Why Law Firm Growth Takes More Than Solving Problems with Benjamin O. Bengtson

If you are trying to grow a law firm by figuring everything out alone, that may be the problem.

In this episode of Judicial Dollars and Cents, you hear from Benjamin O. Bengtson, founder of BOB LAW, about the business lessons behind building a personal injury practice in Atlanta. Ben shares how his path from Army Arabic linguist to insurance defense attorney to plaintiff firm owner shaped how he thinks about communication, case evaluation, client service, and law firm operations.

You will learn why lawyers can fall into the chess fallacy, how defense-side experience changes settlement strategy, why conversion and client communication need written systems, and where financial strategy, profitability, tax planning, and AI can help you run a stronger firm.

Listen to this episode of Judicial Dollars and Cents: Why Law Firm Growth Takes More Than Solving Problems with Benjamin O. Bengtson

Benjamin O. Bengtson is the founder of BOB LAW, a personal injury law firm based in Atlanta. Before founding the firm, Ben worked as a defense attorney representing insurance companies, giving him insight into how claims are evaluated and defended.

Connect with Benjamin O. Bengtson and BOB LAW:

Website: https://www.boblawfirm.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boblawfirm_/

Li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boblawfirm/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boblawfirm/

X: https://x.com/BOBLAWFIRM

Tel: (404)596-5518

E-mail: info@boblawfirm.com

Judicial Dollars and Cents, a podcast hosted by Anders Partner and Virtual CFO, John Scott, focuses on helping law firms win high-stakes cases with smarter financial strategy. The show breaks down the key metrics, financial frameworks, and decision-making systems that drive stronger case outcomes and firm performance.

Website: https://anderscpa.com/learn/podcasts/judicial-dollars-and-cents/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jdc.vcfo 

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/jdc.vcfo/

John C. Scott, CPA, AEP, is a Partner in Tax and a leader in legal industry financial strategy by Anders. He helps law firms win high-stakes cases with smart strategy by delivering clear financial insights, identifying key performance indicators, and strengthening decision-making at every level. With deep expertise in estate planning and financial analysis, John works closely with attorneys and firm leaders to align financial goals with long-term business success and case readiness. His approach brings scalability, flexibility, and data-driven clarity to complex legal environments, helping firms stay focused, prepared, and competitive.

Connect with John C. Scott:

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-c-scott-cpa/ 

X: https://x.com/JohnScottCPA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Judicial Powers and Studs, brought to you by Andrew's virtual CFO services team from all across the United States. I'm John Scott, and in each episode, we'll shine a light on the financial side of the legal world, turning law firm numbers into impact-driven stories. From taxes and profitability to practice growth and leadership, we sit down with law firm innovators who are shaping the future of the profession. Let's dive in right here on Judicial Dollars and Cents. Hey, welcome back to Judicial Dollars and Cents, the podcast where we dive into the business side of running a law firm. I'm John Scott with Anders, Virtual CFO Services for Law Firms, and each week we talk with industry experts who help law firm leaders think differently about growth, profitability, and performance so they can build practices that last. Today we welcome Ben O'Benson. Ben is the founder of Bob Law, the law firm of Ben O'Benson, a personal injury law firm based in Atlanta. Ben focuses on representing plaintiffs in personal injury matters, including motor vehicle accidents, slip and fall cases, and general negligence claims. Before entering the legal profession, he served in the United States Army in military intelligence and as an Arabic Arabic linguist. I'll say that right at some point. After his discharge, honorably I might add, he earned his undergraduate degree in political science from Augusta State University and went on to graduate near the top of his class from Georgia State University College of Law in 2005. Ben, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Hey, thanks for having me, John. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Hey, thank you for being here. I I love to understand and hear people's origin stories. Can you tell me from high school to where you are today, how did this happen? Because it's I think it's a pretty interesting story.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Yeah, so uh I grew up a pastor's kid in kind of in the rural outskirts of Sacramento area in California. And so um I, you know, as I was graduating from high school, we really didn't have a lot of options in terms of you know where to, you know, go to school and all that. So I joined the army uh and to really to get money for college. And um at the time, I was smart enough to have scored really well in this um in this aptitude test for error for linguists. At the time also, it was like in the early 90s, right after uh the Gulf War. And my guess is that the Army intelligence people said, you know, we really ought to have some Arabic linguists since we just got you know done with a war in uh in the Middle East. They had, you know, before that, they had been uh pumping out Russian linguists because it was like the you know the Cold War forever. And um, and so I was lucky enough to um to score really well on this test, and they said, okay, we're sending you to language school. And so I spent I spent the hottest couple months of my life in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, which is like in July. I thought I knew hot, John.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

