The One Where Gyi and Conrad Rock the Boat

Episode Notes

Transcript

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. I’m Gyi from AttorneySync and I am freezing. So cold here.

Conrad Saam:

And I’m Conrad Saam from MockingBird and in my garage under a cover keeping itself warm, I have a 1974 Triumph TR6, which I bought from the second owner about four years ago.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I haven’t seen any pictures of that online, Conrad.

Conrad Saam:

No, I keep my car a little quiet, but it’s fun. It is a great drive. It is as analog as you can possibly get. And every year I have to spend money to keep it running.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Ooh, analog. I love Analog.

Conrad Saam:

We’ll

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Probably be talking more about Analog on Lunch Our Legal Marketing, but we don’t just talk about beautiful cars here on Lunch Our Legal Marketing. We talk about marketing law firms, especially in the digital age, PE age, consolidation age. Conrad, what else were we talking about today?

Conrad Saam:

We are going to start, as always, with the news. And then Gyi just gave you a little foreshadowing about what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk again about private equity in the legal world. But also before that, we are going to walk through a follow-up to last episode where we were decrying the lack of legal voice in the rule of law and what is going on in this country right now. And we’re going to make a 180 turnaround and call out some lawyers who are actually calling out the government.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Because after all, the rule of law makes the world go around.

Announcer:

Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, teaching you how to promote, market, and make fat stacks for your legal practice. Here on Legal Talk Network.

Conrad Saam:

You know, Gy, I got to say, these headphones, high-end headphones, when that base comes on with money makes the world go around, it is absolutely solid. I spend a lot of time with headphones on, especially on airplanes. I think buying a good pair of headphones is money well spent. What are you rocking there? These were the … This is terrible. This is how I made my decision. Because I spent so much time, I wore out my last ones and I found a … This is how I buy technology. I found the most trusted brand name that I liked and I said, give me the most expensive ones. That was my unsophisticated approach to making sure I had amazing headphones.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Brand makes the world go around.

Conrad Saam:

Brand makes the world go around. Before we get into our segments, we’re first going to hit the news.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

All right. The first news item today, Anthropic’s legal plugin for Claude cowork may be an open salvage in a competition between foundation models and legal tech incumbents. That’s Bob Ambrosi’s headline at LawNext. Go check it out. I think for me, when I think about this, and especially if I’m sitting there thinking as a lawyer, it goes to this idea. The big vision right now is that because these legal specific technology platforms are grounded in firm data, they hallucinate less, they provide better answers. That’s the thesis. And I’d be curious to see if that plays out over time, especially as Anthropic’s open sourcing this, you’re going to get law firms building on it, you’re going to get other builders building on it. It’s a very, very interesting thing. And again, I was just having lunch with a lawyer the other day. They’re spending so much money on this AI stuff for the firms that’s legal tech specific.

And I wonder if the foundation models are going to be able to compete and bring the crossway down for law firms.

Conrad Saam:

I mean, it’s interesting. Ambrosi cites a study from The Guardian, which focuses on the European market, but they actually called out four different stocks in legal tech that dropped with the announcement from Anthropic to the drops were 8%, 14%, 10%, and 13%. People who study this stuff, who call us up and ask for Gee and Conrad to spend $500 an hour giving our opinion on this stuff, they’re thinking about this a lot and it’s moving the markets. It’s moving market caps of some pretty big established firms.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

And again, my thing is, let’s benchmark. There are benchmarking studies. They may be imperfect. The industry could work on improving them. But I think that it’s incumbent upon everybody to be like, let’s prove out whether whose is working best. And I know there’s nuance there and it’s harder to implement than easy to say, but I’m very curious. And the early, early my reading of the tea leaves, these foundation models do a pretty darn good job. All right.

Conrad Saam:

Moving on. Ghy, I’m going to share some … It’s not even news because I don’t think we have enough data to prove this, but we are looking at multiple clients who over the last six months, six weeks, sorry, have seen about a 40% drop in all things Google Business Profile. And I started with my suspicions that there was some shady shenanigans going on because we’ve certainly seen that in the past. And boy, are we excited to share that when we can? But this looks like multiple clients with a big drop on visibility, impressions, calls, website traffic. You are going to say, “I told you so, I think. “

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I am, as we were talking in the pre-show, back at Local U, it was during the time of SGE. I think we were still in SGE world. Maybe we were just out of SEU world and we’re in the experimental AI mode. And you’re looking at these non-brand local queries and it’s not local packs at all. And of course, there’s been many tests, many iterations. We’ll continue to see that. And we’ll share this screenshot that I took recently. I posted on LinkedIn as well. Lower funnel, non-brand lawyer lookup. It’s a table of firms with firm names and benefits of each firm. And so this is why, and we plug Dir Media again. What I care about is if that’s going to be the surface, what are the positioning elements that matter to my local community? It’s very interesting. It’s not all the time what people think.

