In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Dustin Ruge discuss:
- Strategic decision-making in choosing clients
- Communicating value through intentional sales processes
- Adapting to AI-driven shifts in legal labor
- Rebuilding legal services through integrated ecosystems
Key Takeaways:
- Choosing which cases to decline becomes a powerful profitability strategy. Disciplined selection protects focus, energy, and long-term growth. The strongest outcomes come from working only with motivated, well-aligned clients.
- Modern legal sales depend on uncovering client needs rather than presenting credentials. Deep qualification shapes tailored solutions that build trust and clarity. Firms that master value communication thrive as outcomes matter more than hours.
- The billable hour strains against rising expectations for efficiency and transparency. Automation is absorbing routine intake and associate-level work. Firms that embrace value-based pricing gain an advantage in a reshaped landscape.
- AI is transforming a fragmented industry into cohesive, streamlined platforms. New business structures and investments accelerate disruption and innovation. Lean, automated operations create opportunities in underserved markets.
“The first meeting is all about the client, the second meeting is all about you.” — Dustin Ruge
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About Dustin Ruge: Dustin W Ruge is known as one of the most respected and trusted sales, marketing, and business growth coaches in the nation. In addition to his numerous books and publications, Dustin frequently appears and is referenced in major news and trade publications, business shows, and trains and keynotes at conferences across the nation. Dustin’s career includes over 27 years’ experience, ranging from technology startups to Fortune 500 companies, where he has received numerous awards and recognition for his work.
Dustin graduated from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and currently lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Connect with Dustin Ruge:
Website: https://dustinruge.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinruge/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Caution everyone before listening. If waiting for referrals feels like a gamble and not a strategy, you may not be ready for what’s ahead. This episode could spark new ideas, ownership and independence. All right, enough goofing around. Everybody. Enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:21]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:43]
Everybody, welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. Steve Fretzin here, and we are rocking and rolling twice a week for your listening pleasure and viewing pleasure. If you check out our YouTube channel, you can just look that up online, but this is the show to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. You guys may have realized, if you’ve been watching or listening to the show for a while, that I am really, really good at bringing on amazing guests, people that are going to blow your mind, people that are going to give you insights that just are different from what you’re hearing and seeing on a day to day basis. Today is absolutely no different. I have Dustin waiting in the wings. How’s it going? My friend, very good. Steve, how are you doing? Listen, it’s Friday. I’ve got a great lunch plan with a friend of mine, and nothing much for the weekend. So like, I’m excited about it, but I’m happy to be here with you to do this today. We love to start with the quote of the show. That’s kind of our jam here. This one is, I don’t know who said this, but maybe you’ll tell me, you make more money on the cases you don’t take on than the ones you do. Yeah. Sounds like, maybe, like a John Morgan thing or something?
Dustin Ruge [01:43]
Well, I don’t know if John lives by that, but I had heard this. I’ve been in the industry for over 17 years, and this is a quote I’ve heard off and on from some of the most successful attorneys, the mentors of attorneys over the years. They said this in various different ways. They’ve always said the same thing, and it’s important, because I’ve got a lot of stories behind that. But the long and the short of it is, you know, you really have to be focused in what you’re doing, and it’s very easy to lose that focus and balance, and then ultimately that success you achieve as an attorney, if you don’t really live and breathe by this quote alone.
Steve Fretzin [02:16]
Yeah. And I think for the PI attorneys, in particular, the ones that have that have figured out, or have a system of how they’re deciding that a case is valuable and is real and has got some teeth to it, versus the ones that are, you know, just going to waste their time and that they’re not going to be worth the effort and to either get rid of them or move them, to refer them out, or something, that that’s a big part of their success in growing a PI firm.
