you start talking about doing more content based on being at an event. Obviously in the last 25 years, web content has changed, social media was not a thing then became a thing. How have you changed the content you’re putting out outside of being at events based on those changes? Have you moved to more video or audio stuff? Are you still writing blogs and articles? How has that worked over the course of time?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, we’ve definitely moved to provide content that more matches kind of the pace of business, which is shorter pieces of content,
More digestible, giving people write from when they see an article or a blog post, they know how long the engagement is going to take. Just stuff like that just from an accessibility standpoint and transparency standpoint so we can still get the engagement, but kind of realizing that there’s a lot more competition now than there was before. It’s funny, I haven’t, and it’s really cool. Obviously we’re doing a podcast here and I’ve seen that over the last 15 years. We used to actually do a survey with ilta that polled their membership, which is primarily on the IT side at a law firm. It’s not necessarily the lawyers, but we hold them and ask them what are their favorite social media tools and where do they go for information. It was always interesting how steadily podcasts have made their way to a much more viable resource. Again, makes sense. People are mobile, people are on the move, they’re doing a hundred things. It all makes sense. So I think the one area where I think we’re still refining always is on the video side because there’s always like, oh yeah, we love video, but then it’s like, yeah, 15 seconds of video,
Jared Correia:
Right? 15 seconds of video and then you actually have to record the videos and comb your hair and take a shower and
Jobst Elster:
Stuff. Nobody wants to do that. Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s the other thing. We used to be able to and get away with sounds sketchy, but when we did these recordings at events we would always do from the floor. So you really didn’t need to do, unless you literally are in the middle of they’re preparing for lunch and you can’t hear anything. We typically with the background noise is supposed to make you feel like you’re there, but you know what I mean? So we’re not going to do much editing. This is raw. And
Jared Correia:
So you’ve been in the space for a while now as we alluded to. So ai,
Jobst Elster:
Right? Yeah.
Jared Correia:
Everybody’s talking about ai.
Jobst Elster:
Yes.
Jared Correia:
Is that the most impactful change you’ve seen to legal technology?
Jobst Elster:
For sure. Yeah,
Jared Correia:
I would agree. And we’re like early days of AI too.
Jobst Elster:
Oh, I know. Yeah, I think so. And the other big monumental change I would say, or before ai, and I’m just strictly speaking from the legal tech side, has been cloud adoption, I think,
Jared Correia:
Right?
Jobst Elster:
But you can still to an extent probably get away with being adverse to that or clinging to the security concerns and all those things that were the
Jared Correia:
Excuses before covid slow to adopt cloud. Yeah,
Jobst Elster:
Absolutely. Yeah. Actually, it was funny, I was listening to a sports podcast prior to us talking today, and they were talking about
Jared Correia:
Which one do you care to share?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, it’s actually one, it’s Pat McAfee.
Jared Correia:
Oh yeah. Okay.
Jobst Elster:
And they were actually a big one talking to Drew Rosenhaus, one of the big mega agents, and they were talking about how one of the reasons that Nick Saban left college coaching is because he didn’t want to deal with the NIL stuff. He didn’t want to deal with all the college athletes all of a sudden becoming professional that
Jared Correia:
That’s why somebody like Belichick moves into UNC. It’s more like the NFL. I get that.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah. So no, that’s what’s happening, right? With ai, right? It’s like you’re seeing people, you know what too much this has made the decision that I’ve been, yeah, I’m dropping that mic. This is the decision I’ve been trying to make, and here’s the sign that I don’t want to deal with it. It’s funny. Yeah, I remember that with social like, oh, I can just close my eyes and ears and Twitter and all that stuff. They’ll go away and then, oh, we had to grin and bear it and still kind of use it in a way, or at least be knowledgeable about it. This is not an either or decision. So that’s why I would agree or say it is absolutely the most impactful because it applies to everybody.