And so grateful for the near media. I think we’re going to have a lot of exciting things to be able to share about how user journeys are happening in this new surface.

Conrad Saam:

And next in the news, this is, again, a micronews segment, but it just happened to my firm again, and I thought this news story had died a while ago. Are you still getting clients struggling to move their WordPress site under their own control when they change agencies? When’s the last time Gi, you’ve dealt with this? Because I’m dealing with it right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Well, there are some well-known firms that make the very difficult, regardless of platform to leave. Specifically WordPress, as we talked in the pre-show, I’m going to be presenting to Jed Wayne’s mastermind group. We know that a lot of these agencies, that’s their game plan for stickiness. They register the domain.

Conrad Saam:

Oh, that’s really dirty.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Oh, totally. They own the hosting account. We’ve seen that many, many times. We still see it. We see the, here’s your site files on a CD. We probably don’t see that one as much. You can download them now. You can download them now.

Conrad Saam:

So where I was going with this is how do you figure out … So we’ve been pushing WordPress, WordPress, WordPress because it’s very easy to transfer and control and then I can work on it.

Announcer:

Right.

Conrad Saam:

But agencies are getting around that WordPress thing by making it very difficult to leave. The answer to, how can I take my WordPress site with me is not, we will turn this into a bunch of zip files that you have to rebuild on your own servers. The answer is, in 60 seconds, I’m going to create an admin account for you for your own site if you don’t already have it, which you should, and that’s how you transfer. So when you guys are talking to agencies about building a WordPress site for them, a great question to ask is, “How am I going to transfer this to my ownership?” And the only answer is you will have admin level access to your own WordPress site from the get- go.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Agreed. And as a fallback and a little insurance on that, I’m going to say this, people are going to be surprised to hear it. You’d be surprised how many lawyers don’t read their agreements. When you’re entering into an agreement with these companies, make sure that you’re retaining ownership, not just renting, not licensing, because a lot of times they put it right in the contract. You are licensing your website, you’re licensing the website software. So again, even the WordPress’s general use license, if you sign an agreement that’s licensing the theme files and yada, yada, yada, guess what? It’s

Conrad Saam:

Not yield.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

They own it.

Conrad Saam:

Yeah. All right. Finally, Gy, is there anything else you would like to announce again?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I am very excited to reannounce that Launch Our Legal Marketing Summit will be taking place. August 11th through 13th in Nashville, Tennessee at the Acme Feed and Seed. We are very, very excited. We’re excited about the venue. We are excited about a lot of the creative ideas that are already been percolating and get your tickets, get your early bird tickets now because this is the second time we’re doing this. We’ve already had a lot of attention for it. I suspect that we are going to hit capacity on this.

Conrad Saam:

And by the way, there are only 149 tickets remaining. So act now. There’s

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Probably less than that.

Conrad Saam:

Gy. Oh, JK. Let’s take a break. No.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Let’s talk more about the summit.

Conrad Saam:

Well, I was looking for the email that we got. Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Actually, I want to talk about something. You can find the email. I got something else to talk to you about in the same

Conrad Saam:

Vein. Go,

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Go. So Conrad, I am getting a lot of feedback about the tickets and that there are only two ticket types available. In-house marketer or lawyer. What if I’m not an in- house marketer at a law firm or a lawyer? I can’t come to Lunch Our Legal Marketing.

Conrad Saam:

Well, that was the email that I was going to look for. Let me be blunt. We don’t want you there. We don’t.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

But you’re not saying that to everybody. There’s lots of people that aren’t lawyers or in- house marketers that we plan on inviting to the

Conrad Saam:

Show. I would say I would take Umbrage with your use of the word lots. There is a handful of select people that we would love to have join us at Lunchard Legal Marketing. But I want to be really, really clear. One of the things I hate about conferences and lawyers hate about conferences is the two to one ratio of vendors to lawyers. This is about law firms and this is about in- house law firm marketers, and we want them there and we want it to be about them. You can’t make it about them when they represent a minority. And so the people who are not in- house marketers are lawyers are going to fall into one of three categories. Number one, amazing speakers that we think you need to hear from. Number two, amazing sponsors that we support and believe in that we think you need to hear from.

And number three, anyone who we don’t really know and excited to do an ignite style talk out of the box five minutes, you don’t control the pace of your own slides, we’d love to put you on stage, but that’s it. So I’m going to make unfriends with a lot of people who want to come to the event. I’ve already told a bunch of people that I love you, let’s have a beer, but not in Nashville. This is about making an amazing conference and I think it will be better, and I love you guys, some of you. It’ll be better for the attendees if you’re not there. I hate to say it.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yeah. And to that point, just to reiterate, it is registration for both tickets and Ignite Session Pitches is open at lunchhourlegalmarketing.com now.

Conrad Saam:

What if you sign up and you’re not a lawyer or in- house marketer and you show up

Gyi Tsakalakis:

At the

Conrad Saam:

Security office down at the bottom to get in, what’s going to happen?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

First of all, we will refund your ticket for you and we will kindly tell you to enjoy Nashville at a different location.