Dustin Ruge [02:39]
Yeah, most people when they when they own businesses, including law firms, right when an attorney is, you know, ask any family law attorney that stopped practicing why they stopped, right? And because it was because of just those few bad clients that they had. And that’s kind of the case with every business and every professional, and that’s why it’s so important to say no, you know, and to know exactly what you go after. And again, I learned this lesson a long time ago. I had some great mentors, and they were some of the most successful business attorneys I knew because they lived and breathed this motto, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [03:06]
And I want to get into something that sort of leaks into this about I do the same thing with like, I’m working with attorneys, but I’m I can only work with the ones that are most highly motivated, interested, coachable, and actually people I enjoy and like, if it’s dealing with someone with a big ego, or someone that’s that can’t afford me or can’t pay me, is not going to pay me like we have to do the right thing and just be very kind and gentle and let them go. I think that fits right in with what you’re saying. So absolutely. Hey everybody. Dustin Ruge is the CEO of law leaders, and you’ve got just, there’s a lot we’re going to cover today, but I want to just make sure everybody has a little bit of flavor of your background in sales. Background In sales, but also in in legal. Because it, like you said, 17 years is a good amount of time that you’ve spent in this industry.
Dustin Ruge [03:49]
Yeah, it is just so a little bit of background about myself. I have been in the legal industry for over 17 years. It’s I’ve been in different variations of I spent a lot of that time in a strategic management position within Thomson Reuters, and then had a number of different technology companies along the way that we produced and then last year, we founded a company called law leaders. And basically what we’re doing is we’re trying to solve one of the biggest problems in the legal industry, which is how to build a AI powered unified legal ecosystem. And the reason why we’re doing that is legal, is very fragmented, and it has been for a long time. It has state regulations and different layers and nuances to it, and as a result of that, it’s been a highly inefficient industry. And as a result of new technologies, especially AI, which we’ll talk about in a moment, that’s one of the reasons that’s driving all this innovation rapidly, much faster than attorneys have ever seen before. And a lot of people are having a hard time putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and that’s what we’re doing within our organization, is not only are we a law firm in Arizona, but we are actually a technology leader in this innovation to put those pieces of that puzzle together so attorneys can really be able to compete and win within this new environment that’s rapidly emerging. Upon them.
Steve Fretzin [05:00]
Yeah, yeah, things are getting crazy, and they’re going to get crazier in AI in particular. But I want to just talk a little bit about how sales has changed. And I know just using that word sales scares the bejesus out of half the people you know in the legal industry, and the other other half are lying. There’s a reason that I fell into working with lawyers. A big part of it was a deep need for them to learn business development, because it’s not taught in law school or at the law firm level. The other part is my focus of teaching sales, free selling, which is a methodology I created to help people not sell, but really walk a buyer through a buying decision and do everything in sort of a sales, free relationship driven way that makes everybody feel good. What’s your bet? You’ve got such a deep background in sales, I’d love to hear your take on how you see sales has changed and then and how lawyers need to be thinking about business development. The word sales, whatever it might be.
Dustin Ruge [05:51]
Yeah? Great. Great question. And we’re going to talk about this in the context of attorneys, correct? Yeah, okay, great. Because I do talk about this a lot when I speak at bar associations. One of the famous slides I pop up there is, everybody’s probably seen the movie The firm, and if you remember that, when Tom Curtis went down to the Caymans and was speaking to one of their clients and was talking about why he should use their service, and then, of course, he got pushed back from the client and things like that. Now this goes into another rabbit hole, which is billable hours and things like that. But what I think illustrated in that movie is what’s happening now, which is we’re moving more toward, you know, moving off of a line of selling by hours, or, you know, selling by time, as opposed to selling by results. And I think we’re, we’re moving that in a glacial shift. And how that happens at sales is, attorneys have to get a lot better. Some of the best attorneys I know are very good at articulating the value what they do. And in other words, if somebody comes and has a legal need, they will be able to articulate not only the results of what’s going to happen, but the value of what they’re paying for. And I think a lot of attorneys have been trained for so long that they’re like, well, they simply say what they’re going to do as a service. They tell them what the billable hours are going to be for that. And then, of course, you know, there’s not a lot of transparency with that, especially if it’s variable. So that’s why a lot of people, you know, shy away from legal services and don’t know if they can afford it. So it’s incumbent upon the law firms to do that. And interestingly enough, about 14 years ago, I started seeing some firms in New York City, when I was living there, that were actually having their sales conversations with clients taking place by sales people, not attorneys, because they realize that the attorneys were so ingrained into this model of not being able to articulate value, they thought the best people to do this were actually sales people. And we’re starting to see that now, not only in the senior management ranks of these larger law firms, but we’re also seeing it within the intake side, which is a lot of these people are really good at this. Are actually sales people. They’re not attorneys, because they know that methodology and how to articulate value better than many of the attorneys can do now. So I think part of it is just that paradigm shift of moving towards that direction. The other part of that is we are. It is literally undeniable moving away from the billable hour. It’s the question is, how and when, and as a result of that, how are attorneys going to be able to better articulate and price what they’re doing and sell that as a package to a consumer, as opposed to how they currently operate today?