But it's not that humid where you grew up with.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

No, no, no. In the Central Valley area, it'll get you know 100 degrees, but it won't be like that swampy hot that it is in in Columbia, South Carolina. It was really hot. Um, and then after that, I went to the language school and I spent like a year and a half studying Arabic, like five, you know, five days a week, eight hours a day, nothing but Arabic all the time. Uh and then I ended up in uh Fort Gordon, which is just kind of on the outskirts of uh Augusta, Georgia, and was assigned there. I can't tell you what I did, but um Well you could tell me, but you'd have to kill me, right? No, no, it was it wasn't that it wasn't that uh uh it wasn't that secret. It's only if I told you I'd have to hurt you really bad.

unknown 3:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Only marginally secret.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So you have a linguistic aptitude. Did you take language in high school?

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Yeah, I took Spanish. I took Spanish in high school, but like for um you I thought a lot about uh how that kind of ended up happening, and the best that I can come up with is that there's a there's a certain mentality of a person who is a language person. It's some kind of combination of like of music and language arts and just kind of having and also this ability to keep a bunch of stuff in your head all at the same time. Turns out that's kind of the same qualities that are that make a lawyer a really good lawyer, is being able to like have all of these facts in your brain at the same time, keep them juggle juggling, uh juggling in the air, and then do something with them, right? Um, so at any rate, the the the aptitude test was like one of the most bizarre tests I've ever taken in my life. Just they make up this language and you have to like keep up with it. Anyways, so um, so then yeah, so then I was in Augusta. I was in Augusta for 10 years. I um went to undergrad. I taught, uh I was a gymnastics coach, I was a youth director at a church, did a bunch of different things. And then uh when I graduated, um I just got a job uh representing people in social security disability cases. It was like the weirdest thing, John. Like I I found that I was I fell in love with helping people understand complex things. Um and you know, I don't really know how how to explain it other than like my upbringing had kind of prepared me for that moment. As a pastor's kid, I grew up around people talking about big things, right? Talking about spiritual things, talking about esoteric topics, and heard my dad all my life um explaining esoteric and philosophical and religious things in simple terms where people can understand it. And I found that I had that same gift. I had this ability to take a complex subject, this this Social Security, disability, federal regulation law, and just like pave it into a way that people could understand and um and then help guide them through it. And that kind of really set the set the tone for the rest of my career. Because I've always been kind of in that in that place where I'm like I'm helping an individual through a weird, like a complex time in their life uh that they have to navigate.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

You know, I want to come back to that thought that you had about you being able to take a bunch of facts, chaos really, and make sense out of it. And I think that you're so right. A lot of attorneys have that ability, a lot of accountants have that ability as well, because you know, there are there are things that are distractors that don't really apply to the fact pattern that you have to be able to weed out, but you have to know where all these things are and pull them together in a coherent manner and be able to tell a story. So that's a great skill set that you have.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