Jared Correia:
I think lawyers are actually adopting AI at a really fast rate, not just big firms that are designing their own AI tools, but also smaller firms. They’re using it way more aggressively than the cloud. Have you seen that too, or
Jobst Elster:
So I feel like the beginning of that adoption curve was skewed toward big law initially.
Jared Correia:
Yes, I agree with that.
Jobst Elster:
Right, and that was for a variety of reasons, right? Sure. Be it resources, all those kinds of things. But now I would absolutely agree with you. In fact, the Legal Week conference, which typically happens during this month, that has always been a great, it’s the beginning of the year and a great time to check in with what firms are doing, and even last year we already saw that it was moving downstream in terms of
Jared Correia:
Adoption
Jobst Elster:
From a size standpoint. So I would absolutely agree with you. What I’m not seeing as much yet, and maybe that’s because there are a lot of sensitivities around that, is AI being used to really deliver complex law type products
Jared Correia:
Beyond the basic use cases of like, Hey, draft me a letter or summarize a document. Yeah,
Jobst Elster:
Exactly. Yeah. I think on the admin side, it is amazing, which is still obviously putting the firms in a position of if we can’t capitalize on this revenue because we were able to cut 1500 hours from what we did last year for that same service, what does that mean to the billable hour? Which I love those conversations. Hopefully we can have this podcast in 20 years when we’re old and whatever.
Jared Correia:
We can look back on this. I’ll like, man, I was so wrong. Death of
Jobst Elster:
The billable hour, still talking about, because it still won’t be
Jared Correia:
Dead. Oh, I agree.
Jobst Elster:
Right? I think that was a conversation I had my first week in the legal tech space in 98. Oh, it’s Kevin, get
Jared Correia:
Ready.
Jobst Elster:
Oh my god
Jared Correia:
it’s so bad. It’s been dying forever. Hourly billing has been on Life Forum forever.
Jobst Elster:
It’s like, oh my God, just put it out. Its misery at this point.
Jared Correia:
So if you’re listening, get your AI shit together, it’s beyond time we’ve been saying it. I want to talk to you a little bit about the conferences, like the legal tech conferences, because I feel like that’s a really interesting world. What’s your take on the legal tech conferences? How have those evolved over time? Because I feel like there’s way more than there’s ever been because not only do you have the A tech show and Legal week, but you got all these little groups putting on conferences now, and then you’ve got vendors who are having their own user conferences, which have turned into large tech conferences, cleo’s, for example. What’s that been like watching that develop?
Jobst Elster:
It’s interesting. I feel like we as an ecosystem of, again, going back to the buyer, sellers have not found out a better way to interact, communicate, share information than conferences, and
Jared Correia:
I’m there for you. That’s good.
Jobst Elster:
We have tried. I mean, if you think about all the virtual attempts, especially during covid,
Jared Correia:
Yeah, which never seemed to work.
Jobst Elster:
There is no traction with those for whatever reason. I mean, I don’t know if it’s because competing with other models like webinars and things, I don’t know. But to answer your question, and I can only speak for the legal business of law and legal tech space, but I don’t see that going away anytime soon. I can tell you that when I started a LM ran a whole conference catalog, and I one year went to 16 legal tech conferences across US and Canada, like New York Legal Tech, New York happened three times a year. So obviously now there’s one right Legal Week, and they’ve kind of put a different spin on that. But I think overall conferences will continue to exist, I think especially because there are so many special interests, if you will, like corporate lawyers. True. And corporate buyers have their own conferences, and then you have litigate. I mean, there’s just so many different, I don’t think that’s going to go away. I think we’re going to stay with name the top three legal tech events that are of relevance across the board. And I would still name probably Legal Week, the ilta Annual Conference and Tech show.
Jared Correia:
Yeah, I mean if you did all of those shows, you would also see most of the big vendors, if not all. That’s Right.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Again, to get repetitive. I think what I always liked about Tech Show is because it’s a different audience than those other two events, you do have somewhat of a different ecosystem of vendors there.