Steve Fretzin [08:11]
Yeah, I mean, one of the principles that I work with attorneys on is to shut up and stop talking and stop pitching and selling, convincing and talking about their value and prescribing early in the meeting. I think the new sales model, and this is not new for you and I. It’s new for attorneys hearing this now that really the majority of the meeting with the client should be about them, about their needs, about their pains, their fears, what is going to get them to understand your value, not through the power of your presentation, but at least up front, but really about the power of your questions and understanding and them, feeling and believing that you’re the right person to help them. Doesn’t mean you don’t present. It doesn’t but think about how much better your presentation is going to be when you spend 80% of the time listening to them talk about everything that’s going on, by the way, in some cases, bad mouthing their existing firm, right, which you don’t want to hear. But guess what you kind of do, because it’s a driver of urgency for them to say, I got to get out from this billable hour at 1000 hour with these people who don’t respond, into somebody that’s actually going to care about me and be responsive and that actually knows what they’re talking about. So I think there’s a shift in sales, and it’s not new again, it’s for me, it’s been around over 20 years that I’ve been working that way. But I think lawyers still don’t realize that in order to keep control in a meeting and to identify that value, it’s got to happen through controlling and qualifying in the meeting. Is this a good fit instead of just pitching and presenting and trying to demonstrate value that way.
Dustin Ruge [09:43]
Yeah, so, you know, it’s a great point. I’m glad you brought that up, because one of the things when I was at Thomson Reuters, one of the things that we used to talk about, is we would dissect the psychology of sales, and especially in the legal space. Now we were selling to attorneys, right? So here you go and but what we would do is we formulated, in general, a. Two Step sales process, and we would always make it very simple. We were like, the first meeting is all about the client, the second meeting is all about you. And if you live under that methodology, you’re exactly right, because then what we found was those first meetings either went very long or very short, because we were able to qualify or disqualify people very quickly. And then the other part of that was we created that psychological breakdown where a lot of people just don’t trust attorneys. In fact, they had a study that came out just recently, again, where the majority of people are apprehensive about working with attorneys so their guards are going to be out. There’s a psychology there’s a psychological wall you have to break down. And unfortunately, that takes a little time, and it takes a little nuance of being able to connect before you disconnect on the sale, right? And then that’s really how we used to do that. And I agree with you 100%.
Steve Fretzin [10:44]
Yeah, the analogy I use is I walked into a therapist office, and the therapist spent an hour telling me about why he’s such a great therapist, and the degrees and all the people he’s helped and how amazing he is. And I left, and I went and saw another therapist just spent an hour asking me questions and making me realize that, you know, my father never loved me, or that my marriage is a disaster, whatever. And I mean, who am I going to want to talk to the second time? Right? It’s definitely not the first therapist. So it’s very similar that and lawyers need to act more like therapists and more like doctors with solid bedside manner to build that trust, to build that relationship, to allow people to open up, and then that, what that does is allow qualification of an understanding about do they have compelling reasons to change? Are they committed? Are you dealing with the right person, and are they going to pay you? You know your value. So there’s a lot that goes into that. But I also want to go back to what you said about the billable hour. I’m terrified for the future of the legal community and the folks who are, you know, all in on the billable hour, and just feel like that’s not going to go away. What’s the help from your perspective and deep, deep knowledge of AI, and also the legal industry, of why lawyers should be more concerned than they maybe are now.