Conrad Saam:

Refund the ticket. Okay. Noted.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Well, yeah, you can’t be like, let them buy a ticket and then not let them in the show.

Conrad Saam:

I can. Sure we

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Can.

Conrad Saam:

Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

All right.

Conrad Saam:

Buy a ticket and Gy and I will put it on the bar tab.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

What we’ll do is we’ll actually, if you buy it, this is what we’re going to do. We’ll put this in the terms on the site. Okay? If you buy a ticket and you’re not an in- house marketer or lawyer, we will assume that you are making a sponsorship to the show and we will call you out on the air for trying to get into the show. That will be your PR, is that we’ll give you some free airtime, not free. It’ll be the cost of your ticket.

Conrad Saam:

It’ll be the cost of your ticket and your dignity.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yeah. So you can sponsor the show, but you will get not positive for us from it. Okay. It’s like reverse paid PR.

Conrad Saam:

Let’s take a break. All right, everyone. Last time, Gyi and I dipped our toe into politics and Gyi mostly lamented the ampathy or lack of presence of lawyers pushing back on federal government oversights. And it feels like we’ve had a turnaround, especially from stuff that I’ve been thinking. Gi, do you agree with that? Have we seen a change and how’s that coming about?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I would say yes, we’ve seen a change. There have been several examples. In fact, we’ve got a couple to share,

But there has been a call in defense of the rule of law. I mean, look, again, you say politics, and I posted this too, and I think this is going to be part of the conversation here. People say, “Well, I’m sick of seeing politics on Facebook. I’m sick of seeing politics. I don’t want to talk about politics.” In fact, I was on a call with someone who does consulting work for law firms and her sentiment was is a lot of the firms we work with, I tell them not to do politics for the very reason that it’s going to disenfranchise a large portion of their both potential client and existing client base. And I’m like, “I get it. ” There are risks to speaking out. There are also risks to remaining quiet. And in my view, if you can’t at least be aligned on the rule of law, I mean, again, we’ve talked about this on the show a million times.

Aside from the fact of your obligations as a citizen, aside from the oath that you took to defend the Constitution, it’s bad for business if there’s no rule of law for lawyers. So we’ve seen a lot of positives. You wanted to call out a couple. Let’s call out a couple. Good. We want to amplify the good stuff we’re seeing out there.

Conrad Saam:

I started looking and grabbing these after our last recording and it is showing up and I don’t know any of these people, so don’t know any of them. And by the way, we’ll figure out a cute way to put these up in the YouTube video. Spencer Falcke is a shareholder at WalkUp, Melodia and Kelly posted a map on a walkout Wednesday pushing activism there. The national trial lawyers had Omarosa as their speaker, and she talked about from the stage that how Donald Trump can’t read. That was part of it. So that was a large organization representing a lot of attorneys calling that out. That was from actually Jay Berkowitz. He posted that. This is just a simple post. This is Don Thomas. If you were someone you know who’s been arrested for protesting in Texas either this weekend or anytime soon, I’d be honored to represent you pro bono.

Puts out a phone number on here. And then I saw this. This was one of the first ones that I grabbed. This is Newman Law Group, Ericha Riggs. Have you been injured by ICE? It’s a display ad Injured by ICE. And I thought this was really clever because this is a positioning advertisement as much as it is an injured by ICE. The number of people who have actually been injured by ICE, low numbers. But basically what they’re saying is if you’ve been injured and you don’t like what’s going on with the federal government, you should call us. I thought it was a very, very clever way to do the positioning and branding and standing for something that you and I have been talking about while also flagrantly advertising, or maybe not flagrantly, nuanced advertising for all kind of injury cases.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yeah. Got to highlight our friend, Patrick Palace.

Conrad Saam:

Yep.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Who’s his agency?

Conrad Saam:

Sorry. He and I are both bitter about this, Patrick. If you hear this,

Gyi Tsakalakis:

We both got stung. I’m bitter. I’m not better at all. Keep moving on. On a serious note, yes. As the president of the National Convention ofBar Presidents, Patrick has led the charge in a pledge to preserve the independence of the legal profession and judicial system. Great leadership, Patrick. I signed it. I support efforts to support the rule of law. And again, we get it. There are trade-offs. We can’t put ourselves in your situation for making the decisions that are right for you, but I think the more that we help educate our communities about how the Constitution works, what due process means, these are things that are cornerstones of the profession and we should be, as our sworn oaths to defend the Constitution, we should be getting the word out at the very least.