Jared Correia:
I don’t know if anybody listening who’s an actual practicing attorney has ever been to 16 conferences in one year. You may have the record. So if I’m a lawyer and I’m listening to
Jobst Elster:
You build Ring must be Sky, I’m Sky, nothing, nothing I’m proud of. But I guess now it’s public information. Don’t worry. We’re only going to put it out all over. Not changing the world by covering legal tech conferences tell you that much.
Jared Correia:
So if I’m a lawyer and I’m listening to this and I maybe don’t go to a lot of legal tech conferences or I’m thinking about going, what would you tell people to do to leverage that experience? Should you try to visit all the boosts? You try to target certain ones, you try to talk to certain people. How do you get into the conference thing? Because a whole vibe on its own, I feel like
Jobst Elster:
It is. It is. And I think actually it’s not a much different answer or recommendation that I would give a vendor who is a vendor, and specifically I’m thinking there of the sales team that is preparing for a conference. So basically be informed, do your research on what you’re be honest about and knowledgeable about why you’re going. It may have been like someone’s like, Hey, you should go to this conference. Okay. Know what I mean? Go with questions that you want answered. If it’s as straightforward as, Hey, you’re looking at, we talked about ai, you’re looking at using AI technology, then narrow down to what specific use cases you have that you’re looking to address with AI potentially. And then match that with the vendor exhibitor side who will be there. And typically these vendors are always very, have open arms when it comes to potential
Jared Correia:
Customers, clients.
Jobst Elster:
So they’ll go out of the way to accommodate you in. So it shouldn’t be hard to get you FaceTime with people and to get you information. That’s actually why I really like conferences ilta, because business is done at this conference where others are more like informational in nature. This is literally people leave with purchase orders and people are literally, you’ve
Jared Correia:
Got buyers and sellers in the
Jobst Elster:
Same place and they are openly wanting to buy. They’re not just secretly wanting your super cool pen to take back home. They actually want you to engage them and talk to them about why your solution is what they need. So I like that. That’s like cut the bullshit, be honest about what you’re there for and let’s talk. Never assume that you’re going to have ad hoc meetings and be able to set up a meeting time on site.
Jared Correia:
That’s a really good point.
Jobst Elster:
Never happens. So plan that stuff and make sure that you have that figured out and scheduled and calendared beforehand.
Jared Correia:
It’s so funny, I talked to vendors sometimes and sometimes they’re grumbling, like Fucker took my pen, didn’t even take my business card, they never scheduled a demo,
Jobst Elster:
And then on the last day when I need to ship all that stuff back, they’re nowhere to be seen. Right? Then I’d gladly take more pens, 20 pens.
Jared Correia:
I got one more question for you. What are you looking at or watching for in terms of developments in the legal tech space for the next half decade? We just hit 2025, so got five years left in the 2020s, which is still crazy to me. Is it simply development of AI products or do you have your eye on some other stuff?
Jobst Elster:
I think it’s less the products. I’m looking more at how technology will evolve to help lawyers stay competitive.
Jared Correia:
Oh yeah.
Jobst Elster:
With competition coming from all a variety of places,
Jared Correia:
Right? Including non-lawyers. Yeah.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah. I remember years ago, I think it was general counsel for Google was on a panel that I was a part of, and she was talking about that Google does not adopt any technology that takes the user longer than 10 minutes to be able to figure out. So you want to stay ahead or abreast of the innovation curve, but at the end of the day, who cares if you’re using cutting edge tech if you’re not actually using it,
Jared Correia:
If it’s not usable.
Jobst Elster:
So it’s kind of like that bouncing act of new tech to help you deliver better work product for your clients with technology that you’re actually using. You don’t have to be excited to use it and all that, but it’s doing the job or ideally it’s even invisible to you and you don’t even know it’s there and and you’re just literally working, but you’re having behind the scenes all this, the duck paddling away,
Jared Correia:
Grinding on those billable hours.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Jared Correia:
If this was great, can you hang around for one last segment?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, of course.