It is, you know, um, in talking with other uh financial people, there there is that thing. It's like um it's like a thread or it's like the one button, right? Or the one dial or knob that you can turn that turns everything on. If you're thinking about like, okay, well, this is taxable and this is not taxable, or this is tax, you know, this is on regular income, and this is on you can't deduct this, but you can deduct this if it's whatever. And you're you you as a as an advisor are thinking about all those variables, and then but you're able to like identify for your client like what that knob, that one knob is that makes the most difference.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yeah, which of those levers can we pull? And and attorneys do the same thing, they look at things from all the different angles to see what could happen or what leverage that you have. And it's just a unique skill set. You either have it or you don't.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Yeah, and it um it what we found is that um that our clients they can't they're not used to it, right? They're well, we're used to you and I are used to thinking of three different, four different variables all at a time, right? And how like if this is taxed at regular income and this is taxed at the dividend rate, and this is and this is uh pass, you know, this is passed through, but this is you know, um a uh you know, you know, this stays in the in the corporate um withholdings, right? Like if it if all these four different variables were a different way, then this would happen, right? But our c but I I can't think that way, right? That's why I need somebody like you who can like who can like translate the way those variables move. And the same thing is true with my clients. Like, we actually have to take each one of those variables and write them a separate letter about each variable just so that they can like start to understand how they work together.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah. Well, and in the VCFO world where we provide these services, we're we're kind of the outsourced finance department for professional firms. What we do is break down the non-financial revenue drivers, the levers we can pull. Like in your case, uh, being a personal injury firm, it's how many cases can we handle? How do we get them in the door? How do we get them to sign up? And then what's the average length? So we would take all that information and we would build a forecast. And we would look at your cash position and say, okay, this is not enough for the risk profile that you have. Here's the goal that we need to build to. How do we get there so that the next incremental dollar that you bring in could go into the owner's pocket? You know, how do we leave enough cash in the business? And so many law firms will at the end of the year drain the cash position and live on the line of credit for a couple months. And we want to get away from that so that they leave enough cash there so that the next case that settles, there's money they could take out.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

So that that's kind of our our Yeah, and particularly, I you know, I'd be glad to pick your brain about that my my particular situation um offline, but like the if you're a pass-through entity like I am, like um the the amount that's in the bank account at the end of the year is kind of important, right? Like, um, and like I I'm certain that you have like really great strategies that people like me can can benefit from to understand, okay, well, like how can I minimize that tax burden at the end of the year if I'm a pass-through organization, uh, but still not be broke in January, right? Because we like we still we literally struggle with that every every every January, John.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Um well, I'm sure I'm sure. And and one of the other things we do for, especially for pass-throughs is segregate your tax money, right? So we know what your income is on a monthly or quarterly basis, and we have you set that money aside into a high yield money market account so that when estimates are due or your balance due is you know due next April, then that money's already set aside. It's kind of a profit-first mentality, although I don't completely agree with all the profit-first thought. I swear by it. Um it's a great, it's it's a great concept though to segregate, pay yourself first, set those taxes aside, and then you're really looking at the operating cash going, okay, do I have enough to run the business? Anything beyond that I can take out. And then when tax time comes, I've got that money. So it gives you it gives you a peace of mind to be able to sleep at night. So you went from helping people with social security disability claims to a defense role, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Uh yeah. Um, so after I graduated from law school, I just wanted a job, right? Like I um I was looking for anything. I was sending out resumes everywhere, and I just needed to like to be a lawyer. And so after I took the bar examination, I just got I just got on the pavement and started like bounding on every door I could. And eventually I got to this place called Swift Curry McGeon Hires, which is uh it's a medium-sized, like really good, like well-regarded um insurance defense firm. Uh, and I got like a great education there and a great, I had a great experience. I um I had like great bosses to work for as um as partners. Um but ultimately I was still like a consumer-oriented person, not a B2B person. Uh, and so like I just, you know, I kind of kind of looked at it and said, you know, I really if I if I really set my mind to it, I could, I I feel like I could be a partner here, but it would have to mean that I'm that I would have to change my personality to be more of a B2B kind of, I am I'm representing the institution, I'm representing this organization rather than consumers. And like I just didn't, like it, like it wasn't who I was. Uh and so they sent me on with their blessing, and I worked for another law firm, um, the small law firm in Sandy Springs, uh, Georgia, as a claimants attorney for about six years, and then I started my own practice in 2012, like 12 years ago. Well, 2014, sorry, about 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

I have to think, though, that being on the defense side helps you on the plaintiff's side because you know how they think. I mean, it it's kind of like if you're going to be a criminal defense attorney, you probably should start out in the prosecuting attorney's office. Yeah. To get to know people and how and how the prosecution works.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Yeah. Uh it's it's not really that you learn their tactics as much as you get to understand how they think, exactly what you say, John. Right? Like, um but let me give you a small example. One, uh, we understand how insurance companies look at a case from a risk profile. And it's simple, in its simplest form, it goes something like this. Look, if this is a $100 case, if we lose and we have a 50-50-50% chance of losing, the value of that case is $50, right? So we'll offer $45 or something close to that, right? Um, and what we understand on our side is exactly how they think through that. And so we just analyze that case the same way that an insurance company would for our clients and say, listen, you've got a tough case, right? Like, I mean, the other person's saying you're at fault. There's no, like, there's no, yeah, like there's no slam dunk here, bud, right? Like you've got a, you know, you've got a hundred dollar case if you win and you've only got a 60% chance of winning. I'm telling you, like the the the outcome of this case is going to be somewhere between $50 and $70. Like, and if you you want me to go after that, I'm your guy. I can do that. Um uh, but if you want like the full value of your case, I can't do that unless you want to gamble and go to trial and risk winning or losing. If you want to do that, great. I try cases, but um, but I kind of want, I, you know, I want a sure thing and I want money and I want what's the right outcome for you and for my client, then I, you know, I need to keep the lights on too, right? Like, so uh once we explain that to the clients and we go through those variables and explain to them how they they work together and they understand how the insurance companies work, then it's much more manageable to get money from insurance companies.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