Conrad Saam:

Do you think there is a space for a law firm to aggressively live on the other side of that?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

No rule of law. I’m trying to play devil’s advocate here. We’re the anti-due process law firm. Who are you going to help? What are you going

Conrad Saam:

To do? No. Who’s your client? We talk about disenfranchising part of the market, right? And so there’s a, depending on which poll you read, 38 to 41% of the market that vociferously disagrees with where you’re currently saying that we should stand. Is there a way for a law firm to stand with that group? However you or I may disagree with that is fine, but is there a way for that to happen?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yeah. What do you want to do? You want to go to polls and harass people? I mean, I don’t know how you not … And again, I’m framing like this. Again, for me, there’s a civic duty component to understanding how the government’s supposed to work and I get people are disenfranchised and frustrated and all this kind of stuff and two party system. And don’t get me started. We could improve things. But I don’t know how if your business is representing people under the law, I don’t know how you stand on the other side of against due process. Yeah. How do you stand on the other side of due process as a lawyer? Now you can argue like, Hey, maybe that’s your thing. You’re like, I’m going to try to convince some judges that the due process clause only applies to citizens. I guess that’s the pitch.

Conrad Saam:

Yeah. So no, I’m getting my constitutional stuff correct. No Fourth and Fifth Amendment, right You’re

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Arguing against Fifth Amendment Fourth and Fifth Amendment. And again, people exercising their First Amendment rights that show up using their Second Amendment right, there’s no first or second amendment anymore either. So you’re out four of the top five.

Conrad Saam:

Okay. All right. All

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Right. I don’t know.

Conrad Saam:

I was just trying to have a balance.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Look, there are plenty of lawyers that have become media pundits that are trying to make in the media, but they’re trying to make money off of ads and sponsorships and websites that pay for publishing, but practicing law. Look, the government will need lawyers, but I don’t, as a private practicing firm, how do you do that? I don’t know. And guess what? If you’re listening to this and you are that lawyer,

Conrad Saam:

Give

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Us up. We promise not to be as nice as we can and from

Conrad Saam:

You. We promise not to be as nice as we can?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

No, we promise to be as nice. I will be as nice. I am extremely nice, Conrad.

Conrad Saam:

I can’t speak to you. I’m trying to give a balanced story here, man. You know me, I like to not rock the boat.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Speaking of it.

Conrad Saam:

Speaking of, stay tuned for our next segment. When we rock the boat on Facebook, when we come back, we’re going to hear a great review from Josh Rorscheib, and he’s going to foreshadow a dispute, a rant, a disagreement, a Facebook tiff that we had with a bunch of people regarding the role of private equity in both legal and the digital marketing agency world. Stay tuned as Gy and I get rowdy. And we’re back. Thank you to Josh Rorscheib for this amazing must listen for lawyers who care about marketing review. Lunch our legal Marketing is one of the most refreshingly honest. There we go. Honest. We’re refreshingly honest. A useful legal marketing podcast out there is packed with real practical tactical advice. You can actually implement not fluffy theory or recycled buzzwords. What really sets this podcast apart is how candid it is about the legal marketing industry itself.

Boy, oh boy, Josh, do we have an episode for you? Stay tuned. It pulls back curtains on how many marketing companies operate when incentives don’t always align with lawyers’ best interests and what attorneys should actually be paying attention to if they want real results. The kind of transparency is rare and incredibly valuable. On top of that, the hosts bring a ton of personality. It’s smart, opinionated, colorful, and genuinely entertaining, perfect for a lunch hour listen and leaves you better informed instead of overwhelmed. Conrad G, thank you for delivering so much value. That was awesome. And a great segue into our next segment.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yes. Thank you for that very kind words. Speaking of casting aspersions on the legal marketing industry, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to just read the facts of what happened. So lawyers that are interested in this thing, we promise you there’s going to be a little bit of groundwork laying here, but we’ll get to how this is practically relevant for you, but we think that it’s a conversation that’s important to highlight and to amplify.

Conrad Saam:

And if you’re watching on YouTube, we’ll make sure that the post is right here for you to read yourself.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

And just so that anybody who doesn’t know about this show that someone shares this, Conrad and I own marketing agent says, “We are worthy rivals. The companies that we’re about to discuss are our worthy rivals. You give this conversation and our opinions on this as much or as little weight as you want to knowing the inherent conflicts of interest and I’ll leave it at that. ” So I’m going to lay what’s going on here. February 2nd, the search engine guys, TSEG, give a little free pub to the search engine guys. Post a Facebook post. I’ve seen these floating around. They’re not just on Facebook. They’re also sponsored ads. And I’m just going to read it.

Conrad Saam:

Just remember, they’re sponsored ads.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Okay?

Conrad Saam:

Yep. We’re going to come back to that.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Your marketing agency just got bought. That means the exclusive strategy you paid for is now being recycled for the firm across the street. At TSEG, we don’t play both sides. We partner with one firm per market, period. While the big box agencies are busy merging, we’re busy winning. Secure your territory before your competitor does grow your law firm or get left behind. And then the image is a spreadsheet and it says, “Lawyers, acquired agency. You’re just number 2,762 now. Acquired agencies serve your competitors to TSEG is exclusive. We don’t work with your rivals, giving your firm the full attention and needs to dominate your market.” Conrad, seven hours ago from the time of recording, shared this on Facebook. And Conrad, what did you say?