Jared Correia:
All right, everybody, we’ll take one final break so you can hear more about our sponsor companies and your latest service offerings. Then stay tuned as always. For the Rump Roast, it’s even more supple than the Roast Beast. I All right, everybody, welcome back. It’s 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? Because I’m the host now, as is common practice here at the Rump Roast. If you have an interesting hobby, you can escape a series of obnoxious questions for a series of slightly less obnoxious questions. So you smoke meat?
Jobst Elster:
Yep, I
Jared Correia:
Do. That is your outside hobby. That’s not legal related at all. I find that to be an insanely interesting world as well, and it’s increasingly popular, especially because in and around Atlanta, right? This is a big thing down there.
Jobst Elster:
I think we have, there’s a Atlanta barbecue app, and I want to say that within a 15 mile radius, I have access to over 350 barbecue joints. Seriously?
Jared Correia:
It’s insane.
Jobst Elster:
And those aren’t even the ones that when you’re driving down the road that are literally in the grocery store parking lot smoking away, these are establishments. Yeah.
Jared Correia:
So I got to say, I’m not a huge barbecue guy, but sorry. But one of my favorite barbecue places in America is there’s this place called Oklahoma Joe’s in Kansas City.
Jobst Elster:
Yes,
Jared Correia:
Sir. Which is like, do you know it? It, of course you do. It’s just little. Are you talking about the location
Jobst Elster:
In the gas station?
Jared Correia:
Yes. Yes.
Jobst Elster:
It’s probably top five in the country.
Jared Correia:
It’s great if you, it’s great. Okay.
Jobst Elster:
So
Jared Correia:
It’s one thing to be like, I’m a barbecue enjoyer, and even to know a little bit about it, I know there are different styles of barbecue. There’s a North Carolina barbecue and Texas barbecue. How do you get to the level where you’re like, I want to go out there, buy and purchase meats and smoke them for consumption by the populace? How does that happen?
Jobst Elster:
Actually, really cool, fun story. That kind of involves my dad too. So I originally grew up in Germany. I’m German National. When I was like eight years old, my family moved to the United States from Germany, and my dad immediately adopted the American lifestyle, which Again, To an extent was what we’re watching on tv. So that’s like Dallas and Knox Landing. I’m serious. And Dukes of Hazard. That was like the exposure. Germans got to America, right.
Jared Correia:
So your dad’s like JR Ewing basically.
Jobst Elster:
Oh, totally. Yeah. He got the boots. He bought the Jack Daniels, and he found friends that showed him that you can actually take pork ribs, barbecue ribs, and smoke them in Germany. You boil them and serve them with sauerkraut, They’re basically kind of like a throwaway meat. People really don’t, they’re not very popular, Obviously The opposite here. So he slowly, and then he ended up doing quite a bit of work going back to kc, the KC link in Kansas City, and when he would come back from his business trips, he would bring home barbecue sauce. This was before nine 11, so you could bring a pig on the plane, right on the plane. There was no line. What are you checking? Shove it in the overhead compartment. You’re good. Totally. Yeah, it’s still moving. It’s all good. Don’t worry about it. So about nine years into this US experience, my dad got delegated back to Germany. So we moved back to Germany, the company BSF, a big German chemical company and audio company. They used to make tapes. They basically gave us an entire shipping container to put all our stuff in, and he’s like, perfect, I have room. So he bought 144 bottles of barbecue sauce, and he bought 144 bottles of Jack Daniels, and he shipped them back to our new home in Germany And basically great. Basically Bought a water smoker, like a $50 brinkman little smoker, and people would come from 30 kilometers away. Oh my God. There was this guy in this little village making American barbecue. Nobody did that in Germany. So that was my first exposure.
Jared Correia:
That is really funny.
Jobst Elster:
And then when I was becoming an adult and that kind of thing, I’m like, I’m going to continue this tradition and discover this world. I did that, and then I moved to Atlanta probably like 12 years ago. And so since 2017, I’ve actually been competing professionally on the barbecue circuit.