Dustin Ruge [11:55]
Yeah, well, the first thing is, when you solve any problem, and I’ve always lived by this, you first have to admit there’s a problem, and the problem. And a lot of attorneys don’t want to admit that the billable hours a problem. And what I always remind them of is I speak about this at conferences a lot. You know, a lot of people don’t realize that the billable hours really, you know, this was developed by an attorney named Reginald Smith back in the early 20th century, and it wasn’t even developed to Bill. It was built. It was developed based upon tracking the attorney’s efficiency within a non practice or a nonprofit. Then he went to a law firm, the law firm adopted and said, Hey, maybe we can build this way. And then all of a sudden, the accountant started doing it, and consultancy started doing it. And then you saw that pyramid scheme start within the formations of these law firms, which started, you know, disconnecting with the marketplace. And the problem is AI is actually breaking all that down, because what’s ultimately happening, and you’ll this is really interesting to me. It was a couple weeks ago a study came out, and it found that the firms that were adopting AI the most have not seen a precipitous drop in bill rates or hours worked for the attorney. Now you would think, why is there an incongruence between that too. Is something nefarious going on here? What’s going on well with the reality is they’re stuck in a system that doesn’t work correctly with their efficiency they can gain now, and I know we’ll segue into this, but the bottom line is, if an attorney can become much more efficient with their time, are they incented to do that within a hourly billing model, or are they more incentive to just bill out and then have more free time? You see there’s a lot of ways they can go with this, and the problem is with consumers, the technology is moving so fast. If the attorneys don’t move in this direction, the technology in the marketplace is going to do that for them, and that’s why you see a lot of new legal services popping up, even pro se type support services and things like that that are literally doing an end around to the legal community. And we’re seeing this in everything that’s going on, and that’s why attorneys got to be very careful, because in the end, it comes down to pricing transparency. And this goes back to your point about sales. The hardest part about selling hourly billing is pricing transparency. Do you know what you’re getting? Do you know what the ultimate cost is going to be, and do you know what the value is behind that? Behind that? And it’s very hard to do that in a hourly billing model, whereas if I had a flat fee model or a value based model, it’s very simple, which is, here’s the cost, here’s what you’re going to get for it, and here’s how you calculate the value of what I provide.
Steve Fretzin [14:15]
With proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality. The best firms higher rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic and cases, other law firm, marketing agencies can’t deliver, get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today. Hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fredson.com and grab a time that works for you. And let’s make this your breakout year. You know, I watch, I do Doom scroll on Instagram from time to time, but fortunately, it pops up like, you know, motivational speakers and Ted Talks and things that I find really interesting. And there was a guy who had a room in front of me said, if you’re a big company, you’re going to spend a million dollars on a logo, right? This is going to be like a new brand, Game Changing logo, and it’s a million dollars you’re going to spend, and it’s going to take, you know, 500 hours to do it, or it could take 15 minutes. Which would you do? And there was, like, some arguments, right about, well, I know I want the I want all that time put into this logo. I don’t want 15 minutes, but what if it’s the same result and it’s so that’s what I think of AI. It’s like, how are you going to value hundreds and hundreds of hours in something that can be done exactly the same in five hours? Right? That doesn’t compute.
Dustin Ruge [15:51]
The great thing for the marketplace and the bad thing for the attorney stuck on this is the marketplace is going to solve this problem for them. If they don’t evolve their practice and their billing practices, they’re going to have alternative models, because the incongruence is actually growing. And now that to your point about the people that would do, for example, a logo that would charge $15,000 as opposed to somebody goes on to Gemini nano banana and can spit one out a minute, you know, mark it up. They’re going to find that difference, and then they’re going to lose their value. They’re going to lose their business ultimately, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [16:19]
I mean the creativity and the experience, you know, obviously there’s you need someone driving the machine, right? It’s, you can’t just leverage AI and expect it to pump out the perfect logo, because you told it a few things, like, might be that lawyer. I mean, that was worked over by a strategist and a specialist for not a tremendous amount of hours, but it was their experience in having worked with so many different brands that allowed them to create something that, when I saw it, I went, you could, they had, they brought me 10, by the way, they brought me 10 ideas, and they showed me, this was the third one. I go, you don’t have to show me the next seven or six or whatever like this you’ve got. And I still looked at him because it was interesting, but, but I was like, done. Be that lawyer is exactly the brand that I wanted and that I’ve been, you know, leveraging for all these years. But you know, ultimately, what I’m concerned about is how this is gonna affect the legal industry and the lawyers and associate roles and the big firms. And look, you know, people kind of crap all over, you know, big law, but ultimately, you know, they’re people too, and there’s a lot of people that are building a tremendous amount of hours at very low level type of work, or mid level work that’s going to be replaced. So how is this? How do you see this kind of playing out in the next number of years?