Conrad Saam:

Well, so I’ll read this out because I don’t think there’s a better way

Gyi Tsakalakis:

To- Yeah, I think it’s appropriate for you to read your own post.

Conrad Saam:

And by the way, I don’t even think that this should have gathered any backlash, but I just wrote Trolling for Jason Hennessy and Seth Price’s clients. The industry saw mass exodus from GNGF when they were bought by Scorpion, but not the same after these two Herringbone acquisitions. Well, I think we announced last week. I mean, it wasn’t a secret for about six months, but we announced last week it went public that Seth’s firm, Blue Shark, was purchased. That’s in the news. They’ve been very public about it. Hennessy has been very in front of being purchased by the Herringbone people, but that was very, very kind of out in the open. So to me, it was clearly a shot looking for clients from Blue Shark and Hennessy.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

It’s clearly positioning against private equity firms and the implication that private equity firms don’t offer exclusivity and that private equity firms may treat you like a number as opposed to giving you the more maybe hands-on experience that this firm stream. Now, I don’t know. And again, we don’t want to pay it up with a broad brush and we’ll talk about some of the comments on the thread. Of those portfolio companies, do you know whether or not they offer exclusivity?

Conrad Saam:

No idea.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Okay. Neither do I. Let’s assume that they do or that they’re going to say that. Seth Price jumped in. He said, “Thanks for the post Conrad. The reason I love our deal is that allows our companies to operate intact and not be smashed into a larger impersonal mush. Excited to see the Herringbone vision fulfilled with personalized service at scale.” So he’s at least pushing back on the private equity being less personalized.

Conrad Saam:

Well, I think he’s also answering your question by not answering your question. He doesn’t say, “We offer market exclusivity,” and we still do.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody to be like, even if the individual logo companies in the portfolio offer exclusivity, or some do and some don’t, there’s going to be overlap inside the portfolio. We know that.

Conrad Saam:

That has to be a part of it, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

It has to be. And then the question is, again, trying to be practical and tactical for the audience, these are the questions you should be asking. And then the question is, is that if that’s true, if there is overlap, does it matter? Are you training? Are you sharing data? Are you doing all the things that make exclusivity an issue? Right?

Conrad Saam:

So the interesting thing that I’ve seen out of this, and then we’ll get into the back and forth by some of the players later. But the interesting thing that I have personally seen in this, when the Scorpion deal was announced to acquire GNGF, it was announced poorly because it wasn’t handled very well. In fact, it was announced on some forums by some clients before it was announced by anyone else. Every single marketing agency got flooded with calls for people who did not want to be handcuffed by Scorpion. There was a known problem with the business model at Scorpion, a known distaste for not owning your own website, a known distaste for not having access to your data, all of those elements, being put on a proprietary platform. There was a known- Doesn’t seem to matter. For Scorpion, but every agency picked up a handful of clients when that happened.

There was a, I don’t want to say mass exodus, but certainly from the chatter on our own experience, three or four or five clients came over.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

And look, I’ll agree with you. Better comms, better comms.

Conrad Saam:

But I don’t think it was … They bungled the communication on that and the rollout, blah, blah, blah. I mean, Hennessy has been very in front of this. I’m a part of this. I’m excited to be this. I’m leading it. And he’s owning it. Seth, the backdoor whispers like everyone knew, but they still announced it and they did this above board. The other ones that were purchased, there were some recently that were kept very, very quiet because I think people didn’t want to lose their client list. iLawyer was quiet.This is a little bit further ago. iLawyer and Law Rent were both very, very quiet. We ended up telling some of their clients that they had been bought. The client would approach us and be like, “Hey, they’re now owned by this other firm,” and the clients didn’t even know it. That was kept very secretive.

But I think the big thing for me is, Gi, there has not been a flood of people … And you and I listen to the industry and we have all these contacts. There has not been a flood of people leaving either Hennessy or Seth. And I think it is because in the former, with the Scorpion example, it was a known entity with known distaste among the industry. With Herringbone and private equity, I think there’s a, and I’ve heard this anecdotally, we’re going to wait and see, right? Yeah. And I suspect we’ll get this out of Jason and Seth and CJ. There’s a really good story for the Herringbone conversation. There’s not a good way that Scorpion can spin like we’ve just acquired you.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Well, yeah, I’m going to push back a little bit. Until they come out and just publicly discuss the issue of exclusivity, that issue in and of itself still is true both ways. It’s true with Scorpion, it’s true with this group.

Conrad Saam:

Right. So we are at this very interesting change in the structure of this business. And we’ve talked about this in many different ways, but one of the ways that is a very real thing is data matters and size matters. Size gives you data and that really matters. I’ve said this before, I wish I had access to Scorpion’s data. I wish I had access to that.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Yeah. If I was competing in this space, I would love to have my competitor’s data being used to help me, especially if I’m a smaller guy.