So going back to when you started Bob Law, what's the one or two things that you would do different if you were starting again today from scratch?

SPEAKER_03 15:23

Honestly, I would call somebody like you first, John. Like um the uh when I started my own practice, it was on shoestrings and you know, some of the clients that I got to take with me uh to have a revenue stream, but I really could have used uh a lot more insight into how business works. Um, I don't know if you've noticed this. I think I know what you're gonna say, but go ahead. Well, lawyers are kind of bad at business, right? Like, I mean, um, we have a very unique skill set, and it's how to solve problems. That's how they identify us for law school. They get they put us in front of this LSAT test and they say, can you solve these problems? Right. And uh and the best people that solve the best problems are given the highest marks and good and admitted to the to the most prestigious law schools, right? And so they're that's how they identify us, right? And so when we finish, we don't like we're thinking about problem solving. We're not thinking as much about like how am I gonna help my client? How am I gonna like like that's that's all good? We should be doing that. Like, I'm trying to change the industry so that it thinks like that in terms of being uh you know focused on the customer experience. Um, I don't know if you've noticed, but that's also kind of lacking in my business. Um, but the but our mentality is how do I solve this problem, right? And so um I can tell you a lot of times, John, what happens is that attorneys go through the same problem that I did, which is uh I call it the chess fallacy, uh chess, like the game chess, right? It goes something like this. Um really smart people are good at chess. I'm a really smart people, therefore I should be good at chess. I can figure this out, right? And it's completely wrong. It's it's completely wrong, right? Like uh you you can't just figure it out. You need to actually tap into somebody like you, right? Like who can can who can tell us what the moves are, tell us what the plays are, tell us what the you know what the possibilities are and study the business instead of just assuming if I hang out a shingle and I have clients that I'm gonna make money. Like that was the worst, that was the worst mistake I made, and and it and it plagued me for eight years before I figured it out.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

But you do figure it out along the way, but you're so right. Most attorneys don't have an undergraduate or graduate background in accounting or finance. There are some unicorns out there that really run it like a business. And at the end of the day, you're very skilled, but you're you're not necessarily running it like a business, in your case, for about eight years. Um we like to look at the finance function, and we have we've developed a maturity model. We didn't develop the concept of a maturity model, but we tailored it for law firms. And it's a it's a self-graded function that goes through five areas of your finance department, and we grade it together with the client or potential client. And what it does is it tells us where you're really rocking it, and it there's usually two areas that you score very low in. And we spend the next six to twelve months trying to get incrementally better in those two areas, and so it helps us set goals to make your the business of what you're doing perform better.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

And so, in in that regard, does it have is it mostly in the financial part of the business or is it also it's solely in the financial part of the business? It's not in production at all. It's it's just in how how do you get money and what do you do with the money when you get it?

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Right. I got it. I mean, we can we can comment and give you some best practices from our experience on the process piece of it, but that's really not what we're trying to advise on. There are plenty of people that do that, and you know, you know, how to improve those processes as well. I mean, we will in the forecasting piece look at the milestones of a case and we can identify bottlenecks and say, hey, you know, intake's great, discovery's good. Here's the bottleneck, and you know, you got to figure out is it a paralegal, is it an attorney that things are getting stuck there because things that should take eight months or taking 15 months? I mean, if we can shorten that time frame down to what it should be, guess what? That flywheel of cash is going a lot quicker.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