Dustin Ruge [17:30]
Yeah, that’s honestly probably one of the biggest impacts I see moving forward is agentic. Basically, agentic AI is going to replace all that first layer legal work, whether it be from intake to associate work to whatever. In fact, we’re seeing this right now. There’s a law firm based South New York City called Pearson Ferdinand, and they have a no associate model that they built, and they basically automate their entire front end of their operations all the way up to the partner level. And they are now one of the fastest growing law firms in the nation. And you have to ask yourself a question, which is, if you’re going to engage with these medium to large size specialist law firms, do you really want to be paying their associates anyways to do your work, to learn on your dime? Or do you want to actually get straight to those people that have the greatest knowledge base and experience to be able to operate and work with you? And that’s where Pearson Ferdinand and other firms like them are starting to break the mold. Is they’re creating these horizontal structures now, and they’re passing through that savings to the clients, because ultimately, they’re not having to absorb all those costs that they ultimately can now automate, largely through AI on the front end of their legal operations.
Steve Fretzin [18:34]
Yeah, and I’ve heard their name not only mentioned a number of times, but I had was his name Ben Ben Dack on the show recently. He’s an IP attorney, and I believe he’s with that firm. And, you know, I think they’re just there, you see, they couldn’t talk enough about the culture and everything really interesting. But, I mean, you know, it’s like, if you take, you know, I don’t know, 1020, 30% of the lawyers that are doing that entry level stuff, what’s going to happen to them? I mean, how is that going to shake out for them? Is it they’re all going to have to go solo? Are they going to have to, just like the ones that really understand AI and can use it and leverage it properly, they’re the associates that are going to get brought on. I mean, I mean, I’m not sure how this plays out for people in law school, and that are, you know, a couple years out.
Dustin Ruge [19:18]
Yeah, nobody knows for certain yet, but what I do know is that this year is the largest law school attendance in the nation. We actually partner up with Suffolk law school in Boston to do some innovation work on the AI side, and they were telling me these are the largest classes they’ve ever seen coming through the law school. Now here’s something interesting about this is that historically, especially over the past five to 10 years, close to half of the people that graduate from these law schools don’t end up practicing law. In fact, many of them consider to have a law degree more valuable than an MBA, and there’s many arguments for that reason alone. And so some of that’s in play for here. The other part of that to your question is, what are these guys going to do? And that’s the hard part. Is there’s, there’s a change going on. And. It’s a bigger answer, but there’s a change going on the legal industry in a couple of ways. One which is, they’re going to have a harder and harder time finding these associate roles in these larger if they want to stay in these larger communities, these larger cities where they go to law schools. It seems like it’s going to be hard to do that, because there’s going to be less and less hiring more and more, you know, peers and Fernandes popping up, where they’re going to not be able to gain that experience. So they can either go out on their own and, you know, try to compete toe to toe, or they, you know, one of the biggest opportunities they have right now is one of the emerging problems in law, which is the access to justice issue. A lot of the attorneys right now that are retiring are the people that are living in these smaller to medium sized communities throughout the United States, and many of them don’t have backups, right? They’re sons or daughters. They go to law school and people to law they want to stay in Phoenix. They want to stay in New York City or whatever. And a lot of these communities now are literally have no attorneys within the counties that they currently operate. So they’re going to help staff to ask themselves a question, which is, you know, do they want to be where the demand is, or do they want to, ultimately have to go out on their own to be able to compete. And they can do that, but it’s hard to do, and it’s a tough time. If I was an associate coming out right now, it would be very hard to do that. The other thing I think will benefit a lot of them is if they have that experience, if they work in these kind of co op programs before they come out of law schools to try to get their leg up into these law firms, because it’s going to be harder and harder, there’s no doubt about it.