Jared Correia:
You have a whole team, right?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, we have a team. Yeah. We’re called the heavy smokers,
Jared Correia:
By the way. Great, great name. Kudos to you.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny. That was always my dad’s, that was always what we called him because he was literally a three pack lucky strike, no filter smoker.
Jared Correia:
Oh,
Jobst Elster:
Wow. Also
Jared Correia:
Smoke. He really adopted the American lifestyle,
Jobst Elster:
And then he also smoked meat, so he was the OG heavy smoker. So he’s like, Hey, You can Use that if you want. Yeah. So anyway, so yeah, it was basically a bunch of some local guys here in Atlanta that all loved eating barbecue, and we all thought we could make good barbecue, and why don’t we put it to the test and go to a competition.
Jared Correia:
Do you guys, do you brainstorm different recipes, different sauces? Is that what you do as a team?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah. Well, you see, the downside of competitive barbecue is it is very non-creative, meaning you’re cooking barbecue for a panel of judges, and the judges have very strict criteria how they are measuring how good your barbecue is, it’s based on, and are There Categories based on Yes, it’s based on taste, obviously texture, the look of it, because you have to serve it in a box.
Jared Correia:
Oh, interesting.
Jobst Elster:
What your box looks like. And it’s very regional, like you mentioned earlier. So Southern Georgia style barbecue is a lot different than North Carolina is a lot different than, Memphis is totally different than Kentucky. So depending on where you’re competing, you have to match the flavor profile of the judges that are very local to that area. So if I was like, I’m just doing a dry rub, no sauce sort of presentation, I would never, ever win anything because here locally, we want sweet sauce. You kind of have to know what the judges want, and it’s always the same meat. You always have to make ribs, you always have to make chicken, you always have to make pork, which could be pulled pork typically, and you always need to make brisket. Those are the four meat categories that you have to submit.
Jared Correia:
And you’ve won awards though, right? You’ve competed and won?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, we’ve won. It was one of those, it’s like the first time you go to a casino and you win, and then you think, why the hell doesn’t everybody go to casinos? This is the best way to make money.
Jared Correia:
So the competition world is pretty much locked in in terms of what you can do. How do you have fun barbecuing? When do you get to experiment? Do you do that on the side? How does that work?
Jobst Elster:
Yeah, I made it sound so like, oh, there’s no opportunities for, there is, I mean, the actual meats that you’re being judged on are strict, but in order to make it fun, some of the competitions have new categories. They’ll have a category, for example, called anything but be UT, T. So you can make anything but a pork product.
Jared Correia:
Oh, interesting. And they will give
Jobst Elster:
You a wheel to spin what protein to use.
Jared Correia:
Oh, that’s cool.
Jobst Elster:
Sometimes it’s like crazy swordfish or whatever, different things. And then there’s a whole judging that goes on just for that. And that’s cool. You can be as creative as you want. Sometimes They want you to make crazy desserts where you’re smoking the actual dessert. But yes, the fun part, just to real quick answer your question of prepping for the competitions is the practice. Just like, I like to fish, and I always admire professional fishermen who literally
Tell their loved ones, oh, I’m spending the day on the water. I’m practicing for my next tournament. So that’s when I’m like, yeah, I’m gone all Saturday. I’m hanging out with my buddies. We’re going to drink beer and smoke meat. We’re practicing for the competition, which we actually are. We’re cooking certain things, we’re trying new recipes, we’re trying new rubs. I mean, that’s so much fun winning stuff. I mean, there are teams, maybe like 50 that I’m aware of, that actually make enough money with barbecue competitions to actually make that their main job for everybody else. It’s obviously like an aside, it’s a hobby. Some of these competitions you’re competing with 500 different teams. So The like’s Likelihood of winning something and winning money is very low, and it’s a very subjective endeavor.
Jared Correia:
Okay. Can I ask you some quick hit questions here? Lightning round on barbecue. Do you remember the Simpsons episode when Homer eats the five Alarm chili and he sees the coyote in his fever dream played by Johnny Cash?