So when you talked about non-financial revenue drivers, is that like one of them, like that time on desk or that bottleneck, that bottleneck function? So that so it kind of ties a little bit into operations, but that's but most of it, the rest of it is financial.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Right. And another one would be um, you know, when I do an intake, what's my conversion rate? I mean, I I worked for a long time with a family law firm that was all across the United States, and their conversion rate was 45%. That was their goal. And if they they had a whole team of people that did intake and they were attorneys, um, if if someone was scoring less than 40%, they would get additional training. If somebody was more than 45%, which was the goal, they would train some of the other people. Now that's kind of like saying Albert Pujols or Tiger Woods could help you at baseball or golf. It doesn't always equate that they're gonna train you, but the point is you have to track that. Because I talked to another family law firm just the other day and their conversion rate was into 20s. And I was a little bit shocked by that, but there was a reason for it. They didn't charge a consult fee. And so the qualifications of the people they were talking to were not where it should be. And you know, we just suggest things that say, look, if you charge, you know, a couple hundred dollar consult fee, you're gonna cut down at your abats, but they're gonna be more serious about hiring you. So in the PI world, you're not gonna charge a consult fee, but in the family law world you would. You might, yeah. In an immigration, I've heard, yeah. Right. You want the tire kickers to to move on.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah, the uh we struggle with that, John. Um one I early, you know, uh up until maybe a year or two ago, I would talk to all of the potential clients um for other reasons, for PR reasons. Um, because if I didn't take them as a client, I wanted them to remember me. Right. Um, there are a bunch. Of times we'll talk to a client about something completely not related to personal injury, just so that we can be helpful. Because our mission, like our purpose is to help people. Uh, and we found that the more we talk to people and just help them through whatever problem, they're having a problem with the landlord and tenant problem, right? I'll sit there and talk. No attorney, like hardly any attorneys will talk to people about that stuff. And so I'll just sit down and talk to them. And every person in my organization has the authority to set up a conference call with me to talk to a client about something not related to personal injury for that very reason, because we're our mission, our purpose is to help people. Uh, and we find that that builds up that there's a PR function there that helps um, you know, feedback loop. But I wanted to ask you something about um, I don't know if this is something you wanted to dwell on, but like the conversion rate, right? We there's something you were talking about earlier uh about the conversion rate and about intake. First of all, we don't ever call our people intake people. They are there to qualify and convert, right? Okay. Means, right? So um whenever I hear the word intake, um, I think of a person mindlessly sitting at you know at a computer, blah, blah, blah. Like for us, because the personal injury world is so saturated with every lawyer in the world that does personal injury, every phone call is a sales call, right? Um, we're we're talking to them long enough to qualify them as a potential customer and then tell them about how good we are at our job and get them to sign while they're still talking to us. Uh, so it's not like an intake, I'm going to put all this stuff in and then I'm gonna hand it to the lawyer, and the lawyer's gonna talk to you sometime next week. Like we're we're there.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I actually like that process because you're not, there's there's not an opportunity for the ball to be dropped.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, I learned that from a smart guy named Grant Cardone, uh, who wrote this book called Sell or Be Sold. And he was he I learned two really important things from them, from him on that book. He said, uh, one, your qual your sales, your your conversion should be as few steps as possible, right? Uh if you're in he he spent all of his time uh training salespeople on car lots and how to sell cars and and trying to get them to to close their conversion process so it's not 15 steps, it's like three, right? Um, and but the other thing he said, which radically changed my practice, John, was you can't sell people unless that's in writing in front of their face. And that hit me really hard because I had been trying to explain things to people all this time instead of writing it and putting it in front of their face. And we radically changed our practice about three years ago. And we and everything, all those three variables we talked about earlier, we have a letter for each one of those. And we send that letter to our client that says, here's our opinion about liability, here's our opinion about coverage, here's our opinion about damages, right? We're gonna talk about how these three things make up the value of your case. Once we started putting that in writing and committing to it, everything changed. Our clients weren't confused, they weren't um arguing with us about value because we put it in front of them in writing and showed them, and it made all the difference in the world.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

That's gotta be a competitive advantage for you because I don't think many PI firms do it that way. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

It is uh it it is right.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

That's right. Which my wife pointed out to me, uh, has a double meaning, but um Yeah I guess so Morgan and Morgan is from the your area of the country, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:17