Steve Fretzin [21:23]
Yeah. Well, this is, you know, and I was talking with a friend of mine, Jeremy Baker, who has a company called Operation palm tree, where he talks with solos and helps them kind of set up, you know, and leave big law. And that’s what he did. And so he’s sort of paying it forward at this point, but he and I were talking about it, and I’m already super busy, and I love it. I want to meet as many attorneys as I can and help as many attorneys I can. But you know, ultimately, you know, business development and marketing and branding may end up being a much bigger and more important play than it is for many right now who are just stuck. You know, 2000 hours a year you’re not doing business development, but when the job goes away, or when your hours get slashed and the billable hours not working anymore, you know, they think, you know, going out and developing relationships may be the go to move Exactly, yep. So then, what are some additional changes that you think will impact the industry over the next three to five years? What else you seeing?
Dustin Ruge [22:17]
Yeah, there’s quite a few. You touched on. One of the most important one, which is the first layer of legal work of a legal profession that, right now, agentic AI is going to largely replace. And by the way, when I talk about AI with the terms, it always helps to understand, you know, there’s two different ways I look at AI. There’s augmentation and replacement. They always get freaked out about the emplacements replacement side, but there’s the augmentation side. So when I talk about a lot of these. These are a transformation, right? They’re thinking in the context of how they practice law now. So they look at AI and chat bots like an augmentation tool that there also is now, especially with agentic AI, that’s where the replacement factor is coming into play. And they need to get very smart about how they’re approaching this, because, yes, the front door is going away. You know, we developed, for example, for our own law firm, and a fully integrated, full stack AI intake system, and that was legal Navigator, and we developed that for our own operations, because it was one of our biggest line items, our biggest problems within our law firm. And then we had a whole bunch of attorneys that saw and they’re like, What is this? And we’ve been selling it as a product now, just because there was such a demand in the space, but we are literally taking away that front door of the legal industry, of the whole notion that you need to have, for example, you know, an administrative staff and somebody answering your phones, and somebody to do your intake. And in your case, I know we can actually do all that through automation. So if you’re a solo this is one of the best times to come out, because that’s one of your biggest expenses when you start out, and now you can do this through automation for a fraction of that cost. There’s other things that are happening. I just got back from the legal tech fund summit a couple weeks ago in Austin, and you know, there were literally 1000s of small legal tech and one of the things I love about going there is you can see all these new, great AI technologies emerging around law. The problem is, they’re all point solutions, and most attorneys don’t want to deal with 10 different vendors to accomplish one thing. And so we’re going through a very rapid innovation phase in the legal tech space and and one of the things I see happening as well is there’s going to be a rise of an integrated, what I call Legal ecosystem. And basically this is another avenue that we went down. In fact, we just launched this recently, which is called law link.ai, and basically the biggest problem we’re seeing for law firms and vendors is they’re all having to do all the same thing, which is, how do they tie and do APIs and web hooks and all these things. And again, if you’re a small to medium sized law firm, you don’t have the resources to do this. We actually now handle that through our technology, our systems and our processes to basically create these ecosystems of technologies and quick integrations for law firms so they can have the best point solutions, but not have to worry about dealing with, you know, five or 10 or 15 different vendors. So that’s another thing I’m seeing. We are an ABS law firm in Arizona, for those. May not be familiar, alternative business structures are now forming throughout the United States. Arizona was at the forefront of this in 2001 Washington State just came online. Puerto Rico. There’s a small amount of this in Utah and DC, but this is another area that’s happening where you’re seeing a billions of dollars of capital coming into the legal industry that otherwise were prohibited from operating and funding within the legal industry. So you’re seeing all these new fundings and innovations going on. And this is also changing the Access to Justice space, because a lot of attorneys are now. This goes back to the the billable by our issue. You know, there are companies out there like, Hello prenup, for example. Now where you can do a prenup online, right? You don’t have to go to an attorney and go through the consultations, although they augment that with the attorney services. So you’re seeing a lot of that happening as well. We talked about the time and costs around, you know, legal and how people are going to be doing their billing. Another thing we’re seeing a lot is, and this was really cool, is there’s a lot of work in the ADR mediation space that goes on, and anything in legal that can be repeated can be automated, and that’s the way to look at AI. And what’s interesting is ADR mediation are perfect examples of this. They have new tools coming out now within the space that can analyze your case, you can put your inputs in from both both sides of the case, and it will actually give you a mediation or an ADR suggestion. And I know that might sound simple when you think about the stresses that takes off of the courts and the attorneys and the time involved due to mediations to do ADR, where you could conceivably, at any point, just simply have a judge say, Hey, here’s what our system is telling us. Is the mediation resolution. Disprove it right? Think about what that can mean for the court systems. And then the final thing I would add to that is pro se legal work, especially family law. A lot of this is standard process, documentation. Again, all this can be automated. So this is also a threat to the legal community, because a lot of people are now going to be feeling more empowered to go into pro se type legal operations and legal type of cases where they have these types of technologies behind them that can do some or all of what the attorneys otherwise would do with them before then. So there’s a myriad of things going on. It’s most exciting time I’ve ever had in the legal industry, because there’s so much change going on so rapidly. And that’s what’s really cool about it.