Jobst Elster:
No, unfortunately, I don’t remember that episode.
Jared Correia:
I don’t, if you’re listening, if you have not watched that one of the Best Simpsons episode ever, do you ever make hot stuff like that? Or is that not a thing for Barbara King?
Jobst Elster:
Well, you see for my own non-competitive scenarios, for sure. Not that crazy hot, but we do experiment with that. It’s actually funny.
Jared Correia:
You’ve never hallucinated and seen a talking coyote, just to be clear.
Jobst Elster:
No,
Jared Correia:
No.
Jobst Elster:
But I mean, yes, but that had nothing to do with hot stuff. That was probably more like bourbon. Okay, good. Yeah.
Jared Correia:
Next question. Do you have a favorite personal type of smoked meat and what is it?
Jobst Elster:
Yes. This is shout out to all our Texas brothers and sisters Brisket.
Jared Correia:
Brisket,
Jobst Elster:
And probably because it’s one of the more expensive cuts, AKA very unforgiving and hard to perfect. And so I always feel like it’s a challenge to do it. And I remember the first time I paid a hundred dollars for a piece of meat, and I was so concerned about ruining it, and literally I paid more attention to that than I did probably many relationships in my life. Yeah. So anyway. Yeah. That’s funny.
Jared Correia:
Briskets, brisket. I love
Jobst Elster:
Brisket for sure.
Jared Correia:
Alright, your favorite rub or sauce?
Jobst Elster:
Anything without sugar in it
Jared Correia:
Really.
Jobst Elster:
And 99% of all rubs and sauces have sugar in it.
Jared Correia:
That’s interesting. Okay. So do you have one that you like
Jobst Elster:
Sugar free? They answer your question. Yeah. Again, going back to Texas salt and pepper.
Jared Correia:
Really just salt and pepper, like playing salt
Jobst Elster:
And pepper, salt pepper, salt and pepper. Sometimes I’ll throw in some granulated garlic and always, the first thing I learned when I was doing barbecue more competitively was the sauce is never the boss. So I always serve sauce as a complete accompaniment. I don’t sauce my stuff. I only sauce it for competitions because you have to.
Jared Correia:
What are some of your favorite beers to pair with? Barbecue?
Jobst Elster:
So actually this is one, I remember when I first moved to, well, not when I first moved to the States, I was eight years old. I wasn’t drinking much beer. But when I moved back, not
Jared Correia:
A law.
Jobst Elster:
Yeah. When I moved back in my early twenties, I was such a beer snob from having been exposed to German and European beers, and it was very counterproductive to be a $6 an hour intern and having a champagne beer taste. So I really started embracing the Miller highlights and the PBRs and those pilsner in general, I feel about beer and barbecue, how I feel about sauce and barbecue. It need not overpower the barbecue. It Needs to just be a nice accompaniment. And to me that means laggers and pilsners.
Jared Correia:
Okay. I’ve learned so much today. I got to say, I go to a steakhouse and I order like well done steak, which people are like, you are the problem. I know. I know. You should. Oh, I, you can’t see this on the podcast in some places. Your face
Jobst Elster:
you would be escorted outside. Yeah,
Jared Correia:
Right. Thank you for doing this. I knew nothing about this, so thanks for educating me. That’s awesome. And everybody who was listening for sure, come back again, please. We’ll have to do this again sometime.
Jobst Elster:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Let’s do it.
Jared Correia:
If you want to find out more about Jobst Elster and Inside Legal, check out inside legal.com. Yes. That’s the actual URL inside legal.com was pretty cheap if you bought it in 1943. Now, for those of you listening in smear Georgia, say that three times fast. We’ve got a real meaty playlist for you over at Spotify. Song’s about meat, cooking it, eating it, rubbing it, putting sauce on it. I don’t know what the fuck you do with it. Whatever you do, you sadly, I’ve run out of time today to talk about the 1981 A FC championship game, but I’m sure I’ll get to it one day. This is Jared Correia reminding you that no one likes to know it all. Tommy.
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