I mean they're from the Yeah, they're from I I I think originally they're from Orlando um in the in Florida. Um and they kind of just grown to be everywhere now, so yeah, they're they've grown to be many places, yeah. But you know, that's the way of things. Um, anyways, I uh can we can we pivot? Because I wanted to just ask you some some financial questions. Sure. Um I've been hearing other people talk about how like the tax uh advantages of the new bill that came out last year suggest that maybe if they were a pass-through organization, they might think about changing to C Corporation, being taxed as a C corporation, not governed as a C corporation. Like, do you have an opinion about that? Like, what what have you advised clients about that?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

We we have advised that the C Corp with a 21% tax rate and now being extended with the new tax bill, yeah, is an attractive um opportunity, which normally we would have said no to a C Corp. And there are C Corp law firms out there that have been historically C Corps, and you're not really gonna change that. The only hesitation I have is there's still the double taxation, right? Right. If I'm gonna pay you everything on a W-2 and drain the income out of the C Corp, I'm only paying tax on what's left in there, right? Everything else is going out to you, and if you're in the highest tax bracket, you're still in the highest tax bracket. That's the same as if you were in an S-corp or a partnership. There are some advantages to leaving some money in there, but again, if I pay it out as a dividend, I still have that double taxation on the dividend. So I don't see a C Corp being as onerous as it used to be because of the lower tax rate, right? But it's it's about the same as being an S-corp, really, because if I want to differentiate pay, you know, depending on my comp system, I have to do it through the W-2. And that's really important. There's a lot of S-corp law firms out there with more than one owner. I don't mind an S-corp law firm with one owner, 100%. But if I have two 50-50 owners and the comp system is eat what you kill, the only place I can differentiate because S-corps require pro rata distributions is on the W 2. And then I've defeated the whole purpose of why I became an S-corp because all the TikTok accountants out there that they give you advice on TikTok and tax law say, oh, pay yourself a low salary, take everything else out in distributions. Well, when you have more than one owner in an S-corp, the distributions have to go in proportion to ownership. Now, a partnership remains the most flexible way to allocate income and expense because I can do whatever I want in there. And so my comp model doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be on the W 2. The drawback is because you're active in a partnership, it would be self-employment income. So there's no way to minimize those SE taxes. The other big thing that's in the tax law this year is the elimination of uh in meals for the employer's convenience. You know, we at the accounting firm, people that I hate that. I know we we feel I I use that all the time.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

In fact, we actually we actually dedicate one cent out of every dollar that we earn to go to the lunch account uh for the staff because it like that's the very reason that that tax advantage was there was to encourage my staff to work through lunch and get and get it paid for by the company and not take an hour off and lose all their productivity for the day. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

It helped you, it helped them, and at least for the foreseeable future, that's uh it's either taxable to them, which you know is kind of painful for them, or it's non-deductible by you.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Depending on how you how you can track it, right? Um the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

I do think if you invited um maybe if you did a lunch and learn and invited a technical person in, then we could call it training and you might be able to deduct it that way. Or if you brought certainly if you brought clients, so many great ideas right now. Certainly if you brought clients into the office to you know do some sort of a reception, that would be deductible. But you're not gonna do that every Friday when you have Free Food Friday lunches.

SPEAKER_03 30:39

But not Taco Tuesday gone. Right, right. But I mean, ultimately we're still gonna do that for the productivity aspect of it. It's just stinks that it's not gonna be, you know, tax deductible. Uh, you said something uh earlier in the uh thing I wanted to ask you about, can't I? Yeah. No, you're I and like I don't know if it's appropriate for me to ask you questions, but I'm just so curious about okay. You said like growth, profitability, and performance. Those are you those are the key things that you're that you're focused on with your clients, right? Like um, and you kind of uh alluded to this earlier when you're talking about like the profit first model, but like how like what are the things that you do with your clients to to make them think about how profitable it is or to make them maximize the profitability of their companies?