Conrad Saam:

You’re taking that to one extreme, right? I’m going to go peek in at the individual data of this specific firm and I’m going to utilize it for my current firm in my

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Market. Not a peak in. I’m saying you’re going to take all of the money my competitors spent. I mean, again, we don’t know who’s doing this or who’s not, but this would be the question I’d be asking. I’m spending all this money and you’re working inside your portfolio, or if it’s Scorpion, you can probably just go look at the bottom of the website. You’re working with one of the leading competitors in my space and we’re at war and the prices are going up. There’s consolidation, national players, I’m feeling pressure on all sides. Every little bit of data helps. I’m spending several million dollars. Are you using that data to help my competitor? Yes or no?

Conrad Saam:

So let me put this into two simplistic buckets. I think if I’m the account manager at Murphy & Murphy and I’m looking at Smith & Jones individually because they’re across the street, that would give me pause.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Mike Morse posted about this. He’s like, “Yeah, in Fireproof, we are very selective about those issues.” Why do you think they’re so conscientious about it? Because

Conrad Saam:

It matters. My counterpoint on all of this, and this is the Scorpion argument. I don’t like their business model. I don’t like almost anything about Scorpion. They know how to run pay-per-click better than anyone. Now, my problem with Scorpion, and you may extend this to private equity, is I don’t believe they optimize for their clients. I believe they optimize for Scorpion. That’s like your

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Opinion, man.

Again, acknowledging my conflict, acknowledging that I’m not private equity backed. I would say this. Are there private equity deals that are done that are positive for customers, for the entrepreneurs, and for the private equity firms? There are. Is it always that way? No. And these are the types of things that I’d be asking about. I think they’re totally fair questions, and I don’t think Jason and Seth or anybody else is trying to hide anything. I’ll leave it at that. Again, I just think that it’s a relevant conversation. Anyway, the reason … So I think it’s pretty obvious why it’s relevant in terms of making a decision about who you’re working with and just being knowing about how your data is being used. I think that’s just a good thing to think about. But Hodges comes in. Our good friend, Josh Hodges, comes in and says … I did a popcorn emoji because I’m just

Conrad Saam:

Enjoying

Gyi Tsakalakis:

All this like I’m at a theater. He says, “Gy, the law firm versions of this post are going to be great, LOL.” And again-

Conrad Saam:

That’s right.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

We just talked about the Dudley Deboger MSO deal, who is part of the CJ advertising group, the Herringbone Group. And so the pitch is going to be, “Hey, you guys go practice law, you go practice law.” And we got everything else covered. We got marketing through Herringbone. We got MSOs through our MSO partners. We’re going to handle all back office for you. And guess what? Everybody’s saying we’re going to support you with the tech. We’ve got AI going on. Conrad and Gee. Conrad and Gi. Yeah, I think they’re going to handle some of the marketing, but Conrad and Gi, they’re telling you on lunch hour legal marketing, you need to free up time so you can go deliver remarkable client service, so you can go spend more time in the parts of the marketing activities that are the human connection marketing activities. We’re giving you that off ramp.

We’re giving you the way to do that. You let us handle everything with the business. You go be human. You go be local. Now, again, how does that play out in these local communities? TBD. But it’s a very interesting thing and I think it’s a thing that it’s on lawyer’s mind. They’re feeling the pressures of these things. And it’s funny because it’s kind of full circle. The positioning that TSEG is using to position themselves away from PE, as Josh is saying, there’s going to be versions of this post, of this ad for law firms, right?

Conrad Saam:

Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

And in fact, I’m recommending it. I’m recommending that.

Conrad Saam:

A couple things on that. The positioning of this and the response to the post was very weak. If you are going to position yourself against the private equity agency or law firm, doesn’t matter which. You got to lean into that and own it and be a part of it. And so it was kind of- You didn’t think they did that? No, they castrated themselves. Oh, I really like Jason and I really like Seth. And there are other companies that I’m really talking about. And so-

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Hold on. Let me just read some facts here. This is Chris Smisaro. I believe he’s CEO or president of TSEG.

Conrad Saam:

Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Thanks for sharing, Conrad. Really putting TSEG on the map. There you go. Some more

Conrad Saam:

Free pile. There you go. Free publication. I appreciate it. The passive aggressive backhanded

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Compliment. Hold on. Well, you can have your opinion about it, but the ad was my idea. You can’t get any more owning it than that. Beautifully executed by our marketing team to grab the attention of greats like this group. No 22 year olds at this point, Jason Hennessy, because he accused of someone 22 year old the market department came up with the idea.