Steve Fretzin [27:19]
I think it’s exciting. I think there’s some elements of it that are scary. And, I mean, there’s stuff much scarier than what could happen to the legal industry, right? I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of scary stuff that, if I start talking to my wife, she tells me to shut up right away, yeah, because I, you know, I just, you know, there’s just, there’s a lot of, you know, other scenarios outside of legal that are, you know, far scarier than what’s going to happen to, you know, the lawyers and, you know, in associate roles. Well, really, really interesting stuff. Dustin, I appreciate that. Let me ask you this question, what’s Dustin’s big mistake?
Dustin Ruge [27:49]
Well, probably the biggest mistake I’ve seen that I’ve made in my life, that I’ve learned from is being quicker on reading market shifts and making changes. And one of the things that probably aggravates my employees is, is how quickly we move, and it’s almost nauseating to them. I know they’re all going to listen to this and start laughing, but it’s true, because it’s one of the things I’ve seen too far too often happen, is people saying the one statement that always kills the business, which is, this is how we’ve always done it. Yeah. And I think if you’ve lived by that methodology and that, that that thinking you’re going to have a very difficult three to five years ahead, and you might not even be practicing law at a certain point if you live by that motto. And I think as a result of that, that’s something I had to learn early on, which is, don’t ride the boat down. You know, it’s constantly change, constantly tack to the wind and make sure that you’re focused on the outcome instead of the actual product or the service.
Steve Fretzin [28:43]
Yeah, yeah. Really good, really good advice and feedback there. Let’s take a moment. Thank our wonderful sponsors. Want to let everybody know future rainmakers is crushing it. This is a different podcast than be that lawyer. It’s me, kind of sharing my best tips and practices on how to build a successful law practice. I am bringing in some clients to kind of share their successes, not only working with me, but what they can tell you about, what it’s like to work with a coach, but more importantly, what they’re doing to be rainmakers and become Equity Partners and excel at their in their careers. Of course, law her podcast with Sonia and rankings IO, one of our good friends, Chris dry over there, crushing it for PI firms. So very good. And Dustin, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to hear about all the different businesses you’re doing. What are the best digits?
Dustin Ruge [29:26]
Yeah. So they can reach me on LinkedIn. So just type in Dustin Ruge, you’ll find me. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. Otherwise, they can email me at Dustin at law leaders.com or they can go to law leaders.com or any one of our product lines, and they can find me.
Steve Fretzin [29:40]
So yeah, and we’ll put all the links in the show notes, everybody, so you don’t have to worry about that. Dustin. Thanks so much. I mean, this is, you know, it’s eye opening. I mean, every time we get into this, and we could have the same conversation in six months, and you might be saying something very different, right? I mean, that’s how sort of fast things are evolving. But I appreciate you coming in and kind of giving your your perspective on this, because I think lawyer. Are, you know, many of them are kind of in the dark about where where things are and where things are going. So much appreciated. My pleasure. Steve is great joining him. Yeah, and thank you everybody for hanging out with us for the last 30 again, hopefully you’re getting lots and lots of good stuff out of this show, whether it’s AI, marketing, branding, business development, you name it, we’ve got it, and we’re going to keep cranking it out for you twice a week, every week. Everybody to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Take care. Everybody. Be safe, be well. We’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [30:30]
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website. Fredson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal, business development and marketing trends, for more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.