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Well, look, we're trying to get them incrementally better. If your profitability isn't up to standards with your peers, then we're gonna dig into what is it? Are you compensating the producers too much? So we look at gross profit. And when we talk about gross profit, it's firm fees minus the salaries and bonus plus overhead for the producers, okay? And then everything below that gross profit line and that gross profit target, we want to be around 50%, because then the selling and other costs, the SGA cost, are going to be around 25 to 30 percent. And so if any of those are out of whack, we can say, hey, you know, your rent should be 7 or 8%, you're really running at 10%. Let's take a look at that. You might be stuck in a you know, a lease for two more years, but we can figure out a way to minimize that going forward. Or if your comp model isn't influencing the right things for people, you know, we can help you make some minor tweaks to that. It's tough to go in and revolutionize how you're paying people because you know, once they're used to getting paid a certain way, but if you can get the incentives aligned with the firm goals, then that's a win for everybody because they can make more money and so will you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

It's interesting. You said something uh earlier also that I wanted to follow up on. You talked about like how much the uh the employees are being paid and whether they're being productive, right? Like um, we've struggled with that because of our industry, there's a lot of competition for uh for human resources, right? Um, and and the perception that most uh law firms I think have is if I want to grow, uh it's really kind of a linear model, right? Where uh if I want to grow from representing a hundred clients to 300 clients, my staff needs to be three times as big, right? And um and and we've we've struggled with accepting that model, right? I need to add an attorney and two more paralegals, or I need to whatever, in order to do that. Um, I'm like, have you run across other law firms that are using like automation or you know, the the new AI stuff to be more efficient with the staff that they have?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

I do think that's a huge opportunity here. And there's two camps of attorneys that view AI one way or the other. One thinks it's the ruination of the profession, and the other is embracing it, realizing that every three months it's getting better or worse and it's changing, right? So you might have to pivot three months from now. But if you can create even 15 or 20 percent efficiency in a lot of the repeatable processes and still have human oversight, then you won't have to have a new attorney and two us and two paralegals to increase your productivity. And I'm not suggesting that we you know double in size and keep the same people, but I'm saying let's create some repeatable things that don't need that human interaction on the front end, but need it on the review side before it goes out the door to create efficiencies in those processes. And I do think the firms that that utilize AI and and automation will be able to compete with bigger firms with the same or less resources.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Yeah. We we've invested heavily in that. Well, I'll tell you, when I drilled down to like understanding how it works, what I found was this one, um, the thing that lawyers do, kind of the we talked about the function of lawyers, being able to handle a bunch of variables, but really if you distill it down to like the tool, the tool is to take all kinds of data and synthesize that data into a narrative, right? Uh if I'm going to trial, I'm taking all the evidence and I'm set, I'm assimilating all that evidence and synthesizing it into a story, right, that I'm telling to the jury. Or if I'm like evaluating a case for my client doing the same thing, or I'm you know talking to an insurance company, that's it. And that's what AI is particularly good at, right? Um, being able to take just tons and tons of data and assimilate it into a narrative. And so what we found was, you know, one of our key drivers of costs was having a highly skilled paralegal that can write medical narratives. Um and we would pick we were paying a six-figure salary for a highly skilled paralegal to be able to go through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of medical records and then synthesize that into um into a medical narrative. And we found that um the AI models will do it 85% as good.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