Conrad Saam:

So he’s owning it. Jason took a swipe, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

He’s owning it. Firms acquiring SEO agencies aren’t the biggest fan of market exclusivity when it comes to scaling and profitability. TSEG has been one of the few agencies to keep exclusivity in place with certain states and major markets having the same law firm partner for 20 years. I mean, we turn away PI firms every day who due to our exclusivity, many of whom eventually hire agencies like yours, helping boost your valuation. So you’re welcome. I’m sure my thank you gift is in the mail. I mean- No, here’s my read. This is from Joe Devine. I don’t see how he’s not owning it.

Conrad Saam:

This is from Joe Devine.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Who’s Joe Devine? Who is Joe Devine?

Conrad Saam:

Former owner of TSEG.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Not a day to day operator, not a day to day operator as he communicates.

Conrad Saam:

These two fine gentlemen, Seth and Jason, are not the only marketing agencies that have sold lately. There have been quite a few marketing companies rolled up and Jason is correct. I’m not involved in day to day, blah, blah, blah. I am also aware that Herring Bone does it differently than most companies rolling up. There’s only two roll-ups going on right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

What’s the other roll-up?

Conrad Saam:

So we’ve got the LawRenk and although Maria says that she’s not a roll-up, but it was LawRenk and i lawyer, both bought by Everservice. She insists they’re not a roll-up, although that is actually the definition of a roll-up when private equity buys small companies in the same business.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Maybe she’s communicating that they didn’t mergers there. And I think she’s trying to say we’re still operating independently. Well,

Conrad Saam:

She’s either part of a roll-up and she doesn’t know it, or she’s part of a roll-up that didn’t work out very well, and it’s a fruit roll-up. But my point is, don’t walk this back. You can still be friendly with Jason and Seth and say, “I think you have a shitty model now, but don’t walk

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Back.” Well, I don’t think Chris walked … So you’re saying Joe walked it back. I get that. Joe’s not in a leadership role at the company. Yeah, no. So he’s an investor, right? And I mean this for whatever you do. He wants to keep the door open just in case he decides to sell someday.

Conrad Saam:

Bingo, right? That’s exactly what happened here. And so my bigger thing for lawyers on a positioning perspective, and I’m just going to use this as an example, and it’s something that we’ve talked about over and over again, lean into your positioning. Lean into it. If you hate private equity, be the whistleblower about why private equity sucks and don’t kind of equivocate and walk it back. You will lose business by trying to appeal to everyone, and that’s kind of what’s happened here.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

So tactical takeaways for lawyers. You got private equity coming in. What are your options? What do you do?

Conrad Saam:

I think very big picture, and let’s not talk about the agency side. Let’s talk about the legal side, private equities.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I want to talk about. That’s

Conrad Saam:

Right. So I think there are a bunch of things to do. The most important thing is to think about this and understand what it actually means. Don’t stick your head in the sand and don’t think this through. We’ve talked about some of these things earlier. Go crazy local. That is a very difficult thing for large firms. And PE is all going to be about size and scale and efficiencies, which is why if you’ve been purchased by private equity along with a competitor, you’re in a roll up whether you want to believe that or not. That’s just how finance works. So you got to go local. I also, and I personally hate this, we are in a transition point in the industry. This is a get big or die. It is going to be very difficult to be a small player. And if you don’t believe that, watch what happened to the medical industry.

When I was a kid, we went to Dr. Heffler and he was the doctor and every little town had one or two general practitioners.That’s how it was. That is gone in medical.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Do you know enough about what’s going on in medicine with private equity to have an opinion of whether it’s been a positive for patient care or not? Because I do.

Conrad Saam:

I can give you anecdotes on that, but if you like-

Gyi Tsakalakis:

There’s been tons of studies published on it.

Conrad Saam:

If you would like to share those quickly, go get it.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I’m going to open that. No. Give me

Conrad Saam:

Thumb up for thumbs down.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Why don’t we do our classic do your own research?

Conrad Saam:

That’s why people listen to us. And don’t go to Twitter and tell me politics. Give me a thumbs up. I’m assuming from your question, the leading question, that it has not been good for patient care.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Well, I would go read, because your sources matter. This is from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Private equities appetite for hospitals may put patients at risk. December 16th, 2024.

Conrad Saam:

2024.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

You can go read the whole thing. Again, the issue is always the same thing. And again, I’m not casting aspersions on anybody. Herringbone, not all private equity is operating the same way. I’m not casting aspersions at the Dudley Deboger MSO. I don’t know anything about any of these folks. But what I do know is that there seems to me to be a challenge or competing interests between people who are … Their main goal is to maximize profit and where that runs into conflict, whether it’s patient care and or legal services, there are issues there that are real issues.

Conrad Saam:

So that is my fourth bullet point on what to do if you’re a law firm. I would think around maximizing value, not volume. The private equity

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Theme,

Conrad Saam:

The playbook is around efficiency and scale, which is contrary to the concept of the boutique doctor, for example. We now have, I’ll extend the medical metaphor a little bit too far, but you now have the subscription concierge medical services and they can make that happen by maximizing the value of their patients and maximizing the value they give to their patients. Instead of seeing 32 patients a day, they’re seeing eight. Right.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

So they charge a premium for that. And that’s tricky to do in the PI contingency fee context.