And then you can still have that person go back and and double check and review, but she's not, or he or she's not going through 40,000 medical records because the AI tool synthesized what was important.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Exactly. That person, they used you all have to have the human in the loop, but with the what the what the smart people call this the human in the loop, right? The um that person who is checking over and making sure like they know they already know the case, they already know the the facts, they're making sure that the AI agent is not hallucinating stuff, right? Uh and making sure and making sure that it's right. But it takes a fraction, I mean, like a minuscule fraction of the time to process it. Um, and we found that to be like super helpful. It allows us to actually take all of the hundreds of medical records in our client's case and synthesize it into a three-page letter that says, here's what all the doctors are saying to you. We've never been able to do that before. Years, years ago, we would have to just talk to the client and say, Well, you know, the doctor said bruh, right? Or the doctor said you were all better, or whatever. Now we're just showing them, right? Look, this is what this is the narrative of what the of what the doctor says. It's it's so much more powerful. What's the case management system that you use? It's interesting you ask about that. Um, this you did not tee this up for me, but I want to talk about it. We've been using Filevine, and um we we're not uh I want I want to say bad things about Filevine. Filevine people, they're good people, they have a great product, but it doesn't quite do as much as we want it to do. Um, mostly because we want to be in like a single pane of glass. We want to be doing everything within the platform. Uh, and so what we're actually doing is we're taking that system I described to you earlier of writing letters to the clients about the things, and we're building our own software platform called OneChousing. And we're going to license it to other uh to other attorneys and allow them to use the same system that we've developed here at the Bob Law firm in their own practices and be able to do to do all those things. Like in a in a more like I don't know how to how to describe this, but like the reason that um lawyers don't do all of the things that they know that they should do to provide a good experience for their clients is they think that it's too hard and it takes too long to do. Right? I know that as an attorney, I should be reasonably informing my client as to what is going on with their case so that they can make informed decisions about the outcome. That's literally the ethics rule from the American Bar Association, from the Georgia Bar Association, right? That's my duty. But most of the time it's too hard to do that, right? Because there are so many records, there are so many variables, there are so many things. But if we can harness um the uh the technology that we have now, it's actually not hard anymore, right? It's not hard to talk to your clients, and it's not hard to write letters to them substantively about what's going on with their case. And we've developed the system so that we can actually do that and we have good communication with our clients. Most of my I I'll have John, sorry, I'm no, I'm drawing it on, but I've getting so I get so excited about this. Like my um my week, I will talk to 65 to 70 clients uh in a week, all in about 10 minute increments. And we have them lined up on my conference call. I'll pick up the phone, I'll say, look, my you know, I was scheduled to call you at 210. Did you get my letter about this? Yep, I got your letter about this. Like, do you under you have do you understand what coverage means? Yeah, I understand what coverage means. Great. Let me like what questions can I answer for you about it? No, I totally get it. Right. And so these conversations that I'm having with my client are not me like picking up the phone and telling them, oh, you know, uh, you know, bad news, we didn't get a good offer or whatever. Like, I'm calling them after they've already watched my video about what to expect and they've read my letter about what's going on, and then we're talking.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So you've built this whole process and and implemented this communication that complies with the ethics rule. That's awesome. Yeah, hey, don't want to talk line about uh the the software venture you're doing and the potential for RD credits, and then also tell you a war story about a similar situation. I want to hear up, I want to hear about your time in Augusta. And I think you're gonna tell me you saw Tiger Woods' first play there.

SPEAKER_03 41:06

Yeah, I think I think so. I don't remember if it was 97 or 96 that I that was his first year. I think it I think when I saw him, but so at the time I was a gymnastics coach, and like all of the all of the parents there, um, they all had like well a bunch of them had uh tickets to go see the masters, and but a bunch of time, and every once in a while, um one of the parents would say, Hey, you coaches, do you want to go to, you know, you want master's tickets for today? And it was always like on a on a Friday or something like that. And so that year, I think it was 97, I got I got the tickets, and I got to see Tiger Woods um on uh I think it was his first year as a pro. And uh I got to see him like and I um go through Amen Corner and onto the um onto the 14th. And it was just like it was really it was really an exciting time. Uh and of course, you know, the the Augusta National Golf Course is one of the most beautiful golf courses anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Well, what a what a great experience. Uh, you know, he's I don't know if he's turned 50 this year or next year, but we have a senior event here every fall, and I'm hoping that hoping against hope that he would, you know, decide to come to St. Louis, but we'll see. Hey, before we wrap up, how can folks get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_03 42:27

You can always find us. You don't have to know a particular website. All you need to remember is Bob Law Firm. Uh, if you type in Bob Law Firm, hardly anything else will come up except I think some some um attorney named Robert who live who's up in um who's up in New York. But Georgia. Yeah, I'm yeah, I think he maybe he had the name before I did. But uh anyways, yeah, you can find us at boblawfirm.com. Uh we're in Atlanta. We're right next to the Braves Stadium uh or the truest park where the Braves where the Braves play. And uh if you ever need us for anything, you want to just talk about your legal issue, I'm I'd be glad to talk to you. As I said earlier, like my my purpose in life is to help people. And if you call my office, I'm gonna find some way to help you.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

Well, Ben, thank you so much. And thank you all for turning in to Judicial Dollars and Cents. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure and like, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps us grow and ensures you never miss an episode. We'll see you next time on Judicial Dollars and Cents. Thanks for joining us on Judicial Dollars and Cents presented by Anders Virtual TFO Services. If you found value in today's conversation, be sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. To learn more about how Anders helps law firms strengthen their financial foundations and drive growth, visit AndersTPA.com. Until next time, keep making smart decisions that make perfect sense.