Conrad Saam:

I don’t know that I agree with that.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Okay.

Conrad Saam:

We’ll see. Well, so think through. I have a great client, COO.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Hold on. Let’s just see if we’re aligned on what this future looks like. The marketplace is, “Hey, I charge a 50% contingency fee, half of your recovery, but I’m local, I’m in your community, I’m an expert in this. Good luck, man.”

Conrad Saam:

You’re making one fallacious assumption.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

I am.

Conrad Saam:

That the end results is the same for the client, going with that small local person and going with the big box.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Right. That’s a tricky thing to try to position against.

Conrad Saam:

I don’t disagree with that. And the PI world has failed repeatedly to differentiate against that. We go to court. There’s a whole reason that we call ourselves trial lawyers instead of all of those. Yeah, they’re

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Good.

Conrad Saam:

So that’s the pushback that I would have on that. And the other thing that I had on my list of things to do right now is on the channel marketing, right? You cannot be reliant on any one given channel at this point in time. You have to be running multiple channels. The level of sophistication is getting bigger and some of those direct response channels are only going to work for high volume, low value shops. That is just a fact. And so if you are-

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Explain why that is. Explain why that is to people.

Conrad Saam:

So let’s look at what has happened to … This is a great conversation, by the way. Let’s look what has happened to the pay-per-click market. I have been hearing for years, and you have been hearing for years, that it’s getting worse. It is too hard to make ends meet with pay-per-click. The cost per client is too high. The bids are too high. It’s not working. The other side of the equation that is beyond and more important than the cost per clicks or the cost per leads or the cost per consultations or even the cost per clients is what you do with that client after you get them. And if you run a very, very efficient firm that can do volume but not value, pay-per-click still works. It works awesome.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Because you have a much higher target cost per acquisition than your other shop.

Conrad Saam:

Because you’re willing to take a 10% margin on a thousand matters instead of a 40% margin on five.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Exactly.

Conrad Saam:

And that’s the difference in the equation. So when you guys say pay-per-click doesn’t work, it might not work for you, but from a different business model and a different approach, that changes. The other thing that happens with that is you’re actually willing to take more cases. They don’t have to be great cases when you’re just working to get 10% on top of that cost per client and the work that you put in. And so that’s the fundamental difference. And again, for me, if I’m a growing firm looking at this changing sea, what are the things I would do to prepare myself for … It’s not the eventual arrival of this. It’s not the eventual arrival of money, really sophisticated marketing people, really sophisticated COOs. We saw that in 2025. The COOs are here, guys. So that has arrived. That has happened. That is where we currently are.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Totally. And a couple of tactical points as we’re running out of time here, but I just want to stuff this in.

Conrad Saam:

Stuff

Gyi Tsakalakis:

It. And lawyers will have to decide what they believe in from a positioning, who they’re going to make friends and enemies with and all that, navigate all that kind of stuff. But when you get a client that hired a billboard lawyer and they’re willing to tell that story about what the differences were, that’s your marketing right there. I was with so- and-so national PE backed firm. This is what they were saying they were going to settle my case for, and this is what local guy who tries cases actually settled it for. That’s powerful. That is strong positioning against … In my opinion, that’s one of the positioning elements. The other thing that I think about in the … And you already said it, but this is why we are all over the place about diversification across channels with brand. Because when you think about it, there is a segment of consumers who already knows and likes you.

They already know you. Maybe some of them are former clients, people in the community and whatever, but they don’t remember you if you’re not staying top of mind with them. If you’re not showing up, people aren’t thinking about you all the time. And so you’re doing good stuff in the community, the Josh Hodges stuff, he’s in their feed all the time. That’s how you peel someone away from making a decision because essentially you have to give them a reason beyond, “I remembered your phone number from your jingle or I remembered your name because I drive past your billboards and listened to your radio.” You have to give them a reason to choose you over them. That’s the game.

Conrad Saam:

All right everyone, thank you for joining Gy and I as we … This has been more ranty than we typically do.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Give us feedback whether you like this rantiness or not.

Conrad Saam:

I’ve enjoyed it. I will tell you that some people over at TLEG will give us negative feedback. I don’t

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Think so. I think they’re going to say thanks for the peak. Pre-PR. Thanks for the

Conrad Saam:

… That’s what they should say. That should be where their brain is. Thank you for the free PR. That they are exclusive and they hate some private equity firms.

Gyi Tsakalakis:

How’s that? Get your popcorn out, folks. It’s an exciting time. Until next time, Conrad and Gee farewell from Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you’d like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I think I’m ready.

Conrad Saam:

You need some coffee, dude, or cocaine. Probably coffee. Okay. Is that coffee?

Gyi Tsakalakis:

Liquid cocaine, brother.

Continue Reading